160

 Yet, the idea of fitting productive activities

into the flow of nature, of using but not destroying

nature, is the important consideration essential to

long-run survival and to long-run survival in comfort.

In earlier times, most men were close to the earth

and knew intimately the source of their sustenance.

Many still do. The causes of productive excesses that

occurred may be laid largely either to ignorance of the

results that would follow potentially destructive

practices such as overgrazing or to a concept of vastness

of the earth that seemed to make its bounty all but

limitless. Then, of course, there was greed.

 But men must be concerned with their resources

and environment, and although few people would seem so

far removed from the earth and the direct concerns for their

sustenance than the modern urban American, a consuming

public, detached for the most part from the earth, is

nonetheless bound to the earth as greatly and dependent

upon it as strongly as ever. Survival and survival in

comfort depend upon the continued fecundity of the earth

and upon an abundant supply of the earth's resources; and

it is survival that is essential, not growth.



 In the course of this study we have attempted

to examine the economic growth of the United States