REDISTRIBUTION OF MANKIND— DICKSON. 557 



from " extensive " sources has reached, or almost reached, its maxi- 

 mum, and that we must depend more and more upon intensive 

 farming, with its greater demands for labor. 



The average total area under wheat is estimated by Dr. Unstead as 

 192,000,000 acres for 1881-1890, 211,000.000 acres for 1891-1900, and 

 242,000,000 acres for 1901-1910. Making the guess— for we can make 

 nothing better — that this area may be increased to 300,000,000 acres, 

 and that under ordinary agriculture the average yield may eventually 

 be increased to 20 bushels over the whole, we get an average harvest 

 of 6,000,000,000 bushels of wheat. The average wheat eater con- 

 sumes, according to Sir William Crooke's figures, about 4^ bushels 

 per annum; but the amount tends to increase. It is as much 

 (according to Dr. Unstead) as 6 bushels in the United Kingdom and 

 8 bushels in France. Let us take the British figure, and it appears 

 that on a liberal estimate the earth ma^'^ in the end be able to feed 

 permanently 1,000,000,000 wheat eaters. If prophecies based on 

 population statistics are trustworthy, the crisis will be upon us before 

 the end of this century. After that we must either depend upon some 

 substitute to reduce the consumption per head of the staple foodstuff, 

 or we must take to intensive farming of the most strenuous sort, 

 absorbing enormous quantities of labor and introducing, sooner or 

 later, serious difficulties connected with plant food. We leave the 

 possibility of diminishing the rate of increase in the number of 

 bread eaters out of account. 



We gather, then, that the estimates formed in 1898 are in the main 

 correct, and the wheat problem must become one of urgency at no 

 distant date, although actual sliortage of food is a long way off. 

 What is of more immediate significance to the geographer is the ele- 

 ment of change, of return to earlier conditions, which is emerging 

 even at the present time. If we admit, as I think we must do, that 

 the days of increase of extensive farming on new land are drawing 

 to a close, then we admit that the assignment of sj^ecial areas for the 

 production of the food suppl}^ of other distant areas is also coming to 

 its end. The opening up of such areas, in which a sparse population 

 produces food in quantities largely in excess of its own needs, has 

 been the characteristic of our time, but it must give place to a more 

 uniform distribution of things, tending always to the condition of a 

 moderately dense population, more uniformly distributed over large 

 areas, capable of providing the increased labor necessary for the 

 higher type of cultivation, and self-supporting in respect of grain 

 food at least. We observe in passing that the colonial system of our 

 time only became possible on the large scale with the invention of the 

 steam locomotive, and that the introduction of railway systems in 

 the appropriate regions, and the first tapping of nearly all such 

 regions on the globe, has taken less than a century. 



