3. Fi. 4 3 | = = 3 5 4 2 SCIENCE — More people, less hunger’ reply to gloomy argument of Malthus . eo FRANTIC efforts are being - made by various people, some With the best intentions, to persuade the Chinese to em- bark on a great campaign for birth control. ‘This is necessary, they claim; to stop the population growing so fast that it will’ outstrip food supplies, and lead. to hunger and starvation. _ Perhaps the real reason is fear of the rapid growth of the largest Sod¢ialist country, which is expected to be sen- sitive about famines, remem- bering terrible past experi- ences. The argument recalls “‘Par- son” Malthus, who claimed that population increases by- geometrical progression (1, 2, _ 4, 8, 16) each year, and food D by arithmetical (1, 3, 3, 4, 5), so that food could never catch up; the workers would al- ways be on the edge of star-- vation, and it was useless to try to raise real wages. 3 “In Hunger and Food (World Federation of Scientific Work- ' ers) a number of writers deal with the problem from’ a genuinely scientific and up- to-date standpoint. “They do not claim every point is firmly established fact, but various essays amount to a case fully ade- ‘quate, not only to demolish the bogus scientific theory of Malthus, but to refute~ com- pletely the vaguer, but more. dangerous, modern prophets 5 y The world’s population is increasing rapidly, but this is no cause for gloem. of gloom. The argument in the book is chiefly developed in the essays of two writers, Lord Boyd Orr and Prof. Roemer of Halle in the German Dem- ocratic Republic. The population of the world has grown as follows: Year Million 1700 500 1800 V15 1900 1,567 1950 2,300 By the year 2000 Lord Boyd Orr estimates that the world will have 5,000 million and Prof. Roemer 3,000 million people. It was certainly true in the past that. Malthus’ expecta- tion, a doubling of the popu- lation in 25 years, was never realized. Roemer detects signs that the rapid growth of 1900- 1950 is slowing down. In any case, Boyd Orr ad- mits that although food pro-~ duction increased less rapidly than population in 1946-50, in the next five yearg it caught up. He quotes an esti- mate made in 1946, that in view of expected. population increases, world food supplies needed to be doubled, in order to provide an adequate diet for all the people in the world. Prof. Roemer; however, still. Lord Boyd Orr ~ numbers among the pessimists and lists concretely the factors which he thinks will prove him so. 1, The use of mineral fer- tilizers. After Liebig made the first study of these 150 years ago, food production doubled in 66 years, while population took 100 years. Use of ferti- lizers is at less than half the saturation point°even in the most advanced countries. 2. Plant breeding, estimated now to be providing an in- crease of 0.5 percent per an- num. But this can be exceed- ed, Hybrid maizes can yield 25 percent more than the origi- nal species. Dutch sugar-cane experts have doubled . the yield in 25 years. 3. Elimination of diseases— reckoned to reduce harvest by at least 15 percent. in -Ger- _many and between 25 and 50 percent in tropical countries. 4, Biochemistry, which can reduce or eliminate insect pests and harmful weeds.’ 5. Scientific study of how to reduce losses of. food dur- ing’ storage. 6. Development of irriga- tion. Half the dry land of the world: — about 42 million acres -—— could be: used for food production, but only a quarter is so used merely be- cause of lack of water, Even now, the 13 percent of the world’s cultivated land which js irrigated produces 25 per- cent of the world’s food. -The book is an arsenal of arguments for Socialism, be- cause they show how, in order to banish hunger, a complete social rdorganization is needed. OPEN FORUM Tribute to Bechet R. L.; Vancouver, B.C.: Progressives should note in passing, in Paris three weeks ago, one of the greatest creat- ive artists of this century, Sidney Bechet. Bechet, 62, was one of the original Negro jazzmen. Raised in the New Orleans blues idiom, the bed- rock and best of jazz, Bechet came to Chicago in 1918 with the Original New Orleans Creole Jazz Band, playing soprano sax and clarinet. For 40 years Bechet, more than any other artist of simi- lar renown, resisted the daily temptation of white, eommer- cial “jazz” (sweet, swing, and “modern”), playing and teaching to the end the great life-loving resistance blues of the Negro American. In the late 40s, when bebop and “modern” jazz swept both Negro and white, com- mercializing even Louis Arm- strong, Bechet moved to Paris in quiet protest. Bechet was a master of all jazz instruments and of the complex structure of the form. “Teamwork, _ collective spirit, rich blending harmony —that was Sidney Bechet’s whole life,” says Mezz Mezz- row, great white cjarinetist and mixed-race band pioneer who also moved to Paris, tn his classic book Really the Blues. In perhaps his greatest rec- ords, The Blues of Bechet and The Sheik of Araby,Bechet plays all six instruments New Orleans style in a~tremend- ous declaration of defiance to commercialism. } ,As Mezzrow says: “Modern swing and jump is frantic, savage, frenzied, berserk — ‘its the agony of the split, hacked-up personality. Its got nothing at all in common with New Orleans, which by contrast is dignified, balanced, deeply harmonious, high- spirited but pervaded all through with a mysterious calm — the music of a per- sonality that hasn’t exploded like a fragmentation , bomb,” which “was the great secret of Sidney’s genius.” Fortunately, much of his work survives on _ records, which will be turned to as jazz frees itself from middle- class neurosis, Negro Ameri- ca’s history of oppression and resistance has produced no greater artist than Sidney Bechet. ts AUUC operetta wins acclaim from critics IN ITS presentation of the operetta Chervona Kalina last week in the York Theatre here the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians scored their second great cultural triumph within a year. During the B.C. Centennial year. the great Ukrainian Festival staged by the AUUC was the most outstanding eul- tural presentation of working- class effort in the whole cen- tennial prognam of events, winning wide acclaim - from many circles. : Now comes the premiere performance of Chervena Ka- lina, an operetta written to mark the 300th anniversary of friendship and brotherhood between the Ukrainian and Russian people, a friéndship which was not won without bitter struggle. : The players were working men and women* of Vancou- ver, the language Ukrainian, but the vitality, spontaniety, and the simple “naturalness” which the actors put into their effort, made it compar- atively easy. for the non- Ukrainian to grasp the beauty and dramatic force of the play. Throughout the three acts of Chervona Kalina, depict- ing the bitter “struggles of 2 the Russian and Ukrainian peoples of the 17th century there were many inspiring Ukrainian and Russiam songs and dances, accompanied by a fine string orchestra under the direttion of Karl Kobylan- sky, which lifted the most stoic to a meod of high en- thusiasm. While the whole cast of 20 - or more turned in fine per- formances, “grandfather” An- thony Citulski and “lJandlord” Ben. Sochasky contributed a standard of dramatic artistry seldom attributed to the tal- ents of ordinary working men. Mrs. O. Frick who played the role of “Baba” and Ed Honcharuk as a Polish land- lord also demonstrated a high artistic ability. .As Stanley Bligh of the Vancouver Sun put it: ; “A purely amateur produc- tion, its performance had the real feeling of folk optra.” During its three-night: run at the York Theatre Chervona Kalina was attended by ap- proximately one thousand people, and which, in itself is : a tribute to the AUUC for its continued and ~ outstanding © contributions to the enrich- ment of our national culture, TOM McEWEN. June 5, 1959 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 5