Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-08-18
POPULATION GROWTH AFFECTS
BUSINESS LIFE OF COUNTRY
Expansion Since End of Revolution Has
Been on Enormous Scale-Economic
Conditions Greatly Changed.

gagged to increasing demand from con-
sumerS over. any measurable future
time. This Is a very important point.
It really was the seed that gave rise to
the mass production system. It was
the cause of the almost incurahle
optimism of the United States, It was
key by which people grew rich.
Mass Production.
Any resident of the United States
could make the calculation that in
space OF from three to five years the
number of persons likely to want to
use his land or services, or to purchase
his commodities, from 1890 to 1914.
within the region of which he was an
economic unit, would simply have to
increase. All economic life was gagged
to this fact.
Out of it developed mass production
through the fact that production had q
steady uphill task in keeping up with
consumption and consumptiVe require
ments. Since the policy Of raising
wages TO meet difficulties caused BY
shortage of labor could only 20 so far
in solving the problem of production
there came into existence, slowly at first
and then rapidly, a system of manufac-
turing through specialization and sub
division of labor, to which we give the
term of mass production" system.
Now what does this really do to the
was left to the older countries, which
had relatively large supplies Of labor
and relatively smaller stocks Of raw ma
terials. New countries, long on mate
rails and with a short labor supply,
largely ignore considerations of quail
ity and durability.
This is important. The economic life
of the United States through the nine
teenth century was based sQuarely upon
right on increasing, This was the nat
ural thing to assume. The eighteenth
century had been one of high birth
rates. Immigration had consisted in
the main of young adults whose instinct
for self-propagation could not but be
stimulated by such pioneer life. The
birth rate continued high through the
first decade of the nineteenth century
Families of half dozen children or
more were the normal thing.
Expansion Stimulated.
But as the volume of adult immi-
grants began to roll up toward the
middle of the nineteenth century the
economic expansion Of the country as
whole, particularly of the great CEN
NS4S Va AhstA 4DuVAOlA S4vAdNSN @404he b4AS
Eastern Seaboard, was stimulated to an
almost unwholesome extent Thus
Americas stages of economic progress
pastoral, agricultural, commercial, in
dustrial and f1nancial-did not, as in
Europe, develop over period of five
to eight centuries, but in the short
time of century and half. 81
Now under the vigorous stimulation
given to the American productive sys-
tenn by the inflow of consumers from
1890 to 1914 the United States developed
an economic system predicated largely
upon the dependable certainty Of q
steady rise in the number of consumers
Let this prospect of q normal expansion
cease or be jeopardized, and everything
would stop with a jar.
Suppose the owners Of real estate
bands, the investors in mortgages and
the like in, let us say, New York, should
conclude suddenly that the total popu-
lation of that region were destined not
to increase in the next 20 years, would
they not be very much agitated over
the discount they would have to face in
placing sales values on their invest
nnents within that period, as a conse-
quence of the leSsening in competition
TO- the space? Witness the terrific eff
feet upon the economic life of the
United States produced in the early
months of the World War, when every
type of property and production was
hit. Everything went down with a
thud.
Then from the beginning of 1915 I'M
til late 1920 the business Of the United
States lived IN anticipation of an al