of our social life and to the progress of all our 
industries. Here we have so many people. Here 
will be, in a few years, so many more. These 
things are mathematically certain. What de- 
mands will they make upon the country, and how 
well is it prepared to meet them? No question 
can be so fit for the consideration of a Farmers’ 
Congress. Indeed, it is difficult to intelligently 
consider other questions until that one has been 
settled. And it is far from settled now. Until 
lately it seems scarcely to have been thought of, 
and it is generally dismissed with the vague as- 
sertion that ‘‘things will come out all right as they 
always have’. A Farmers’ Congress should un- 
derstand and prepare for the work that lies be- 
fore the farmer, not in some indefinitely distant 
future but within this and the next succeeding 
generation. 
It is as well assured as any future event can be 
that the population of the United States will be 
200,000,000 by about the middle of the present 
century, or in less than fifty years. This is prov- 
ed by the ratio of increase in the past. It may 
come a few years later or a few years earlier ac- 
cording to circumstances, for good times lift both 
the immigration total and the domestic birth rate 
while depression decreases both. However, this 
is immaterial. Millions of persons now living will 
see the 200,000,000 people here; and the first ques- 
tion is how they are to be fed. There will be many 
8 
