“The planting is all done in vats or chambers with air tight roofs. The bottom of a vat is covered with a few inches of soil specially prepared and appropriate for the plant intended to be sown. After the seeds germinate the vat is covered and the inside is brightly illuminated with electricity and filled with carbonic dioxide, obtained by burning a proper quantity of coal in a retort, which is also accomplished by electricity. All the conditions necessary for rapid growth are supplied to the plants and they are forced forward to maturity without any pause or delay, such as takes place in the growth of plants on earth, through the intervention of cloudy or stormy weather, too much or too little moisture, too much or too little heat, the darkness of night etc.
“The same method of cultivation prevails to a great extent on the exterior continent, although as the sun shines on that continent about 350 hours at a time, which constitutes the length of the day there, the vats are often merely covered by air tight glass roofs and the sun is the growing power instead of electricity.”
“I understand now,” said I, “what you meant by saying you reserved your mineral coal for food purposes. You draw on it only when the steady supply of artificial coal fails?”
“But if you rigorously save every particle of your organic matters to be reconverted into food, I don’t see why it should ever fail unless your population increases. But you have not informed me on that subject.”
“The control of the reproduction of the population has been in the hands of the state from the remotest antiquity,” said he; “and no increase in the total number has ever been permitted unless there had already been an increase in the means of supporting the population by the discovery of improved methods or new appliances. The tendency and policy has always been to allow the population to keep up near the limits of the means of support, and occasionally it has crowded a little too close. Then there are occasional losses by fire and a more or less steady unavoidable waste of food materials in their ordinary handling. Some are lost in the sea. But as long as there is a store of mineral coal to draw upon, no such losses can entail more than a temporary inconvenience. One thing that has a considerable effect on the food supply, is the change in fashions, that often takes place in a manner that the authorities cannot foresee or provide for.”