10 FOOD AND POPULATION. 



hungry man can not wait for his breakfast until an unoccupied region can be peopled and 

 its lands subdued, and to-day the world is not only short in bread-stuff by reason of defi- 

 cient acreage, but the great disaster which has befallen the growing crops of Europe, 

 coupled with the deficient acreage, render it reasonably certain that the yield of the 

 world's wheat and rye fields in IfiiU will be le^is than current needs liy hundreils of millions 

 of bushels and that the last vestige of the reserves, aecumulated during the e.\isten<e of a 

 surplus acreage, will have disappeared and an unpleasant void still remain, and this con- 

 dition should ensure very high prices for our products, and once the pinch is felt in con- 

 sequence of the exhaustion of the reserves, prices should, and will, remain high while 

 the acre;ige deficit exists, and that it will long exist is assured by the scarcity of available 

 lands in the termperate zones. 



THE EXHAUSTION OF THE AEABLE LANDS. 



Nearly twenty years since, Gen. W. B. Hazen pointed out the approaching ex- 

 haustion of the arable lands of the United States, and was sharply criticised for certain 

 statements as to the aridity and unfitness for agriculture of the lands west of the 100th 

 meridian. Time and repeated attempts to subject such lands to cultivation have shown 

 the correctness of Gen. Hazeu's statements and conclusions. A little more than a score 

 of years since, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas constituted a vast dis- 

 trict but sparsely settled, the area then in cultivation in those States being but little more 

 than seven million acres; now, however, by the opening of new farms and the develop- 

 ment of older ones, the area in staple crops (in such States) is much more than one-fourth 

 of all the lands in the United States so employed. With such an area of the most fertile 

 soils in the process of development it is not strange that Gen. Hazeu's views were looked 

 upon as pessimistic; yet their correctness can no longer be questioned. 



The writer has recently shown that the existing depression in agriculture is 

 due, in part, to an excessive development of these fertile districts; that agriculture and 

 all related industries can be prosperous only wheu consumption balances production; and 

 that an early equilibratiou is assured by the growing scarcity of tillable lands. Investi- 

 gations, undertaken solely with the view of ascertaining why the farmer was not 

 prosperous, led irresistably to the conclusion that the rapid increase of the cultivated area 

 in the United States was one of the causes of the lack of prosperity among the farmers of 

 Canada and Europe, as well as of the United States, and that the great reduction in the 

 yearly accretions to such cultivated acreage was a sure presage of the early coming of 

 the time when the farmer will be prosperous. Further investigations have developed the 

 fact tliat the arable lands are being occupied at a rate which insures their complete ex- 

 haustion at a much earlier date than has heretofore been deemed possible, with rapid 

 reduction in the volume of exportable breadstutl's, and an entire and not remote cessiifion 

 of such exports, probably to be followed by our entering the markets of the world for a 

 portion of the wheat required for domestic consumption. 



To understand the situation clearly, it is best to resort to tabular statements show- 

 ing the increase in cultivated acres in diflerent districts during designated periods, the 

 rate of increase in each district in such periods, the aggregate of the additions to the cul- 

 tivated acreage in each period, the yearly average of such additions for each perioil, the 

 percentages o^ such increase for each period as well as the yearly average of such percent, 

 ages, and a comparison of the periodical rate of increase of acreage with that of popula- 

 tion. This is shown in the following table: 



