To the Editor:

For some reason I’m not on the population-control mailing lists, but through the kindness of a correspondent, I am in receipt of a curious pendant to my “The Population Controllers” [May 1972]. It is a manifesto announcing the establishment of Negative Population Growth, Inc., already being called by its promoters NPG, a convention sure to bedevil typesetters and copy-readers as time goes by. The emergency declared by NPG is like unto that declared by ZPG, only more so; the prescription for it is the same, only more so; and there is the same taste for coercion, only more so. We are going to be allowed a choice between one-child and what they quaintly call “child-free” families, until such time as the U.S. population is halved. Then we can go back to two. We will be thus restricted by Any Means Necessary, although there is a ritual statement admitting the theoretical possibility of, but not a preference for, voluntary measures so long as we are willing to go along quietly. NPG intends to sponsor what it chooses to call “research” to demonstrate that this depopulation, far from being economically troublesome, will be downright pleasant for persons now alive. Readers of my piece will not be surprised to learn that Edgar Chasteen is on NPG’s advisory board, which includes such distinguished scholars as Sir Julian Huxley, Luther Evans, and Shirley MacLaine.

Well, I suppose people so slovenly of language, indeed so pathetically divorced from the realm of ideas as to accept a verbal monstrosity like “negative growth” will believe anything. I fully expect the next year to see the birth (sorry) of ZBG (Zero Birth Group) Inc., arguing that since the resources of the earth will not outlast those now on it, reproduction must be made a capital offense.

But the madness represented by NPG is sufficient unto the day; its founding indicates that the extremists in the movement have found each other. Perhaps thus united is thus isolated, but the tendency for hysterical movements to end up led by their extremists is not reassuring.

Samuel McCracken
London, England