Some reflections on the "Population Problem"

It always confuses me how, on the one hand, so many people must stay without resources and with all sorts of man-made dangers in a city, while the countryside has such vast expanses of land we pass by in buses or trains, or which we see from planes. Upon a little thinking, I see that in cities itself there are such stretches of resource that are utilizable, but generally guarded by a man, or a lock, or by something hard or fierce. So often has one heard that there are simply too many people. If one were sincere in saying that, and ashamed of it as one seemed, one would have to be ashamed of oneself's being born, of his being one of the too many. But that is something unacceptable to the most hard-core believer of this one-too-many philosophy, and hence we must leave him at that. It is worth asking if by bearing a few children lesser, a poor man would be any less poorer than he would otherwise be. For him, poverty is already a condition, with which he must cope. In such a state, it is difficult to decide whether the more children one has are more mouths or more hands.