PRODUCTION

In M.I.T.'s Rockwell Cage, a huge, airy gym standing apart from the columned halls where man's spirit was under investigation, the scientists discussed man's material condition. In the panel on "the Problem of World Production," Fairfield (Our Plundered Planet) Osborn once more raised his familiar Malthusian bogy of ever-shrinking resources, ever-increasing population.

Vannevar Bush, wartime director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development--and an optimist who tries to grow potatoes among New Hampshire's rocks--tore into Osborn's gloomy theories. His main point: population increases, all right, but the world's living standard increases first. When "a lid is removed," both science and population burst upward, "but science gets there first." This is followed by a leveling off at a higher standard. "And thus," said Bush, "we go on."

With dry Yankee humor he estimated what would have happened if the alarmists' theories on population growth were correct: "I computed last night that if Adam and Eve started this game about 4000 B.C. and had been reasonably fertile, if we had had a 10% increase per generation, we would now have--unless my slide rule slipped--a population as densely packed as this auditorium, leaving out the aisles. It would cover the entire earth, deserts and oceans 15 layers deep. Those who would be allocated the desert would be very much distressed, those allocated to the oceans would get wet."

Bush cited examples of how food production could be further increased; they ranged from the treatment of cows with penicillin--to prevent cattle disease which costs Europe 5,000,000 tons of milk a year ("and that will feed a lot of babies") --to controlled photosynthesis and improved fertilizing through methods discovered in the course of atomic research.

Concluded Bush: "It is a problem of how these things can be applied . . . The technical part is easy."

Bush had a special message for pessimists: "For all its terrors and tragedies . . . the life of man is a thing of potential beauty and dignity ... To live is good."

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