Norwich bulletin., 1916-04-11
INFINITE POSSIBILITIES
 ARE AS YET UNTOUCHED. In Every Country-No Danger of a General Shortage in Humanitys Market Basket Supplies.
Especial to The BuIletinO


 Washington, D. C., April 1O.-Fore- casting a condition in the future in which there will be to many people in the world for the grain fields and stock ranges to feed. the question of possible general shortage in human ity's market basket supplies has re- ceived more than 100 years of vol luminous consideration. Since the outbreak of the Yorid-war. probabil- ities of food shortages have been dis cussed more than ever before, but in | respect to definite and narrow geo. graphical limitations. Mir. William | Joseph Showalter, in a careful study | of the worlds food supply, considering | the bulk produced, its distribution, | and the potentiaiities for increased i production, discounts present-day | fears of ultimate universal famine. l under-supply of foodstufGffs is the | menace of the future. he has the fol- l lowing to say Tn study prepared for 1 the National Geographic Society at ] Washington:
 Many men are inclined to sound a pessimistic note as to the adequacy
 of the worlds food supply for future | generations. and, like Malthus a hum
 dred years ago, are inclined to pre- dict that the day has at last come
 
 expand it's numbers, or else face in- ] evitablc hunger.
 And when We consider how many
 mouths there are in this world tC
 satisfy them, little rom Is there tC ' wonder ar this pessimism.
 The earth'S population today reaches a grand total of about 1,7O0,' GOO. coo souls. If they were all SC l down at a banquet 1t would require ! I-g.- HH globe to seat them For every ounce } 1 of food they late, the dinner-givel i would have to provide 5S,0J0 tons O l provisions, and if the dinner were n' | more than a democratic dollar--piat' Q affair. it would cost, in the aggreEat as must as it costs to run the United | States government a year and half
 Expressed in terms of annual con
 sumption. the worlds market baske is one that defles portrayal in weigh , and size. One is forced to cast around . for new units of measurement to givl { a proper idea of its proportions. As . suminE that the average inhabitant O ] the earth uses two pounds of pro . visions a day, the total for the yea . ! would amount to a billion and a quar s ter tons. It would require a string O r cars, carrying thirty tons to the cal - and reaching eight times around tn s earth, to haul this material.
 The fact. however, is that the av IT t bably uses more than two pounds c e provisions a day. The steeTaEe pas q l sengers on English ships are allowe Y PIP pounds each day. Even tn 2 prisoner in the average jail gets nor if than pounds: the Russian conscriI s f pounds; and the Austrian cormo s soldier 1-2 pounds a day.
 still another way to get an idea ( st the size of the worlds food prObleI s is to assume that the average indi
 aH aH- e food daily. On this basis it woul e require t.re entire national wealth , st the United States, the richest natio IS of all history, to pay the worlds foo d bill for twenty-siX months.
 IS For every cent per day per capit n. that the cost of living increases. mol Id than S6.O00.0OC.0O0 is added to n l- worlds annual market-basket e1 g pense.
 e But when one considers the poss h bilities of future food production. it le difficult to have much faith in q
 prophecies of pessimism of the! ,n twentieth-century successors of Ma A thus. For instance, in the Unite d States we have 935,O00,000 acres se arabic land, only 400, ,OOO, 900 of whi, s- are under cultivation. Yet, with le se than half of our available land uti ,n ized. the United States produces on l. sixth of the worlds wheat, sever of ninths of its corn, one-fourth of i iZ oats, One-elEnth or Its cattle, on a- third of it's hogs, and one-twelfth r. it's sheep.
 Even with the land now under GU R. tivation, if we produced as mut re wheat per acre as England and Ge l. many, we could supply the world wi D. two-thirds of its flour. If we pr te duced as much corn to the acre r. they do, we could double the world A supply of that product
 -s Today the United States has he total cereal crop of 5000. COG. O nd bushels. Were all of our arable laI al under cultivation and producing on pe according to our present standaI re which is less than half as high y- that of western Europe. we could al sh enough cereals to take care of an a h- ditional population the size of that w. Europe.
 When one has lived on land, as [
 writer has done, which, at the el
 of the Civil War. did not produ
 more than eight bushels of wheat al