390 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
species does not increase relatively to its numbers. Then recall that 
we are just such a species, Homo sapiens. 
Actually we have brought about a paradox, so far as space is con- 
cerned. As our numbers increase, so does our space per capita. 
Each urban citizen is getting about double the space he had 50 years 
ago, and so is each rural person—that is, each rural person who stays 
in the country. The average farmer operates twice the acreage he 
would have done 50 years ago. ‘The answer to our paradox lies in the 
fact that urban growth is due to immigration from the country. The 
new city man doesn’t get twice the space he had in the country—he 
just gets twice the space he would have had if he had moved into the 
city 50 years ago! 
Very likely we are suffering from a population-pressure neurosis 
much like that of the jaegers at the high point of the rodent cycle. 
The fact that no great city maintains its numbers by its own birth 
rate suggests this. We surrender our right to cross a street at will, 
to keep poultry, and drink unchlorinated water from our own well. 
We may spend an hour and a half traveling between home and work 
each day. 
Whatever the psychological effects of this on personality may be, 
we can be sure of other effects that are not to be laughed off. The 
intimate, sensitive contact between man and the resource base is 
broken. Milk comes from wagons, other foods from shelves, and how 
they get there is someone else’s business. If history gives us any 
guide, the very congestion of numbers submerges the individual and 
exacts its toll in the creeping loss both of liberty and sense of respon- 
sibility. The chain of dependence upon technology lengthens and 
with it the distance between the individual and the physical basis of 
survival. Competition intensifies and can no longer be met by 
moving away from it. Instead the individual seeks protection from 
it in hiding within his specialty and then seeking to protect his 
specialty by devices of organization and monopoly. Specialization is 
no longer just a device to increase efficiency but a cultural refuge from 
intolerable pressures as well. 
I pass no judgment here on the ethics and esthetics of this situation. 
I merely suggest that the problem is with us and we ought not blunder 
further into it with our eyes closed. Unfortunately the issue is 
clouded by a serious cleavage of opinion among those to whom we 
look for guidance. Perhaps the prevailing idea is that both popula- 
tion and our economy must continue to expand indefinitely or go 
under. Sustaining this view is a confidence in the power of modern 
science and technology to meet and conquer any shortages or other 
obstacles that may develop. A familiar expression is that “the only 
essential resource is human resourcefulness itself.” 
