Albert Perry Brigham

“ It is not easy to see how Italy maintains her people. Certain reliefs suggest themselves. It is admitted that many Italians exist rather than live; but this must not be said of Rome or Tuscany or the valley of the Po. We allow something for a genial climate which at once gives quick returns from the soil and reduces the need of clothing and fuel. And we may not forget the great sums brought into Italy by travelers and foreign residents, for the winning of whose money Italian arrangements sometimes seem peculiarly effective. ”

“ Thus to arrive at maximum population we must somewhat approach millennial conditions. Then, in high degree a self-sufficient nation, we could keep as many people as our own soil could feed and clothe. With wise timidity we have been deferring those large transactions in figures which the reader has been expecting, and we might with good show of reason, confess that inquiry for precise results is absurd and drop the attempt to forecast. Nevertheless, the next patriotic speech will marshal before us our future hundreds of millions, sole progeny of buoyant national pride. ”

“ Perhaps, in view of our general influence in the world, we might be glad to have several hundred millions of people, but only if we are so conditioned that our influence would be a boon to other lands. This indeed in itself implies a limit, for we must not be too many to live with freedom and with worthy standards.
We may take ourselves out of the ranks of the enthusiast with a second preliminary question—is a great population probable? ”

“ A further gain can be had on soils already in use by expert management in the direction of proper succession of crops and a thoroughness of occupation and tillage often seen in Italy, France or Belgium, but only exceptionally found as yet in our own land. We need not only better directed labor, but more labor on the same soil. In the regions of sufficient rainfall, which comprise nearly the eastern half of the United States, we shall find, or did find in 1900, seven men per average square mile, tilling the soil, or one to each lot of 91.4 acres. ”

“ Probably the safest approach is by comparison, for thus we avail ourselves of such experience as has come to our race in different parts of the world. But let us avoid China and Java, even though they seem such available examples of a great population, of high density, with small percentage of exchange and hence almost self-sufficient. But their standards of living—could we, even with our superior skill and progressiveness, take the same resources and support an equal number of people up to American standards of comfort and efficiency? ”

“ Population capacity would afford a less baffling inquiry if food alone were needed. Mere questions of mouths, bushels and pounds might involve simple ratios, easily determined, but we must at once include clothing, of vegetable fibers, animal fibers, furs and skins, nearly all requiring land for their production. Man must have shelter and a long catalogue of objects of domestic utility, for the household and for the tillage of the soil. These things may become chiefly derivable from subterranean sources with the single exception of a minimum demand on the forest. ”

“ Let any man traverse the country regions in the eastern states and he will pass innumerable poor and hungry farms, and the greater the natural leanness of the soil, the more sure is he to see the manure-heap leaching, often for the second year, in the farm yard.
In like degree are our resources now wasted through the prevalent methods of sewage disposal. No treachery to the land can be so great as that which sends out into the sea the highly concentrated nitrogenous products which have with toil been wrung from a soil which is becoming poor in capacity for crops. ”

“ Thus there is color for the view that France with her disturbing birth rate has only arrived first at the condition to which all cultivated peoples are moving. Motives of economy and of opportunity for self and children press more strongly as standards rise, and it has recently been urged that even Ireland, with new land laws and with peasant proprietorship, will become more restrictive of population. It seems to be as true with man as in the general field of natural history, that the higher the type the fewer the progeny. ”

“ Indeed that nearly two thirds of the country is worked as productive soil is in itself significant to one who knows the ruggedness of much of the realm. The stretches of bare Apenine slope seem to be endless, and one is sometimes inclined to say that Italy is fertile only in spots. ”

“ Making generous allowance for ground not in tillage, we still find the working force far too small to bring maximum quantities of food out of the ground. We need also on much plow land and meadow east of the arid belt supplementary irrigation for many seasons and for some crops, and with abundant water resources, there is no good reason why nature should not thus be helped to her best. Some areas, many, it would doubtless be better to say, would be doubled in productive worth by more effective drainage than has yet been applied. ”

“ The maximum of population therefore for the whole world hinges upon the supply of material substances derived from the atmosphere, the water, the soil and the rocks. For a given country the problem is complicated by exchange. The exchange values, however, must be won on the home ground. England has, for example, a far greater population than she can feed, but her coal and iron have enabled her to manufacture and to carry for other nations. ”

“ The American farmer is learning to adapt his crop to his soil and to his market. This is the teaching of the United States Bureau of Soil Survey, in its field work and in its reports. It is the burden of the agricultural college and of the experiment station, and the agricultural explorer of the department in Washington is searching widely in aid of something fit and good to fill every arable American acre. Adaptation will increase the product of food, as will also the more intelligent and energetic use of fertilizers. ”

“ A plain is more than a plain for it may be of a variety of origins and types, with its peculiar phases of structure, relief, soil, climate and vegetation. Similar statements may be made of plateaux and mountain regions. In the census of 1900, this classification was taken up in a brief and supplementary way, and the area, population and density of the several physiographic regions were computed and are placed before the reader. The areas are not exact, for the boundaries had to be determined by the nearest available county lines, but the error can hardly be of disturbing proportions. ”

“ But we are maturing, the frontier stage is past, our land is filling and fertile quarter sections are no more free. We have thus our own social problems, sharpening their quest for solution, and, moreover, being Americans, we now and then become enthusiastic and break into prophecy. ”

“ Or we might, indifferently, raise our silk, or sell farm machinery and buy silk, since either sort of production at present requires trees, and trees require land.
We have ventured the belief that we are sure of power. We may further include hopefully the resources of the underworld of the rocks, considering new reductions and uses of metals and many mineral substances. When the use of wood has come down to the minimum, the chief remaining demands on the soil, may, after all, be for food and clothing. ”

“ Iowa is a typical prairie state and has 55,475 square miles, not counting a few hundred miles of water surface. This state has about two and one fourth million of people, and with the density of France would have more than four times as many, or nearly ten and one half million. Iowa now has 13.39 acres of improved farm land for each one of her population. With the greater density she would have about three acres for each person, while France now has two and one third acres. In general fertility the odds are probably in favor of Iowa. ”

“ It is cited by Hilgard that Nile lands have for centuries supported an average population of more than one and one half persons per square acre, which means a density of about 1,000 per square mile. Without questioning the accuracy of this claim, it may be urged that we do not know whether flooding by the Cordilleran irrigator would be as favorable to fertility as the flooding of the Nile. Nor may we forget comparative standards of living any more than in the case of China. ”

“ Using the new land classification, we may approach again the possible or probable population east of the great plains, or in the well-watered eastern section of the United States. Leaving out the New England Hills, which already exceed the density we are about to propose, and omitting the Appalachian Plateau and the Ozark Hills, it would seem reasonable to expect an average density of 100 for the remaining territory of the east. ”

“ The mineral output of France is now relatively much greater than that of the prairie state, but it is by no means certain that the ratio would be maintained under full development of the new region, whose building stones, clays and gypsum are but in their commercial beginnings. In that prime necessity, coal, Iowa has quite the advantage, for she mines annually 23⁄4 tons for each resident, against 7⁄8 ton in France. ”

“ IF any reader of these pages thinks, with a recent writer, that "population is a vast and wandering theme," we shall have no quarrel with him. No doubt the problem has a keener interest in such a country as Great Britain or France, where population approaches capacity or is perhaps beyond the permanent limit of resources. ”

“ Almost as fundamental as food is the requirement of power. Here, however, the supply seems ample and permament. Long before the stores of buried fuel are exhausted, other natural forces, particularly that of moving water, will meet the needs of any population which we can feed. ”

“ A density of 100, however, seems a low expectation for the prairies, and also for the lake region, which last already has 55.2 persons per square mile. Considering the soil, climate, minerals and transportation facilities of the lake borders, their population must largely increase. Give these two regions the present density of France or of Austria-Hungary, we must add to the total already reached, 40,000,000 for the prairies and 15,000,000 for the lakes, bringing our total east of the great plains to 205,000,000. ”

“ The latter people imports much fuel, while the vast resources of Iowa for the most part lie still beneath the surface. Not many are probably aware that Iowa has 7,000 square miles of forest, more than at any previous time within the ken of the white man. She has, indeed, nearly as much forest for the proposed ten million people, as France now has for an equal number. It seems reasonable, therefore, to forecast for the prairies an occupation as dense as that of France or Austria. ”

“ The barest inspection of crop averages per acre, or of half the ripening harvests that fall under the eye of the traveler, supports the belief that a vast increment of food can be won from lands that are not now given a full chance. ”

“ We may consider potential gardens along more than two hundred thousand miles of railway, the fruit that might grow by millions of miles of highway, the steep and immature slopes that are more capable of terracing than those of Capri or Amalfi, or ancient Palestine, and finally those rugged areas of glacial hillside or mountain slope, where nut-bearing trees might produce no inconsiderable amount of highly nutritious food. The possible production of food substances in the laboratory is at present so far from the geographer's domain that it would be profitless to dwell upon it. ”

“ We must also keep in sight the inevitable condition that there is water enough in the west to make fertile but a small fraction of the dry area. If we accept this at one fifteenth and receive without discount the figures for the Nile, applying them boldly to Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and the other arid states, we shall arrive at a population of eighty million for the arid regions. ”

“ We may well sober our inquiry with the preliminary question—is a great population desirable? Not so, surely, for us, from the military point of view. We have men enough to send to the front and men enough to keep in the shop and field, to meet any emergency of war which lies within the horizon of reasonable conjecture. ”

“ When, forty years ago, the Irish laborer planted his potato patch by the railway track, or when to-day the Italian immigrant raises his vegetables in waste corners, it has not been recognized that he is the pioneer of the future. It is the traveler in such foreign lands as Belgium, Norway or Italy, who becomes able to appreciate the waste of American soils. ”

“ This comes out with force if we look at the ratio of workers to a given surface of production. In the United States east of the arid regions there was one worker to each 91.4 acres, counting the entire territory. In Italy there was one to each 5.07 acres, counting only the productive lands. But as these are there reckoned at more than two thirds of the whole, the comparison stands almost at full force. Including all of Italy, we should find one worker for each plot of eight acres or a little less. ”