The Catholic times. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1951-current, 1959-12-18
JOSEPH BREIG
Too Many
Being Born?

| yield to no one in my respect, in general, for
the o~bjectlvity and honesty of American newsmen.
Within the limitations of headlines, and of the news
paper page or the radio or TV broadcast, they come
up with excellent results.
But they do have their weaknesses. One is their
tendency to equate freedom of speech and press with
license to offend against modesty and decency and
indeed to descend to vulgarity in the matter of sex.
Allied with this, because it is inevitably connected
with right and wrong uses of sex, is the subject called
1.-The population explosion" which is a current darling
OF dlscusSlonerS and ieWerS-With-alarm
! DO NOT THINK it is too much to ask competent
journalists to reject the words population explosion"
or at least to note for their audiences that they are
loaded words - in more than one sense. Their use un-
balances a report In its very origins.
Nevertheless, CBS-TV, with Howard K. Smith re-
porting, titled a recent one-hour special program, 1.-THE
Population Explodes. y This is a piece of sensationaism
and special pleading which ought to be beneath pro-
fessional journalistic dignity
CBS-TV is by no means the only offender. Almost
everything written or broadcast about world population
IS poisoned with the words explode or explosion"
This is not honest journalism, it is a word trick.
Some news outlets, further, have been patsieS. in
my opinion, for the Population Reference Bureau in
washington, which is a private, not public, set-up, and
periodically issues handouts with Malthusian implica-
tons.
THOMAS NAL the clergyman who came up
a Gentry and a half ago, with the idea that population
grows economically 1-2-4-8-16) whereas food produc-
ton at best rises only automatically 1-2-34-5) has
been proved Just about as wrong as a man can be.
Still, Malthusianism has been dug out of its I'M
nonored grave by birth-preVention propagandsts, and
is having a vogue at the precise time in history when
1t Is most clearly preposterous.
Father Anthony Zimmerman, a population expert.
has noted that many Americans are worrying about
the world starving, at the very moment when they are
paying taxes to reduce food production - and to store
the huge surpluses that mount up anyhow.
EVEN IN THE worldwide view. optimism. not pes
slmlsm, is the realistic attitude nowadays. Populations
are growing because of the spread of health, sanitation,
and medical knowledge; but the average human being
today is better fed than ever before.
And this is only a bare beginning of the prosperi-
ty that seems surely in store for mankind if we will
refrain from blowing ourselves sky-high. The studies
by Colin Clark, famed agricultural economist of Ok
ford University, indicate that the earth, properly titled.
can feed, and feed well, at least nine or 10 times its
present population.
Furthermore, that is reckoning without the i'm
mense potential of peaceful atomic power, which can
turn deserts into gardens; and also without the
titanic food resources of the seas, which have hardly
been touched.
DO NOT THlNK it is cranky of me to say that it
is the job OF our neWSmen-and of our writer's gener-
ally = to learn the whole story, and give it TO the
people.
AS Chesterton remarked in a famous retort 10 the
contraceptlonistS, if there is a shortage of hats. sem
slble men do not start looping off heads. They start
making more hats.
Humanity needs more food for more people. The
sane and practical thing to do is to produce more.
That way lies booming world prosperity.