POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES 211 



raise our wealth per capita, and not " cause two unhappy human beings 

 to live where one lived before." 



It is proposed here to attend more to the means of approaching the 

 problem, than to the study of figures, which last in writings on popula- 

 tion, are usually guesses supported by vague and inapplicable compari- 

 sons with China. As the writer has said elsewhere, it is not of interest 

 to know how many Chinese could exist on American soil, but how many 

 occidental citizens could live here in comfort and progress. 



The largest single element in our problem must always be food. 

 Other things are important, but for simplicity we take this singly, in 

 relation to the resources of our own domain. There are several ways 

 in which our food supply can be increased, and first of all, without 

 raising the sum of products, they can be enlarged in their availability. 

 No one familiar with culinary matters can avoid the belief that there is 

 great loss through misuse and positive waste. Unskilled treatment 

 alone is responsible for much loss of nutritive values and prodigality is 

 to be found on private tables, while consumption in public places is 

 attended oftentimes with destruction that is well-nigh criminal. The 

 rise of industrial and domestic science will in part correct the evil, and 

 any ultimate approach to a narrow margin between food and mouths 

 would be felt in resulting economies. 



No one doubts that our food supply could be much increased by 

 more scientific and intensive cultivation of lands which are now actually 

 under the plow. Here indeed we are already beginning a cheerful and 

 significant era of hope and achievement. The farmer is becoming a 

 wiser man and many things are helping him in his unfolding. This 

 came home to us recently in the story of a farmer in western New York, 

 who started poor four years ago, has paid for a large farm property 

 with four crops, and expects out of the fifth to build a mansion for his 

 family. 



The American farmer is learning to adapt his crop to his soil and to 

 his market. This is the teaching of the United States Bureau of Soil 

 Survey, in its field work and in its reports. It is the burden of the 

 agricultural college and of the experiment station, and the agricultural 

 explorer of the department in Washington is searching widely in aid of 

 something fit and good to fill every arable American acre. Adaptation 

 will increase the product of food, as will also the more intelligent and 

 energetic use of fertilizers. Intelligence will find the fertilizer and put 

 it where it will do the greatest good, and will stimulate the energy in 

 its use which is now sadly lacking. Let any man traverse the country 

 regions in the eastern states and he will pass innumerable poor and 

 hungry farms, and the greater the natural leanness of the soil, the more 

 sure is he to see the manure-heap leaching, often for the second year, 

 in the farm yard. 



In like degree are our resources now wasted through the prevalent 



