ROBERTC.COOK 77 



[Raynal] might with just as much propriety have said that before 

 the institution of social laws every man had a right to live a hun- 

 dred years. Undoubtedly he had then and has still a good right to 

 live a hundred years, nay a thousand // he can, without interfering 

 with the right of others to live; but the affair in both cases is princi- 

 pally an affair of power not of right. Social laws very greatly in- 

 crease this power, by enabling a much greater number to subsist 

 than could subsist without them, and so far very greatly enlarge le 

 droit de subsister; but neither before nor after the institution of 

 social laws could an unlimited number subsist; and before as well 

 as since, he who ceased to have the power ceased to have the right.^ 



In increasing our own power over the fifty years since 1908, we 

 appear to have grievously impaired the rights of the people of many 

 lands. The fantastic increase in the levels of living in the United 

 States has been at the expense not only of our own resources, but of 

 those of the rest of the world as well. The gargantuan scale of this 

 drain on the world's resources was set forth by The Twentieth Century 

 Fund in 1955: 



Of many raw materials the United States consumes as much as all 

 the rest of the world combined. It accounts for about half the 

 world's steel capacity, for example, now that the post Korean ex- 

 pansion has been completed. It consumes more than half of the 

 world's crude petroleum and nine-tenths of the world's natural gas. 

 It is the leading consumer of nearly every industrial raw material, 

 and, with some notable exceptions, is also the leading producer.^ 



This voracious demand will accelerate as population growth acceler- 

 ates. 



In the light of the parlous situation of a majority of the earth's 

 people, the picture is not altogether pleasant. Our standard of living 

 is not now, nor does it appear likely to be soon, based on a balanced 

 exploitation of our own resources. 



Marie Antoinette earned a niche in history's hall of fame by pro- 

 posing to feed the starving people of France on cake since they had 

 no bread. At the present moment in history, we, the incredibly for- 

 tunate 6 per cent, having pre-empted much of the earth's industrial 



-' T. R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (9th ed.; London: 

 Reeves and Turner, 1888), p. 421. 



^ J. Frederic Dewhurst and Associates, America's Needs and Resources, The 

 Twentieth Century Fund, New York, 1955, p. 754. 



