The Leading of the False God— 'Production" 47 



tain our total agricultural output at its present stand- 

 ard. If the nation is to go on growing, while the 

 farmers continue to abandon their fields for the crowded 

 streets of the city, it is obvious that the inventors and 

 manufacturers of machinery that is to supplant the 

 human race must work overtime. 



The child-like faith of those who declare that ma- 

 chinery may safely be relied upon to feed our peo- 

 ple and sustain our export trade is buttressed by 

 no facts and figures. It is not thus with the friends 

 of reclamation and land settlement — the champions 

 of the three-ccntury-old policy of continental con- 

 quest that made America what it is to-day. One of 

 the most enlightened of these champions, Douglas AV. 

 Ross, C. E., has recently said: 



"Assuming a rate of increase of 15 per cent per 

 decade for the next 20 years, as against 16 per cent 

 for the one just ended, and 21 per cent for the one 

 next preceding, the population of the United States 

 will be about 140,000,000 by 1940; and assuming an 

 increase of 25 per cent per decade in our urban popu- 

 lation, which is considerably less than the average since 

 1900, about 60 per cent, or 85,000,000 of these people 

 will be living in towns and cities, with 55,000,000 in the 

 country — an increase of less than 4,000,000 in the pres- 

 ent rural population." 



And Mr. Ross estimates that merely to maintain the 

 present balance of urban and rural population, as dis- 

 closed by the latest census, will demand 130,000,000 

 new acres of cultivated land in the next 20 years. 



Mr. Sheldon S. Cline consulted the highest authorities 

 of the Department of Agriculture at Washington, in 



