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Technological horizons
Robert C. Turner EDITOR
INOLOGICAL
HORIZONS ENERGY
AND
THE
UNDERDEVELOPED
AREAS
by Fred CottreU No ONE can fail to sympathize with the people of the underdeveloped areas of the world in their efforts to improve their lot, and the people of the Western world cannot fail to respond to their plea for aid in their efforts to industrialize. Most of us are agreed that whatever Western aid is necessary should go at least to all those who, seek a noncommunist solution to their problem. If we are to be successful, however, we must examine carefully the conditions under which the desired changes can be brought about and determine whether all of these conditions can, in fact, be realized. These conditions may be described in psychological, sociological, cultural, political, or economic terms; they may also be described in biological and technological terms. The exact combination of conditions necessary for the effective operation of an industrial society is not well understood, however, and even if it were, it would be beyond our capacity to describe here. On the basis of the evidence Mr. Cottrell is Professor of Government and Chairman oI the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Miami University, Oxford.
now available, the biological and physical barriers to industrialization appear so great in some areas that it is questionable whether the other conditions can be achieved. In some cases it seems impossible that the barriers can be overcome, and in others the eost of surmounting them is so high that the effort is likely to be abandoned before a breakthrough can be. achieved. Our purpose here is to demonstrate some of the technological changes that occur and the costs involved in achieving them. ANY CLASSIFICATION of societies
that places the underdeveloped society at one end of a continuum will place at the other end the society that is in possession of much more material wealth and much more power. Material wealth can be measured in terms of costs and their value, and these can be stated in terms of a market price, as well as evaluated by institutions such as the corporation, the family, the church, and the state. But cost may also be measured in biological and physical terms, and these terms may prove to be as useful in predicting the future as any other measure.
To the degree that work is required to produce things or perform services, costs can be measured in terms of the energy required for their production or performance. These costs must be paid in energy. Study of the energy available as compared with the work required to achieve a given end will show whether or not the end can be achieved. Though, of course, it should be borne in mind that, even where the energy to achieve a given end is available, it may be allotted to the production or performance of other, more valuable goods or services. Thus, one of the first questions to be asked concerning the prospeets for the development of a given area is, "Where is the necessary energy to come from?" Part of the answer is to be found in natural energy sources-coal and oil fields, arable land, minerals such as uranium and thorium, and flowing water. Another part is found in the ability of the people located near these sources to make them available in the necessary forms at the proper time and place. The most important question, however, is, "What is the ratio between the population and the capacity of the energy converters available to it?" Ultimately, this factor determines the available energy per capita and the amount of material goods a society can produce. By converter we mean any instrument through which energy can be converted from one form into another. Man's own body is a converter. On the average, he can convert less than .3,000 calories of energy per day from food into various other forms, and only about 20 per cent of his energy input can be converted into mechanical energy. The best-fed population can, on
BUSINESS H O R I Z O N S - SUMMER, 1 9 6 1
103
the average, utilize less than the equivalent of 600 calories per person per day of mechanical energy -less than one horsepower-hour per day. In a village where men are the only sources of mechanical energy, the maximum amount of work that can be done can be determined by counting the population. Work that requires more than this amount of energy will require another converter. An additional converter often used in underdeveloped countries is the draft animal. These animals, however, consume some plants that would also support human life, and in some cases the land used for feed might instead be providing food for men. Where the population depends mainly on local land to provide plants for human consumption, the draft animal competes for survival with man. Although the
horse can produce roughly five times the mechanical energy a man can deliver in a day, he also consumes five times as many calories. As a result, the horse is likely to be replaced by men as population pressures increase. THE LIMITED capacity of land to produce food is a familiar fact. A family that has resided on the same land for five hundred years needs no Malthus to point out that the land's capacity to produce is limited. The plants yielding larger amounts of energy generally take more sustenance from the land, and unless the scarce minerals in the soil ( such as nitrogen) are replaced, future crops will suffer. In the last few centuries, the sailing ship has enabled the cultivator to carry his techniques into empty continents. Helped by
new plants with a greater power to convert sunlight into food energy, new techniques of cultivation and irrigation, and the development of fertilizer, Western man seemed for a time to have escaped Malthus' law, and those who warned against the dangers of overpopulation fell into disrepute. A brand of economies developed which held that since land became more valuable as it became more scarce we could all get rich from the unearned increment on land. This phenomenon is well known in undeveloped areas where land has fallen into the hands of landlords who exact inordinate rents. That the landlord is sufficiently enriched to enable him to buy in urban markets in no way offsets the worsening poverty of the peasants. If we discuss production and productivity in terms of energy
some commuu#/es oarow fas/er //tan o/hers... "How much electric power is available in this area for both our immediate and future needs?" "What is its cost?" "Is the service dependable?" These are questions asked by key executives looking for n e w plant sites. And the communities with the right answers a r e t h e communities that grow. It's a big reason why Northern and East Central Indiana and Southwestern Michigan are three of the country's fastest growing areas. They enjoy plenty of low-cost and dependable electric service. And we, at I &M, are proud to provide this electric power for growth t. I&M is one of six interconnected companies in the American Electric Power System. These companies provide electric service to over five million people in 2,364 comm unities in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
iNDIANA
1~ M I C H I G A N
E L E C T R I C
An/nvestor-Owned Public Utility
COMPANY A.¢m,c,. CL¢CT.,C @
~OWCm SYST=~.
General Offices: Fort Wayne, Indiana Division Offices in Fort Wayne, Marion and South Bend, Indiana
104
BUSINESSH O R I Z O N S - SUMMER, 1961
we may see why our economic theory has not always produced the expected result in the. underdeveloped world. Any plant has a limited capacity to convert stmlight and inorganic materials into organic products. Some plants, such as wheat or maize, can convert as much as two- or threetenths of 1 per cent of the sunlight falling on them in a growing season. Others, such as hay, can convert less. All will respond to favorable conditions such as fertile soil and abundant water and sunlight and will yield proportio.nately less under adverse conditions. The factor that sets the outside, limitation on a population, then, is the capacity of plants to convert sunlight into other energy forms. If we combine the facts of arable land and the limited capacity of plants to convert energy, we seem to find no food source that can be endlessly extended. THE OUTSIDElimit is thus set by the energy it is possible to obtain from plants. But not all of this energy can be used at the whim of those who obtain it. Some must go back into the ground as seed, and where plants are cultivated, some additional energy must be used in that endeavor. Where more elaborate methods of securing energy are adopted, the energy required to produce tools or machinery must be subtracted from the energy obtained with their use. The difference between this energy input and the energy output it makes available is surplus energy, according to my definition. It is the per capita surplus energy that sets the limits and provides the means for man's advances in his struggle for survival. The amount of surplus energy available is a function of geog-
raphy, technology, and social arrangement, but extreme efficiency in the social and technological arrangements cannot expand the limits set by nature. One piece of land may, with careful cultivation, produce plants yielding 700,000 calories per acre, while another, despite poor cultivation, may produce a million. Under neither system, however, can the energy yield be, say, doubled or tripled. Moreover, the system getting the largest return in the form of food may expend two or three times as much energy in raising that food as one yielding a smaller total does; thus, the surplus energy from such a system may actually be less than that from the one yielding less total energy. If, in the effort to maximize the amount of food, surplus energy is reduced, the amount of other goods and services that might have been produced with the larger surplus is diminished. In underdeveloped areas, much of the land has been cultivated far past the point of maximum surplus. But if, in order to gain the things that might be obtained with larger surplus, men were removed from cultivation and it became less intense (yielding a larger surplus), the total food supply would fall and with it the means to sustain a larger population. History will show how this situation was avoided in-the West. The discovery of nearly erupt37 continents permitted draft animals to multiply to the point where, with their aid, one man and his family could cultivate large areas of land. The surplus energy per acre was not necessarily increased-in fact, it was frequently l o w e r e d - b u t the surplus energy per man-hour engaged in cultivation was tremen-
dously increased; as a result, large amounts of man power were released for other activities. It is at this point that the difference between the underdeveloped world and the industrial world becomes apparent. Old societies continued to use men because they were numerous and cheap. Because men needed food to survive, more food was produced. But the productivity of the system was limited by the capacity of men working on the land to produce surplus energy. The number of people who can be fed is determined by the amount of food that can be raised, and the number of these people who can be utilized for work other than farming is determined by the energy required in farming itself. The Japanese farmer, one of the most efficient in the world, produces surplus energy about twelve: and a half times as great as the energy consumed by his body in production, but most agricultural societies do not approach the Japanese maximum. In some areas this is due to social and psychological factors, in others to a shortage of water or to less fertile land. The amount o.f surplus energy derived from agriculture is relatively small and the prospect of increasing it is not great. On the other hand, with the increasing population, the production of food requires more effort, even if this effort reduces the amount of surplus energy available. Food was made abundant in the West by turning to surplus energy from sources other than plants. In areas where population pressure made the use of animals ineffective, conditions similar to those in Asia set in. But these were offset since food sources from distant points were tapped by railroad and ship. The introduction of the tractor during
BUSINESS HORIZONS --
SUMMER,
1961
105
Don't blindfold himZ HE MAN in this picture is a cancer
T research scientist. The device he is using looks like something out of science-fiction-but actually, it's an electron microscope. It shows him the sub-microscopic detail of a cancer cell - m a g n i f i e d 100,000 times. The cost o] one electron microscope is $35,000. Some of the equipment needed for cancer research, and purchased with A m e r i c a n C a n c e r Society funds, is even more expensive. The American Cancer Society grants millions of dollars for research to some 1300 scientists who are at this m o m e n t w o r k i n g to find the cause of c a n c e r - a n d ultimately, ways to prevent cancer. Your help is needed to enable the American Cancer Society to continue this support. Don't b l i n d f o l d c a n c e r research. Give to it. Send your contribution now to CANCER, C/o ~ L I I ~ your local post office. AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY
106
BUSINESS H O R I Z O N S -
SUMMER,
World War I permitted the use of petroleum, a fuel source from which a tremendous supply of energy could be, obtained. Where abundant land and sparse population now exist in underdeveloped lands the same solution might be u s e d - b u t few such lands exist. It should be recalled, however, that increased productivity per man-hour in agriculture in the West was in many eases secured by production of fewer pounds of food per acre and decreased surplus energy per acre. Reverting to our comparison, the .Japanese farmer, using hand labor, produced the same amount of rice per acre as did an Arkansas farmer using irrigation, fertilization, and mechanized cultivation and halwest methods. The surplus energy produced by the Japanese was over a thousand horsepower-hours per acre while that of the Arkansas farmer was a little over three hundred. Introducing the tractor in Japan would not have the same result as in the United States. Even though there would be no increase in the amount of rice produced, there would be an increase in production costs. This increase would make it necessary to sell some rice, thereby depriving the local community of its use. It has been estimated that in the United States today more energy goes into agriculture than comes out of it; a system operating in this manner could not be self-sustaining in an area wholly dependent for its energy upon agriculture. It is fairly well established that the amount of surplus energy gained lay putting men to work in agriculture is small and becomes smaller when these men are replaced by machines. On the other hand, the surplus may be enlarged by such measures as seed 1961
selection, intensive cultivation, fertilization, and the use of insecticides, but these measures, too, are limited. The law of diminishing returns is as evident in these cases as in the growing poverty of overpopulated areas. I N THE WEST,
where population
has not yet grown so rapidly as to overtake the gains made through these methods, it is still possible to manipulate energy sources. Increased power from coal or falling water in the form of electricity or from petroleum in the form of fuel can be introduced to increase the output per man-hour in agriculture. Since it is not the amount of food produced that is being maximized, but the difference between price-measured cost of inputs and price-measured outputs, it is considered desirable here to industrialize agriculture even though little or no surplus energy is produced in the operation. Because surplus energy in other forms can be produced in such great amounts, the diminution of the surplus goes unnoticed. But in a community supported only by the work of men and the products of their toil, surplus energy from the cultivation of food is the primary measure of well-being. A consumer of food may offer to the food raiser goods that have been produced with the aid of energy from, say, coal or petroleum. The energy cost of such goods may be a hundred times the energy to be obtained from the food. On the other hand, if the food raiser offers handmade goods for sale he finds himself competing with all of the other means by which identical objects (or those that can be substituted for them ) may be prodnced. The consumer of such objects will not care whether they were made by a food-fueled, expensive artisan,
or with the aid of another fuel whose producer could obtain, in a day, a thousand times more energy than the food raiser. Thus the producer who must use men in production, where his competitor in the market or on the battlefield can use converters fueled from high surplus sources, faces an impossible task. The Japanese rice grower, for example, produces less than thirteen horsepower-hours per day surplus energy. If he is paid even one dollar a day for that endeavor, the energy he produces has cost about eight cents a horsepower-hour. On the other hand, an American coal miner earning $18 a day produces so much surplus energy in the form of coal that his efforts cost the consumer only about one-tenth of a cent per horsepower-hour. It is obvious, then, that the consumer will, where he can, choose goods produced with the cheaper form of energy. In the underdeveloped areas, the consumer produces his own food or employs men rather than machines to produce it. Those who seek to industrialize must either use in industry those who formerly raised food or leave them to subsist in other ways. Some will be employed, but, since high-energy technology can produce many more goods using limited man power than can a large number of artisans, others will be unemployed. Some of these may turn to more primitive means of subsistence. Others, incapable of producing in competition with the machines anything they can sell for enough to buy food, starve. The food they might have eaten is eaten instead by the machine builders and operators, those who produce fuel, and others to whom emerging social
organization gives a claim on food. HUMANITARIANS both at home and abroad have urged that the limited number of high-energy converters in underdeveloped lands such as India be. used to provide food for the starving. One way to increase the supply of foodstuffs, for example, would be to increase the amount of synthetic fertilizer available, thus providing larger crop yields. The manufacture of this fertilizer requires large quantities of energy. Thus, energy from a hydroelectric plant might be used to provide food for a given number of people, but the people thus saved would be unable with their own bodies to build another plant of equal capacity. As a result, they could neither replace the existing converters as they wore out, nor build new ones to supply the fertilizer required to produce the crops with which to feed their children. Railroads transport food to places where, in the past, famine would have prevented overpopulation. Foreign loans are floated to feed millions who cannot hope to produce enough to. repay them. Five-year plans are designed to industrialize, while at the same time unemployment calls for the utilization of men, not machines. If these demands for converters and fuel were small it might be possible for the Soviet Union or the West to dump large amounts of surplus energy into the system, permitting it to generate sufficient energy to become selfperpetuating. But the amount of capital required probably exceeds the capacity of both systems. Faced with their own exploding populations, neither private capitalists nor imperialists of either capitalist or corn-
mtmist variety seem likely to undertake the ditticult task of meeting even the physical costs of industrialization. One solution that ccould possibly occur is ruthless exploitation of the populations of underdeveloped regions by their own people. This would result in their being slowly starved to death and prevented from breeding while working to build high-energy converters. The Soviet Union apparently was able to do this through its political prisoner camps, but it is doubtful whether the communists would attempt this solution in China, where the population eurrendy increases by 15 million a year. Another possible solution may be one that China has used on a number of occasions in the past. By means of irrigation, intensive agriculture could be carried on that would sustain the agricultural population, and public works could be constructed using man power almost exclusively. At the same time, the population could be held rigorously in control through food rationing. The surpluses from such an operation could be controlled by a land-controlling elite that would trade surplus food for the products of a small industrial elite. However, neither elite would be interested in sharing the surplus with the great peasant mass. Of the three likely solutions, this seems to me to be the most probable in the, long rim. With our limited knowledge of the processes involved in technological change, it is difficult to predict the future of underdeveloped areas. But our predictions might be much more accurate than they now are if we studied energy flow from source to end product, as well as psychosociological evidence.
BUSINESS H O R I Z O N S - SUMMER, 1961
107
INOLOGICAL
HORIZONS ENERGY
AND
THE
UNDERDEVELOPED
AREAS
by Fred CottreU No ONE can fail to sympathize with the people of the underdeveloped areas of the world in their efforts to improve their lot, and the people of the Western world cannot fail to respond to their plea for aid in their efforts to industrialize. Most of us are agreed that whatever Western aid is necessary should go at least to all those who, seek a noncommunist solution to their problem. If we are to be successful, however, we must examine carefully the conditions under which the desired changes can be brought about and determine whether all of these conditions can, in fact, be realized. These conditions may be described in psychological, sociological, cultural, political, or economic terms; they may also be described in biological and technological terms. The exact combination of conditions necessary for the effective operation of an industrial society is not well understood, however, and even if it were, it would be beyond our capacity to describe here. On the basis of the evidence Mr. Cottrell is Professor of Government and Chairman oI the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Miami University, Oxford.
now available, the biological and physical barriers to industrialization appear so great in some areas that it is questionable whether the other conditions can be achieved. In some cases it seems impossible that the barriers can be overcome, and in others the eost of surmounting them is so high that the effort is likely to be abandoned before a breakthrough can be. achieved. Our purpose here is to demonstrate some of the technological changes that occur and the costs involved in achieving them. ANY CLASSIFICATION of societies
that places the underdeveloped society at one end of a continuum will place at the other end the society that is in possession of much more material wealth and much more power. Material wealth can be measured in terms of costs and their value, and these can be stated in terms of a market price, as well as evaluated by institutions such as the corporation, the family, the church, and the state. But cost may also be measured in biological and physical terms, and these terms may prove to be as useful in predicting the future as any other measure.
To the degree that work is required to produce things or perform services, costs can be measured in terms of the energy required for their production or performance. These costs must be paid in energy. Study of the energy available as compared with the work required to achieve a given end will show whether or not the end can be achieved. Though, of course, it should be borne in mind that, even where the energy to achieve a given end is available, it may be allotted to the production or performance of other, more valuable goods or services. Thus, one of the first questions to be asked concerning the prospeets for the development of a given area is, "Where is the necessary energy to come from?" Part of the answer is to be found in natural energy sources-coal and oil fields, arable land, minerals such as uranium and thorium, and flowing water. Another part is found in the ability of the people located near these sources to make them available in the necessary forms at the proper time and place. The most important question, however, is, "What is the ratio between the population and the capacity of the energy converters available to it?" Ultimately, this factor determines the available energy per capita and the amount of material goods a society can produce. By converter we mean any instrument through which energy can be converted from one form into another. Man's own body is a converter. On the average, he can convert less than .3,000 calories of energy per day from food into various other forms, and only about 20 per cent of his energy input can be converted into mechanical energy. The best-fed population can, on
BUSINESS H O R I Z O N S - SUMMER, 1 9 6 1
103
the average, utilize less than the equivalent of 600 calories per person per day of mechanical energy -less than one horsepower-hour per day. In a village where men are the only sources of mechanical energy, the maximum amount of work that can be done can be determined by counting the population. Work that requires more than this amount of energy will require another converter. An additional converter often used in underdeveloped countries is the draft animal. These animals, however, consume some plants that would also support human life, and in some cases the land used for feed might instead be providing food for men. Where the population depends mainly on local land to provide plants for human consumption, the draft animal competes for survival with man. Although the
horse can produce roughly five times the mechanical energy a man can deliver in a day, he also consumes five times as many calories. As a result, the horse is likely to be replaced by men as population pressures increase. THE LIMITED capacity of land to produce food is a familiar fact. A family that has resided on the same land for five hundred years needs no Malthus to point out that the land's capacity to produce is limited. The plants yielding larger amounts of energy generally take more sustenance from the land, and unless the scarce minerals in the soil ( such as nitrogen) are replaced, future crops will suffer. In the last few centuries, the sailing ship has enabled the cultivator to carry his techniques into empty continents. Helped by
new plants with a greater power to convert sunlight into food energy, new techniques of cultivation and irrigation, and the development of fertilizer, Western man seemed for a time to have escaped Malthus' law, and those who warned against the dangers of overpopulation fell into disrepute. A brand of economies developed which held that since land became more valuable as it became more scarce we could all get rich from the unearned increment on land. This phenomenon is well known in undeveloped areas where land has fallen into the hands of landlords who exact inordinate rents. That the landlord is sufficiently enriched to enable him to buy in urban markets in no way offsets the worsening poverty of the peasants. If we discuss production and productivity in terms of energy
some commuu#/es oarow fas/er //tan o/hers... "How much electric power is available in this area for both our immediate and future needs?" "What is its cost?" "Is the service dependable?" These are questions asked by key executives looking for n e w plant sites. And the communities with the right answers a r e t h e communities that grow. It's a big reason why Northern and East Central Indiana and Southwestern Michigan are three of the country's fastest growing areas. They enjoy plenty of low-cost and dependable electric service. And we, at I &M, are proud to provide this electric power for growth t. I&M is one of six interconnected companies in the American Electric Power System. These companies provide electric service to over five million people in 2,364 comm unities in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
iNDIANA
1~ M I C H I G A N
E L E C T R I C
An/nvestor-Owned Public Utility
COMPANY A.¢m,c,. CL¢CT.,C @
~OWCm SYST=~.
General Offices: Fort Wayne, Indiana Division Offices in Fort Wayne, Marion and South Bend, Indiana
104
BUSINESSH O R I Z O N S - SUMMER, 1961
we may see why our economic theory has not always produced the expected result in the. underdeveloped world. Any plant has a limited capacity to convert stmlight and inorganic materials into organic products. Some plants, such as wheat or maize, can convert as much as two- or threetenths of 1 per cent of the sunlight falling on them in a growing season. Others, such as hay, can convert less. All will respond to favorable conditions such as fertile soil and abundant water and sunlight and will yield proportio.nately less under adverse conditions. The factor that sets the outside, limitation on a population, then, is the capacity of plants to convert sunlight into other energy forms. If we combine the facts of arable land and the limited capacity of plants to convert energy, we seem to find no food source that can be endlessly extended. THE OUTSIDElimit is thus set by the energy it is possible to obtain from plants. But not all of this energy can be used at the whim of those who obtain it. Some must go back into the ground as seed, and where plants are cultivated, some additional energy must be used in that endeavor. Where more elaborate methods of securing energy are adopted, the energy required to produce tools or machinery must be subtracted from the energy obtained with their use. The difference between this energy input and the energy output it makes available is surplus energy, according to my definition. It is the per capita surplus energy that sets the limits and provides the means for man's advances in his struggle for survival. The amount of surplus energy available is a function of geog-
raphy, technology, and social arrangement, but extreme efficiency in the social and technological arrangements cannot expand the limits set by nature. One piece of land may, with careful cultivation, produce plants yielding 700,000 calories per acre, while another, despite poor cultivation, may produce a million. Under neither system, however, can the energy yield be, say, doubled or tripled. Moreover, the system getting the largest return in the form of food may expend two or three times as much energy in raising that food as one yielding a smaller total does; thus, the surplus energy from such a system may actually be less than that from the one yielding less total energy. If, in the effort to maximize the amount of food, surplus energy is reduced, the amount of other goods and services that might have been produced with the larger surplus is diminished. In underdeveloped areas, much of the land has been cultivated far past the point of maximum surplus. But if, in order to gain the things that might be obtained with larger surplus, men were removed from cultivation and it became less intense (yielding a larger surplus), the total food supply would fall and with it the means to sustain a larger population. History will show how this situation was avoided in-the West. The discovery of nearly erupt37 continents permitted draft animals to multiply to the point where, with their aid, one man and his family could cultivate large areas of land. The surplus energy per acre was not necessarily increased-in fact, it was frequently l o w e r e d - b u t the surplus energy per man-hour engaged in cultivation was tremen-
dously increased; as a result, large amounts of man power were released for other activities. It is at this point that the difference between the underdeveloped world and the industrial world becomes apparent. Old societies continued to use men because they were numerous and cheap. Because men needed food to survive, more food was produced. But the productivity of the system was limited by the capacity of men working on the land to produce surplus energy. The number of people who can be fed is determined by the amount of food that can be raised, and the number of these people who can be utilized for work other than farming is determined by the energy required in farming itself. The Japanese farmer, one of the most efficient in the world, produces surplus energy about twelve: and a half times as great as the energy consumed by his body in production, but most agricultural societies do not approach the Japanese maximum. In some areas this is due to social and psychological factors, in others to a shortage of water or to less fertile land. The amount o.f surplus energy derived from agriculture is relatively small and the prospect of increasing it is not great. On the other hand, with the increasing population, the production of food requires more effort, even if this effort reduces the amount of surplus energy available. Food was made abundant in the West by turning to surplus energy from sources other than plants. In areas where population pressure made the use of animals ineffective, conditions similar to those in Asia set in. But these were offset since food sources from distant points were tapped by railroad and ship. The introduction of the tractor during
BUSINESS HORIZONS --
SUMMER,
1961
105
Don't blindfold himZ HE MAN in this picture is a cancer
T research scientist. The device he is using looks like something out of science-fiction-but actually, it's an electron microscope. It shows him the sub-microscopic detail of a cancer cell - m a g n i f i e d 100,000 times. The cost o] one electron microscope is $35,000. Some of the equipment needed for cancer research, and purchased with A m e r i c a n C a n c e r Society funds, is even more expensive. The American Cancer Society grants millions of dollars for research to some 1300 scientists who are at this m o m e n t w o r k i n g to find the cause of c a n c e r - a n d ultimately, ways to prevent cancer. Your help is needed to enable the American Cancer Society to continue this support. Don't b l i n d f o l d c a n c e r research. Give to it. Send your contribution now to CANCER, C/o ~ L I I ~ your local post office. AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY
106
BUSINESS H O R I Z O N S -
SUMMER,
World War I permitted the use of petroleum, a fuel source from which a tremendous supply of energy could be, obtained. Where abundant land and sparse population now exist in underdeveloped lands the same solution might be u s e d - b u t few such lands exist. It should be recalled, however, that increased productivity per man-hour in agriculture in the West was in many eases secured by production of fewer pounds of food per acre and decreased surplus energy per acre. Reverting to our comparison, the .Japanese farmer, using hand labor, produced the same amount of rice per acre as did an Arkansas farmer using irrigation, fertilization, and mechanized cultivation and halwest methods. The surplus energy produced by the Japanese was over a thousand horsepower-hours per acre while that of the Arkansas farmer was a little over three hundred. Introducing the tractor in Japan would not have the same result as in the United States. Even though there would be no increase in the amount of rice produced, there would be an increase in production costs. This increase would make it necessary to sell some rice, thereby depriving the local community of its use. It has been estimated that in the United States today more energy goes into agriculture than comes out of it; a system operating in this manner could not be self-sustaining in an area wholly dependent for its energy upon agriculture. It is fairly well established that the amount of surplus energy gained lay putting men to work in agriculture is small and becomes smaller when these men are replaced by machines. On the other hand, the surplus may be enlarged by such measures as seed 1961
selection, intensive cultivation, fertilization, and the use of insecticides, but these measures, too, are limited. The law of diminishing returns is as evident in these cases as in the growing poverty of overpopulated areas. I N THE WEST,
where population
has not yet grown so rapidly as to overtake the gains made through these methods, it is still possible to manipulate energy sources. Increased power from coal or falling water in the form of electricity or from petroleum in the form of fuel can be introduced to increase the output per man-hour in agriculture. Since it is not the amount of food produced that is being maximized, but the difference between price-measured cost of inputs and price-measured outputs, it is considered desirable here to industrialize agriculture even though little or no surplus energy is produced in the operation. Because surplus energy in other forms can be produced in such great amounts, the diminution of the surplus goes unnoticed. But in a community supported only by the work of men and the products of their toil, surplus energy from the cultivation of food is the primary measure of well-being. A consumer of food may offer to the food raiser goods that have been produced with the aid of energy from, say, coal or petroleum. The energy cost of such goods may be a hundred times the energy to be obtained from the food. On the other hand, if the food raiser offers handmade goods for sale he finds himself competing with all of the other means by which identical objects (or those that can be substituted for them ) may be prodnced. The consumer of such objects will not care whether they were made by a food-fueled, expensive artisan,
or with the aid of another fuel whose producer could obtain, in a day, a thousand times more energy than the food raiser. Thus the producer who must use men in production, where his competitor in the market or on the battlefield can use converters fueled from high surplus sources, faces an impossible task. The Japanese rice grower, for example, produces less than thirteen horsepower-hours per day surplus energy. If he is paid even one dollar a day for that endeavor, the energy he produces has cost about eight cents a horsepower-hour. On the other hand, an American coal miner earning $18 a day produces so much surplus energy in the form of coal that his efforts cost the consumer only about one-tenth of a cent per horsepower-hour. It is obvious, then, that the consumer will, where he can, choose goods produced with the cheaper form of energy. In the underdeveloped areas, the consumer produces his own food or employs men rather than machines to produce it. Those who seek to industrialize must either use in industry those who formerly raised food or leave them to subsist in other ways. Some will be employed, but, since high-energy technology can produce many more goods using limited man power than can a large number of artisans, others will be unemployed. Some of these may turn to more primitive means of subsistence. Others, incapable of producing in competition with the machines anything they can sell for enough to buy food, starve. The food they might have eaten is eaten instead by the machine builders and operators, those who produce fuel, and others to whom emerging social
organization gives a claim on food. HUMANITARIANS both at home and abroad have urged that the limited number of high-energy converters in underdeveloped lands such as India be. used to provide food for the starving. One way to increase the supply of foodstuffs, for example, would be to increase the amount of synthetic fertilizer available, thus providing larger crop yields. The manufacture of this fertilizer requires large quantities of energy. Thus, energy from a hydroelectric plant might be used to provide food for a given number of people, but the people thus saved would be unable with their own bodies to build another plant of equal capacity. As a result, they could neither replace the existing converters as they wore out, nor build new ones to supply the fertilizer required to produce the crops with which to feed their children. Railroads transport food to places where, in the past, famine would have prevented overpopulation. Foreign loans are floated to feed millions who cannot hope to produce enough to. repay them. Five-year plans are designed to industrialize, while at the same time unemployment calls for the utilization of men, not machines. If these demands for converters and fuel were small it might be possible for the Soviet Union or the West to dump large amounts of surplus energy into the system, permitting it to generate sufficient energy to become selfperpetuating. But the amount of capital required probably exceeds the capacity of both systems. Faced with their own exploding populations, neither private capitalists nor imperialists of either capitalist or corn-
mtmist variety seem likely to undertake the ditticult task of meeting even the physical costs of industrialization. One solution that ccould possibly occur is ruthless exploitation of the populations of underdeveloped regions by their own people. This would result in their being slowly starved to death and prevented from breeding while working to build high-energy converters. The Soviet Union apparently was able to do this through its political prisoner camps, but it is doubtful whether the communists would attempt this solution in China, where the population eurrendy increases by 15 million a year. Another possible solution may be one that China has used on a number of occasions in the past. By means of irrigation, intensive agriculture could be carried on that would sustain the agricultural population, and public works could be constructed using man power almost exclusively. At the same time, the population could be held rigorously in control through food rationing. The surpluses from such an operation could be controlled by a land-controlling elite that would trade surplus food for the products of a small industrial elite. However, neither elite would be interested in sharing the surplus with the great peasant mass. Of the three likely solutions, this seems to me to be the most probable in the, long rim. With our limited knowledge of the processes involved in technological change, it is difficult to predict the future of underdeveloped areas. But our predictions might be much more accurate than they now are if we studied energy flow from source to end product, as well as psychosociological evidence.
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