ABSTRACT
Wilhelm Roepke was an unusual free-market economist working in a difficult time. The task facing the modern economist, Roepke said, was to eliminate "the sterile alternative" between a return to nineteenth century laissez-faire and twentieth century collectivism. Indeed, Roepke held an almost religious faith in the transformative power of the private garden. Roepke's analysis of and prescription for the social crisis of his age involved troubling paradoxes or dilemmas over the natural family. Roepke did recognize on occasion the reality of antinatalist tendencies in modern life. Roepke denounced the "blindness", the "criminal optimism", and the "strange mixture of statistics and lullabies" which overlooked the dangers of expanding human numbers. He denied the "bold theory" that it was population growth "which imparts dynamism to the industrial counties". This flooding of the earth with a "mass" was "bound to stamp its mass character" on the whole civilization.
