CHAPTER III 



We are now in a position to resume the thread of 

 the argument. As the increase of our power to 

 make food depended only on improving plants and 

 adding to our strength, it seemed that nothing more 

 was to be done to improve the lots of peoples than to 

 persevere along these two lines. And this indeed 

 would be, and is, the case in certain parts of the world 

 to which we shall have much occasion to make reference 

 presently. In those parts of the world there is a super- 

 fluity of cultivable land. But in other parts of the 

 world it is not sufficient merely to pursue the improve- 

 ment of plants and the improvement in the strength 

 of man, though these two considerations require the 

 same attention there as elsewhere, but it is necessary also 

 to put to rights another very serious condition of affairs. 

 A man can make a good living only from good land, 

 and if he cultivates inferior land his living will not be 

 so good. Why then does not everybody cultivate the 

 good land and leave the inferior alone ? The answer 

 to this we have already seen in the small quantity of 

 good land which is available. Consequently, when the 

 people of any country increase in numbers beyond the 

 extent of their good land some of them must cultivate 

 inferior land. Thus we arrive at the very important 

 relation of numbers to land. If a people is more 

 numerous than can be supported from the better land 

 alone, then the average of their subsistence must be 

 lowered from what it might be if they could restrain 

 themselves to the use only of the good land. 



