THE WORLD FACING STARVATION?
"Starvation is staring the world in the
face-!" We have heard that doleful cry often
during the last decade; especially since a
certain railroad builder and, incidentally,
land sales promoter1 began insisting that
human hunger was growing faster than
food production. . Taking up" his cry, 'the
statisticians and fictionists hive been har
rying and frightening us with what they
declared is absolute proof of the truth of :
the railroad builder's cry. Yet there are ,;;
those of us who refuse to grow 'pale of f
cheek or tremulous of speech when we lis- ''
ten to the direful predictions of ultimate
world starvation. Somehow or- other the -most
of us manage to get our three square
meals a day, usually by working, although
some there be who get theirs in divers and
sundry ways not recognized in law as being
good form.
We are told that our area of corn pro
duction is already stretched to the limit;
and we are shown by figures that our wheat
production is decreasing owing to the over
working of our wheat lands. By deft ma
nipulation of the multiplier under the multi
plicand we are shown that at the decreasing
rate of production and the increasing rate
of population we are all too soon to begin
skipping meals with constantly increasing
regularity. A great many people have been
worried to death by troubles that never hap
pened ; and a lot of people are working up
cases of starvation while surrounded by"
foodstuffs of every description, and with '.
multiplying facilities or increasing the pro
duction thereof. It is true. that there are
thousands upon thousands- aye, millions
upon millions of people 'who are ih dire
want. Many of them, however, want that
which they do not need but think they need ;
other millions are really in .need because
they lack the "getrup-and-get" spirit in prop
er degree ; still other -thousands are starv- -.
ing because of some radical failure in our
complex machinery of distribution.
Less than twenty years ago Nebraska,
farmers were burning corn for . fuel because
it was so cheap it was unprofitable to haul
it to market. At the same time miners in
Pennsylvania and West Virginia, with mil- '
lions of tons of coal waiting for their picks
and shovels, were starving because they
could not mine that coal and send it to
those Nebraska farmers in exchange for the
foodstuff those farmers were burning. Even- .
as long ago as that an occasional pessimist
would arise and assert that the world was
approaching the starvation stage. But the
blunt fact is that the world is further away .
than ever from that point. One need but -look
past academic figures to -where the
rerl facts are to obtain proof of the truth
of that assertion.
A great many people overlook the trite
old truth that while "figures will not He,-
liars will figure," and- these, gazing first
upon the tables showing decreasing .wheat
yields per acre, and then at the tables show
ing rapidly increasing' population, immedi
ately feel hunger pinching them.
Of course it is true that we usually con
sume every year what was produced in
that year, and that if the 1911 crops were
to utterly fail we would all become awfully
hungry. before the 1912 crops were harvest
ed. It is also true that if one-half the peo
ple were to die during 1911 the under
takers could not . supply enough coffins to
decently inter the dead. This old world
has been' wagging along for several , thou
sands of years, and to date we have al
ways nianaged to raise enough foodstuffs
every year to feed the vast majority until
another crop came along. True that many
people have died of famine, but was it. be
cause there was not enough food in the
world, or was -it because, we have signally
.failed, as yet, to solve the problem of dis
tributing. our food supplies? The fault" has
been our own' if our. brothers 'and sisters
anywhere starved to death, not the fault of
the., soil, the air,- the water or the Creator.
While a lot of pessimistic statisticians
are growing blue about the gills because
they have figured out that the day of ulti
mate starvation, is at . hand, . proving it to
their, own satisfaction by tables showing de- '
creasing production per acre, a lot of op
timistic scientific sharps, usually working
for scant wage but with unbounded en
thusiasm, are finding ways to correct that.
When Uncle Sam had land to give away to
all comers, and gave it, the land was held
so cheaply that people abused it, over
looking the. fact that soil; like a cistern,,
must at some time jor other have some
thing put into it else the time would come
when it would have nothing to give out.
After raising successive crops of corn or,
wheat upon land, until the land balked and
refused to yield profitably, the farmer moved
on, or sold out to some .otherfarmer whose ...
land was in even poorer condition.
. Right , here the "book farmer," the .sci
entific fellow in the college laboratory, came
- to the front with his theory about crop rota-
tion? legumes, t bugs and other things, all
evolved from his inner consciousness, so to
speak, and after the "practical farmers", had
laughed at him for a spell his theories were
. taken up little by little. As a result, land
that was pronounced "worked out" and
worthless a generation ago, is now produc
. ing. bigger, crops than it did in its palmiest
dayvs of yore.
We have so long labored under the delu
sion that it took not less than 160 acres of '
fertile land to afford a living that we find
it difficult to believe that a 40, or even a
20-acre farmv well tilled and intensively cul
tivated is more profitable than the quarter
section merely "farmed." Yet it is the
truth, as. may be seen by a visit to Pawnee
county, Nebraska, where lives the most suc
cessful farmer in the United, States. He' is
actually getting rich from the production of
a 20-acre; farm. Land,, too, that he. bought
v cheaply because the man he bought it from
thought it practically worthless, being hilly
and clayey. That successful farmer not only
uses plow and harrow and disc and hoe, but
he uses brains and, after all, the best farm,
tool and the best fertilizer is brains.
When Nebraska was admitted to state
hood in 1867 her population consisted of
. about 100,000 people, nine-tenths, of whom
lived fifty or sixty miles of the Missouri
river. For fifteen years people believed that
ful pictures of impending starvation, sixteen
million acres of fertile Nebraska soil are
ready for alfalfa seed soil never yet touched'
by the plow.
Starvation staring the world in the face?
Just about as true as the old-time Millerite
predictions of the second coming. The prob
lem of production is really solved. If in
ability to nroduce is all that is fri.p-hten-
- .-?..
ing the pessimists, let them 'chirp '"up.,v The'
problem confronting us now is how to "get
what we can produce to those who need
it, and get it to them in time. ,
The starvation-scared statisticians dearby
love to deal in. doleful figures ; perhaps some
figures, the other way" 'round may tend to
ease their minds. Nebraska has 72,000 square
miles pf land within, her borders, four-fifths
of which, approximately 58,000 square miles,
is unusually responsive to intelligent culti
vation. That is 37,120,000 acres, or there
abouts. : JNlowj it that Pawnee county farmer,
who has a wife and three children, can make
a good living and lay Up a thousand dollars
or so a year on 20 acres what's the an
swer? Nebraska has a population of about
i nwnAnn 1 1 r r t i; x TM -
i,iv,uuu, na.ii ui wiiuin live in tuvviis. J. lie
same figures that the hunger-scared statisti
cians use to frighten the unthinking, prove
that Nebraska can take care of about 5,500,-
000 more people on . her fertile lands, and
about as many more in her cities and towns.
And taking care of 11,000,000 people threat-
PtiPiH ixrirh croi-Trntirm 10 to L-ino- iir mi. to o .
considerable bit of slack at least for one
state that was deemed little if any better
than a desert less than a generation ago.
TM - j - C . 1 . j '
I nprp arp rnr rnanv ni rnpep arric ini7fvs- .
tigators, and too few investigators who get
out. and pace off the ground. Why, if every
corn raiser in the United States went right
on trying to raise corn like their grand-
.' - J !j .1 J.J. t 1.
iatners raised ir, we woman t nave enougn
corn in anv one vear to make a eriddlecake
"j ... t r i
per capira. r oriunateiy ior au 01 us in our
agricultural school laboratories .are men I
who would have difficulty in explaining to
a Wall street broker the difference between
a fancmlnw and a rr patn senaratnr hut whn
o or 1 j " "
arc discovering new things about corn and
corn growing every day,, and then telling
bright-faced students all about them. Then
those students hike joyfully back to the
farms and make 'steen ears of corn where
only a nubbin grew before. Same way with
wlipat an A nats arA rr1-n tnpc t-rpr-ri-Vi inor
produced from the soil. Danger of the
world starving? Yes, when there is no
longer air to breathe or water to slake thirst.
Scarcity of hogs and cattle and other meat
r.rnr.iirts ? CVrtainlv hnt th rpcnii rnafnl
west is full of swine and kine potentiali
ties. A score of years ago it took a half
section of. land to raise a long-horned steer
that was scarcelv worth the raising- after
oil Tr'o AiCCni- AUln..n.Ul.l.. .1
max. . -1 fc. VJ.XI1 V-X Vll t 11V VV J. 1.1.1,1 1J Ugil CLA
most. unbounded cattle range is a thing of
1 1 a j 1 ir . . 1 ta t
ine past, mere are more Deei came in in e
braska todav than in the. davs of the frpe
range. Not long-horns, either; the white-
lace, the short-horn, the foiled Angus, the
Aberdeens the best beef animals in the
world, any one of which is worth more than
three of the long-hbrns that once roamed
. the free and unfenced range. And on the
half-section that once had all it could do v
to' prepare one of those Texans for market,'
a carload of grade steers is now prepared,
yet men sit around with faces as long as-
TMimrvhfinrl1ac -f-llinfr 11c h'o-. -fVn A -it - .
vation is almost upon us! If there is hun
ger anywhere in this world and of course
there is it is not because we are unable tot
produce the foodstuffs to satify that hunger,
It is because there is. somewhere, a badJdnk
