NATURAL RESOURCES AND PEACE
For the United States to attempt to secure an economic
internationalism, which shall form the basis of an enduring peace, is
to enter upon a task which bristles with difficulties. These
difficulties fall into two classes, those which tend to deprive America
of her freedom of action and disqualify her for leadership, and those
which are found in deep antagonisms among the nations to be reconciled.
America cannot succeed in her efforts to bring about an economic
internationalism if she herself is economically or psychologically
unstable or if her own foreign policy is grasping, aggressive and
imperialistic. Nor can she succeed unless her efforts are wisely
directed towards the solution of the real problems which now divide the
world.
In all such discussions we are likely to take America's pacific
intentions in the future for granted. Such an assumption, however, is
unwarranted. To-day the peace-maker is the organiser of the world and
no nation can lead in the peace movement, nor even be assured of its
own peace, unless it has reached a certain stage of economic stability
and is organised on a reasonably satisfactory economic basis. Our
danger of war lies partly within. If we launch out upon an
imperialistic policy, placing our vital national interests within the
area of keen international rivalry, we shall be in peril of a war,
evoked by ourselves.
The time to prevent such a conflict is not immediately {170} before its
threatened outbreak but during the period in which the forces making
for war are slowly maturing. These forces, in our case at least, take
their rise in home conditions. Our chance of peace with England,
Germany, Japan or Russia twenty or thirty years from now depends upon
what we do with our own territory and our own resources to-day.
This may at first glance seem a paradox. Why should we fight Germany
or Japan because our agriculture is inefficient or our fiscal policy
inadequate or because our wealthy are too wealthy and our poor too
poor? Yet the connection is close. Bellicosity is not spontaneous, a
thing evolved out of nothing. Peoples do not fight when they have what
they want, but only when they are frustrated and cramped and need air
and elbow room. War is like emigration. The individual migrant leaves
home for personal reasons, but the great movement of emigration is
nothing but an escape from worse to better economic conditions. If the
natural resources of a nation are too small or are badly utilised the
resulting insecurity and poverty may lead to international conflicts.
Or if the national economy though otherwise efficient and
self-contained is so ordered that huge masses of the population are
impoverished and destitute, there will always be a centrifugal force
inciting to foreign adventures and wars. Where there is no place at
home for "younger sons" they will seek a place outside.
Nowhere can one study this tremendous internal outward-driving pressure
better than in Japan. That nation, though extremely poor, spends huge
sums upon armies, navies and fortifications, and engages in a dangerous
and perhaps eventually fatal conflict with other powers. But it is not
pride of race or dynastic ambition which compels Japan to enter upon
these imperialistic courses, but a {171} sheer lack of economic
reserves. Her area, not including Korea, Formosa, Sakhalin, etc., is
149,000 square miles, or less than that of California, while her
population (1914) is 56,000,000. Moreover, Japan is so extraordinarily
mountainous that the greater part of her area is unfitted for
agriculture. Despite a very low standard of living, therefore, and a
highly intensive culture, the land cannot feed the population, and
foodstuffs must be imported. The population is growing with great
rapidity, the excess of births over deaths amounting to over six
hundred thousand a year.
Nor has Japan a sufficient outlet through emigration. The immigration
of Japanese into Australia, British Columbia, the United States and
South Africa is practically prohibited. Most parts of Eastern Asia are
too crowded with men living still lower in the scale to permit any
large infiltration of Japanese. To Japan, therefore, there are but two
alternatives to an ultimate famine: the settlement of Korea and
Manchuria, and industrialism. For industrialism, however, Japan is
rather ill-fitted by tradition and lack of raw materials. Her best
chance is to sell to China and to develop Manchuria and Korea, in both
of which directions she runs counter to European ambitions. As a
result, Japan becomes imperialistic and militaristic.
The American temptation to imperialism is far weaker than is that of
Japan. There is for us no overwhelming necessity to enter upon a
scramble for new territories or to fight wars to secure such
territories. Our aggressiveness is latent, though with a capacity for
growth. There are two ways to lessen this potential aggressiveness.
The first is to weaken economic interests favouring imperialism and war
and strengthen opposed interests; the second is to build up in the
people a tough intellectual and emotional resistance to martial
incitement. The remedy resolves itself into two {172} factors,
economic completeness and internal stability and equality.
Economic completeness depends in the first place upon a certain
relation between natural resources and population. If the fields and
mines of a country are too unproductive or its population excessive,
there will be an inevitable leaning upon the resources of foreign
countries and an intense competition for new territory, trade or
investment facilities. A nation, however, may possess most of the
elements of economic completeness and yet suffer through a bad
geographical position. Its commerce, even its coast-wise commerce, may
be at the mercy of a foreign country, or it may not control the mouths
of its own rivers, or may be shut off completely from the sea.
Switzerland, Hungary, Bohemia cannot secure their economic independence
of Spain or France, but must depend upon the good will of other
nations. Because of such geographical conditions an otherwise pacific
nation may fail completely to build up a resistance to war.
An event in our own history will illustrate this point. From 1783 to
1803, our settlers in the Ohio Valley were entirely dependent for the
sale of their products upon an outlet through the Mississippi River.
Unless Spain and later France would permit the rude arks, laden with
tobacco, flour and bacon, to unload at New Orleans, the West would be
shut off from markets. Railroads had not yet been invented and there
were no good roads over the mountains. Animosity towards the owner of
New Orleans was therefore inevitable,[1] since unless we could {173}
control the mouth of the Mississippi, we could not secure the
allegiance of our own settlers west of the Alleghenies. The interests
of our citizens lay beyond our borders; the key to our door was in the
hands of a foreign power. But for the lucky accident that peacefully
gave us Louisiana, we should sooner or later have been forced into war.
The cession of this territory tended to establish for us an economic
completeness.
An economic completeness for the United States does not of course mean
that we should become a hermit nation, absolutely shut up within our
tariff walls. It would be manifestly undesirable to prohibit foreign
commerce or the foreign investment of American capital and no such
sacrifice, even if possible, would be necessary to prevent a too
violent friction with Europe. There is a more direct way in which to
increase America's economic reliance upon herself and diminish her
dependence upon the accidents and hostilities of the world competition.
It can be done by a better utilisation of our own resources. As yet we
have merely skimmed the cream of one of the richest parts of the earth,
and have exploited, rather than developed, our great continental
territory. We have been superficial not thorough, hasty not
scientific, in our utilisation of our resources. We have still a
margin in which further to develop agriculture and other great
extractive industries in order to lay at home the basis for a
population which is bound to increase during the coming decades.
How great our friction with Europe is to be will depend on whether our
economic development in the main is to {174} consist of activities
which impinge upon those of the great industrial countries or of
activities which do not so impinge, whether for example, five per cent.
or thirty per cent. of our people are to be engaged in industries which
actively compete in foreign markets with the industries of Europe.
Certain of our economic activities are for us pacific in tendency,
inasmuch as they do not affect industrial Europe or actually benefit
her. Of such a nature is agriculture. Every added bushel of wheat or
bale of cotton raised in the United States improves the chances of
European industry, lessens our competition with Europe and increases
our market for European wares. The same is largely true of our
production of copper, gold, silver, petroleum and other natural
products. Upon these extractive enterprises, including coal and iron
ore, is based a vast manufacturing industry which supplies our home
population, and an immense transportation and commercial system which
has its roots in our home resources. Our railroads do not appreciably
compete with those of England and Germany; on the contrary the
industrial progress of those countries is hastened by the development
of our transportation system, which cheapens their food and raw
materials. On the other hand a development of the American carrying
trade, a growth of ship-building, shipping and export trade, however
necessary or desirable, trenches immediately upon British and German
shipbuilding, carrying and export trade, and leads directly and
inevitably to economic conflict.[2]
{175}
The dependence of our economic mutuality with Europe upon our
agriculture may be illustrated by an hypothesis. Assume that our
agricultural products were permanently cut in half while our population
remained constant. We should have no food to export and would be
obliged to import food. Millions of men would be forced out of
agriculture into manufacturing industries, and as the home demand for
these industries would be lessened a foreign market would be essential.
Our railroad traffic would diminish, and railroad workers, thrown out
of employment, would enter the export trade. We should be forced to
secure foreign markets, and if political pressure were necessary, it
would be forthcoming. Similarly, our chances for investment in
agriculture and in railroad and industrial companies being lessened,
capital would be forced to find an outlet in other countries,
especially in semi-developed lands to which European capital flows.
The rate of interest would fall, big risks would be taken, and if
American investments were endangered by unrest or disorder in the
backward country, our government would intervene. We should have no
choice and could afford no scruples. Given such a fall in our
agricultural product, the country would become imperialistic and
bellicose, and there would be not the remotest possibility of our
taking the lead in a policy to promote international peace.
The hypothesis is far-fetched, but exactly the same result would follow
if instead of our agricultural product dwindling, it remained constant
while our population grew. If our population increased 100 per cent.
and our agricultural product remained stationary or increased only
twenty or forty per cent., it would be impossible to maintain our
present relation to the world. We must uphold a certain, not quite
constant relation between our agricultural (and other extractive)
industries and our {176} population if we are to keep out of the
thickest of the European complications.
A secure basis for a policy of non-aggression lies therefore in the
development of home agriculture.[3] It is not, however, to be expected
that the proportion of farm workers will remain constant. In the
United States this proportion has steadily fallen. Of every thousand
males in all occupations 483 were engaged in agricultural pursuits in
1880 as compared with only 358 in 1910.[4] But despite this relative
decline agriculture did not become less productive. More horses and
more agricultural machinery were used, and fewer persons were able to
perform the same amount of work.
What is more significant than the number of persons employed is the
amount of land available for agriculture. Until 1900 we were in the
extensive period of American farming, during which an increase in the
population was met by an increased farm acreage. From 1850 to 1900 our
population increased from 23 to 76 millions, but our farm area
increased almost as fast and the improved farm area even faster.[5]
During the decade ending 1910, however, a strong pressure of population
upon American agriculture became obvious. In these ten years the
country's population increased 21 per cent. while the total farm area
increased only 4.8 per cent.[6] While 16,000,000 {177} people were
added to the population the increase in farm area was equal only to
what would accommodate an additional three and a half million people.
It is no longer easy to stretch the farm area and to a large extent our
farms must grow by the increase of the improved at the expense of the
unimproved acres.[7]
Actually the per capita agricultural production in 1909 (the year
covered by the census of 1910) was less than that of a decade before.
Though the crops in the latter year were far higher in value, the
increase in the quantity of product was only 10 per cent., as compared
with an increase in population of 21 per cent.[8] Had the American
people consumed all the American product in both years, they would have
been obliged to cut down their ration by about one-tenth;[9] instead
there was a vast diminution of exports. The growing population began
to consume the agricultural products formerly exported. The question
is therefore pertinent whether it will be possible for us indefinitely
to feed from our own fields our increasing millions or whether we shall
be forced to depend increasingly for food on outside sources and to
secure this food by a development of our export trade in manufactured
products. To many this question will seem to answer itself. It is
commonly assumed that there are almost no limits to {178} our possible
agricultural production and therefore to our desirable increase of
population. France is almost self-sufficing with a population of 189.5
to the square mile; when the United States (continental area) has an
equally dense population we may maintain a population of five or six
hundred millions. We need merely take up new lands and cultivate more
intensively.
The opportunities for the further development of American agriculture,
however, while undoubtedly great, are not immeasurable. At present we
have some 879,000,000 acres in farms, of which 478,000,000 (or 25.1 per
cent. of our total land area) are improved.[10] But of the rest of our
area much is not useful. Some 465,000,000 acres in the western part of
the country have an annual precipitation of fifteen inches or less, and
of these acres, not over 30,000,000 could be profitably irrigated at
present prices of farm products, labour, land and capital. This
addition of 30,000,000 acres would increase our present improved area
by less than seven per cent. Besides the permanently arid acres,
moreover, there is other unusable land in national forests, roads,
cities and in swamps and over-flow lands difficult to reclaim. With
these deductions made, we have only 1,252,000,000 acres as the maximum
farm area of the future. This is 31.1 per cent. greater than the
present farm area.[11]
It is true that a larger part of the farm area can be cultivated. From
1900 to 1910 the area of improved lands increased 15.4 per cent. If
this rate of increase could continue there would be about one billion
acres improved by 1960, and this seems to be the absolutely {179}
outside upper limit. But this does not mean that a billion acres could
be improved and cultivated at the same cost per acre as at present.
The improved lands would require a constantly increasing amount of
capital and labour to secure returns equal to those which the farmer
now obtains.
Similarly there are limits to the extent to which we can afford to
divide up our land into smaller farms in order to secure a larger
production per acre. Intensive cultivation is an alluring phrase but
in the production of many staple crops intensive cultivation is dear
cultivation. The movement in progressive agricultural communities is
towards a moderately large farm. It is the smaller farms (of from 20
to 99 acres) that the boys and girls leave most rapidly. "The farm
management studies," writes Mr. Eugene Merritt of the U. S. Department
of Agriculture[12] "indicate that on these small-sized farms, man
labour, horse labour, and agricultural machinery cannot be used
efficiently. In other words, economic competition is eliminating the
unprofitable sized farms."[13]
{180}
The pressure of agricultural population upon a given farm area results
either in the growth of an inefficient small scale production or of a
large rural proletariat. Both are undesirable and neither will permit
farming on as cheap a scale as at present. The actual trend to-day in
districts where cereals are raised is towards larger farms (of 150 to
300 acres), and this tendency is likely to be increased by the
introduction of cheap tractor engines, which now seems to impend.
There is doubtless a considerable opportunity in the United States for
an improvement in the average product per acre even though the increase
in the area of cultivation constantly brings in land of decreasing
fertility. If in the course of forty or fifty years we can increase
the area under cultivation by fifty per cent. and the product per acre
by 20 per cent. we shall have an increase in product of 80 per cent.,
which would provide for an increase in the population of 80,000,000
without any greater leaning upon foreign resources than to-day.[14]
We are likely, however, to lean upon certain foreign resources, and
more especially upon Canada and the Caribbean countries. Whatever its
political allegiance Canada is and will probably remain economically a
part of the United States. The Iowa farmers, who sold out their home
farms to buy cheaper land in Canada, unconsciously illustrated the
closeness of this economic bond. We may draw upon Canadian wheat,
fish, lumber and iron ore almost exactly as though the territory were
our own. It is Canada's interest to sell to us and buy from us, and
even preferential duties cannot entirely overcome our immense
geographical advantage over Europe. Similarly {181} we shall draw upon
the Caribbean countries, whether or not we have a political union, for
vast quantities of tropical food stuffs.
Whatever our importation of food an increase in agricultural efficiency
is also probable. We have already improved and cheapened our farm
machinery and have disseminated agricultural education and information.
But much progress remains to be made. We can use better seeds, raise
better crops and cattle, and work more co-operatively instead of
individualistically. Our transportation system can be better
co-ordinated with our agriculture, so that food, now wasted because it
will not pay the freight, can be brought to market.[15] A better
knowledge of the science of farming would greatly increase our
agricultural production. If our country roads were improved, if we
varied our crops more intelligently, if we refrained from impoverishing
our soils, if we drained some tracts and irrigated others, we should
speedily discover a vast increase in our agricultural productiveness, a
larger return to the farmers, a greater home demand for manufactured
products, and a better opportunity for capital at home. {182} If by
putting more capital and intelligence upon our farms, we were to add
several billions to the value of their output, we should broaden the
base of our whole economic life, enlarge the volume of our
non-competitive exports, and in the end approximate conditions that
would make for a peaceful foreign policy and for the promotion of an
economic internationalism.
But though we widen our agricultural base, our population unless its
rate of progress is checked, will eventually, and perhaps soon,
overtake any extension.[16] Though we increase agricultural knowledge
and substitute mechanical for animal power and gasoline for hay, the
law of diminishing returns will remain. Ten men cannot secure as large
a per capita product from a given area as five, or twenty as large as
ten. But if our population were to maintain its present geometrical
increase we should have 200,000,000 inhabitants in 1953 and, to assume
the almost impossible, 400,000,000 in 1990. Long before the latter
figure could be reached there would be positive and preventive checks
to further growth, but if these checks were late in being applied,
there would come increased inequality, misery and economic uncertainty,
and an enhanced liability to war.
For us as for other nations a too rapid increase in population spells
this constant danger of war. Our farms cannot absorb more than a
certain proportion of our population without causing lowered wages and
increasing poverty, and we cannot expand our export trade without
entering into the range of international conflict. While therefore an
improved agriculture with high food prices will permit of an increase
in our population, it is {183} advantageous that that increase does not
proceed too rapidly. If we grow to two hundred millions in
seventy-five or one hundred years instead of in thirty-seven, we shall
still be strong enough to protect our present territories and shall
have less occasion to fight for new.
Fortunately our rate of population increase, despite immigration, is
steadily decreasing. In the decade ending 1860 our population
increased 35.6 per cent., in the period 1860 to 1879 at an average
decennial rate of 26.3 per cent., and in the three following decades
25.5 per cent., 20.7 per cent. and 21.1 per cent respectively. The
fall in our natural increase was even greater. While the death rate
has declined[17] the birth rate has fallen off even more rapidly. Our
birth statistics are inadequate, but we can gain some idea of this
decline by comparing the number of children under 5 years of age living
at each census year with the number of women between the ages of 16 to
44 inclusive. In 1800 there were 976 children per 1,000 women in these
ages; in 1830, 877; in 1860, 714; in 1890, 554; in 1910, 508.[18]
For a number of decades a continuation in this falling off in the birth
rate is probable. It is rendered necessary by the fall in the death
rate and possible by the fact that birth has ceased to be a mere
physiological accident {184} and is coming under human control. "The
most important factor in the change," says Dr. John Shaw Billings, "is
the deliberate and voluntary avoidance or prevention of child-bearing
on the part of a steadily increasing number of married people who
prefer to have but few children."[19] The spreading of the knowledge
of birth control and the increasing financial burden of children in an
urbanised society composed of economically ambitious people will
probably prevent our population from ever again increasing as rapidly
as it did half a century ago.[20]
In the meanwhile our immigration (until the outbreak of the present
war) continued to increase. In the ten years ending June 30, 1914,
over ten million immigrant aliens arrived in the United States, of whom
approximately seven millions remained. Nor has the high point in
immigration been surely attained. The European population increases so
rapidly that the excess of births over deaths is between three and four
times the entire emigration. Immigration tends to flow from countries
where the pressure of population is greater to countries like the
United States, where the pressure is less. Unless there is restriction
we may witness within the next decades a new vast increase in
immigration, which will result in a rapid growth of our population and
a resulting pressure upon our agricultural (and other natural)
resources, that will vastly increase the intensity and bitterness of
our {185} competition for the world's markets and the world's
investment opportunities.
By thus increasing our agricultural product, and developing our home
market and our less directly competitive industries and by slackening
an increase in our population, which would otherwise force us into
foreign adventures, we tend to approach a balanced economic system and
a parallel growth of extractive and manufacturing industries. Such a
dependence in the main on home resources for the nation's primal needs
is in the circumstances the best preventive of an imperialistic policy
that might lead to war. But there is an even closer-lying incentive to
imperialism and war. A nation may have a sufficiently wide base and an
efficient industrial development but because of internal economic
mal-adjustments may be driven into imperialistic courses. A policy not
dictated by national needs may be forced upon the nation by the
necessities and ambitions of its dominating class.
[1] "There was," he (President Jefferson) said, "one spot on the face
of the earth so important to the United States that whoever held it
was, for that very reason, naturally and forever our enemy; and that
spot was New Orleans. He could not, therefore, see it transferred to
France but with deep regret. The day she took possession of the city
the ancient friendship between her and the United States ended;
alliance with Great Britain became necessary, and the sentence that was
to keep France below low-water mark became fixed."--John Bach McMaster,
"History of the People of the United States," Vol. II, p. 620.
[2] Agriculture is not essentially pacific; in various stages of
historical development agricultural nations war upon each other in
order to secure more land or to levy tribute of grain. The pacific
tendency of our present agricultural development arises out of the
needs of industrial Europe. Our agricultural progress, however, is
peaceful only in so far as it increases the product of our fields; it
would not be peaceful, and might be the exact reverse, if we sought to
increase our acreage by, let us say, a conquest of Canada.
[3] By this is not meant that the nation should be preponderatingly
agricultural, but only that where agriculture is sufficiently developed
to maintain a large industrial population working for the home market
the competition for foreign markets and foreign investment fields
becomes less intense.
[4] "Agricultural pursuits" includes agriculture, forestry and animal
husbandry. These figures from the United States Census, 1910, Vol. IV,
p. 41, are only approximately exact, owing to almost insuperable
difficulties in classifying occupations. See Vol. IV, p. 19.
[5] Thirteenth Census of the United States, Vol. V, Agriculture, p. 51.
[6] The improved farm acreage increased 15.4 per cent., and the acreage
devoted to the principal crops 9.9 per cent.
[7] The new lands, moreover, are not so good as the old. From 1850 to
1885 the lands brought into cultivation (Illinois, Iowa, etc.) were
better than the earlier area, but since 1885 the farmers have driven
forward into more arid lands further removed from transportation.
"Across the Great Plains, the farmer has pushed closer and closer to
the base of the Rockies and, as he has done so, the difficulty of
producing a bushel of corn or wheat has continually increased."--King.
(Willford Isbell.) "The Wealth and Income of the People of the United
States," New York (Macmillan), 1915: pp. 23, 24.
[8] For the comparability of the years 1909 and 1899, see Census Volume
on Agriculture, p. 537.
[9] Actually 9.9 per cent.
[10] Total land area equals 1,903,289,600 acres.
[11] Thompson, Warren S. "Population: A Study in Malthusianism."
Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, Columbia University Vol.
LXIII, No. 3. New York, 1915.
[12] "The Agricultural Element in the Population:" _American
Statistical Association Quarterly_, March, 1916, p. 52.
[13] The dwarf farms found in many parts of Europe are even less
economical. The Bavarian, French, or Belgian peasant secures more per
acre than the American farmer but much less per hour or year of work.
"Small scale farming, as we have defined it," says Prof. Thomas Nixon
Carver, "invariably means small incomes for the farmers, though the
land is usually well cultivated and yields large crops per acre." "The
French or the Belgian peasant (because of the smallness of his farm)
frequently finds it more profitable to dispense altogether with horses,
or even oxen, as draft animals, using rather a pair of milch cows, or
only a single cow, for such work as he cannot do with his own muscles."
"He would likewise find a reaping or a mowing machine a poor
investment. The general result of such small scale staple farming is
necessarily the use of laborious and inefficient methods."--"Principles
of Rural Economics," pp. 253-54. New York, 1911.
[14] If, however, the average product per acre remains constant or
decreases, the pressure of the population will make itself felt far
sooner.
[15] The loss in perishable farm products, to cite only one instance,
is tremendous. A very large proportion of the perishable fruits and
vegetables, and a smaller proportion of the dairy and poultry products,
decay on the farmer's hands. According to a study made by Mr. Arthur
B. Adams, "at least 25 per cent. of the perishables which arrive at the
wholesale markets is hauled to the dump-pile because it is unfit for
human consumption.... In warm weather Florida oranges lose 30 per
cent. in transportation alone, and if we add the decay after the fruit
reaches the consuming centre the total loss would be astounding. There
is a loss of 17 per cent. in eggs from producer to consumer, due to
breakage, decay, etc., but butter has an equally great loss.... It is
not an over-estimate, therefore, to say that between 30 and 40 per
cent. of the perishables which are raised on the farms are never
consumed at all, but are a complete social loss."--"Marketing
Perishable Farm Products." Studies in History, Economics and Public
Law. Columbia University. Vol. LXXII, No. 3, p. 25. New York, 1916.
[16] It is of course assumed that no means will soon be found by which
cheap food can be produced synthetically; if that happens, all our
conclusions go by the board.
[17] In the decade 1850-59 the death rate in New York City was 35.6 per
cent., in the period 1900-13 only 15.3 per cent.; in Massachusetts, in
the same periods, the death rate was 18.0 and 15.5 per cent.
respectively. The diminution was due, partly to a change in the
age-constitution of the population and partly to a progressive control
of diseases.--Walter F. Willcox, "The Nature and Significance of the
Changes in the Birth and Death Rates in Recent Years." _American
Statistical Association Quarterly_, March, 1916, p. 2.
[18] Prof. Willcox, who presents the table from which these figures are
drawn, illustrates the decline by showing that its continuation would
wipe out all births in 160 years, so that by 2070 we should live in a
baby-less world.--_Op cit._, pp. 11, 12.
[19] Quoted by Prof. Willcox, _op. cit._, pp. 13, 14.
[20] That there lies a danger in exactly the opposite direction cannot
be denied. There are limits to the fall in the death rate, but
practically no limits to the possible decline in child-bearing. The
limitation of births is almost entirely determined by individual (or
family) considerations, and may proceed to a point where population
will decline rapidly and perhaps deteriorate in quality. A linking up
of the individual interest in small families to the social interest in
having the population maintained or slowly increased, as well as
improved in quality, is essential.
{186}