CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTION. 



No special amount of prophetic acumen is required 

 to foresee that the time will soon corne when the people 

 of this country must necessarily place a much higher 

 value upon all kinds of food than they do at present, or 

 have done in the past. In this we are pre-supposing 

 that in the natural course of events, our population will 

 continue to increase in nearly the same ratio it has since 

 we assumed the responsibilities of an independent nation. 



The very existence of animal life on this planet de- 

 pends upon the quantity and quality of available food, 

 and while some sentimentalists may assume to ignore 

 and even attempt to deprecate the animal desires of 

 their race, nature compels us to recognize the fact that 

 there can be no fire without fuel, and the great and use- 

 ful intellectual powers of man are the emanations of the 

 animal tissues of a well-nourished brain. The brawny 

 arm that rends the rock and hurls the fragments aside, 

 gets its power through the same channel and from the 

 same source as those of other members of society, what- 

 ever the nature of their calling ; for mankind is built 

 upon one universal and general plan, varied though it 

 may be in some of the minor details of construction. 

 We certainly have no cause to fear that the theories of 

 Malthus, in regard to the overpopulation of the earth 

 as a whole, will ever be verified in the experience of the 

 human race, because with necessity comes industry, also 

 the inventions of devices to enable us to avoid just such 

 dangers, and if these fail to keep pace with our wants 



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