Comments by the Director 



LET US CONSIDER for a moment the thinking of the world 150 years 

 ago as evidenced by the Malthusian doctrine which was an example of cur- 

 rent thought about the year 1800. 



Thomas Robert Malthus was a minister and the son of a minister. From 

 the nature of his calling and from what we know about his investigations of 

 rural conditions in France, Scandinavia, Russia, and other countries we may 

 gather that he had a profound interest in the welfare of his fellow men. He 

 had noted the attempts of poor people to eke out existences on farms. Final- 

 ly, he evolved a social doctrine to the effect that the human race tended to in- 

 crease faster than it was possible to produce food from the land the people 

 occupied, and that a large measure of the squalor, degradation, and suffer- 

 ing of humanity on the fringes of society was due, primarily and ultimately, 

 to a lack of food. So long as population multiplied faster than it was possible 

 to increase food products from the land — so long must people die of starva- 

 tion. 



Malthus even expressed his findings in mathematical form. For exam- 

 ple, population tended to increase in geometrical ratio 2, 4, 8, 16, while, at 

 best, food production tended to increase in arithmetical ration 2, 4, 6, 8. This 

 must lead to ever greater discrepancies between the number of stomachs to 

 he satisfied and the total production of the soil. 



His finished conclusions were published about the beginning of the 

 nineteenth century. At that time, the world's population, as nearly as we 

 can determine, was 850,000,000. In perspective, the amazing thing is that 

 while the ages and eons of time down to the year 1800 had accumulated only 

 this number of people in the whole world, within the comparatively short time 

 of a century, or by the year 1900, world population had more than doubled. 

 What happened that people suddenly should increase so fast? Why did we 

 add another world of people in a hundred years to that which we already 

 had, regardless of the Malthusian doctrine? How did we feed them? 



Among numerous developments of this century was a growing recog- 

 nition of the potential capacity of the United States for agricultural produc- 

 tion in a much larger way. Not only did the early settlers, who were largely 

 confined to the Eastern Seaboard, begin to sense the potential possibilities of 

 the Middle West when, and if, it could be more easily reached and better 

 utilized but they also entertained aspirations and hopes that stimulated their 

 budding ingenuity into activity. These sentiments became so general and 

 persistent that The Congress found itself involved in seeking solution to some 

 of the national problems involved. 



Following several proposals and one or two abortive Congressional acts, 

 our national law makers evolved the Homestead Act. It became law in 1862 

 and immediately proved an effective instrument in stimulating the occupa- 

 tion of vast reaches of the national domain stretching far toward the west. 

 In this same year some profound thinking for national planning led by Sen- 

 ator Morrill of Vermont came to fruition in the Land-Grant College Act. 

 Both these acts were effective and their far-reaching influence tended to revo- 

 lutionize the world's thinking about food no less than to stimulate increased 

 use of our own agricultural resources in America. 



