196 evolution: the ages and tomorrow 



essential aspect of the whole population problem, and it is 

 almost criminal to insist that science can go on forever find- 

 ing new foods and new ways of production, always well in 

 advance of any likely totals to which man may push his 

 populations. Even without the other effects of science, such 

 as lowered death rates through medicine and hygiene, the 

 reproductive potential in man, like that of all organisms, is 

 explosively great and can and will, if permitted, produce 

 any astronomical numbers of individuals that one can im- 

 agine. Medicine and hygiene remove the positive check of 

 death to such a degree that the explosion often starts im- 

 mediately, as will appear shortly in a brief review of the 

 recent history of Puerto Rico and Japan. 



Malthus stated the basic problem one hundred and fifty 

 years ago, and one might reasonably suppose that by now 

 there would be a concerted effort to find ways and means of 

 solving it. Such, however, is not the case. On the contrary 

 there is, as students of population like R. C. Cook point out, 

 a problem of getting even a minority in science and sociol- 

 ogy and government to recognize that there is a problem. 

 In America, where there is much talk of farm surpluses, it 

 is particularly difficult to get a hearing. The fact that two- 

 thirds of the 2,500,000,000 people in the world are insuffi- 

 ciently nourished does not seem to register strongly with 

 individuals who have never known starvation and have 

 never seen it, and above all with individuals who live on one 

 of the world's richest and least crowded continents. Euro- 

 peans since World War II have felt somewhat the pinch 

 of hunger, and many of their leaders are more willing now 

 than formerly to lend an ear to the counsels of the popula- 

 tion expert. Even in India and China, where the problem is 

 acute and due in part to religious pressures toward large 

 families, it has been only recently that any leaders have 

 given the least consideration to the thought of population 

 control. The problem is not talked of at all in Russia; and in 



