TEMPERATE SURPLUS-PRODUCING REGIONS 45 



1900, fell to 142 in 1910. 1 Cattle, sheep and pigs contributed 

 about equally to the decline. This means that meat-producing 

 animals were so reduced in numbers relative to the population 

 between 1900 and 1910 that they produced about 22 per cent, less 

 meat for each inhabitant in the latter year than in the former. 

 The ratio of dairy cattle to the population, however, altered little 

 between 1900 and 1910, so that the production of meat was in 

 reality still further reduced through the considerable increase in 

 the proportion of dairy cows to other cattle during the period. 

 On the other hand, meat production per animal per annum probably 

 rose in the interval, and this would balance to a limited extent the 

 reduction caused by the increase in milch cows. On the whole, 

 the figures of " cattle units " above may be taken as a fair 

 measure of the actual change in meat production, relative 

 to the population. The fact that the ratio of milch cows has 

 declined very slightly, while there is known to have been a distinct 

 increase in average milk production per cow, explains the feature 

 that there was less change in net import or export trade in dairy 

 products. 



The various forms of encroachment upon large surplus supplies 

 of animal produce, while more marked in the United States than in 

 other countries of the same class, are typical of the whole group. 

 In all of them the area of accessible fertile land is limited, and the 

 rapid construction of overland systems of transport soon makes 

 most of it available. This stage has been reached in the United 

 States, and is being quickly reached elsewhere. Much forest 

 covered land remains in the United States, and a still greater 

 proportion of the surface of Canada, New Zealand, Russia and 

 Siberia, consists of such land, but much of this forest country is 

 either too broken or too infertile to be of value as agricultural 

 land. Moreover, the rapid consumption of timber in the United 

 States, as also in the other countries named, has caused a distinct 

 possibility of something approaching a world-wide famine in timber 

 in the near future, amd makes it therefore necessary, from a national 

 point of view, to check further extensive deforestation. 2 The 

 areas still under forest cannot then in most of these surplus- 

 producing countries, and especially in the United States, be relied 

 upon to furnish any large additions to existing agricultural or 

 pastoral lands. In any case, forest land generally requires the 

 lapse of a much longer period of time, and the expenditure of much 

 more capital and labour before being brought into cultivation, 

 than does open prairie land. 3 



1 Obtained by using the United States conversion ratios (see p. 36, Note 7> 

 above) . 



2 Careful estimates made by the United States forestry experts indicate that 

 the timber supplies will last possibly fifty years at the present rate of con- 

 sumption. However, the rate of consumption may easily increase. 



3 See Chap. XII., below, p. 176, Note 4. 



