liberal in their allowances to a large family, with the practical effect of making the father of many children often able to procure more indulgences for himself without working than he could have got by hard work if he had been unmarried or had only a small family. Those who availed themselves most of this bounty, were naturally the laziest and meanest of the people, those with least self-respect and enterprise. So although there was in the manufacturing towns a fearful mortality, particularly of infants, the quantity of the people increased fast; but its quality improved little, if at all, till the passing of the New Poor Law in 1834. Since that time the rapid growth of the town population has, as we shall see in the next Chapter, tended to increase mortality; but this has been counteracted by the growth of temperance, of medical knowledge, of sanitation and of general cleanliness. Emigration has increased, the age of marriage has been slightly raised, and a somewhat less proportion of the whole population are married; but, on the other hand, the ratio of births to a marriage has risen; the net result being that population has grown nearly steadily.

§ 5. Early in this century, when wages were low and wheat was dear, the working classes generally spent Modern causes more than half their income on bread: and con- affecting marsequently a rise in the price of wheat diminished riage-rate. marriages very much among them: that is, it diminished very much the number of marriages by banns. But it raised the income of many members of the well-to-do classes, and therefore often increased the number of marriages by license. Since however these were but a small part of the whole, the net effect was to lower the marriage-rate. But as time went on, the price of wheat fell and wages rose, till now the working classes spend on the average less than a quarter of their incomes on bread; and in consequence the variations of commercial prosperity have got to exercise a preponderating influence on the marriage-rate.

Since 1873 though the average real income of the population of England has indeed been increasing, its rate of increase has been less than in the preceding years. But meanwhile there has been a great fall of prices, and consequently a great fall in the money-incomes of many classes of society; and people are governed in their calculations as to whether they can afford to marry or not, more by the money income which they expect to be able to get, than by elaborate calculations of changes in its purchasing power. The standard of living therefore among the working classes has been rising rapidly, perhaps more rapidly than at any other time in English history: their household expenditure measured in money has remained about stationary, and measured in goods has increased very fast. The English marriage-rate fell from 8.8 per 1000 in 1873, to 7·1 in 1886, the lowest rate that has occurred since civil registration began; but it has again somewhat risen to 7.5 in 1895.1

1 The latter half of Principles IV. iv. contains a good many statistical tables relating to the growth of population in England, and to a comparison of the birth, death, and marriage-rates of different countries of the Western world. It is seen that the marriage-rate is generally highest where the number of early marriages is the greatest; and so also is the fecundity of marriages. The general mortality is high wherever the birth-rate is high. The marriagerate, the birth-rate and the death-rate are diminishing in almost every country; in spite of the unexpected fact that the percentage of bridegrooms who are not over twenty-five years of age is increasing in nearly every country, for which the figures are given.

Taking the present population of the world at one and a half thousand millions; and assuming that its present rate of increase (about 8 per 1000 annually, see Mr Ravenstein's paper before the British Association in 1890) will continue, we find that in less than two hundred years it will amount to six thousand millions; or at the rate of about 200 to the square mile of fairly fertile land. But if as is probable there are meanwhile great improvements in the arts of agriculture, the pressure of population on the means of subsistence may not be much felt during those two centuries. If however the same rate of increase be continued till the year 2400, the population will then be 1000 for every mile of fairly fertile land: and, so far as we can see now, the diet of such a population must needs be in the main vegetarian.

CHAPTER V.

THE HEALTH AND STRENGTH OF THE POPULATION.

WE have next to consider the conditions on which

ciency.

§ 1. depend health and strength, physical, mental and The basis of moral. They are the basis of industrial effici- industrial effiency, on which the production of material wealth depends; while on the other hand the chief importance of material wealth lies in the fact that, when wisely used, it increases the health and strength, physical, mental and moral of the human race.

In many occupations industrial efficiency requires little else than physical vigour; that is, muscular strength, Physical a good constitution and energetic habits. In strength. estimating muscular, or indeed any other kind of strength for industrial purposes, we must take account of the number of hours in the day, of the number of days in the year, and the number of years in the lifetime, during which it can be exerted. But with this precaution we can measure a man's muscular exertion by the number of feet through which his work would raise a pound weight, if it were applied directly to this use; or in other words by the number of "foot pounds" of work that he does1.

1 This measure can be applied directly to most kinds of navvies' and porters' work, and indirectly to many kinds of agricultural work. In a controversy that was waged after the great agricultural lock-out as to the relative efficiency of unskilled labour in the South and North of England, the most trustworthy measure was found in the number of tons of material that a man would load into a cart in a day.

In backward countries, particularly where there is not much use of horses or other draught animals, a great part of men's and women's work may be measured fairly well by the muscular exertion involved in it. But in England less than one-sixth of the industrial classes are now engaged on work of this kind; while the force exerted by steam-engines alone is more than twenty times as much as could be done by the muscles of all Englishmen.

vigour.

Although the power of sustaining great muscular exertion General seems to rest on constitutional strength and other physical conditions, yet even it depends also on force of will, and strength of character. Energy of this kind, which may perhaps be taken to be the strength of the man, as distinguished from that of his body, is moral rather than physical; but yet it depends on the physical condition of nervous strength'. This strength of the man himself, this resolution, energy and self-mastery, or in short this "vigour" is the source of all progress: it shows itself in great deeds, in great thoughts and in the capacity for true religious feeling.

§ 2. In discussing the growth of numbers a little has been said incidentally of the causes which determine length of life but they are in the main the same as those which determine constitutional strength and vigour, and they will occupy our attention again in the present chapter.

climate.

The first of these causes is the climate. A warm climate Influence of is not altogether hostile to high intellectual and artistic work but it prevents people from being able to endure very hard exertion of any kind continued for a long time.

Climate has also a large share in determining the neces

The necessa

ries of life.

saries of life; the first of which is food. Food must supply the nitrogenous and other elements that

1 This must be distinguished from nervousness, which, as a rule, indicates a general deficiency of nervous strength; though sometimes it proceeds from nervous irritability or want of balance.

are required to build up growing tissues and to repair the waste of the body. It must also afford heat, some of which can be converted into muscular force; and for this purpose carbonaceous food, when it can be properly digested, is the cheapest'. Much also depends on the proper preparation of food, and a skilled housewife with ten shillings a week to spend on food will often do more for the health and strength of her family than an unskilled one with twenty. The great infant mortality among the poor is largely due to the want of care and judgment in preparing their food; and those who do not entirely succumb to this want of motherly care often grow with enfeebled constitutions. Even in London in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the mortality was eight per cent. greater when corn was dear than when it was cheap: and though the increase of wealth and of charity and the constant supply of cheap foreign corn has caused the worst effects of hunger to cease, yet the want of fitting food is still a frequent cause of that general weakening of the system which renders it unable to resist disease.

up

We have already seen that the necessaries for efficiency vary with the nature of the work to be done, but we must now examine this subject a little more closely.

As regards muscular work in particular, there is a close connection between the supply of food that a man has, and his available strength. If the work is intermittent, as that of some dock labourers, a cheap but nutritious grain diet is sufficient. But for very heavy continuous strain, such as is involved in puddlers' and the hardest navvies' Other material work, food is required which can be digested and necessaries. assimilated even when the body is tired. This quality is still more essential in the food of the higher grades of labour which involve increased nervous strain, though the quantity required is generally small.

1 The nitrogenous elements are most easily got from animal food. They exist also in vegetable foods; but not in a form that is so easily digested.