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'The time from about 1880 until the outbreak of war in 1914 has for Danish agriculture been a period of extraordinary and prosperous development.

Before 1880 Danish agriculture was mainly producer and seller of corn; but when America's surplus production of corn in the eighties reached Europe the corn prices fell rapidly and the corn producing agriculture had to work under very difficult conditions, particularly in Denmark where the chief part of the soil, especially in Jutland but also in parts of the islands, is of so poor a quality that it only yields comparatively small crops. Instead of entering into a-from the outset hopeless-competition against the transatlantic import of corn a happy fate led Danish agriculture in the quite opposite direction, and taking advantage first of the supplies of cheap corn and later of oil cakes as raw material a production of refined produces (products) of domestic animals was taken up-especially butter and bacon-which gradually became the specialty of Danish agriculture. This production spelt a thorough revolution of Danish agricultural economy and opened possibilities as well for rural enterprises to which the soil was better adapted than to corn growing as for the extensive outparceling of land to the small freeholds that have become a social blessing to the whole country

"When the farmers after 1880 at a continually increasing rate took up the production of butter, bacon, and eggs, as the chief articles of export, this production was from the very start adjusted so as to suit British consumers; and the English market was held mainly in view from the very beginning also at the numerous new-established cooperative factories. Every effort was made to produce the particular quality of butter and bacon required by the great English army of consumers, and simultaneously every endeavor was made to ensure a fixed quality common for the whole country all the year round and to ensure equal shipments both summer and winter. The efforts were duly appreciated in England, and the Danish agricultural products gained in the course of time a firm and secure footing on the British Market."

CHAPTER XXVI

FOOD SUPPLY PROBLEM

DURING the past two hundred years the United States has supplied foreign countries so lavishly with foodstuffs that the problem of a future food supply at home was scarcely thought of. But now that the tide is turning, now that we are importing some corn and some meat, it is an opportune time to pause and take an inventory of conditions as they are, and to endeavor to form an estimate of conditions as they soon will be.

Food Problem.-The food supply problem is a dual problem(1) How much food is produced? (Fig. 90.) (2) How many people are there to eat this food? We know that population is increasing. We know that the food supply is increasing also. But the present and the prospective ratio between the increase in population and the increase in food supply is the vital question that concerns us. Some of the most important literature of the world has been devoted to a discussion of one or more aspects of this problem. T. R. Malthus, the British clergyman, Liebig, the German agricultural chemist, and Sir Wm. Crookes, the British scientist, to name but three great thinkers, have all made notable contributions to the world's knowledge of this problem. The most widely known of these three is doubtless Malthus. Since he treats of the problem from the population standpoint, his doctrine will first receive attention.

The Malthusian Theory of Population.-Like a good many Englishmen of the "upper classes" of that day, Malthus was interested in "Plans of improving the poor." By battling with his critics for some 27 years (from 1798 to 1825) he finally worked out his conclusions that the trouble with the poor was their poverty; that their poverty was due to low wages; that low wages were due to the oversupply of labor, namely, to the oversupply of poor people, and that consequently the one effective remedy was to produce fewer laborers. This limitation of the supply of labor would raise wages, leave more food for each laborer, and not greatly inconvenience the "upper classes." "We must show the poor," said Malthus, "that the withholding of the supplies of labor is the only possible way of really raising its price, and that they themselves being the possessors of this commodity have alone

power to do this." The proposed systems of "equality" of his day Malthus rejected as mere palterings with a serious problem.

The general effect of years of cheapness and abundance of food, says Malthus, is to dispose a great many persons to marry. Countries are populous according to the quantity of human food which

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FIG. 90.-Fresh and cured meats in a cold storage warehouse in Chicago.

they produce or can acquire; and happy according to the liberality with which food is divided, the quantity which a day's labor will produce. Corn countries are more populous than pasture countries, and rice countries more populous than corn countries. This happiness depends on the proportion which the population and the food bear to each other.

But population, says Malthus, tends to increase beyond the means of subsistence. Population is limited by the food supply.

THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY OF POPULATION

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Population when unchecked goes on doubling itself every twentyfive years that is, it increases in a geometrical ratio. The food supply, under circumstances the most favorable to human industry could not possibly be made to increase, says Malthus, faster than in an arithmetical ratio. That is, population increases as the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and so on, while the food supply increases as the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Thus at the end of 100 years the population would tend to be more than 3 times the food supply. The Malthusian theory of population consists of two parts--the first part, just stated, of the geometric increases of population when unchecked; the second part, of the "checks on population." The ultimate check is want of food. But the immediate checks are two, namely, (1) preventive—that is, voluntary restraint; (2) positive that is, vice and misery in every form which causes a shortening of human life. Vice and misery include unwholesome labor, exposure, poverty, disease, war, plague, famine. Delay of marriage, from prudential considerations, said Malthus, is the most powerful check in modern Europe in keeping down the population to the level of subsistence. A lower birth-rate would lead to a lower death-rate, said Malthus, that is, to fewer and better children. The apparent paradox that better wages would lead to earlier marriage and more children and lower wages, Malthus met by laying stress on a more general system of education and a higher standard of living for the workers.

He stated that the population of the United States had doubled every 25 years during the first 150 years, and he estimated a similar rate of increase for the future as long as abundance of cheap food lasted. This table compares his prediction with the facts.

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The actual population of the United States in 1890, by the federal census, was 62,622,250, or less than one-half of one per cent under the estimate made by Malthus some ninety years before. Following the year 1890, however, for the first time the "geometrical increase" failed to occur. On the basis of doubling every

25 years, the population would have reached 125,734,848 in 1915. The actual population in 1915 was about 100,000,000. Evidently the Malthusian "check" on population had begun to operate.

The Malthusian theory of population is undoubtedly correct. The grimmer aspects of his theory are not so conspicuous to-day, since famine, pestilence, war, vice and misery do not take such heavy tolls as they once did in overpopulated countries. The prudential checks, the "higher standards of living," are lowering the birth-rate in many countries. The unknown factors now in the problem of ascertaining the present and prospective ratio of population to food supply include the following: declining birthrate; knowledge of birth control; declining death-rate; new knowledge concerning human and animal nutrition; possibilities of scientific agriculture. But somewhere in the background is the ultimate limit of population-the food supply. It would doubtless be a very simple biological feat to double the population of China or Japan in 25 years, but, as Malthus says, it is doubtful if the food produce of China and Japan could be doubled in any number of years.

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Soil Exhaustion Question. The last paragraph referred to China and Japan-the oldest agricultural districts in the world. The records show that agriculture has been conducted in the same fields here for at least four thousand years. The fact that this soil is not yet exhausted has given a sense of false security to those who live nearer the virgin soils of a new country. These countries serve as a warning, if anything, of the dire calamity of soil exhaustion. In Professor F. H. King's very excellent book on "Farmers of Forty Centuries" he shows that the farmers of Japan and China maintain their soil fertility only by applying to the soil animal and vegetable waste matter of every possible kind. Not only are canal bottoms dredged for the fertile canal mud, but the straw from the grain, the leaves from the trees are all used in making a compost to be applied to the tiny fields. The urine of animals is saved, yes, even every bit of the human excrement itself. For this reason the great cities do not have sewer systems, all the night-soil being removed daily by farmers as food for their plants. This means for the average Oriental farmer a life of unremitting toil, and little hope of ever rising far above the danger line of starvation. "If," says Dr. King, "the agricultural lands of the United States are ever called upon to feed even 1,200 millions of

1 King, F. H. Farmers of Forty Centuries. Madison, Wisconsin, 1911. Published by Mrs. F. H. King.

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