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104 5 As international concerns about population growth were developing in the mid 1960s, concerns were also mounting about population growth within the United States. In the same 1966 article in which he stated that population growth in India and other third-world nations “jeopardized the existence of civilization,” General William Draper also blamed population growth for two pressing problems within the United States. The first was poverty, especially urban poverty. In many American cities, poverty and public welfare had become “a way of life” because both white and black migrants from the countryside “brought higher birth rates which are characteristic of all rural families.” As with India, Draper suggested that there was something to fear: studies showed, he said, that “delinquent boys were found to come from larger families.” Additionally, Draper blamed population growth for a problem that was seemingly unrelated to poverty: the crowding of national parks and other outdoor recreation areas. “Soon the day may come,” he wrote, “when we will have to make a reservation five years ahead even to drive in a massive traffic jam through the gates of a national park.” Many causes might be put forward, but “the real pressure on our irreplaceable natural resources,” he emphasized, came from “the pressure of people.” During the 1950s and especially the 1960s, Americans began to “feel” crowded not just globally but within the United States, as well.1 The “Chinification” of American Cities, Suburbs, and Wilderness [Because of population growth, Americans will face] “increased crime, gambling, sexual promiscuity, riots, air and water pollution, traffic congestion , noise and lack of solitude. More and more there will be ‘no place to hide.’” —Irving Bengelsdorf, Los Angeles Times, 1965 “Chinification has already begun right here at home.” —William and Paul Paddock, 1971 “CHINIFICATION” OF AMERICA 105 During these decades, the United States, like many third-world countries, experienced unprecedented population growth. This growth came as a surprise. When William Vogt and Fairfield Osborn wrote their books in 1948, the great “baby boom” had already started, but no one knew that it would last, which is ultimately what made it distinctive. The massive increase in birth rates did not peak until 1957, and ended only in 1964. During this “fertility splurge,” Americans of all races and regions had more children on average, starting at a younger age. All told, the boom added nearly ninety million children, during a period of little immigration. In 1950, the U.S. population stood at 152 million; in 1960, at 181 million; in 1970, at 205 million—a one-third gain in twenty years.2 This postwar population growth, unique among industrial powers, changed American culture: in the 1950s, according to one historian, it made the United States into “a child-centered nation.” In later years, as this huge generation became teenagers and then college-aged, American life shifted according to their interests and concerns.3 At the same time, other demographic trends also reshaped the United States. Ethnic neighborhoods dispersed, and “ethnics” turned into “whites.” African Americans joined other rural residents moving to cities, sending urban and semi-urban populations dramatically upward. In 1945, more than half of all Americans lived on farms or in towns of fewer than 10,000 people. By 1970, nearly 75 percent lived in or near communities much larger than that—many in gargantuan metropolitan areas like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Much of this urban growth was uneven: African Americans clustered into inner cities, but most growth occurred in new suburbs on the outer ring of cities. Some urban centers grew, but by 1970, roughly half were losing numbers. By this time, the United States had become one of the world’s most decentralized industrial societies.4 In these years of rapid growth and change, among the loudest critics of population growth were the environmental Malthusians, an important strand of a group coming to be called environmentalists. Downplaying other often more moderate explanations, they increasingly saw population growth as the core problem behind the threats to American “quality of life”: the poverty and violence in inner cities and the crowding and dysfunction in suburbs, parks, and wilderness areas. “Underlying it all,” two environmentalists wrote in 1967, was humanity’s “breeding fervor.” In these arguments, the international often overlapped with the local. Many environmental Malthusians, for instance, worried about the “Chinification” of the United States—the loss of quality of life because of too much quantity of life. In the years following Rachel Carson’s attack on...

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