But unfortunately these countries lack not merely agricultural machinery and an industrial plant capable of turning out this machinery, but also the capital required to create such a plant. Capital is what is left over after the primary needs of a population have been satisfied. But the primary needs of most of the people in underdeveloped countries are never fully satisfied. At the end of each year almost nothing is left over, and there is therefore almost no capital avail­able for creating the industrial and agricultural plant, by means of which the people's needs might be satisfied. Moreover, there is, in all these underdevel­oped countries, a serious shortage of the trained man­power without which a modern industrial and agricul­tural plant cannot be operated. The present educa­tional facilities are inadequate; so are the resources, financial and cultural, for improving the existing facili­ties as fast as the situation demands. Meanwhile the population of some of these underdeveloped countries is increasing at the rate of 3 per cent per annum.

Their tragic situation is discussed in an important book, published in 1957 — The Next Hundred Years, by Professors Harrison Brown, James Bonner and John Weir of the California Institute of Technology. How is mankind coping with the problem of rapidly increasing numbers? Not very successfully. "The evidence suggests rather strongly that in most underdeveloped countries the lot of the average individual has wor­sened appreciably in the last half century. People have become more poorly fed. There are fewer available goods per person. And practically every attempt to improve the situation has been nullified by the relent­less pressure of continued population growth."

Whenever the economic life of a nation becomes pre­carious, the central government is forced to assume additional responsibilities for the general welfare.