Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/260

256 cattle, has assumed the place of chief economic importance among garden products. Twenty-five years ago the European crop of potatoes exceeded in value the entire wheat crop of the world. In the United States in 1912 the increase of potato production over the average of the preceding ten years was 100,000,000 bushels, an additional bushel for every person living within our borders.

A bit of statistics may emphasize the fact of our increasing surplus. The increase of rural population in the United States between 1900 and 1910 was 9 per cent. In the same period the production of wheat increased 31 per cent.; of corn 47 per cent.; of rice 82 per cent.; and the value of all farm property over 200 per cent. Paralleling the rapid advance in agricultural production has been the increase of mineral products. In the decade the production of copper increased 40 per cent; of zinc 7 per cent.; of iron 69 per cent.; of petroleum 131 per cent.; and of coal 140 per cent. At the same time, the products of manufacture increased far faster than the population. While the latter went forward 21 per cent., the former advanced 84 per cent. How directly this bears on living conditions appears in the fact that the manufacture of food products and textile articles constitute more than a third of the total and show an increase in ten years of 83 per cent. To see how manufacture tends toward the food surplus, one needs but to look at the grocer's shelves. There safely packed away in cans, bottles, cartons, are the seasonal surpluses of widely distant zones. Vegetables, fruits, fish, meats hide behind attractive covers and await the capricious appetites of purchasers. Here one sees also how transportation by rail and boat has eliminated zonal boundaries. Australia, South America, Europe, Asia, and the farthest corners of our own continent are here brought together. The typical American epicure knows no season and no territorial zone. On Christmas day he eats fruits his progenitor of a half century earlier could have had only in June, and in New York he pleases himself with foods available to his ancestors only after ten thousand miles of travel.

To think of a near world famine in the face of these modern wonders of production and distribution is to be disturbed by a dream. The world can now produce more than it can properly consume and the production is increasing at a faster rate than is the population. If there is still hunger in America, it is not due to the scantiness of food. It is due to the inequality of distribution, an inequality, however, that is not static or necessary. We can rest assured that as soon as society has partially recovered its feet after its headlong plunge into wealth, it will set itself to rights and care for every man as he needs. At the present time there are searching efforts being made to ascertain the adequate standard of living for men of various occupations. That that standard will be met out of society's rapidly accumulating surplus is as