Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/665

Rh calculated numbers a little over a century hence, for that would be a density of about 125 per mile—far greater than Europe.

It is also difficult to see how science is to produce food indefinitely, for the real basis of food production is the soil and vegetation, such as the changing of cellulose into starches and sugars. The possible limit is the amount of the sun's energy we can capture through vegetation. The calculated population of a thousand years hence, 41 billions, or 11,000 per mile, is not at present conceivable.

There is a law of population, that its increase depends upon its density, irrespective of the birth rate; hence at the saturation point the death rate must equal the birth rate, as at present in China, where the large birth rate is compensated by frightful destruction of life, awful pestilences, famines, universal infanticide and judicial executions for every felony. Our civilization will never tolerate such mortality, nor can the surplus migrate, as it has been doing from Europe for four hundred years. Yet we need have no fear of future famines and pestilence due to overcrowding and so necessary in India and China, for the solution of the problem will come of its own accord in a natural limitation of the size of families by prevention of conception or some other means, a process already begun, as many have already pointed out. The average number of children in English families is already less than four. By the time we have reached our maximum growth it is quite likely that the number of children in American families will be less than three, or just enough to compensate for unavoidable deaths and still keep the population stationary. The deliberations of the Malthusian societies may appear very absurd, but they are merely discussing things which are sure to come about naturally and not artificially.

Thus Dr. Pritchett's estimates of our future population of 11,000 per square mile, being based upon the rates of increase in a country far below its saturation point, it seems that a better formula could have been obtained by taking the increases in European countries which probably have been saturated since the glacial times and supersaturated ever since they became maritime powers and could import food. Thus England had 5 millions in 1650, and only 6  millions in 1750, and less than 9 millions in 1800; since then, through food importations due to commerce, her rate of increase has been about 13 per cent, per decade. Our rate, as above stated, was 32 per cent, in 1800, 24 per cent, in 1880, and the time it will be 13 may be long before 1990, and it is quite likely to be zero within a century or two.

Our country will never contain more people than it can feed, and the struggle for existence or the stress of life will not be a particle more severe than now. Since the first paleolithic man appeared on the scene, Europe has supported as many men as she could and has thus been at the saturation point, ever on the verge of over-population, needing famines, wars of expansion and other forms of deaths, so that there has always been the same struggle for existence we see now, and that struggle can never be more severe than it has always been there. The course of civilization would even justify a prediction that life will be made easier, so that posterity may pity us as we pity our savage ancestors in their terrible struggle for existence.

To the Editor: I have been much interested in Havelock Ellis's 'Study of British Genius,' for the reason that his conclusions are so nearly paralleled by a study of a like character for several of the continental countries reported by me in the latest number of the 'Conservative Review.' Mr. Ellis says, among other things: "When we survey the field of investigation I have here briefly summarized, the most