818 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 780 



such as the world has never yet beheld. He who 

 knows where and how to look can see it coming. 

 The African activity among western European 

 nations is a part of it. It is always cheaper to 

 move when over-population and failing fertility 

 threaten a shortage of food — providing there is 

 any place to move into; that is, providing we can 

 dispossess the other party and his land is worth 

 the contest. 



However that may be as an abstract proposi- 

 tion, for us there is no moving. For us there are 

 no more " new worlds." For us there is little 

 more " out west." Our fortune and our future, 

 whatever they may be, are staked down on the 

 American continent. Literally, " here we rest," 

 and whether we like it or not, we must devise and 

 establish a permanent agriculture or go down in 

 the attempt. 



Much the same general line of thought 

 was followed by President J. L. Snyder in 

 his annual address before the Association 

 of American Agricultural Colleges and 

 Experiment Stations, but with special 

 emphasis on the social significance of a 

 straitened food supply. He said: 



. . . agriculture has contributed to democracy 

 more than we can estimate by furnishing our 

 people with an abundant food supply. So fertile 

 has been our land, so extensive our fields, so 

 abundant our harvests of grain and fruit, that 

 the best and highest grades of food have been 

 within the reach of every citizen who has been 

 willing to do an honest day's work. It matters 

 not what his occupation and social position, be 

 they ever so humble. He and his family enjoy 

 practically the same kinds of food as that enjoyed 

 by families of wealth and prominence. In the 

 dinner pail of the man who works in the mill, in 

 the mine, or digs the ditches in our city streets, 

 can usually be found wheat bread, meat, butter, 

 fruit and coffee. What more does any one 

 have? . . . 



Caste and class distinction can make little 

 headway among a people who all live on the 

 same kind of food. As long as the working man 

 has in his tin pail as good a dinner as his super- 

 intendent or as the mayor of his city, his preju- 

 dices will be moderate. He will maintain his self- 

 respect and feel and act the man. It is when the 

 pangs of hunger begin to pinch that men give way 

 to prejudice and passion. 



After pointing out that unless the food 

 supply keeps pace with the increase of 

 population, there will not be enough of 

 the better foods to go around, he says : 



The history of other countries tells us what 

 would soon follow. Two families could not or 

 would not occupy the same pew in church while 

 one lived on white bread and meat and the other 

 on black bread and potatoes. There is a social 

 distinction there that can not be bridged. They 

 would not even attend the same church or belong 

 to the same social organizations. Our people 

 would separate into classes and become estranged 

 from each other. The power usually goes with 

 wealth, but the men compelled to live on cheap 

 food would soon get into the same political party 

 and perhaps gain control ■ of the national gov- 

 ernment. 



and quotes from a letter of Lord Macau- 

 ley to an American friend as follows: 



. . . The day will come when the multitudes 

 of people, none of whom has had more than half 

 a breakfast or expects to have more than half a 

 dinner, will choose a legislature. Is it possible 

 to doubt what sort of a legislature will be chosen? 

 . . . There will be, I fear, spoliation. The spolia- 

 tion will increase the distress; the distress will 

 produce fresh spoliation. . . . Either civilization 

 or liberty will perish. 



Even if we question the estimates of 

 rate of increase in population on which 

 these warnings are based, and however 

 much weight we may attach on the other 

 hand to estimates of increasing agricul- 

 tural production per acre, it would be 

 foolish in the extreme to close our eyes to 

 the fact that the intensity of the demand 

 for food by our future population will ex- 

 ceed anything we have yet known. Whether 

 this state of affairs is to come about more 

 or less rapidly is important chiefly as it 

 gives us more or less time to prepare for it. 



This is not the occasion to discuss prob- 

 lems of crop production nor of the conser- 

 vation of soil fertility, but there are other 

 aspects of the question which intimately 

 concern us as stock feeders. 



The problem of food supply is essentially 



