GROWTH OF EUROPE DURING 40 YEARS OF PEACE 



273 



hand, France, wliich in 1872 had 174 in- 

 habitants per square mile, showed in 191 1 

 but 189, a very shght increase in density 

 in the 40-year period when compared 

 with that of the other nations in question. 

 Curiously, too, this large increase in 

 population has occurred in the face of 

 heavy losses by emigration. England, 

 which shows a gain of practically 60 per 

 cent in population in 40 years, lost in the 

 same 40 years nearly 6,000,000 by emi- 

 gration, or approximately one-fourth as 

 many as her population in 1871 ; Ger- 

 many, which shows a larger per cent of 

 ^ain, lost by emigration, also approxi- 

 mately, 6,000,000; Russia, approximately 

 3,000,000; Italy and Austria-Hungary, 

 about 3,000,000 each, and France only a 

 few thousands. 



■the; world's population has doubled 

 IN 100 yi;ars 



A comparison of the best estimates of 

 the world's population of 100 years ago 

 with accepted statistics of today indicates 

 that the population of the world has more 

 than doubled in a single century, and 

 that this increase has been shared in a 

 considerable degree by countries which 

 were even then looked upon as overpop- 

 ulated. Conservative estimates of the 

 population of the world for the first dec- 

 ade of the last century put the total at 

 approximately 700,000,000, while the 

 latest census records and official estimates 

 show a grand total for the world of ap- 

 proximately 1,650,000,000 in 19 14, an ap- 

 parent increase of about 130 per cent in 

 the last 100 years. In that period Europe 

 shows an increase from 190,000,000 to 

 450,000,000, a gain of 137 per cent, while 

 America as a whole shows an increase 

 of 700 per cent, and the United States 

 alone more than 1,000 per cent. 



This wonderful change in the power 

 of the world and of limited areas such as 

 Europe to sustain a very dense popula- 

 tion is largely the result of changes in 

 methods of transportation and produc- 

 tion which have come into use during the 

 last century. Prior to the advent of the 

 railroad the population of a given area 

 was dependent upon the food-producing 

 power of the territory which it occupied 

 or with which it could communicate by 



water transportation, and was also de- 

 pendent upon a like area as a market for 

 its own products. Enormous areas of 

 high producing power, but lying a hun- 

 dred miles or more from the water's 

 edge, contributed little to the food supply 

 of the outside world, and consumed little 

 from abroad because of the lack of facili- 

 ties for transporting their products to the 

 river or ocean ; and population moved 

 into those areas but slowly for the same 

 reason. 



In those sections of the world in which- 

 the population was already sufficiently 

 dense to require all the food which the 

 surrounding country could supply, a fail- 

 ure of crops meant famine and loss of 

 life from starvation and pestilence. Food 

 supplies which might exist within a few 

 hundred miles were as inaccessible as 

 though on the other side of the globe. 

 The people living in the cities could ex- 

 change their manufactures for food prod- 

 ucts only in a limited area ; and with the 

 congestion of population within walled 

 cities and their absence of proper sani- 

 tary facilities, they came justly to be de- 

 scribed as "men destroyers" and vam- 

 pires feeding upon the surrounding coun- 

 try, from which they had to draw men 

 and women to replace the losses caused 

 by disease and lack of food. Of those 

 born in the cities but a small percentage 

 escaped the dangers of childhood. 



But with the advent of the railroad 

 and the steamship, and with the applica- 

 tion of steam power to production, all 

 this was changed. The city, town, or 

 community was no longer dependent 

 upon the immediately surrounding area 

 for its food supply or for a market for 

 its products. The world's great product- 

 ive areas, formerly useless because of 

 their inaccessibility, could now be relied 

 upon for a food supply, even though a 

 thousand or several thousand miles dis- 

 tant from the point at which they were 

 reauired. 



The workman of densely populated 

 England mav now with a single day's 

 labor pay the cost of transporting a 

 year's supply of bread and meat from 

 America to his own door, and may mar- 

 ket the products of his labor in some 

 equally distant part of the world. This 



