Overpopulation?

Alexander M. Goldfinger

[Reprinted from The Gargoyle, March, 1960]

On TV networks, in newspapers and magazines much has been fed to us recently concerning the population explosion that in two decades will pose a problem involving the whole world. Statistics, increases in birth rates, decreases in death rates, proportions, and views of the paupers of India with no homes, no beds but the sidewalks of the cities and the cries of hungry children sharpen cur awareness of the problem.

We learn that because of hygeine, modern methods of innoculation and antibiotics, millions of children in China, India, Japan and other populous countries now survive who formerly succumbed to the ravages of disease, and so the average life span is increased producing more middle-aged and elderly people. And a good prognostication that this condition will be augmented in the future is safe.

While we rejoice that children are being saved from lives of pain or from death, we must recognize that formerly the high birth rate of some poverty stricken peoples was balanced by the high death rate of its infants.

Malthus took cognizance that the tendency of population to increase by geometric proportions while the productivity of man and nature tended to increase arithmetically. He also noted that the tendency of increased population was decreased by wars, famine, and pestilence to keep population within the limits of its environment. Now, sociologists are alarmed that the famine and pestilence features maybe conquered by man's increased knowledge, leaving only wars to decimate the hordes of mankind.

We have problems today which were but slightly recognised a few generations ago. The growing art or science of geriatrics, the care, maintenance and usefulness of the elderly is gaining in importance due to the increase of the proportion of the elderly in our population.

One misconception that is prevalent is that because the average life-span has increased, people live longer today than formerly. Actually, life insurance company studies show that, after reaching maturity, the probability of any one or of a group of persons to attain advanced age is about the same as one hundred years ago, except for endemic or epidemic occurrences.

Was Malthus right that the poverty of mankind was largely due to the tendency to overpopulate? In Japan, the population increase has been so great that abortion has been legalized and is practiced to an increasing degree. The cultures and the religions of other peoples has forbidden this practice, but controlled parenthood is spreading and religions opposed to artificial means of preventing conception are favoring abstinence or are countenancing use of the rhythm cycle to lessen the birth rate. But, particularly in the most populous countries, the control of birth-rate is difficult to achieve, and in the foreseeable future, the ogre of a world population double the present number in less than a half century from now is a real problem begging study and solution.

If control of population is not readily attainable, can the productiveness of man and nature supply the increased population with the necessaries and the luxuries of a better life, or will decreased standards of living if not starvation and poverty be the lot of all in the future?

Many arguments have been made that nature is not niggardly, but that man's stupidity or his culture is responsible for poor economic conditions. It is pointed out that in the United States we have produced farm products in such huge amounts that, at times, we paid farmers to destroy excess crops, or we stored them and tried to give away large amounts to save storage expense, all the while people were, in want both in this country and abroad. It has been pointed out that technology has found many products for man's use that formerly required vast expenditure of man's energies and a bountiful nature. Plastics and synthetics today are used to house us and clothe us, not requiring the cooperation of agriculture or timber lands. And it is predicted that in the future, all our clothing and some of our food will be manufactured synthetically, thus making us more independent of our limited environment.

But there is more to the problem than man's proclivity to reproduce and his ability to find sources of sustenance. Yes, most of the earth's surface is covered by oceans and seas, within which much of man's future sustenance may be found, but, no matter how much wealth or sustenance man may make available, his culture, his laws, his way-of-life will continue to be a barrier to a universal well-being.

Two examples will demonstrate this. If there is poverty in Canada, and there is, can it be because of overpopulation or lack of natural resources? Canada has a population density of less than 4 persons to the square mile compared to England's density of slightly more than 800 to the square mile. Canada's natural resources are certainly not less than England's. So, if there is poverty in Canada, the population is not the cause.

If there is poverty in India, and there is, can it be solely because India has more than 400,000 people. Some years ago, the Quakers, both English and American, in an endeavor to help the people of India to help themselves, bought a small farm in a farming area and operated it, using only the tools and implements used by the natives, but employing better hybrid seeds and farming practices than indigenous in the area. They did not preach or teach, but left it to the curiosity of the natives to note the differences. The yield on the Quaker farm was almost treble that per hectare or per acre on native farms, which fact did not escape the attention of neighbors. Gradually, the neighbors saw and learned, and by acquiring the hybrid seeds they also increased their yields of products.

For several years these natives prospered, but then they reverted to their old methods and the yields decreased. The Quakers learned the reasons and so reported to their superiors. In India, cows and monkeys are sacred and cannot be molested nor destroyed nor domesticated. As the product yields of the Indians increased, so did the cows and monkeys and they ate and consumed more of the products. This was bad, but still worse; when the land-owner who rented the farms to the natives learned that their farms were more productive, he increased the rent to absorb, the increase, thus leaving the natives little if any increase for their own consumption. So, the natives, seeing no profit from better and newer methods reverted to their ancient methods and had to be satisfied with the older poverty they had endured.

The problem of overpopulation will not be easily solved unless and until the culture, the education, the enlightenment of man is such that an equitable distribution of nature's bounty can be encompassed in a free society.

Yes, we have a population problem to solve. We also have a land-tenure problem which, more than the overpopulation problem, requires attention and solution if poverty is not to be man's perpetual burden.