CONCLUSIONS AS TO POPULATION INCREASE 121
America is carrying only 39, being told also by certain
special and able students that it can never carry more
than 66 to the square mile, one realises how superficial
are some of the studies of the world’s possibilities.
The data do not yet exist by means of which a really
exhaustive estimate can be made of the world’s population-limits,
 as things are at present, nor as they are
likely to be. But we do know enough to affirm with
confidence, that the fear that a country with immense
resources can carry only 66 to the square mile is
created by too narrow a view of the problem in hand.
No sufficient account has been taken of the standardof-living
 assumed to be essential, nor of the fact that
the theory leading to this estimate is based upon
merely temporary, undeveloped and unessential conditions.
 It may of course be true that the easy state
of things in any new country must pass as the world’s
peoples multiply, and that the standards existing must
perforce change. If they do change in the direction
of less luxury, then the estimate of 66 people to the
square mile goes by the board.
Even should our estimates of the limits of population
 be too modest, it still remains true that mankind
is profligate in the use of such of Nature’s materials
as are immediately at his disposal, and he is applying
 them, and the food-stuffs likely to be available,
recklessly. For this reason Man will certainly be
pulled up in the near future, and the Shadow of
his future remains in being. What we said in our
report on the Australian Census of 1911 remains true.
Our words were *—

“The limits of human expansion are much nearer
than popular opinion imagines; the difficulty of future
food supplies will soon be of the gravest character;
the exhaustion of sources of energy necessary for any
notable increase of population or advance in the