In his 2006 book Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, Lester Brown writes:

If paper use per person in China in 2031 reaches the current U.S. level, this translates into 305 million tons of paper—double existing world production of 161 million tons. There go the world’s forests.

Yes indeed, the forests would soon be gone because, as we all know, once a tree is harvested for paper, that’s the end of that. The land is forevermore bare.

Oh wait, no it isn’t: it’s possible to plant new trees. As the price of paper rises, paper companies would find it profitable to grow more paper-producing trees than they grow today. And at a high enough price of paper, it would pay to recycle more paper (just as it already pays to recycle aluminum cans).

Brown makes similar projections for grain and oil, and concludes:

The inevitable conclusion to be drawn from these projections is that there are not enough resources for China to reach U.S. consumption levels.

Quite right. And in 1907 it was equally impossible for the US to ever reach its current 2007 consumption levels.