216 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



sole progeny of buoyant national pride. Perhaps, therefore, any sober 

 argument on this inevitable theme is better than none. 



Probably the safest approach is by comparison, for thus we avail 

 ourselves of such experience as has come to our race in different parts 

 of the world. But let us avoid China and Java, even though they seem 

 such available examples of a great population, of high density, with 

 small percentage of exchange and hence almost self-sufficient. But 

 their standards of living — could we, even with our superior skill and 

 progressiveness, take the same resources and support an equal number 

 of people up to American standards of comfort and efficiency ? We do 

 not know those resources well enough to tell, hence we dismiss oriental 

 nations and turn to people more like ourselves. 



We have elsewhere made a brief comparison between England and 

 that part of the United States which lies east of the Dakotas, Kansas 

 and Texas. It was suggested that this region, about two fifths of the 

 chief continental area of the United States, averages in resources of 

 every sort as well as England, and it was shown that if we could in 

 these 1,200,000 square miles reach the present density of England, we 

 should have, east of the meridian of Omaha, 742,000,000 people. To 

 have put this in print should at once, it would seem, shatter all preten- 

 sion to soberness. We are quite willing to scale down the figure, while 

 taking refuge under the fact that these computations were not offered 

 as prophecy. With such an enormous population, we, like England, 

 could not feed half our mouths, and should have to exchange other 

 products for food. But other lands might not have the surplus in those 

 days, to send to us. And our underground resources might be seriously 

 reduced, if not exhausted, and we could not produce the exchange 

 values. We thus see how fascinating and how futile is the hundred- 

 million tendency. Let us divide our total by three, and arrive at a 

 population which we might hope to feed from our own soil, a little 

 under 250,000,000. It will be seen that in this estimate we leave the 

 Great Plains and Cordilleras to be peopled according to the dictates of 

 a cold conservatism, or of a lively enthusiasm. 



An instructive comparison can be made with Italy, whose area is 

 110,550 square miles, and whose population is reckoned to have been, 

 on January 1, 1907, 33,640,710. The density was 304.3, not far from 

 half that of England or Belgium, and about twelve times as great as 

 that exhibited by the United States in 1900. 



We may first take the comparative density of agricultural workers. 

 In Italy, of persons, male and female, over nine years of age, there were 

 at work in the fields, in 1900, 9,611,003. In our own country in 1900 

 there were, over ten years of age, 10,438,219. When we remember that 

 the smaller country contained a little more than 30,000,000 people at 

 that time and we had 76,000,000, the figures show their meaning. This 

 comes out with force if we look at the ratio of workers to a given surface 

 of production. In the United States east of the arid regions there was 



