Surveying the World's Resources
RAUSHENBUSH, STEPHEN
WRITERS and WRITING Surveying the World's Resources World Population and Production. By W. S. and E. S. Woytinsky. Twentieth Century Fund. 1,268 pp. $9.00. Reviewed by Stephen...
...Reviewed by Stephen Raushenbush United Nations consultant on resources...
...Into that atmosphere the Woytinskys, after pondering for many years the physical growth and change in our world, throw this dynamic challenge: It would cost about $45 billion a year??somewhat over a third of what is currently being spent on arms??to free the world from extreme poverty...
...It covers the resources of the world, natural and human, used and unused, past, present and future...
...At the same time, they do not consider it within their scope to explain some of the mysteries they discover...
...Part I, "Man and His Environment," covers the physical earth and climate, people, migrations, cities, vital statistics, health and the population future...
...World Needs and Resources" are covered in Part II...
...At the same time, it manages to achieve a substantial measure of human interest...
...The Woytinskys touch only infrequently on the ideas and institutions that marked the process of world change...
...The authors' purpose in this vast undertaking was "to outline world economic forces and trends during the fateful era in which mechanized economy is becoming the universal civilization of mankind...
...Part III...
...This one is divided into five long parts...
...The new technology is given first place as the disturber and hope of the world: "People have discovered that skill and organization rather than accumulated wealth are the clues to economic progress, and this has been the most revolutionary discovery of our time...
...author, "Our Conservation Job" In the spring of 1954, probably more of the world's people got closer to complete destruction than ever before...
...The authors come up with an estimate of 3.25 billion people in the year 2000, and think that some of the current alarm about the pressure of population on resources may be exaggerated...
...From 1870 to 1920, the Woytinskys' figures show a growth of 89 and 62 per cent respectively...
...They recognize that the old pyramid of the world, with a few advantaged nations on top and many impoverished peoples at the base, is crumbling...
...This massive book, which was prepared with the financial aid of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Twentieth Century Fund, is one of two companion volumes, the second of which deals with world trade and government...
...The sections on land reform, in which we are conspicuous laggards, are particularly worthwhile...
...Our small bloc of people does about one-third of the world's manufacturing, even when handicrafts are added to the total...
...However, they do remind the reader that Karl Marx based his predictions on a supposedly "completed capitalism" which was in fact a world almost without iron or railroads, a collection of slums around a few cotton mills, offering hardly more than a hint of all that was to come...
...We are reminded to be humble by the observation that all the muscular effort of all the people in the world does not equal the energy produced by 50 million tons of coal...
...Man's long effort to create a more livable environment is recounted, from the destruction of the Greek forests before Plato's time to the TVA...
...Does the explanation for their faster progress with fewer resources lie in a slower population increase, in less despoliation of natural resources, or what...
...Here particularly, the remarkable size and performance of the U.S...
...And that sum would have to be spent in areas that produce only 10 per cent of the world's income...
...The authors try to measure the physical change without appraising it??an unusual feat of restraint...
...The difference between the developed and undeveloped areas of the world seems utterly unbridgeable??until the authors remind us of our own difficult beginnings with a little story of how early Boston (1643) offered a monopoly in grinding corn to anyone who would erect a water-driven mill...
...Under the final head, "Manufactures in the World Economy," we are shown the more advanced use of resources...
...industrial machine stands out in contrast with the rest of the world...
...And, between 1920 and 1950, the percentage rises are 97 and 77...
...Amid all the tables and charts showing what everybody eats everywhere is a little story of Gandhi trying to eat meat to become as strong as the conquering, beef-eating British, but vomiting at the taste and feeling the guilt of an unpardonable sin...
...Also, more people saw more clearly the possibility that Asia might swing away from the Western values of freedom to the Communist promises of material progress without freedom...
...This is a weighty book of 1,268 pages...
...The tree of knowledge has been shown to the have-not peoples, and there are no cherubim with flaming swords to keep them away from it...
...These 295 pages dealing with agriculture would make a respectable book in themselves...
...When it comes to comparing the incomes of various peoples around the earth, the authors quite properly back away from the figures currently used, which give the average Chinese an annual income of about $17...
...With all this rapid growth in Sweden, how does it happen that they have not yet quite reached our standard of living...
...Agriculture in the World Economy," gives a broad picture of man's efforts to deal with his food and fiber problems...
...For example, how did it happen that Sweden has had so much more rapid a growth in real per capita income than the United States...
...All this is brought right up to date with some speculation on the uses of atomic energy and the possibility of a new South Chicago near Trenton, built on Venezuelan iron ore...
...Thus, in the middle of a review of progress in the chemical industry, up pops Sir William Crookes's old exhortation to the scientists to discover synthetic nitrogen lest "the great Caucasian race will cease to be foremost in the world and will be squeezed out of existence by races to whom wheaten bread is not the staff of life...
...In Part IV, "Mining in the World Economy," we read about metals and fuels, where the resources are, their value, their increasing or diminishing usefulness, the techniques men have developed to obtain them, and the labor force engaged in the process...
...It is remarkably erudite, showing very wide reading and study...
...Surpluses, it seems, are almost as old as man...
...This raises some questions which are not answered...
...Deep change, with all its hopes and disillusionments, is altering the basic architecture of the world...
...Our Secretaries Brannan and Benson, with their hands full of unwanted farm products, are made at one with King Charles X of France, who remarked over 120 years ago: "His Majesty has no power to protect his subjects against the consequences of a good harvest...
...That would hardly pay for his rice for six months...
Vol. 37 • April 1954 • No. 17
