Jean had not received any journals about lead, but she knew the look and
feel of silica. And she knew that the surface of her star was mostly
like that of her island—very hard stuff to make a garden of.
She had been wondering if Horatio’s descendants would have got enough to
eat. By August, 1917, she had come to the conclusion that they wouldn’t.
She had decided that an annual net increase of fifteen million human
mouths is sure to happen, and that each year the earth will have to
produce twenty billion more pounds of food to feed them.
It couldn’t be done. She was sure it couldn’t. There wasn’t enough
acreage.
In an old magazine she ran across a statement made in 1898, the year of
her birth, by somebody named Crookes, a great chemist, to the effect
that by 1931 folks would either have to stop eating wheat or increase
the crop by taking nitrogen out of the air. That set her to studying
wheat, rice, millet, maize, barley, oats, and rye. Though the farm paper
often spoke about the possibilities of plant breeding, she investigated
the new Marquis wheat and saw that even that marvel would not go far
toward supplying twenty billion pounds.
No, instead of being the last war, it was just the beginning of a
desperate struggle for food. She was glad in her heart that Horatio had
died childless.
All the world was beginning to feel the pinch of hunger—all except
America, which had forgotten how cheap food used to be. She had heard
her father tell of his first trip on a Long Island Sound steamer, back
in 1856. He declared upon honor that for half a dollar a gluttonous
passenger might eat of beef, lamb, pig, turkey, chicken, duck, goose,
wild turkey, prairie chicken, mallard, teal, canvas-back, wild goose,
brook trout, bluefish, butterfish, mackerel, oysters, turtle, terrapin,
breads, vegetables, jellies, fruits, creams, and ices. No money could
buy such a meal in 1917. And after the next war, America would be glad
to get what Austria was getting—less than enough to prevent rickets in
half the children.
Even near her the game was virtually gone, and she rarely saw deer
except in her father’s woods. If mankind really put its mind to the
task, it could kill off all the remaining wild food in a single year.
Just now it was too busy killing off its choicest youths.
From every side the cities were shutting in upon her. Every half hour
she saw a steamer pass her island on its way after iron ore to make guns
and shells. That was why the patrol boat was so busy. If the enemy could
block this channel, the enemy could win the war and then citify every
foot of earth. Of course Captain Jack Gillies would not let the Germans
block the channel, but he could not prevent Americans from crowding it
with steamers. After the war there would be a steady procession of them,
steaming daily and nightly toward the pole.
And some day these straits would be fought for just as the Dardanelles
had always been fought for. All this pious chatter about a lasting peace
was rubbish, as anybody who had studied geography ought to see.
How much of this pessimism was due to Jean’s own poverty is hard to say,
but she was in no sense penurious. The little pauper was so friendly
with the millions of miles in her star-sown nightly sky that she rarely
counted money in less than millions. Some day a steel man would come
along and try to buy her island to use for a coaling station. Well, he
couldn’t have it, not for a million dollars.