Word: malthus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...there died in a West England village a clergyman named Thomas Robert Malthus, whose bequest to mankind was a somber prophecy that the human race faced strangulation by graphs and curves. The world's population would threaten to outgrow its supply of food, said Malthus, whereupon pestilence, famine and war would follow. During the following century, the world's population did increase, from one billion to more than two billion, but it was amply taken care of by the development of new foods from new lands, by more intensive cultivation...
Your Jan. 10 article "Of People and Plenty" overlooks some important considerations...A serious look at Japan and Puerto Rico would, I think, restrain your optimism in dismissing Malthus and planned parenthood so quickly...However, it would be foolish to neglect the planning of our population...with the necessary facilities to meet the demands which it will make...We should not welcome an increase in population unless we have the schools and the recreational facilities to meet the legitimate needs of an increased population...
Only a few years ago a rate of population increase as high as the present one would have brought howls of impending calamity. Malthus had "proved" that people tended to increase faster than their food supply. Actually, in the century before 1950 world food production increased slightly faster than numbers of people. In the U.S., food supply increased much faster. An 1870 U.S. farm family produced enough to feed itself and one other family; a 1954 farm family produced enough to feed seven other families. It now seems as if Malthus' opponent, William Godwin, was right in predicting...
Very little is known about the subtle and important relationships between population growth and economics. But enough is known to discredit Malthus. Americans take present population figures as a promise of more prosperity. Gone, for the first time in history, is the worry over whether a society can produce enough goods to take care of its people. The lingering worry is whether it will have enough people to consume the goods. The population figures seem to insure that the U.S. will; the rate of growth is the strongest buttress of confidence in the continuation of unprecedented prosperity (see BUSINESS). Every...
...gloomy Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus made his famed pronouncement that human populations, unless checked by enemies or disasters, tend to increase until finally checked by hunger. Malthus foresaw only catastrophe ahead. In fact he predicted that within 50 years Britain would be in disaster because of overpopulation. Malthus was wrong in his prediction. Around him in England, as he was writing, his countrymen were developing the machine culture that permitted a new cycle of human expansion. But many scientists are convinced that in his broader sense Malthus may still be proved right. Today's neo-Malthusians maintain that catastrophe...