c 



P^OOD AND POPULATION. 



Where is it possible to find such :i quantity of avaihible laud with the populatiom 

 necessiiry to its culliviUion? 



When we reflect that the basis from wliieh we now start to add to the consuming 

 population is 117 per cent, greater than twenty years since and tliat lliis population is, by 

 reason of its greater volume and the long prevalence of peace, increasing, in the aggre, 

 gate, twice as fast as it did thirty years ago, that the augmentalion during the coining 

 twenty years will be a half greater than the present population of the United States, tliat 

 their requirements for food are inereasing in like ratio and that the available lauds are 

 daily becoming less abundant, the tas'< before the generation becomes more plain and its 

 difficulties such as to address themselves to the thoughtful attention of those who have 

 been entrusted with the direction of public afTairs, and it were well to take careful ac- 

 count of the world's resources. 



Some will suggest that Providence will care for our welfare and see that the children 

 of men do not want, while others will advance the theory that the acreage under cultiva- 

 tion can, by better methods, be made to produce much more; some enthuastic writers 

 placing the increment from better methods at 100 per cent., but they are evidently not 

 av/are that changing meteorological conditions are the controlling factors in agricultural 

 production, nor can they be very well acquainted with the characteristics of the cultivat- 

 ing class who, timeout of mind, have been proverbial for the reluctance with which they 

 change processes handed down from father to son. While it is probable that additions to 

 the acreage yield will result from the adoption of better methods of culture and fertiliza- 

 tion, yet the improvement in this direction is likely to be so slow as to be hardly apprecia 

 ble with the passage of a limited number of years. 



Others believe that such improved methods will no more than maintain the existing 

 fertility of the cultivated lands, contending that its original fertility is being rapidly dis- 

 eipated and instance in proof of such contention the diminishing production of American 

 fields, as shown in the reports of the Department of Agriculture, and such argument is 

 not without weight, if but the face of the returns is looked at, as they show average 

 yields per acre as follows: 



While there has clearly been a reduction in the acreage yield due to diminishing 

 fertility, or the bringing under cultivation of lands of lower productive power, this show, 

 ing is deceptive in as much as the acreage in all crops was, each year of the eighth decade^ 

 greatly understated by the Department, as was made manifest by the census of 1880, when 

 the departmental returns were found to be some 26,000 000 acres less than the census count, 

 and such under-estimate necessarily increased the reported product per acre and these 

 errors, exceed, except iu the case of rye, the last ten years' reduction iu acreage yieldi 

 thus vitiating all arguments based upon the diminishing yield shown by the Depart- 

 mental reports without rendering it necessary to resort to the explanation, advanced by 

 the Departmental statistician, that the diminishing yield was due to a succession of un- 

 favoralde seasons. 



The writer believes that the increased production which will result from the adop- 

 tion of better methods of culture, in suburban and other favorably located districts, will 

 no more than compensate for the lessening yield of more remote districts and the con- 

 stant addition of acres of lower average fertility. 



Continued cultivation will lessen the productive power of the soil where the means 

 or incentive for fertilization are lacking, and this is as true of India as of the United 

 States, a.9 lands that, in the reign of Akbar, gave an average .yield of 19 bushels of wheat 



