Page 189 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1490 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

What the invention of machinery driven by falling This medical transformation became worldwide after
water, coal-fired steam engines, and other inanimate 1950, when public health administrators succeeded in
sources of energy did was allow far larger populations eliminating smallpox and diminishing the ravages of
than before to cluster together in cities and import food most other infections through vaccines, mosquito con-
from far and wide, much of which came to be produced trol, new drugs, and more sanitary water supplies.
by power-driven machinery—tractors and harvesters and The first effect was to accelerate rates of population
other specialized devices. This had devastating conse- growth, especially in rural areas and among village pop-
quences for old-fashioned peasant farming, and the con- ulations. A second and not long-delayed result was to
sequent collapse (some say transformation) of village life create crisis for young people in already crowded rural
is still going on at a very rapid rate throughout Asia, landscapes, who could no longer find enough land to
Africa, and Latin America.The upshot is uncertain. Pro- found a new a family along traditional lines. This coin-
found disruption of age-old demographic and cultural cided with intensified communications, thanks to
patterns of rural life has already occurred, and it seems movies, radio, and television, that showed rural dwellers
unlikely that North American–style agribusiness, involv- how different their lives were from those of city dwellers.
ing mass production of grain and other crops by expen- Wholesale migration ensued and continues today at a
sive machines fueled by gasoline or diesel oil, can ever very rapid rate, creating vast slum settlements around
become the dominant pattern worldwide. African, Asian, and Latin American cities, and crowding
Recent census figures show that half or perhaps a lit- European, North American, and Australian cities with
tle more than half the 6 billion human beings who now newcomers from far and wide.
inhabit the earth live in cities and depend on food they Simultaneously, long-urbanized populations began to
do not grow themselves. In the United States, a mere 5 restrict births on a far greater scale than ever before.This
percent of the population feeds the remaining 95 per- accelerated when oral birth control pills became available
cent. This turns agrarian society upside down, for until in the 1960s. The fact that raising children in modern
recently the vast majority lived in villages, producing cities is costly and not always truly satisfying for parents
food for themselves and for a small (though growing) lay behind the rapid spread of deliberate birth control,
number of city folk, living close enough to the fields that and has made cities once again into places where popu-
fed them to be sure of getting the nourishment they lations are not self-sustaining. Obviously, when adults
needed. Food, like other commodities, now can travel have to leave home to work in offices, factories, and
long distances, feeding people halfway round the earth. shops, small children hamper and interrupt daily rou-
Supporting our present numbers indeed requires an tines. Then, as children grow older, legal and practical
elaborate, worldwide distribution system for both fuel requirements for formal schooling last into late adoles-
and food.Any prolonged breakdown of transport would cence or beyond.This means that children contribute lit-
provoke famine of unprecedented universality and with tle or nothing to family income, and wherever govern-
almost unimaginable consequences. mental social security programs function, they seldom
Birth and death rates are likewise unstable as never have to look after their parents in old age. All the incen-
before. Throughout the agrarian era, cities were places tives that sustained births in rural villages are thus can-
where intensified infections meant that deaths exceeded celled in our cities. But galloping immigration from dis-
births, so that a continual flow of migrants from the tant rural countrysides still disguises the way cities have
healthier countryside was needed to maintain urban recently become population sinkholes, not for epidemic
populations. Recently, that ceased to be true, beginning but for economic and sociological reasons.
when public health measures (1860s) and new vaccines What this may mean for the future is hard to imagine.
(1880s) became available in some well-managed cities. Fundamental patterns of the agrarian past are in ques-