428 FOOD SUPPLY PROBLEM 



25 years, the population would have reached 125,734,848 in 1915. 

 The actual population in 1915 was about 100,000,000. Evidently 

 the Malthusian " check" on population had begun to operate. 



The Malthusian theory of population is undoubtedly correct. 

 The grimmer aspects of his theory are not so conspicuous to-day, 

 since famine, pestilence, war, vice and misery do not take such 

 heavy tolls as they once did in overpopulated countries. The 

 prudential checks, the " higher standards of living," are lowering 

 the birth-rate in many countries. The unknown factors now in 

 the problem of ascertaining the present and prospective ratio of 

 population to food supply include the following: declining birth- 

 rate; knowledge of birth control; declining death-rate; new knowl- 

 edge concerning human and animal nutrition; possibilities of 

 scientific agriculture. But somewhere in the background is the 

 ultimate limit of population the food supply. It would doubtless 

 be a very simple biological feat to double the population of China 

 or Japan in 25 years, but, as Malthus says, it is doubtful if the 

 food produce of China and Japan could be doubled in any 

 number of years. 



Soil Exhaustion Question. The last paragraph referred to 

 China and Japan the oldest agricultural districts in the world. 

 The records show that agriculture has been conducted in the same 

 fields here for at least four thousand years. The fact that this 

 soil is not yet exhausted has given a sense of false security to those 

 who live nearer the virgin soils of a new country. These countries 

 serve as a warning, if anything, of the dire calamity of soil exhaus- 

 tion. In Professor F. H. King's very excellent book on " Farmers 

 of Forty Centuries" 1 he shows that the farmers of Japan and 

 China maintain their soil fertility only by applying to the soil 

 animal and vegetable waste matter of every possible kind. Not 

 only are canal bottoms dredged for the fertile canal mud, but the 

 straw from the grain, the leaves from the trees are all used in 

 making a compost to be applied to the tiny fields. The urine of 

 animals is saved, yes, even every bit of the human excrement 

 itself. For this reason the great cities do not have sewer systems, 

 all the night-soil being removed daily by farmers as food for their 

 plants. This means for the average Oriental farmer a life of unre- 

 mitting toil, and little hope of ever rising far above the danger line 

 of starvation. "If," says Dr. King, "the agricultural lands of the 

 United States are ever called upon to feed even 1,200 millions of 



1 King, F. H. Farmers of Forty Centuries. Madison, Wisconsin, 1911. 

 Published by Mrs. F. H. King. 



