96 
century a far greater increase in the industrial than in 
the agricultural population, as is plainly shown in the 
enormous growth of cities and towns, a relative growth 
so steady and constant that it necessarily reflects a cor- 
responding development of agricultural skill or capacity. 
It is this surplus of the food producer that has at every 
period of the world’s history been the measure of its 
progress and prosperity, and the index of its accumulated 
wealth. For the labor of the agriculturist, if limited to 
his own needs, disappears with the enforced consumption 
of the product; it is only the excess that supports 
industries whereof the results assume permanence and 
constitute national wealth. 
Among the innumerable forms of organic life there is 
everywhere a relentless struggle for the means of sub- 
sistence. Alike in the meadow and the forest, the rill 
and the river, the pond and the sea, there is neither 
blade of grass, nor towering tree, no bird, no insect, no 
walking or swimming creature whose existence does not 
imply the wresting of sustenance from the many that 
have perished Even man, whose increase involves the 
destruction of so much that is below him in the scale of 
being, needs himself to bend to the mere acquirement 
of food the weight of his overmastering energy. 
Famine has ever been the scourge of his race, the spur 
of his industry and the dread school of his forethought 
and frugality. Equally with the humblest organism he 
finds his proper nutrition the object of his main 
endeavor, the occasion of a struggle whereof the gravity 
deepens with the coming and the going of the 
generations. For even with the utmost advance in 
scientific farming as indicated by the possibilities of 
agricultural bacteriology, there is reason to presume 


To the reckless destruction of forests is largely attributed the famines of India and 
China, the aridity of much of Spain and Italy, and a measure of the depopulation of 
Asia Minor, and other portions of the East. The renewel of denuded areas in France 
and India has already accomplished remarkable results, which, however, are of little 
moment compared with the promise of the future. 
