NUMBERS AND DISTRIBUTION OF MANKIND—FAWCETT 
the natural increase of population for 
the intercensal decade 1911-21, in 
which the net increase was only 0.9 
percent. Europe has undergone two 
great wars, and the resulting famines 
and pestilence, since 1914; while 
Russia has also suffered revolution, 
civil war, and further famine. These 
facts taken together make it improb- 
able that there has been any large 
increase in the total world population 
since 1914, in spite of the growth in the 
New World. 
In view of these doubts and of the 
variations in many of the estimates 
which have been quoted, it is im- 
possible to give an exact figure for 
the world’s population. The total 
is probably somewhat less than 2,000 
millions (210°). 
Growth 
The experience of the civilized lands 
during the last two centuries has ac- 
customed us to the conception of a 
continually increasing population. 
From 1801 to 1921 the population of 
England and Wales multiplied more 
than fourfold ° in spite of a considerable 
emigration. Since 1800 the total popu- 
lation of Europe has increased from 
175 millions’ to 500 millions, in spite 
of the emigration of not less than 40 
million® people. Under specially 
favorable conditions some smaller 
populations have increased even more 
rapidly. The French Canadians now 
number about 4 millions. Practically 
all of them are descended from the 
5,800 immigrants who reached Canada 
before A. D. 1680 when immigration 
from France ceased.? This gives more 
6 From 9 millions to 38 millions; figures 
from the Census Reports. 
7 Estimate of Levasseur, op. cit.; and see J. 
Haliczer’s The population of Europe, 1720, 
1820, 1930, in Geography, 1934. 
8'To the United States alone more than 
33 millions. F. J. Warne in Annals of the 
American Academy of Political and Social 
Science, January 1921. 
9G. E. Marquis on p. 7 of the volume 
Social and economic conditions in Canada, 
published by the American Academy of 
Political and Social Science, May 1923. 
385 
than six-hundredfold {increase in 260 
years. 
During the first decade of this cen- 
tury the mean rate of increase in the 
countries which had ;regular censuses 
was 1.159 percent per annum.” At 
this rate the numbers would be 
doubled in a little more than 60 years. 
If this had been the average rate of 
increase in the past, the whole of the 
present population of the world would 
be descended from one couple living 
near the end of the first century B. C, 
(the date of the expulsion from the 
Garden of Eden?). If it could be 
maintained in the future, then in 
another thousand years the earth 
would have about 25 million millions 
(2510!*) of human inhabitants, 
i. e., more than one to every square 
yard of land. Such calculations make 
it very obvious that the recent average 
rates of increase among the civilized 
peoples are far greater than those 
which existed in the past; and also 
that such rates of increase cannot be 
maintained for any considerable time. 
Evidently we have been living in a 
period of exceptionally rapid increase 
of population. But it is clear that we 
are approaching the end of that pe- 
riod; for the birth rates are now falling, 
more rapidly than the death rates, in 
a large part of the civilized world. 
While in the past the direct check to a 
too rapid increase in numbers was 
usually the existence of a high death 
rate, in particular of high rates of 
infant mortality, it is now attributable 
chiefly to a fall in the birth rate. 
Mankind is now able to choose which 
of these two checks shall be applied; 
but one of them must be. If the 
naturally rapid increase in numbers is 
not controlled by human acts, the 
appeal will be to the ancient trinity 
of ‘“‘war, pestilence, and famine.” For 
the surface of the earth is incapable 
of expansion; and its resources, though 
great and capable of much fuller uti- 
lization, are limited. 
10 Knibbs, op. cit., p. 31. See also article 
by F. Shirras, in the Economic Journal, 
March 1933. 
