“Europe is the great breeding ground for Africa, as it was formerly for North America. And the human inundation that formerly poured itself into the United States is diverted chiefly to Africa, but in four fold volume.”
“Surely,” said I, “the capacity of the earth for supporting the human family must be almost exhausted. It is sickening to contemplate the suffering that will be entailed in the struggle for existence that it seems to me must inevitably come soon. Evidently from what you say, Europe must be about as full as it will hold. I suppose the great migration you speak of represents the surplus crop of folks that the continent must get rid of in order to let those that remain live in tolerable comfort. When Africa and South America get to be as full as Europe and the United States, so that they can no longer receive this tide of emigration, then what is to be done? For anything I can see famine will have to sweep away some of the race in order that the rest may exist, and after all is that any better than war?”
“At any rate,” said he, “we have not reached that yet. We have now reached the beginning of the twenty-first century. The population of the earth has reached the very considerable number of 4,000,000,000 or almost three times what is was in your day. Yet we concede a three fold increase of that figure before starvation or some other repressive agency will be necessary to stop the increase of the population and that will only be reached by the year 2070.”
He here pulled out a pencil of curious make and with his middle left hand dashed off some strange looking characters on a blank space on the profile. He was evidently figuring, for in a moment he went on to say that he found that when the 40,000,000 square miles of habitable land on the earth were divided equally between 12,000,000,000, of people they would have about two acres each.
I ventured to say, I did not think two acres enough to furnish an individual with food, taking his chances of bad seasons from droughts, floods etc. Besides men could hardly live without timber and they could have none if all the land were cultivated. Moreover, they must have animals to furnish leather, wool etc., and land would be required for their sustenance.