A TRIBUTE TO SQUANTO 341 



tury, not to catch the glint of marching bayonets, nor 

 to hear the sound of forensic eloquence. Nor does it 

 look across the sea to trace the progress of events on that 

 ground where nearly all history has been made. On 

 the contrary, it scans only our own land, and for the 

 sole purpose of ascertaining, in a modest way, how Ag- 

 riculture is to feed the three hundred million mouths 

 that will be opened for food in these United States on 

 the good day of our Lord Jan. 1, 2000. Every college 

 boy who has advanced to his senior year 'is familiar 

 with the leading theories of so-called economic science on 

 this subject. It is quite surprising with what accuracy 

 the comfortable college professor sets limits to the num- 

 ber of our inhabitants and the products of agriculture. 

 The alluring theories of Adam Smith and Malthus 

 have never lost their dominant influence in those cozy 

 libraries where the well fed professor, with his gastric 

 glands in full function on a good dinner, tells us of 

 the near starvation of man. Our virgin soils, he says, 

 are exhausted. The average of field crops is decreas- 

 ing. This country has reached its maximum limit in 

 the production of food stuffs. In a few years we will 

 be importing meat and bread. The increase in our 

 population will soon be checked by the limits of sub- 

 sistence. Every energy of man will be used up in the 

 struggle for existence. Progress will be arrested, and 

 humanity having reached its full flower and fruit, will 

 soon enter upon that era of retrogression which is the 

 natural course of all human events. 



Such are the dicta of the lecture room and of the 

 magazine. 



I do not believe that this pessimistic view of the near 

 future of man is based on fact, nor sustained by ten- 

 able theory. In support of this statement, I propose 



