Catastrophe By The Numbers

Sir: A much stronger word than Congratulations is needed to express my admiration and gratitude for your publishing Charlton Ogburn’s article “Catastrophe by the Numbers” (December, 1969). It is most lucid and courageous. That it should appear first in AMERICAN HERITAGE is indeed a magnificent testimony to your genuine concern not only for our country’s heritage but for its future.

It is inevitable that some will remonstrate— those who are a part of that all too large a group who prefer the pleasant world of fantasy to the harsh world of reality. Others, thanks to you, will for the first time be enabled to see the horrors of overpopulation as an American problem. For too long our simplistic concern for the hungry masses of India has blinded us to the crisis in our own back yard.