Word: osborns
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Died. Sidney Preston Osborn, 64, ninth governor of Arizona; of progressive muscular paralysis† in Phoenix. Unable to speak or write towards the end, Osborn insisted on being carried to his office, where he "dictated" by pointing at an alphabet, registered opinion by nodding...
...Leonard Osborn turns in a magnificent performance on vocal and acting levels as Earl Tolloller, and Richard Walker is fine as his friendly rival, the Earl of Mountararat. Richard Watson does his brief bit as Private Willis perfectly. Perhaps the weakest member of the cast is Charles Dorning as the male love interest, Strephon. Dorning's voice and style, while certainly adequate, are not up to the abilities of his fellows...
Thus far, the increase has been taken care of chiefly by cultivating new land. But this recourse, Osborn thinks, is pretty nearly exhausted. Almost all the good land is already cultivated. Most of the remainder has something wrong with it: bad climate, bad soil or both. There is still room for pioneers, but not enough to make much difference...
Much of the world's best land has been so badly treated that its productivity is falling steadily. Osborn retells the familiar tale of "soil-mining," deforestation and erosion all over the world. As people grow more numerous, the soil they depend on grows poorer & poorer. The low point has almost been reached in the Near East, where man-made deserts occupy large areas that were once fertile and populous. Like most conservationists, Osborn is something of an alarmist. He tends to underestimate the ability of modern agricultural science to revive maltreated soil, make deserts productive by irrigation...
...Osborn's basic thesis is reasonable. Improvements in food-getting require better organization and discipline than most nations possess. And even if all of them were put in practice, that would only postpone the crisis. The human race cannot continue to increase indefinitely at ts present rate without reaching the starvation point-as India has done already...