Paul Hoffman Misses A Few

Subsidized by the Lasker Foundation, Paul Hoffman has produced a pamphlet which is being distributed free of charge by the Committee for International Economic Growth, a pamphlet weighted down with the stupendous title: One Hundred Countries and One and One-Quarter Billion People: How to Speed Their Economic Growth and Ours—in the 1960’s. Mr. Hoffman’s product might have been more “bold and imaginative” if he had employed better informed geographers or had one of his secretaries carefully consult the most recent edition of the World Almanac. Though he is burning with zeal to “speed the economic growth” of all the “underdeveloped” nations and peoples on earth before the human migration to the planets of outer space starts, his list of these nations and peoples, under the heading of “Countries and Territories,” adds up to only 100. A footnote indicates his awareness of a few others; but, even so, his vision is still far from comprehensive. For example, he does not mention Andorra, Monaco, Muscat, Oman, Kuwait, Quatar, or the seven Trucial Sheikdoms, or Iceland, Greenland, and hundreds of other islands, large and small, that dot the world’s great oceans.

However, I observe in particular and with some regret that his list does embrace Borneo and New Guinea. For if the inhabitants of those islands are to be uplifted by his aspiring global program, the “wild man from Borneo” and the Negrito pigmy of New Guinea will no longer profit from their constant exhibition in the sideshows of our circuses where their presence is accustomed to delight the many thousands, young and old, who have paid the requisite fee. Moreover, if the primitives of Borneo and New Guinea are to receive this benevolence, why should those of Tahiti, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia and the Solomons—not to mention thousands of others—be neglected?

JR

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J. Fred Rippy

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Subsidized by the Lasker Foundation, Paul Hoffman has produced a pamphlet which is being distributed free of charge by the Committee for International Economic Growth, a pamphlet weighted down with the stupendous title: One Hundred Countries and One and One-Quarter Billion People: How to Speed Their Economic Growth and Ours—in the 1960’s. Mr. Hoffman’s product might have been more “bold and imaginative” if he had employed better informed geographers or had one of his secretaries carefully consult the most recent edition of the World Almanac. Though he is burning with zeal to “speed the economic growth” of all the “underdeveloped” nations and peoples on earth before the human migration to the planets of outer space starts, his list of these nations and peoples, under the heading of “Countries and Territories,” adds up to only 100. A footnote indicates his awareness of a few others; but, even so, his vision is still far from comprehensive. For example, he does not mention Andorra, Monaco, Muscat, Oman, Kuwait, Quatar, or the seven Trucial Sheikdoms, or Iceland, Greenland, and hundreds of other islands, large and small, that dot the world’s great oceans.

However, I observe in particular and with some regret that his list does embrace Borneo and New Guinea. For if the inhabitants of those islands are to be uplifted by his aspiring global program, the “wild man from Borneo” and the Negrito pigmy of New Guinea will no longer profit from their constant exhibition in the sideshows of our circuses where their presence is accustomed to delight the many thousands, young and old, who have paid the requisite fee. Moreover, if the primitives of Borneo and New Guinea are to receive this benevolence, why should those of Tahiti, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia and the Solomons—not to mention thousands of others—be neglected?