December 13, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



919 



ing the nomination of respectable candi- 

 dates. Some reforms have been accom- 

 plished, wholly or in part, through the 

 influence of women. A considerable pro- 

 portion of women voters are as yet some- 

 what independent of party control, forming 

 an unknown quantity which disturbs the 

 calculations of party managers, and whether 

 called independence or fickleness, may be 

 regarded as counting against rather than 

 for political trickery and corruption. People 

 who expected that society would be imme- 

 diately regenerated through the influence of 

 woman's suffrage have been grievously dis- 

 appointed, and many of them, both men 

 and women, consider the experiment a to- 

 tal failure. Such people have expected too 

 much and are too impatient. No remark- 

 able reforms have been accomplished, but 

 it is safe to say that woman suffrage has 

 done no harm, that it has done some good, 

 and that it has been adopted by Colorado 

 '■ for better or for worse. ' 



' The World's Bread Supply ' : Edward 

 T. Peters, Division of Statistics, U. S. De- 

 partment of Agriculture. 



In his annual address as president of the 

 British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, delivered at the Bristol meeting of 

 that body in 1898, Sir William Crookes 

 sounded an alarm as to the future of the 

 world's wheat supply. He pointed out that 

 the bread-eating populations, consisting of 

 the people of Europe and of European set- 

 tlers and their descendants in various parts 

 of the world, are increasing in a geomet- 

 rical ratio, and from the figures he pre- 

 sented, he reached the startling conclusion 

 that, by 1931, the number of bread-eaters 

 will have become so great as to require the 

 produce of all the land in the world avail- 

 able for wheat-growing, unless there shall, 

 in the meantime, have been an increase in 

 the average production per acre, which, at 

 the time of his address, he estimated for the 

 world at large at 12.7 bushels per acre. 



The conclusions reached by Sir William, as 

 to the future wheat- exporting capabilities 

 of the United States, have seemed to some 

 writers to fall so far short of the truth as to 

 make his conclusion in regard to the world 

 at large seem unworthy of serious attention ; 

 but an article by Mr. John Hyde, statis- 

 tician of the Department of Agriculture, 

 published some time ago in the North 

 American Revieiv, if it does not entirely sup- 

 port Sir William's view, yet shows by an 

 overwhelming array of well-considered facts 

 and figures that the optimistic expectations 

 of some of Sir William's critics are wildlj^ 

 extravagant. In considering the average 

 capacity of the earth to support civilized 

 populations, it is to be remembered that, 

 with the rise in the general standard of liv- 

 ing which was a conspicuous feature of 

 nineteenth-century progress, bread became 

 a smaller and smaller proportion of the 

 total consumption of the people. Wants 

 have greatly multiplied ; and as these wants 

 require the produce of land for their satis- 

 faction, the average area required for the 

 support of an individual is now much 

 greater than it was one hundred years ago. 

 Moreover, if the standard of living is to rise 

 still higher, that average area must, in the 

 absence of increased yields per acre, become 

 greater still, and a still smaller proportion 

 of it will be devoted to the production of 

 bread. ' Man shall not live by bread 

 alone ' is receiving, with the advance of 

 civilization, a more and more liberal inter- 

 pretation, and this fact has a vital bearing 

 on the capacity of the earth for supporting 

 population. Population cannot increase 

 beyond a certain point without arresting 

 the improvement in the standard of living 

 and starting a movement in the opposite di- 

 rection, unless a means can be found of ob- 

 taining from the soil increasing yields. 

 The point at which such increasing yields 

 will become the only alternative to starva- 

 tion may not be quite so near as Sir William 



