The Detroit times. [volume] (Detroit, Mich.) 1903-1920, 1913-02-13
'ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP EARTH"
he Noah Fanny and Ms Mah,pIyhng An,mals
BY HERBERT QUICK

crops. and bring In exhausted and denuded acres.
Japan, II all lands up to a slope OF 10 degrees
brought under tillage may add So per cent TO her
farmed acreage, and thus allow increase OF popu
lation TO a hundred millions. But no discovery of
science can so far be take from the soil
what is not in IT, enable agriculture to make food
OF anything but plants fed from the plant food in the
soil SO that poverty rs to recur IL the present
birth rate these nations keeps up no matter IL the
whole earth were theirs. They not made poor by
theif-oppressors. but by their birthrate.
1t might be possible to make some show of denial
of this the Japanese; for they have most OF the
paraphernala OF industrial robbery and exploitation.
But in the Hoang Mo valley OF China. and especially
In such fertile the Chengtu plain. where
from three to four thousand people live each
square mile the law of Nautilus is in stark. plain
full operation.
Are not these people in some way robbed?"
duction which goes non-producers said he, can
not be more than two or three per cent. Wipe out
oven that leakage parasitic hands, and the birth
rate would poverty in its original awfulness
I'm a year In his book, The Changing Chinese, he
repeats this. Nor" says he, lis the lot or the
masses due exploitation. In the cities there Is a
sprinkling of rich but out in the province one may
travel for weeks and sign OF wealthy class
no mansion fine country place, no equipage bent
ting the rich. There great stretches or fertiie
agricultural country where the struggle for existence
is stern and yet cutivator his land and i'm
plements and pays tribute TO no man
The long strife with nature for subsistence has
affirmed of even the parasite from the shoulders or
these sober honest and thrifty men. There is no
s,,rplus on which the non-worker can live. Farming
Is SO perfect that the greatest agricultural ex
pert of our time. the late F. H. King, could see no
way I'm which our science materially help them
Our best agricultural practice seems barbarous COM
pared with theirs II good farming good soil, fever
ish and unremitting industry practical freedom from
taxes and the enjoyment of practically all the pro-
duce OF their labor could keep them from poverty
these people would not be Yet they are so poor
that eight out of ten their children die In infancy
The land cannot support the increase.
So while we need not yet lay any OF our western
poyerty to pressure OF population we should remem
her that this awful evil to be approaching Our
population has grown from SS.000,0OO In 1870 10
90 900 900; Japans in the same time from $4,000
900 to $4,000 900; Russia's 100000 to l6o'-
900 OOO Germany's from 100000 to 64OoooOo;
Great Britans from 81 900 900 to 100000 0O Italy
from 26 900 900 to "a ,OOo. 900; Austria-Hungary
from AZ 600 900 to 81 900, 600; while even France
whose population increases more slowly than that Oh
any other nation has grown from S6,oOO.OoO to So
900 900. 49,,
The URGE to multiply bears man on TO the same
goal APPARENTLY as the sparrow and the worm-to the
exhaustion of subsistence. DIT. W. J. McGee has MADE
calculations that in three hundred years the United
States win have acquired population OF Dillon
and reached the limit. The limit means conditions
ike those in @Chengtu Let the Passengers on the
Good Ship Earth consider these thingsl
See tomorrow's Times for announcement OF the next
article In this great series