have come since 1900. In spite of this vast migration to new lands, the older countries, with few exceptions, have not lost, but on the contrary, have gained in population. Thus Great Britain and Ireland increased from about 16,000,000 in 1801 to 41,000,000 in 1901. A great civilization has sprung up in Australia and New Zealand. Buenos Aires is the third largest city in the Western Hemisphere. To-day the situation is changing. There are few unoccupied areas tempting to men of the temperate zones and most of these are well organized politically and controlled by people not friendly to mass immigration. To what place is the surplus population of this century to migrate?

Resources and the Standard of Living

Two entirely different questions are coming into the foreground. The first deals with the adequacy of natural resources to meet human needs, the second is the question of the standard of living. That these questions are related is obvious. That this relation is not fixed and final, but relative and changing is equally clear. We may state it in this fashion: What is the effect of an increase of population on the standard of living? This question leads to another: Which does man consider more important, the raising of the standard of living, or the increase of total population?

The optimist often states these fundamentals as if nothing more were involved than the problem of securing food and clothing from an inexhaustible storehouse for a constantly increasing population. He is satisfied that, in some way or other, "the Lord will provide." By contrast the pessimist, impressed by the shortage of some commodity such as wool or gasoline, stresses the early end of our culture. In reality the problem does not lie in the relationship of a number of fixed quantities but deals rather with many variables. For illustration, if we were to assume that bread was the staff of life, it would not be difficult to tell how many persons could be fed from the product of a given number of acres worked under given conditions by a given labor force. But the problem is more complex. Man's standard of bread may change. It was one thing a generation ago. It is far different to-day when man demands a fine white flour with the result that about one-fourth of the wheat is turned into bran, one-fourth into shorts, so that only one-half of the wheat enters human food, and this half has lost much of the food value of the whole wheat. Elsewhere man has demanded polished rice, and has got it-has got beriberi also. Illustrations are easy. But who can state or fix limits to human demands, or tastes? As a matter of fact, man's standard-that which he demands, not what he wantsranges from the mere existence level of folks situated as are the Eskimos or most of the Chinese, to the relatively high levels of a fortunately situated people, the Americans. Any discussion, then, of the growth of population must deal with the standard of living if it is to have any real value or meaning. Between the mere existence minimum and a relatively rich maximum there is a wide range of choice. The question is not how many men earth can support, but under what conditions do men prefer to live.

The Cause of Migrations

A further complication is caused by the rivalry between different races of men for the control of desirable parts of earth. The politician, thinking in terms of supremacy over other groups, of conquest, has always favored an increase in numbers that his nation might have plenty of "cannon fodder" in times of war. Do not blame the politician. He is but the mouthpiece of the great inarticulate mass of common men behind him. Germany's old demand for a "place in the sun" meant, in reality, a location for surplus population. The antagonism to "perfidious Albion" was founded on jealousy, not on condemnation of England's policies. Neither Japan nor Italy are, or can be, satisfied with the immigration policies of Australia and America. Suppose other nations followed suit and no place were left for surplus populations! He reads history blindly who does not see that the increasing difficulties of maintaining old standards at home has been one of the greatest causes of human migration, whether the causes back of the difficulty were changing climatic conditions or something else. The normal movement of men, then, is from a place where old standards are becoming difficult to a place where they, or even higher, standards, may be maintained. The primary appeal of the frontier as a place of permanent residence is only to those who think in terms of future welfare. The change in American immigration policy from the welcome extended to strangers which characterized the last century to the exclusion policy of to-day is based, in part on racial jealousy to be sure, but chiefly on the fear that the incoming hordes will lower our standard of living. This suggests that the era of great peaceful migration is drawing to a close. It would appear that in the future the statesmen of the world will have to find local solutions of their population problems or else embark on an era of wars which will dwarf earlier wars into insignificance. Is the League of Nations ready to consider such questions?

The continued prosperity of man on earth depends on:

1. Amount of agricultural land

2. Supplies of metal and other necessities

3. Sources of power, coal, electricity, etc.

Any improvement or increase of supplies depends on:

1. Additional land secured by drainage, irrigation

2. New sources of metals, fuels, etc.

3. Technical improvements in machinery and methods

4. Plant and animal breeding

5. Increased use of ocean's products

6. Elimination of waste (really a part of 3)

THE PROBLEM DEFINED

With few exceptions prior to the last century the men whose ideas have come down to us never viewed the growth of human population in terms of world conditions. This occasions no surprise, for their ignorance of the earth as a whole made such discussion impossible. The local problems were often considered, and scattered over earth we find such social policies as the destruction of infants or the aged practiced and defended on grounds of group necessity. The world, however, seemed so vast that migration always offered a solution. Sir Thomas More in Utopia had raised the question of population and such men as Montesquieu and Benjamin Franklin had appreciated its importance. The common idea of the last of the eighteenth century was presented by an able English writer, William Godkin. "Three-fourths of the habitable globe is now uncultivated. The parts already cultivated are capable of immeasurable improvement. Myriads of centuries of still increasing population may pass away, and the earth be still found sufficient for the subsistence of its inhabitants." 2

Malthus

It remained for an English preacher, Malthus, in his Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, to state the question in such a way as to attract immediate and lasting consideration. It is doubtful if any other thesis of similar age is more energetically opposed or defended to-day. Much of the current discussion is useless and sterile because dealing with single phases of the topic or with part truths. The popular statement of the Malthusian Law, "Population tends to increase in a geometrical ratio while food supply increases in an arithmetical ratio," literally taken, is foolish, but taken as a figure of speech it is profoundly true. It is interesting and significant to discover that natural scientists and economists agree with Malthus almost to a man, while his opponents are men in business or public life. What, then, are the facts at present? In the following pages I shall draw freely from an outstanding recent work on population, Mankind at the Crossroads, by E. M. East.

East's Summary of the Present Situation

There are on earth, according to East, some 13,000,000,000 acres (40 per cent of the land area) available for agriculture. On the basis of the best prewar European agriculture about 21⁄2 acres of cultivated ground are required for each person to be supported.

3

The production in these four countries has averaged 70 per cent above that of the other advanced nations, according to the computations of the authorities in our Department of Agriculture.