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Congratulations on an excellent expose ol the fallacies in the Neo-Malthusian school of economists' argument in reference to population and food supply [TIME, Nov. 8] Those chappies are long on theory and dialectic, short on soil science...
Some nations and religious groups make vigorous efforts to increase the numbers of their people. They are seldom if ever successful. Thoroughly Roman Catholic Eire has one of the lowest birth rates in the world and its population is stable. Eire is behaving more or less as the Neo-Malthusians want all countries to behave. It is not industrializing (Vogt hates industrialization), it is not greatly increasing food production. But 79% of Irishmen under 30 and 60% under 40 are not married. Thirty-five percent of Irishwomen do not marry at all. "Ecologists" might call this balance; few sociologists would...
...Neo-Malthusians point to India and China and warn that if the world helps them increase their food supply, they will respond by overwhelming the world with a billion more Asiatics. Vogt is especially loud in crying this warning. He even wants the U.S. to stop sending food to Greece, lest the Greeks process each ton of wheat into more Greek mouths...
Such super-isolationism, with hints of the old "yellow peril," is one of the ugliest Implications of Neo-Malthusianism. The world is already overpopulated, the argument goes. Some areas, like the U.S., are luckier than others, but even the U.S. will soon run out of food. Therefore it should not help foreigners. Let them starve now, before they increase their numbers (with our help) and overwhelm...
...Neo-Malthusians are not the only ones who have been wildly wrong about population growth. Abraham Lincoln, assuming that U.S. population would continue to grow as fast as it did in his day, predicted that the U.S. would have 250 million people by 1930. According to his forecasts, the 1948 population would be 430 million instead of 140 million...