The Wenatchee daily world. [volume] (Wenatchee, Wash.) 1905-1971, 1909-07-13
RACE WILL FACE
STARVATION
POPULATION OF THIS COUNTRY
WILL INCREASE PRODIGIOUS-
LIZ IN NEXT so YEARS, SAYS
SCIENTIST.

rate, put TO starvation, that the sup
ply of phosphorus, so essential for
the soil, is rapidly disappearing and
that agriculture must be made per-
manent, if future generations are to
eat, were some OF the statements of
Dean Eugene Davenport of the de-
partment of agriculture of the Illi-
nois state university in a recent ad
dress.
Dean Davenport said in part:
eve have seen the last of the cheap
white bread
within the lifetime of the chill
fdren born today, scarcity of labor
will be a matter of history. and abun-
dance of cheap food will be a tale
that is told by the gran'ther in his
chimney corner doing in his dotage.
We are educating in our schools to-
day a generation of children to live
Ia life that we ourselves have never
seen and that history does not re-
cord. Calculate what their condi
tons of life are likely to be and
mand our methods accordingly.
I'VE were 800 years in getting
population of 100000 people, so
slowly do numbers pile up when the
base is small, whatever the ratio, but
we have increased 100000 in the
last 100 years. I we'll remember
when our population was but 10000,
900 and I am no relative of Methusa-
la either. Many of you remember
when it was but 900, 900, but now
! it has reached approximately 100,
| 100000. With such a base and with
| modern conditions of life this coun-
| try can and will produce men at a
rate the world has never seen.
I'VE can now produce in this coun-
| try as much increased population in
the next 25 years as We produced in
! the whole 400 years since its discov-
cry by white men and we can pro-
duce twice as many more in the next
25. In so years from now we shall
have the population OF China in this
country unless something goes wrong
and it is the business of agriculture
| to learn how to feed them we'll. When
! it has learned this, it will have learn
! cd he
now know how to teach.
There is to be in the near future,
a. struggle for land and the food it
will produce such as the world has
never yet beheld. He who knows
where and how to look can see it
coming. The African activity among
western European nations is part
of it, 1t is always cheaper to move
when over-population and failing fer
tility threaten a shortage of food
providing there is any place to move
into; that is, providing We can dis
possess the other party and his land
is worth the contest.
However that may be as an abb
|stract proposition, for us there is no
moving. For us there are no more
now worlds. For us there is little
more out west Our fortune and our
future, whatever they may be, are
staked down on the American canti-
nent. Literally here we rest and
whether we like it or not we must
devise and establish a permanent ag-
riculture or go down in the attempt.
Our descendants will certainly be
as cultured as we; they ought to be
more So Their needs surely will not
be fewer or of a more modest char
acter. Their numbers will be vastly
greater, and unless we, not they, can
succeed in finding a permanent agri-
culture the race will degenerate and
end where it commenced, in poverty
and barbarism.'
Dean Davenport deplored the Gus
tom of moving off the farm into the
city in order to btain the luxuries OF
life. I'm doing this" he said, 1.-The
farmer has abandoned his business.
He has broken up his children's
home. He has exposed his little ones
to the unbridled dangers of the small
town. He has set before them the
example of idleness He has turned
his back upon the farm that has
made his wealth and stripped the
land of its fertility to build in the
town the homes to which the farm
was entitled to. He has stripped the
country of its earnings to build up
the city and add to it's numbers use
less and undesirable population. So
common has this thing become as to
excite public alarm and no one topic
rings a more significant note through
the findings of the country life COM
mission than the abandonment of the
farm at the stage of houco hu;1d;no -,