246 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 
other crops, and the export of 145,000,000 bushels would soon be 
required at home. In the world’s crop for 1897-1898 he gives the 
United, States 510,000,000 bushels. As it turned out, there were in 
the process of harvest, when Sir William was reading, 675,000,000. 
The average crop for eleven years, 1898-1908, has been 643,668,762 
bushels, giving an average increase beyond his figure of 133,668,000 
bushels—almost enough to cover the export amount then stated. The 
world’s crop for 1897-98 was said to be 1,921,000,000 bushels, 
leaving a deficit, but for supplies carried over, of 400,000,000. He 
thought the wheat lands of all nations brought to their utmost capacity 
might raise the total to 3,340,000,000, or within 17,000,000 bushels 
of what the eaters of wheat bread would require in 1931. We now 
know that the world’s crop eight years later, or in 1906, was 
3 ,423,134,000 bushels, and the limit is nowhere in sight, and cannot 
be conjectured within a billion bushels by the keenest student of the 
wheat problem. Sir William felt that performance had lagged behind 
promise in Canada, and he observed the modest export of less than 
9,000,000 bushels, which has now been raised nearly fivefold. 
It is hazardous to set limits to wheat, in view of possible unknown 
factors of production, and discussions have not taken sufficient account 
of the limitation of population which exhibits itself among the nations 
of higher standards, which are precisely the bread-eating peoples. 
Without regard to wheat this limitation would be operative, but any 
pressure on the wheat supply would foreshadow itself before the pinch 
came, and would tend to still further restriction of population. We 
may therefore comfortably come back to an earlier conclusion of an 
American economist:! ‘In short, it would seem as if the world in 
general, for the first time in its history, has now good and sufficient 
reasons for feeling free from all apprehensions of a scarcity or dearness 
of bread.’ 
Looking, in conclusion, at the world field, the only great importing 
countries are in Western Europe, or more truly North-Western Europe. 
Any increased demand in that region should readily be met by develop- 
ments in Canada, Russia, Argentina, Egypt, India, South Africa, and 
Australia. We may thus even leave out the United States, and we 
might omit India, should ampler distribution of her wheat at home be 
made to avert her too frequent periods of famine. Of the greater 
producers, Argentina is far from her market, is undeveloped, and in 
some degree uncertain. Russia is backward, and will not for more than 
a generation bring her vast resources to full effect in the world’s 
market. It is North America which has the land, the progressive 
appliances, the skilled energy of production, and the facilities of trans- 
portation to supply the bread market of coming decades. No citizen 
of the great Republic need harbour a jealous thought if in that market 
the major place should come to his northern neighbour. 
"Mr. D, A. Wells in Recent Economic Changes, p. 177 (1889). 
