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CHAPTER VI.

MALTHUSIANISM IN WAGES-THE LAW OF POPULATION.

To the situation reached at the close of the last chapter let us now apply the law of population known by the name of the English writer who, if he did not discover the principles underlying it, at least called and compelled general attention to them.

The reader will have noted that in tracing the gradual increase in numbers of the agricultural community whose experiences formed the subject of the last chapter, the additional laborers for whom room and work were found were in all cases called in from abroad, and that these laborers were taken as without families, or at least that women and children were in no way introduced into the narrative. This was because we were then only concerned with the industrial capabilities of the square-mile tract under consideration.

But now let us change the supposition. The addition of laborers shall be through the growth to maturity of the children of the first residents. All the conditions will remain substantially the same, through the whole course of settlement and improvement, until we reach the stage of "diminishing returns." Here the difference between the two modes of accession begins, and here Malthusianism applies for the first time. In the last chapter our supposition was that when the point was reached where the number of laborers was as great

as could be employed upon the land to advantage —that is, without a reduction of the per-capita crop— the existing body of laborers would refuse to receive further accessions, and thus stop at the limit of the highest individual product. But how will it be if the accessions are by the arrival at maturity of the children of the laborers themselves? Will that mode of increase be checked so easily, surely, and, one might say, automatically, when the real interests of the laborer demand that no more shall be admitted to the land now tilled to its highest per-capita capability? Mr. Malthus answers, No; and his great reputation rests on his searching investigation of the principles of population, and his conclusive statement that population has tended, at least under past human conditions, to disregard the moral inhibition contained in the fact of diminishing returns, and to increase thereafter faster than subsistence, and even to persist in that increase, while food became more scant, meagre, and unnourishing, until at last the one sufficient check was applied by disease and famine.

Population, said Mr. Malthus, increases in a geometrical ratio, while subsistence increases in an arithmetical ratio only. What, now, is the characteristic of geometrical as contrasted with arithmetical increase? It is that the increase itself increases. Thus, in a series of seven terms, we might have:

Arithmetical, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14.

Geometrical, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128.

Here, in the former series, the actual difference between the sixth and seventh terms is the same as that between the first and second, namely, 2. In the latter series, the difference between the first and second terms is also 2, while between the sixth and seventh it is 64. This tremendous leap from term to term is due to the fact that the increase between the first and second terms becomes itself the cause of increase between the second and third terms; and this increase, in turn, becomes the cause of corre

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sponding increase between the third and fourth, and so on to the end. Whereas in the arithmetical series we may say that the entire increase comes out of the original first term, and all the successive increments remain themselves barren.

Mankind, like every other species of animals, said Mr. Malthus, tend to increase in a geometrical ratio. Speaking broadly, every human pair, no matter in what term of the series appearing, has the same capability of reproduction as the original pair, and has the same likelihood of an equally numerous offspring, after the same number of generations, as Adam and Eve are credited with. It is in this fact of a reproductive capability in the descendant equal to that of the ancestor that Mr. Malthus found the possibilities of perpetual poverty, misery, and vice among the human race. At this point, however, it needs to be observed that the mere fact of children being born to every human pair on earth does not of itself meet the conditions of Mr. Malthus's reasoning. Mr. Greg, in his Social Enigmas, has written as if Malthusianism presented the issue whether people should have children or not. But it is plain—almost too plain, indeed, to be formally stated that every human pair might have one child, and yet the race become extinct in a few generations; might have two children, yet no increase of population result, the children only supplying the parents' places in the social and industrial order; nay, as a large proportion of those who are born do, and seemingly must, in the present state of sanitary and medical science, die before reaching maturity, and as many who survive do, from one cause or another, remain single, every married pair might have three children, and yet there be no increase. Surely these facts dispose of Mr. Greg's sentimental grievance.

The doctrine of Malthus, then, assumes an average number of children to a family sufficient, after allowance for infant mortality, celibacy, and exceptional sterility, to yield a net increase in each generation. As matter of fact

Mr. Malthus' assumes in excess of four children to a family as the average under conditions where neither "vice, misery, nor moral restraint" appear to check the natural progress of population. The validity of the theory does not, however, depend on the specific ratio taken. Given only a number of children sufficient to yield a net increase, however slight, in each generation, with an undiminished reproductive capability in each married pair, we have the conditions of a geometrical progression. And the capabilities of a geometrical progression when persisted in are simply tremendous. "The elephant," says Mr. Darwin, "is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals, and I have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum rate of natural increase. It will be safest to assume that it begins breeding when thirty years old, and goes on breeding till ninety years old, bringing forth six young in the interval, and surviving till one hundred years old; if this be so, after a period of from seven hundred and forty to seven hundred and fifty years there would be alive nearly nineteen million elephants descended from the first pair. . . . Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twentyfive years, and at this rate in a few thousand years there would literally not be standing-room for his progeny.

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But how would it be meanwhile with subsistence? In saying that this tends to increase in an arithmetical ratio only, Mr. Malthus did not deny an inherent capability in vegetable life to reproduce itself far more rapidly than it is given to most species of animals to do. "Wheat, we know," says Prof. Senior, "is an annual, and its average power of reproduction perhaps about six for one; on that supposition, the produce of a single acre might cover the globe in fourteen years." Here, surely, is geometrical and geographical progression with a vengeance! Why, then, assert for vegetable life a power of arithmetical progression only?

1 The Principle of Population, i. 474-6.
* The Origin of Species, chap. iii.

3 Pol. Econ., p. 30.

The justification of this will be found in the last words of the extract just given: the globe would be covered,' and that in fourteen years, by the increase of a single acre of this comparatively unprolific cereal. There are weeds, and even useful plants, whose rate of increase would allow them to overspread the earth in half that time. Mr. Malthus's theory assumes the earth generally occupied and cultivated, in its fertile parts at least. From this point on, all increase of vegetable food must be made against an increasing resistance, and hence can only be obtained through the expenditure of constantly-increasing force. After the condition of "diminishing returns" described in the preceding chapter has been reached, every addition to the crop is obtained at the cost of more than a proportional amount of labor. Thus the share of each laborer becomes smaller and still smaller, as, through the persistence of the sexual instincts, population continues to increase. "The diminishing productiveness of the land, as compared with the undiminished power of human fecundity, forms the basis of the Malthusian theory."

From my own analysis of the doctrine of Mr. Malthus, I

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Throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand, but has been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear them."-Malthus, The Principle of Population, i. 3.

L'accroisement des moyens d'existence et l'accroisement du capital ont nécessairement des limites dans un espace de temps donné. Au contraire, l'accroisement de la population est pour ainsi dire illimité.

Si donc, entre ces deux productions extrêmement inégales, la prévoyance humaine ne s'interpose, une calamité est imminente.” -M. Chevalier, 7ème Discours, d'Overture du cours de l'année, 1846–7.

2 "The same power that doubles the population of Kentucky, Illinois, and New South Wales every five-and-twenty years, exists everywhere, and is equally energetic in England, France, and Holland." -J. R. McCulloch, Pol. Econ. 226.

3 Prof. Rickards, Population and Capital, p. 127.

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