178 THE FARMER OF TO-MORROW 



And, lastly, the hungry world marches for- 

 ward in numbers, its appetite increasing in 

 geometrical ratio. 



How imminent, or how remote, is the catas- 

 trophe, not only of the starvation of a part 

 that the rest may live, but of the starvation 

 of the whole world ? Mathematically, one con- 

 sideration, that of starvation of the whole, is as 

 sound as starvation of a part. Carrying coals 

 to Newcastle is a trite saying, yet the day must 

 inevitably come when coals must be carried to 

 Newcastle before coals can be carried away. 

 Coal and iron, phosphate rock and potash 

 there is a bottom to every mine. 



This is not an illusory hypothesis. It is 

 the accepted theory and practice of the civil- 

 ized nations of the world, with the single ex- 

 ception of China, where agriculture has been 

 going on for forty centuries ; and her acres are 

 still feeding a population fifteen or twenty 

 times as dense as our own, without regard to 

 potash and phosphorus in chemical form. 



If this theory is the basis for accepted prac- 

 tice in our agriculture, then surely it should 

 reflect itself, to some extent at least, in the 

 value of land. Dr. Cyril G. Hopkins of the 

 University of Illinois has gone to considerable 



