EARTH’S POPULATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 September 1927, Page 5

EARTH’S POPULATION

A PESSIMISTIC PROFESSOR. 'Australian and N.Z. Cable Association., GENEVA, August 31. There were two hundred scientists, statesmen, economists and Government officials present at the opening of the first International World Population Conference, which it is expected will result in the establishment of a permanent International organisation to study one of the most fundamental , problems facing mankind, seeing the size of the earth and its capacity to support human beings are limited, while populations are continually growing, creating social economic and political situations which are threatening most profoundly to alter and possibly wreck the present civilisation. ~ j Professor East (Harvard University) expressed the opinion that at the present rate of increase, the earth’s population, within a century, would reach five thousand millions, which was the utmost the earth was capable of supporting. He advocated the immediate formation of an International Union to establish a just peace between peoples, founded on the basic instincts of nutrition and reproduction. .

NEW AUSTRALIANS. FROM SOUTHERN EUROPE. GENEVA, Sept. 31. “Australia, in the early future, is likely to become a spacious asylum for the reception of oyer-crowded peoples, particularly rural settlers from Southern East Europe. The decision of the United States to forbid extensive immigration may divert to Australia as many migrants as can be absorbed." ' ■

This passage occurred in a paper by. Mr. John. Walter Gregory, formerly Professor of Geology at Melbourne, read at the World’s Population Conference.

Mr. Gregory expressed the opinion that the United States’ quota restriction was arbitrary and unscientific. It should have been based on the density of, its own population and supporting power of the country or origin. There was no biological support for the idea that inter-marriage of Italians with Northern, Eastern and Western Europeans produced inferior progeny.