11 



for its own sake? 



Revelle: No, not unless you had a reason for it. Many people did 



have a reason, and most people should have a reason, if they 

 just thought it through. But there are problems that make 

 it difficult. 



Sharp: 



Revelle: 



So I never felt that the center should be very much 

 involved with administration of family planning programs, 

 and that antagonized quite a few people, the Planned 

 Parenthood types. Many of them were particularly concerned 

 about high birthrates in the United States, and of course 

 the high birthrates were mostly among poor, uneducated 

 people, but it sounds sort of racist. I think many of the 

 Planned Parenthood people are not racist; they're concerned 

 about human beings . 



When the center was getting going was exactly the time in 

 the United States when awareness about birth control and the 

 use of birth control was really pushing forward. In getting 

 a Center of Population Studies established, one might 

 automatically assume that that would be a special interest. 



Yes, and it was, but more in other centers than in ours. At 

 that time there were half a dozen centers all started about 

 the same time. North Carolina, Michigan. 



Sharp: 

 Revelle: 



Sharp : 

 Revelle: 



At the universities? 



Yes. At Tulane, at Columbia. 

 Tulane, Michigan. 



Columbia, North Carolina, 



And departments of demography and population studies 

 were developing in many places, like Berkeley and later USC. 

 David Herr went to USC and Kingsley Davis is there now, 

 after having retired from Berkeley. 



Among the demographers there was a general feeling 

 that there was a real problem with rapid population growth, 

 most extremely represented by Kingsley Davis, who was at 

 that time at Berkeley and was pretty conservative 

 politically, a right-wing Republican. He was also a great 

 demographer, he was a first-rate scientific worker. To some 

 extent his objective science was not obscured, but — . 



Shaped or colored or something? 



I don't think that's really true, but in any case he had 

 this sort of split personality. Part of the time he would 

 just shudder with indignation at rapid population growth and 

 the other time he'd write a scholarly article about how it 

 was happening. 



But a man named Ronald Freedman at Michigan was a much 

 more objective demographer. 



At North Carolina, the North Carolina center was 

 headed by a man who was a public health type, Moye Freimen, 

 and in the long run it got into difficulties. 



