GENERAL PRINCIPLES 9 



greatly increased, and the limit is not yet reached. Peoples 

 who never made their living by hunting wild animals, but by 

 gathering wild herbs and fruits, probably developed into the 

 agricultural stage directly without having passed through the 

 pastoral stage. 



Inefficiency of the hunting and fishing stage. That the bar- 

 barous method of getting a living by hunting and fishing is very 

 inefficient as compared with agriculture may be shown by the 

 following considerations. It is the opinion of those most compe- 

 tent to judge, that there were never more than 500,000 Indians 

 in that part of the present territory of the United States which 

 lies east of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. By their 

 methods of getting a living, which consisted mainly of hunting 

 and fishing, even this small number could eke out only a meager 

 existence. Each tribe was forced to be on its guard lest its hunt- 

 ing grounds be invaded by other tribes and its source of sub- 

 sistence thereby cut off. But this same territory now supports 

 about 60,000,000 people, and most of their food and a good 

 part of the materials for their clothing are produced on its 

 farms. No country of equal area, however rich by nature, is 

 capable of supporting a population such as this by hunting 

 and fishing alone. 



Of all the extractive industries farming has become, in 

 all civilized countries, vastly the most important. In certain 

 small communities lumbering and mining may, for a brief 

 period, overshadow farming ; but for large areas, and over long 

 periods of time, none of the other extractive industries can even 

 rival farming. Moreover, lumbering as distinct from forestry, 

 which is a kind of farming and mining tend to exhaust, once 

 and for all, the store of natural resources which they are engaged 

 in extracting. On the other hand, farming may last for indefi- 

 nite periods, by reason of the fact that if wisely managed the 

 soil may be conserved and renewed, and even improved. For 



