78 



be only 25 bushels per acre and the average yield in Illinois 

 be only twenty-five bushels per acre and the average yield in 

 Illinois be only thirty-five bushels per acre, when the average 

 yield upon the farm of the University of Illinois, on normal 

 soil under practical, profitable and permanent scientific systems of 

 farming is eighty-seven bushels per acre? 



There are at least four factors involved in the solution of 

 the problem of maintaining prosperity, civilization, and univer- 

 sal education in this country. These four factors may be clas- 

 sified as exploitational, scientific, legal, and economic. 



1. Further exploitation of our remaining virgin soils, as by 

 irrigation and drainage, neither of which is of large significance in 

 comparison with the magnitude of our present agricultural devel- 

 opment. 



2. The restoration, by practical scientific methods, of deplet- 

 ed lands and large increase in productive power of practically all 

 lands now under cultivation. This is the only great positive 

 factor. 



3. The legal control of increase in pouplation by the en- 

 actment and enforcement of suitable laws. 



4. The reduction in the standard of living, by extending the 

 tendency already enforced to some extent, as in the gradual with- 

 drawal of meat and other valuable food products from the daily 

 diet, and adopting such standards as are common in China and 

 Japan, where beef, butter, and milk are practically unknown. 



The greatest study of mankind is not man, but the applica- 

 tion of principles upon which depends the preservation of man's 

 prosperity and civilization ; and this study n^ust not only in- 

 clude the application of science to raise high the limitations or 

 the production from the soil of necessary food supplies, but 

 it must also include the application of sense in placing some 

 just and necessary limitations upon the reproduction of the 

 least fit of human kind. 



