America's most successful monopolies have never had much room in their enormous, profitable hearts for the individual. Lately, the nation should be warned, they have established a strange, plainly menacing conspiracy to dismantle individual identity and replace it with a number.

The telephone company, one of the most awesome monopolies of them all, has stepped up its program of numerifying its subscribers with total-digit dialing, a truly ugly business. The Department of Defense, clutching its monopoly over selective service, has long regarded the populace as a vast network of draft numbers. Other government agencies holding other monopolies are beginning to follow suit.

The worst of these is the United States Post Office Department. A few years ago they instituted zone numbers and now the second step in their program is revealed in the form of the heinous ZIP Code. In order to head off the loosely organized foes of numerification, the post office is carrying on a large-scale public relations program, including the biggest mass mailing in history. They have even gone so far as to devise a little ZIP Code anthem, arranged for the music of "Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah," a sacred tune which once signified the beauty of life.

But any link between the beauty of life and this flagrant numerification is a decidedly tenuous one. There was a time when identification by number was punishment reserved for criminals alone; now it has become the lot of every individual. This is an evil tendency which should surely be resisted.