Photograph from Rev. B. H. Johns 



a day's rations for 43 boys : Tientsin, north china 



The food for one day (two meals) is, beginning at the left: bag of wheat flour for 

 bread, 32 pounds; bottle of sesame seed oil; little basket of sea salt; two pounds of bean 

 curd (in wicker ladle) ; large stone bowl of rice, 33 pounds, and several heads of Chinese 

 cabbage. The bundle of dried grass at the right is the fuel for preparing it. 



day, the total for the year would amount 

 to a billion and a quarter tons. It would 

 require a string - of cars, carrying - thirty 

 tons to the car and reaching eight times 

 around the earth, to haul this material. 



THE AVERAGE RATION ' 



The fact, however, is that the average 

 inhabitant of the earth probably uses 

 more than two pounds of provisions a 

 day. The steerage passengers on Eng- 

 lish ships are allowed 2^ pounds each a 

 day. Even the prisoner in the average 

 jail gets more than 2 pounds; the Rus- 

 sian conscript 4 pounds ; and the Aus- 

 trian common soldier 2^ pounds a day. 



Still another way to get an idea of the 

 size of the world's food problem is to as- 

 sume that the average individual con- 

 sumes ten cents' worth of food daily. 

 On this basis it would require the entire 

 national wealth of the United States, the 

 richest nation of all history, to pay the 

 world's food bill for twenty-six months. 

 For every cent per day per capita that 

 the cost of living increases, more than 



$6,000,000,000 is added to the world's 

 annual market-basket expense. 



STARVATION STILL REMOTE 



But when one considers the possibili- 

 ties of future food production, it is diffi- 

 cult to have much faith in the prophecies 

 of pessimism of these twentieth-century 

 successors of Malthus (see also page 91). 



For instance, in the United States we 

 have 935,000,000 acres of arable land, 

 only 400,000,000 of which are under cul- 

 tivation. Yet, with less than half of our 

 available land utilized, the United States 

 produces one-sixth of the world's wheat, 

 four-ninths of its corn, one-fourth of its 

 oats, one-eighth of its cattle, one-third of 

 its hogs, and one-twelfth of its sheep. 



Even with the land now under cultiva- 

 tion, if we produced as much wheat per 

 acre as England and Germany, we could 

 supply the world with two-thirds of its 

 flour. If we produced as much corn to 

 the acre as they do, we could double the 

 world's supply of that product. 



Today the United States has a total 



