4 University of New Hampshire [Sta. Bui. 330 



With the occupation of America and the circumnavigation of the 

 globe, land resources were definitely at an end. The civilization of 

 the early 19th century had expressed the hopelessness of the situa- 

 tion through Thomas Robert Malthus. Much of the unhappiness, 

 squalor, and degradation among humanity was inevitable so long as 

 nothing was done to curtail population. Mankind could in no way 

 hope to continue to find new lands for the use of the ever-increasing 

 millions of consumers. All the world had now been discovered. Only 

 by a reduction in the birth rate could any improvement for humanity 

 as a whole be expected. 



Nevertheless, history indicates that the population of the world, 

 slowly but relentlessly occupying and filling every new country to 

 the apparent limit of food production and hovering around the threat 

 of starvation, suddenly accelerated its increase in the 19th century, 

 following Malthus' dire prognostication, so that the world harbored 

 twice as many human beings in 1900 as it had in 1800. It is for us 

 to wonder why or to explain ! How could twice as many people, an 

 additional world, be fed in 1900, and be better fed than in 1800? 



The answer may well be that America has not been willing nor 

 content to accept the dictum of Malthus. First, she tried education ; 

 then she discovered its weakness, and added research ; then she added 

 more research. Out of it all we learned that prairies could be used 

 for other crops than grass, that they were as easy to plow as appear- 

 ances indicated, and that the soil was fertile, even that the climate 

 of our Middle West was propitious. We soon had proof that the 

 use of an iron plow would not poison the land ! Better adapted 

 crops, more efficient animals, new knowledge of feeding both crops 

 and animals developed. All in all, American ingenuity had com- 

 bined mechanical and biological science to make possible greater 

 production from far fewer farmers. 



Previous to the outbreak of the World War, the scarcely four 

 per cent of the world's farmers located in the United States had come 

 to produce more corn, cotton, tobacco, and hogs than all the rest 

 of the world. They produced one-fourth of all the cereals. They 

 were exporting agricultural products for the use of other countries 

 in larger quantity than all the rest of the world added together. 

 Along with the war came the patriotic appeal for more production. 

 "Food will win the war." Production as a whole was slightly in- 

 creased, but most of the change came through shifting crops to cor- 

 respond to anticipated war needs. Wheat production, for example, 

 was greatly expanded. Measures of the physical volume of produc- 

 tion of food and feed crops indicate that maximum production per 

 capita in the United States occurred in 1915, the first season after 

 the war started and two years before we entered the conflict. The 

 next highest production was in 1912, before the war was anticipated, 

 and the third highest was in 1920, two years after the armistice was 

 signed. Since 1920, it has always been less than in any one of these 

 three years. The average for the crop years 1911-14, pre-war, was 

 more than for the years 1916-1919. 



