TOO MANY FLIES

A scientist has made the prediction that our descendants of the ninth or tenth generation will be so crowded into the area of the United States that there will not be space for them all to live comfortably, nor resources to provide them with food. In a few centuries the world will have reached its "saturation point" but by that time of course, we may be in communication with Mars, and if Mars has any room for our excess population we may be able to emigrate to the "new world". But if scientists fall in reach our sister planet by radio or aeroplane or by shooting rockets up into the air, what will our descendants do with themselves?

In discussing the problem. Professor Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins University describes an experiment which he conducted with a pint milk-bottle, a supply of yeast and banana agar, and about a dozen flies (genus ). The food supply of yeast and banana agar was put it the bottom of the bottle and then the flies were enclosed, and the whole kept at a uniform temperature for about fifty days. During this time the flies multiplied so that the milk bottle--representing the United States--could not hold them all, nor the food supply give sufficient nourishment. The population, so to speak, had arrived at the saturation point, and further expansion was impossible.

When our country reaches the state of the milk bottle it will be confronted by a serious problem; but this same situation has already arisen in Asia Minor; and Lord Curzon, on behalf of England--and, supposedly, the rest of Europe,-- has advised that the millions Greeks, Armenians and the other Christian minorities in the country beyond the Aegean, be transported from the path of the Turk. He fears that, if they should remain, massacres on a more terrible scale might occur, and that it is better to leave Kemal and Ishmet and their followers room for expansion.

For the Turk this is a very pleasant prospect, but not so happy a one for the million and more exiles who are to be transported, nor for the lands where these peoples are to be settle. What if, at the end of two or three centuries the United States should decide the country was burdened with more of a certain race than it could support, and found it advisable to ship the offending citizens to some other continent? The plan might be successful if a massacre were the only possible alternative; the world may freeze first. Now, however, the problem of overcrowding is vital both at Lausanne and in America, and will be more easily handled before it assumes these "Asiatic" proportions, than after.

When our country reaches the state of the milk bottle it will be confronted by a serious problem; but this same situation has already arisen in Asia Minor; and Lord Curzon, on behalf of England--and, supposedly, the rest of Europe,-- has advised that the millions Greeks, Armenians and the other Christian minorities in the country beyond the Aegean, be transported from the path of the Turk. He fears that, if they should remain, massacres on a more terrible scale might occur, and that it is better to leave Kemal and Ishmet and their followers room for expansion.

For the Turk this is a very pleasant prospect, but not so happy a one for the million and more exiles who are to be transported, nor for the lands where these peoples are to be settle. What if, at the end of two or three centuries the United States should decide the country was burdened with more of a certain race than it could support, and found it advisable to ship the offending citizens to some other continent? The plan might be successful if a massacre were the only possible alternative; the world may freeze first. Now, however, the problem of overcrowding is vital both at Lausanne and in America, and will be more easily handled before it assumes these "Asiatic" proportions, than after.