president's address. — SECTION G. 187 



the following way : — .Even assuming — m order to eliminate all 

 consequences attributable to the clash of opposing national in- 

 terests — a world-population, which has become homogeneous m 

 respect to its various interests, the power oi this population to 

 advance will be dei>endeut upon its skill in exploiting the very- 

 large but limited possibilities upon which, it is really de-pendent. 

 The wants of mankind may be divided into two classes, viz., the 

 essential, such, as food, housing, clothing, &c., and the unessen- 

 tial, such as all unnecesary elaboration of these items and of the 

 general paraphernalia of civilized life. Elaboration is, of course, 

 not always undesirable, since whenever it promotes man's power 

 of meeting his essential wants, it may be regarded as belonging 

 to the class of essential needs. Thus education, with its elaborate 

 machinery for informing, training, and developing, not only does 

 not necessarily reduce the population possibilities of the world, it 

 may greatly increase them. For example, discorveries resulting 

 from investigations in ordinary chemistry or in biochemistry, in 

 biology, in physics, and progress and invention in agricultural 

 and other branches of engineering, have made relatively arid 

 tracts productive. Thus, through the accumulations of know- 

 and of capital, the settlement of population has become a possi- 

 bility where without these, it was quite impossible. It appears, 

 moreover, from recent research that growth can be electrically 

 stimulated, and it is not unlikely that our power to exploit 

 Nature is only in its infancy. But whatever be the truth of this, 

 and however skilful man may become in such exploitation, the 

 world cannot carry a vast jjopulatioii, nor can it increase for 

 many centuries at the rate now characteristic, for that rate would 

 in but a few centuries not leave, us even standing room. It is 

 evident, therefc>re, that a world-consensus of opinion may have 

 virtually to be reached in the not very remote future as to popu- 

 latioin increase and as to the appropriate mode of developing 

 world-production and the proper limits of its exploitation, 



4. International Homogeneity atul Bate of Natural Increase. — 

 When, however, as at the present time, the above assumption of 

 a world-wide homogeneity of interest and purpose is not entitled 

 to be made, the special duty of countries such as ours more vividly 

 ai>pears. Thus, the unique problem in any sparsely-populated 

 and valuable territory is to make its food supplies and all essen- 

 tial products as abundant as possible with the best economy of 

 effort; for in this way, and in this way alone, can capital accumu- 

 late and population be advanced. This means, however, having 

 capital and material enough, and working hard enough, to main- 

 tain an increasingly large proportion of unproductive persons, 

 viz., the young; in short, those who, not having reached the 



