WILD LIFE IN NATIONAL ECONOMY ^ 



planation for the depression advanced by administration 

 leaders. 3 



The Cause of Unbalanced Production: The explanation 

 of the cause of this maladjustment between supply and de- 

 mand seems to lie in the fact that agricultural production 

 was greatly stimulated in the period just preceding and dur- 

 ing the World War by an unusual demand. During all that 

 period from 1900 to the close of the War the fear was 

 widely expressed that the population was outrunning the 

 food supply. 4 



From the Civil War onward the breaking plow of the 

 new settler had been turning thousands of acres of prairie 

 land in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska, and the Pacific 

 Northwest into fertile farms, but during that same period 

 population was increasing by leaps and bounds. By 1900 

 most of the available agricultural land had been settled but 

 still the immigrants came by the hundreds of thousands and 

 still population grew. 



It is not to be wondered at that thinking men began to 

 fear that if population continued to grow at its then rate of 

 increase, it would soon outdistance food supply. Conse- 

 quently, to prevent this situation coming about, agricultural 

 production, they thought, must be stepped up. This theory 

 gave rise to the reclamation movement in the Far West at 

 the expense of the federal government, to the undertaking 

 of large-scale drainage operations by the states, to the re- 

 organization of the agricultural extension and county-agent 

 services, and to the establishment in many states of secon- 

 dary schools of agriculture. 



3 Tugwell, Rexford, "Land Planning," Today, Jan. 20, 1934, p. 6; see 

 also Ezekiel and Bean, Economic Bases for the A.A.A., Dept. of Agri- 

 culture pamphlet, Dec. 1933. 



4 Hill, James J., Highways of Progress (New York, 1910) is an 

 example of the expression of that belief. 



