diminishing returns does not apply directly to mechanical industry. Yet, inasmuch as the materials of that industry are all of an agricultural origin, or at least are all taken from the soil, the cost of manufactured products will inevitably be enhanced in consequence. All, however, will not rise equally from this cause. Those in which the cost of the material is relatively small may for a long time decline in price in spite of "diminishing returns;" those in which the cost of the material is relatively large may increase steadily in spite of mechanical inventions and improve

ments.

In 1832 Mr. Babbage stated' that pig-lead to the value of £1 became worth when manufactured into

Copper of the value of £1 became worth when manu

Metallic cloth, 10,000 meshes to the square inch.... 52.23

Bar-iron of the value of £1 became worth when manufactured into

Now, it is evident that the part of the cost of the nearly £1000 of sword-handles, instanced by Mr. Babbage, which is affected by the law of diminishing returns, is the few

1 1 Economy of Manufactures, pp. 163, 164.

shillings' worth of pig-iron originally taken plus the few shillings' worth of coal necessary to produce the power and the melting and the tempering heat for the successive processes of manufacture. With the progress of chemical and mechanical discovery, therefore, the cost of the swordhandle and the penknife-blade will approach that of the horseshoe and the nail-iron. The efficiency of human labor, again, in the production of wheat may have increased sixfold since the days of the Odyssey; the efficiency of labor in converting that wheat into bread, as M. Chevalier computes it, has been multiplied one hundred and forty-four times. The efficiency of labor in producing wool may have increased four-fold in this long period, but many living men have seen the efficiency of labor in rendering wool into cloth multiplied fifty-fold.

So far, then, as human wants can be met by the elaboration of the crude materials furnished by the earth, satisfactions (to use the term which Bastiat's writings have brought so much into vogue) may be multiplied almost indefinitely, not in spite of, but partly in consequence of, the increase of population. The mechanic of to-day, if his wages yield something over the demands of physical maintenance, may purchase with the balance luxuries, in one of a thousand forms, which two hundred years ago would have tasked the means of the wealthiest banker. The wife of a common laborer may wear fabrics which would once have excited the admiration of a court. But, after all, the great bulk of the consumption of the working classes must be in coarse forms of agricultural produce simply prepared. It matters little to the laborer that for a few pence additional he may have his cotton wrought into exquisite designs which a century ago would have required months for their elaboration, if the pence he has are not enough to buy a sufficient weight of cotton to keep him and his children warm. His main concern is with the cost of grains and meats, of cotton and wool, of iron and wood; and to these, in their simplest forms, the law of diminish.

ing returns applies with a stringency that never relaxes. "If the fact were otherwise. . . the science of political economy, as it at present exists, would be as completely revolutionized as if human nature itself were altered.""

'J. E. Cairnes, Logical Method, etc., p. 36.

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 cropthe 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