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CAMBRIDGE ECONOMIC HANDBOOKS.
GENERAL EDITOR: J. M. KEYNES, M.A., C.B.
POPULATION
LATION
BY
HAROLD WRIGHT
MA.
PEMUUOKE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
WITH A PREFACE BY
J. M. KEYNES
M.A., C.B.
FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMUIUDGE
ILon&on
NISBET & CO. LTD.
Cambrtc-ge
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Hi3
*
7
Co/). t>
First published in ig2j
Reprinted /uly, 1923
All rights reserved
Made and printed In Great Britain at
The Mayflower Press, Plymouth. William Brendon & Son, Ltd.
P«97
PREFACE
A belief in the material progress of mankind is not old.
During the greater part of history such a belief was
neither compatible with experience nor encouraged by
religion. It is doubtful whether, taking one century
with another, there was much variation in the lot of
the unskilled labourer at the centres of civilisation in
the two thousand years from the Greece of Solon to
the England of Charles II or the France of Louis XIV.
Paganism placed the Golden Age behind us ; Christianity
raised Heaven above us ; and anyone, before the middle of
the eighteenth century, who had expected a progressive
improvement in material welfare here, as a result of
the division of labour, the discoveries of science and
the boundless fecundity of the species, would have
been thought very eccentric.
In the eighteenth century, for obscure reasons which
economic historians have not yet sufficiently explored,
material progress commenced over wide areas in a
decided and cumulative fashion not previously experi-
enced. Philosophers were ready with an appropriate
superstition, and before the century was out Priestley's
view was becoming fashionable, that, by the further
division of labour, — " Nature, including both its
materials and its laws, will be more at our command ;
vii
viii PREFACE
men will make their situation in th's world abundantly
more easy and comfortable ; they will prolong their
existence in it and will grow daily more happy."
It was against the philosophers of this school that
Malthus directed his Essay. Its arguments impressed
his reasonable contemporaries, and the interruption to
progress by the Napoleonic wars supplied a favourable
atmosphere. But as the nineteenth century proceeded,
the tendency to material progress reasserted itself.
Malthus was forgotten or discredited. The cloud was
lifted ; the classical Economists dethroned ; and the
opinions of the Vicar of Wakefield, who " was ever of
opinion that the honest man who married and brought
up a large family did more service than he who continued
single and only talked of population," and of Adam
Smith, who held that " the most decisive mark of the
prosperity of any country is the increase of the number
of its inhabitants," almost recovered their sway.
Nevertheless, the interruption to prosperity by the
war, corresponding to the similar interruption a hundred
years before, has again encouraged an atmosphere of
doubt ; and there are some who have a care. The most
interesting question in the world (of those at least to
which time will bring us an answer) is whether, after a
short interval of recovery, material progress will be
resumed, or whether, on the other hand, the magnificent
episode of the nineteenth century is over.
In this volume of the Cambridge Economic Handbooks
Mr. Harold Wright summarises the data, and outlines
the main features of the Problem of Population. It is
no part of the purpose of this Series to present ready-
made conclusions. Our object is to aid and stimulate
PREFACE ix
study. The topic of this particular volume is one about
which it is difficult, for anyone who has given much
thought to it, not to feel strongly. But Mr. Wright has
avoided propagandism and has been concerned to display
in a calm spirit the extraordinary interest, difficulty and
importance of his subject, rather than to advocate any
definite policies. His object will have been accomplished
if he can do something to direct the thoughts of a few
more students to what is going to be not merely an
economist's problem, but, in the near future, the
greatest of all social questions,- — a question which will
arouse some of the deepest instincts and emotions of
men, and about which feeling may run as passionately
as in earlier struggles between religions. A great
transition in human history will have begun when
civilised man endeavours to assume conscious control
in his own hands, away from the blind instinct of mere
predominant survival.
J. M. KEYNES.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
EARLY POPULATION THEORIES
PAGE
§ 1. Introductory ....... 1
§2. Greek and Roman Population Theories . . 3
§ 3. The Influence or the Early Christians . 6
§ 4. Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Writers
on Population Problems .... 7
§5. The Introduction of Vital Statistics . . 11
§ (5. The Forerunners of Malthus .... 14
CHAPTER II
MALTHUS
§ 1. An Essay on the Principle of Population . 21
§ 2. The Malthusian Argument . . . .23
§ 3. The Law of Diminishing Returns ... 30
§ 4. The Relevance of the Malthusian Argument 34
to Present Circumstances ....
§ 5. An Important Development .... 38
CHAPTER III
POPULATION THEORIES IN CHANCING
CIRCUMSTANCES
§ 1. Why Malthus had many Disciples . . 41
§2. How Diminishing Returns Revealed Themselves 44
§ 3. Reaction against Malthus and Ricardo . 40
§ 4. J. S. Mill's View of Population Problems . 50
§ 5. A Criticism of Mill's view . . . .52
§ 6. The Return to Malthus ..... 55
xi
xu
CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV
FOOD AND RAW MATERIALS
§ 1. Analogy between a Shrinking Earth and a
Growing Population .....
§ 2. The Transference of Resources in War-time .
§ 3. The Pressure of Population upon Subsistence
§ 4. The Economic Advantages of a Growing Popu
lation .......
§ 5. The Supply of Raw Cotton
§ 6. The Supply of Wool ....
§ 7. Fisheries ......
CO
02
05
07
72
74
70
CHAPTER V
COAL AND IRON
§ 1. Jevons and the Coal Question
§ 2. The Meaning of " Exhaustion "
§ 3. The Influence of Protection
§ 4. The World's Coal Reserves
§ 5. The Export Trade in Coal
§ 0. Substitutes for Coal
§ 7. Iron ....
§ 8. Great Britain's Problem .
78
83
80
88
91
92
95
97
§1.
§2.
§3.
§4.
§5.
§6.
§7.
CHAPTER VI
THE GROWTH OF POPULATION
Changes in the Birth-rate .... 101
Changes in the Death-rate . . . .104
The Relative Influence of Birth-rate and
Death-rate upon the Growth of Population 105
Preventive Checks to Population . .108
Under-Population ...... 109
A Falling Birth-rate . . . . .110
Some Explanations of the Decline in the
Birth-rate . . . . . . .113
CONTENTS
Xlll
§ 8. Variations in the Birth-rate between
Different Classes . . . . .115
§ 9. Other Factors Influencing the Birth-rate . 117
§ 10. The Importance of the Decline in the Birth-
rate . . . . . . • .119
CHAPTER VII
INTERNATIONAL POPULATION PROBLEMS
§ 1.
The Influence of Nationality
121
§ 2.
Japan and India .
122
§ 3.
TnE Big Four .
125
§ *.
The United States
125
§ 5.
The British Empire
126
§ 6.
France
127
§ 7.
Germany .
129
§ 8.
Russia
. 131
§ 9.
War and Population
. 132
§10.
War and Subsistence
. 136
§ 11-
Emigration
. 142
§12.
The Danger to Civilisat
ION
. 149
CHAPTER VIII
THE QUALITY OF POPULATION
§ 1. Introductory ....... 151
§ 2. Why there are more Women than Men . 151
§ 3. The Fertility of Different Classes . . 153
§ 4. A Cause of the High Birth-rate among the
Poor ........ 156
§ 5. Eugenic Considerations ..... 157
§6. Present Limitations of Eugenics. . . . 161
§ 7. The Relative Importance of Heredity and
Environment . . . . . . .162
§ 8. The Relation between Quantity and Quality
of Population . . . . . .163
XIV
CONTENTS
CHAPTER IX
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
§ 1. Recapitulatory
§2. A Forecast by Maltijus .
§ 3. The World's Resources .
§ 4. The Way Out ....
§ 5. Possible Scientific Developments
§ 6. The Value of Discussion
TAOE
168
170
171
172
173
176
POPULATION
CHAPTER I
EARLY POPULATION THEORIES
" Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this
is new ? It hath been already of old time, which was
before us." t? 1 ■ , m
hcclesiastcs 1. 10.
§ 1. Introductory. " The view once widely held that
the principle of population must inevitably keep the
mass of the people close to the verge of the bare means
of subsistence was no statement of a desirable ideal.
It was a nightmare ; a nightmare none the less, though
it may haunt us yet." So wrote Mr. Henderson in the
first volume of this series ; and it is the purpose of this,
the fifth volume, to explain what is meant by " the
principle of population " ; to examine its validity as a
universal economic law, and to enquire how far the
truth in this matter is a menace to the progress of
mankind ; a nightmare which must haunt us yet.
Economists have often been accused of being too
little guided by the actual experience of mankind.
Sometimes, no doubt, they have been guilty of this .
2 POPULATION
fault. At other times, however, the tendency has been
to err in the other direction and to mistake the peculiar
conditions of a particular period in the evolution of
lyiman society for the permanent and inevitable results
of the working of economic laws. This latter tendency
has always been very much in evidence with regard to
questions about population. When small communities
have sought to maintain exclusive possession of large
and fertile lands, their learned men have naturally
taught them that an increasing population was an
unmixed blessing, since it provided more hands to till
the soil and more soldiers to defend the fields. When,
on the other hand, a community found itself confined
to a certain definite area, and that area was well supplied
with human beings, a wise man would arise and point
out that the means of subsistence were limited and that
a further increase in the population must inevitably
involve hunger and misery, unless an outlet could be
found in other lands. Both doctrines were perfectly
sound in their application to the circumstances of the
particular peoples to whom they were addressed ; but
the doctrines were frequently couched in general terms,
as though they must necessarily apply to all nations at
all times, which they certainly do not. Even T. R.
Malthus, whose essay on The Principle of Population,
first published in 1798, still holds the field as the
classic exposition of this subject, owed much of his
early fame to the special economic circumstances of
Great Britain in the early years of the nineteenth
century, and suffered a partial eclipse owing to
changes which did not in any way invalidate his main
argument.
EARLY POPULATION THEORIES 3
§ 2. Greek and Roman Population Theories. The
ancient Greeks characteristically approached the popula-
tion question from the point of view of the ideal City
State. They made up their minds first as to the number
of citizens that would produce the most satisfactory
political and social unit, and then took steps to keep
the population up to the desired level and to prevent it
from increasing beyond it. They took account of the
quality as well as of the number of citizens, and
endeavoured to eliminate the unfit from their societies.
In Sparta there seems to have been little fear of over-
population, except in regard to the slaves, whose
numbers were kept in check by such devices as in-
fanticide. Frequent wars took their toll of young
freemen, and created an urgent demand for more.
Thus, in Sparta, the State regulations respecting marriage
and procreation were mainly directed towards a high
birth-rate of healthy children. Every Spartan was
expected to marry for the good of the State. Bachelors
were subjected to social indignities as well as to legal
and political disabilities. Marriages were supervised
with a view to the production of children sound in
body and mind, and the fathers of three or more sons
were publicly rewarded.
In Athens, the regulation of marriage was less rigid
than in Sparta. There, too, laws existed against
celibacy ; but in times of peace these were not enforced,
and late marriages were advocated. The Athenian
remedy for over-population was emigration, but
infanticide was also a recognised custom. Malthus
remarks that " when Solon permitted the exposing of
children, it is probable that he only gave the sanction
4 POPULATION
of law to a custom already prevalent " ; adding with
characteristic shrewdness :
" In this permission he had without doubt two ends in
view. First, that which is most obvious, the prevention
of such an excessive population as would cause universal
poverty and discontent ; and, secondly, that of keeping
the population up to the level of what the territory could
support, by removing the terrors of too numerous a family
and consequently the principal obstacle to marriage."
In addition to these two motives, the Greeks were
inclined to look favourably upon infanticide as a
eugenic device ; for weakly or deformed children were
exposed in Sparta by order of the State, a practice which
Plato and Aristotle both approved.
Malthus was clearly justified in saying that in-
fanticide was frequently adopted among primitive
peoples as a means of keeping the population within
the means of subsistence. In Polynesia, for instance,
the islands being small though the climate is favourable
to the production of food, the custom was generally
observed. In the Hawaiian Islands all children after
the third or fourth were strangled or buried alive. At
Tahiti, fathers had the right (and used it) of suffocating
their newly born children. The Areois, in the Society
Islands, imposed infanticide upon the women members
by oath. In fact, although a religious sanction is often
given to the slaughter of infants among savage tribes,
this practice or others restricting increase seem to be
generally prevalent among those peoples who have
reason to fear that their food supply may prove in-
sufficient for their support, while in some countries
infants are destroyed in times of scarcity only. It is
EARLY POPULATION THEORIES 5
therefore reasonable to suppose that some fear of over-
population played a part in originating this custom
among the ancient Greeks.
Infanticide was prevalent among the Romans also,
but it is improbable that the practice was encouraged
by their rulers. As a conquering race they were always
obsessed with the need for soldiers and colonists. Their
legislation respecting marriage and parenthood was
therefore directed towards an increase in population.
As in Sparta, rewards were given to the fathers of
families and penalties imposed upon bachelors. Plutarch
says of Camillus that " as the wars had made many
widows, he obliged such of the men as lived single,
partly by persuasion and partly by threatening them
with fines, to marry the widows." Whether any Roman
Weller stood out against this terrifying edict is not
recorded ! In the early days of the Empire, the popula-
tion question appears to have caused considerable
anxiety. Augustus resorted to elaborate legislation.
He enacted that men and women must be married and
have children before the men were twenty-five and
women twenty. Those who disobeyed this law by
remaining unmarried were disqualified from becoming
heirs or receiving legacies. Those who married but
had no children could receive only half of any property
left to them, and could bequeath only one-tenth of
their property to their widows. On the other hand,
honours and privileges were bestowed upon prolific
parents.
The object of this legislation seems, however, to have
been the preservation of the patrician families rather
than the increase of the numbers of the whole people.
6 POPULATION
If this was the intention, it was defeated by the luxury
and vice that prevailed among the upper classes in
imperial Rome.
§ 3. The Influence of the Early Christians. Early
Christian morality was in its nature a reaction from
the immorality of Rome, and by its insistence upon the
virtues of chastity and virginity it treated marriage as
an inferior state, to be tolerated but not to be encouraged.
There were slight differences between the various sects
and preachers as to the degree to which marriage fell
off from perfection, but all agreed in regarding it as a
concession to human frailty. Political and economic
considerations were completely disregarded by the
Fathers, some of whom did not desire the human race
to continue on the earth. Thus Methodius writing On
Virginity says :
" For the world, while still unfilled with men, was like a
child, and it was necessary that it should first be filled with
these, and so grow to manhood. But when thereafter it
was colonised from end to end, the race of man spreading
to a boundless extent, God no longer allowed man to remain
in the same ways, considering how they might now proceed
from one point to another and advance nearer heaven,
until having attained to the greatest and most exalted
lesson of virginity they should reach to perfection ; that
first they should abandon the intermarriage of brothers
and sisters and marry wives from other families ; and then
that they should no longer have many wives, like brute
beasts as though born for the mere propagation of the
species ; and then that they should not be adulterers ;
and then again that they should go on to continence, and
from continence to virginity, when, having trained them-
selves to despise the flesh, they sail fearlessly into the
peaceful haven of immortahty."
EARLY POPULATION THEORIES 7
The effect of the early Christian view of marriage and
procreation upon imperial policy is shown by the
fifth-century church historian Sozomen, who says that
the Emperor (Constantine) :
" deeming it absurd to attempt the multiplication of the
human species by the care and zeal of man (since nature
always receives increase or decrease according to the fiat
from on high), made a law enjoining that the unmarried
and childless should have the same advantages as the
married. He even bestowed peculiar privileges on those
who embraced a life of continence and virginity."
§ 4. Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Writers on
Population Problems. From this brief survey of the
attitude of the ancient world towards population
problems, we must now jump to modern Europe and
take an equally hasty glance at the views of those
writers who preceded Malthus in the consideration of
these matters.
In Sir Thomas More's Utopia, as in the ideal common-
wealths of the ancient Greeks, it is considered im-
portant to maintain a constant population :
" Lest any city should become either too great or by any
accident be dispeopled, provision is made that none of their
cities may contain more than six thousand persons besides
those of the country round. No family may have less than
ten or more than sixteen children, but there can be no
determined numbers of children under age. This rule is
easily observed by removing some of a more fruitful couple
to any other family that does not so abound in them.
By the same rule they supply cities that do not increase
so fast from others that breed faster ; and if there is any
increase over the whole island they draw out a number of
their citizens from the several towns, and send them over
8 POPULATION
to a neighbouring continent, where . . . they fix a colony.
. . . Such care is taken of the soil that it becomes fruit-
ful enough to supply provisions for all, though it might
otherwise be too narrow and barren."
If the influence of Plato, or his own insight, led Sir
Thomas More to regard excessive population as an evil,
no such calculation was sanctioned by his contemporary,
Luther, whose views on this subject had a profound
influence on the Protestant world, an influence which
is not yet exhausted.
" God," said Luther, " has shown how sufficiently He
cares for us, when He created heaven and earth, all animals
and plants, before He created man. He shows us thus
that He will always provide food and shelter sufficient for
our needs. It is only necessary that we work and do not
remain idle ; we shall assuredly be both clothed and fed.
. . . From all this we draw the conclusion that whoever
finds himself unfitted to remain chaste should make
arrangements betimes and get some work and then dare,
in God's name, to enter into matrimony. A youth should
marry not later than his twentieth year, and a maiden
when she is between fifteen and eighteen years old. Then
they should remain upright and serious and let God provide
the way and means by which their children shall be
nourished."
This pronouncement has shared the fate of many
another striking utterance. It has been stripped of its
qualifying phrases and used as a substitute for common
sense. How many careless parents have cried, " Let
God provide ! " without first taking the precaution of
" making arrangements betimes and getting some work,"
or even remembering to " remain upright and serious."
EARLY POPULATION THEORIES 9
English writers of the early seventeenth century,
seeing destitution and poverty around them, regarded
over-population as a very real thing and a potent cause
of international strife. Thus, Sir Walter Raleigh in his
Discourse of War in General, said :
' When any country is overlaid by the multitude which
live upon it, there is a natural necessity compelling it to
disburden itself and lay the load upon others, by right or
wrong, for (to omit the danger of pestilence, often visiting
them that live in throngs) there is no misery that urgeth
men so violently unto desperate courses and contempt
of death as the torments and threats of famine. Wherefore,
the war that is grounded on general remediless necessity,
may be termed the general and remediless or necessary
3 J
war.
Elsewhere he wrote that the earth would not only be
full, but overflowing with human beings, were it not
for the effect of hunger, pestilence, crime and war, and
of abstinence and artificial sterility.
Bacon and other writers of the period also express
the view that wars are caused by the pressure of popula-
tion on the means of subsistence.
When we come to the next great period in economic
history, however, we find almost every writer on the
subject dwelling upon the advantages of large and
growing populations. The growth of large States,
increasing in power and the love of power, developing
an industrial and commercial life which made the
maintenance of a larger population possible, and
indulging in wars which required a constant supply of
wealth and life to feed them, led inevitably to the
revival of the Roman view that marriage and pro-
10 POPULATION
creation were duties which the citizen owed to the
State. This view was emphasized by the fact that the
Thirty Years War, in which practically the whole of
Europe had been involved during the early part of the
seventeenth century, had depleted the population to an
appalling extent. In Bohemia it is said that only
about 6000 villages out of 35,000 escaped destruction ;
Moravia and Silesia suffered a similar fate ; Bavaria,
Franconia and Swabia were desolated by famine and
disease, while the rest of Germany and Austria fared
little better. " During more than a generation after
the conclusion of the war a full third of the land in
northern Germany was left uncultivated. Cattle and
sheep diminished to an extraordinary extent, and many
once fertile districts became forests inhabited by wolves
and other savage beasts."1
In the course of this war the population of the Empire
is believed to have diminished by at least two-thirds —
from over sixteen to under six millions. In the Lower
Palatinate only one-tenth and in Wurttemberg only
one-sixth survived.
Under these circumstances it is not surprising that
Mr. Stangeland should find in his study of German
literature on the subject that " the opinions on popula-
tion from the end of the Thirty Years War to the
beginning of the eighteenth century were unanimously
favourable to the greatest possible increase."2 Thus
Leibnitz thought that the State should encourage
marriage because " the true power of a kingdom consists
in the number of men. Where there are men, there is
1 Cambridge Modern History, Vol. IV, p. 419.
* Pre-Malthusian Doctrines of Population, by C. E. Stangeland.
EARLY POPULATION THEORIES 11
substance and strength. Where men are most diligent
and laborious and saving of their goods, there all are
safest ; and manufacturing especially is to be con-
sidered the most useful occupation in accomplishing
this result." Christian Wolff (1679-1754), a disciple of
Leibnitz, who is said to have been one of the first to
" teach philosophy to speak German," expressed a
crudely militarist point of view about population
problems. Power, he said, consists in money, in the
army which a state is able to keep, and in the greatest
amount of employment ; but above all in a rich and
populous state ; but " wealth is superior to numbers
of subjects ; for where there is enough money an army
can always be maintained, and when necessary foreign
mercenaries can be hired to defend the country. If
there is no money with which to support an army, a
multitude of people is of small service."
§ 5. The Introduction of Vital Statistics. Johann Peter
Sussmilch (1707-1767), one of Frederick the Great's
military chaplains, was the first writer to deduce a
principle of population from the study of vital statistics
which had been collected by various English and
German writers during the latter half of the seven-
teenth century. His investigation made him optimistic
concerning both the desirability and the possibility of
increase. Improvements in the methods of production,
especially in agriculture, would, he thought, greatly
increase the food supply. With more intensive cultiva-
tion, the yield of land could be increased an hundred-
fold. God regulated population according to the
supplies He had given. It was the duty of statesmen
12 POPULATION
to encourage population, because it was the means of
happiness, security, power and wealth.
Sussmilch detected four great natural checks to the
increase of mankind :
(a) Pestilence, which often carried off half the popula-
tion, not only of cities, but of whole provinces.
(b) War, "a real monster, a disgraceful blot on reason
and humanity, and especially on Christianity,"
which robbed the State of many of its best citizens
and also diminished the means of subsistence.
(c) Famine.
(d) Earthquakes and floods.
This notable contribution towards a true theory of
population was rendered possible by the Political
Arithmetic of Graunt (1620-1674) and Petty (1623-1687),
who first attempted to collect statistics of births, deaths
and marriages in the city of London. Gregory King,
Lancaster Herald, whom Macaulay describes as "a
political arithmetician of great acuteness and judg-
ment," carried this work a step further when he com-
piled his Natural and Political Observations and Con-
clusions upon the State and Condition of England, 1696.
Basing his calculations mainly upon the number of
houses returned in 1690 by the officers who made the
last collection of the hearth money, he arrived at the
conclusion that the population of England was nearly
five millions and a half, an estimate that has since
received confirmation from independent sources. From
this figure and the information he collected about the
birth and death-rates, King made the following in-
genious deductions, which are worth reproducing, both
EARLY POPULATION THEORIES 13
for their intrinsic interest and as an indication of the
pitfalls of political arithmetic :
" That, Anno 1260, or about 200 years after the Norman
Conquest, the kingdom had 2,750,000 people, or half the
present number ; so that the people of England have
doubled in about 435 years last past ;
' That in probability the next doubling of the people of
England will be in about 600 years to come, or by the year
of our Lord 2300 ; at which time it will have 11 millions
of people ; but that the next doubling after that will not
be (in all probability) in less than 1200 or 1300 years more,
or by the year of our Lord 3500 or 3600 ; at which time the
kingdom will have 22 millions of souls, or four times its
present number, in case the world should last so long ;
" Now, the kingdom containing but 39 millions of acres,
it will then have less than two acres to each head, and
consequently will not then be capable of any further
increase.
..." Whereby it appears that the increase of the king-
dom being 880,000 people in the last 100 years, and 920,000
in the next succeeding 100 years, the increase at this
time is about 9000 souls per annum. But, whereas the
yearly burials of the kingdom are about 1 in 32, or 170,000
souls ; and the yearly births 1 in 28, or 190,000 souls,
" Whereby the yearly increase should be 20,000 souls ;
" It is to be noted,
per annum.
1. That the allowance for plagues and great
mortalities comes to, at a medium . . 4000
2. Foreign or civil wars, at a medium . . 3500
3. The sea, constantly employing about 40,000,
precipitates the death of about . . 2500
4. The plantations (over and above the acces-
sion of foreigners) carry away . . 1000
In all 11,000
Whereby the neat annual increase is but . . 9000
In all 20,000 "
14 POPULATION
It will be seen that, if he was rather rash in his
speculations, Gregory King gave us some useful statistics
for comparison with more recent times. We shall
return to these in a later chapter, devoting the rest
of this to a glance at eighteenth-century population
theories and the controversy which provoked Malthus
to write his essay in 1798.
§ 6. The Forerunners of Malthus. Montesquieu made
some shrewd observations on our subject in the twenty-
third book of V Esprit des Lois, from which the following
are extracted :
" The females of brutes have an almost constant
fecundity ; but in the human species, the manner of
thinking, the character, the passions, the humour, the
caprice, the idea of preserving beauty, the pain of child-
bearing and the fatigue of a too numerous family obstruct
propagation in a thousand different ways."
On the other hand :
" Wherever a place is found in which two persons can
live commodiously, there they enter into marriage. Nature
has a sufficient propensity to it, when unrestrained by the
difficulty of subsistence. . . .
" A rising people increase and multiply extremely.
This is because with them it would be a great inconvenience
to live in celibacy and not to have many children ; the
contrary of which is the case when a nation is formed."
The possibility of over-population was clearly in-
dicated by Montesquieu in the following passage :
" There are countries in which nature does all ; the
legislator then has nothing to do. What need is there of
inducing men by laws to propagation when a fruitful
EARLY POPULATION THEORIES 15
climate yields a sufficient number of inhabitants ? Some-
times the climate is more favourable than the soil ; the
people multiply and are destroyed by famine ; this is the
case in China. Hence a father sells his daughter and
exposes his children."
The Physiocrats, concentrating their attention upon
the means by which the abject poverty of the French
peasants could be alleviated, naturally rejected the
" more the merrier " doctrine which the courtiers of
ambitious rnonarchs had as naturally adopted. In the
latter half of the eighteenth century, therefore, the
French economists were generally inclined to emphasize
the dependence of the population upon the food supply,
and to point out that improvements in the methods
of agriculture must necessarily precede any healthy
increase in the numbers of the people.
This point of view was shared by various writers in
Italy and Germany, but seems to have made so little
impression in England that it came with the shock of
novelty from the pen of Malthus. America was in
advance of England in this respect, for Benjamin
Franklin, who was much influenced by the Physiocrats,
published in 1751 his short Observations concerning the
Increase of Mankind and the Peopling of Countries, in
which some fundamental principles were clearly ex-
pounded. Europe, he said, was almost fully peopled
and could therefore increase but little and slowly, but
in America land was so cheap and plentiful that a
labourer could in a short time accumulate enough to
support and provide for a family. Therefore " if it
be reckoned there [in Europe] that there is but one
marriage per annum among one hundred persons,
16 POPULATION
perhaps we may reckon two ; and if in Europe they
have four births to a marriage (many of their marriages
being late) we may reckon eight, of which, if one-half
grow up, and our marriages are made, reckoning one
with another, at twenty years of age, our people must
at least be doubled every twenty years." " There is
no bound," said Franklin, " to the prolific nature of
plants or animals, but what is made by their crowding
and interfering with each other's means of subsistence.
Was the face of the earth vacant of other plants, it
might be gradually sowed with one kind only, as, for
instance, with fennel ; and were it empty of other
inhabitants, it might in a few ages be replenished from
one nation only, as, for instance, with Englishmen."
Not more than eighty thousand Englishmen had been
taken to America, but by natural increase they amounted
to more than a million in the middle of the eighteenth
century. By doubling every twenty-five years — a
moderate estimate, Franklin thought, of the rate of
increase — this million would in another century result
in a greater number of Englishmen in America than in
the mother country. " What an accession of power to
the British Empire by sea as well as by land ! "
English writers were engaged at this time in a learned
controversy concerning the relative density of popula-
tion in ancient and modern times. Dr. Robert Wallace
maintained the " superior populousness of antiquity "
in a work published in 1753. David Hume replied to
this in a Discourse concerning the populousness of Antient
Nations. Wallace rejoined in an appendix to his own
book, but, according to M'Culloch, though he " suc-
ceeded in pointing out a few errors in Hume's
EARLY POPULATION THEORIES 17
statements, which were rectified in subsequent editions
of the essay, he wholly failed to shake its foundations,
or to prove in opposition to Hume that Europe was
more populous in ancient than in modern times."
Other writers also took part in this discussion, and
although the point at issue appears to be one of purely
academic interest, it was mainly from these writings
of Hume and Wallace that Malthus deduced his principle
of population.
In 1776 occurred the revolution in economic thought
occasioned by the publication of The Wealth of Nations.
Adam Smith did not deal systematically with popula-
tion problems, but his references to them are very
suggestive, and there is no doubt that he, too, helped
to inspire Malthus. In his chapter on the wages of
labour, he says :
"It is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but
its continual increase, which occasions a rise in the wages of
labour. . . . The most decisive mark of the prosperity
of any country is the increase of the number of its in-
habitants. In Great Britain and most other European
countries they are not supposed to double in less than
five hundred years. In the British colonies in North
America it has been found that they double in twenty or
five-and-twenty years. Nor in the present times is this
increase principally owing to the continual importation of
new inhabitants, but to the great multiplication of the
species. Those who live to an old age, it is said, frequently
see there from fifty to a hundred, and sometimes many
more, descendants from their own body. . . .
" Poverty, though it no doubt discourages, does not
always prevent marriage. It seems even to be favourable
to generation. A half-starved Highland woman frequently
bears more than twenty children, while a pampered fine
18 POPULATION
lady is often incapable of bearing any, and is generally
exhausted by two or three. . . .
" But poverty, though it does not prevent the generation,
is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children. The
tender plant is produced ; but in so cold a soil, and so
severe a climate, soon withers and dies. It is not uncommon,
I have been frequently told, in the Highlands of Scotland,
for a mother who has borne twenty children not to have two
alive. . . .
" Every species of animals naturally multiplies in
proportion to the means of their subsistence, and no species
can ever multiply beyond it. But in civilised society it is
only among the inferior ranks of people that the scantiness
of subsistence can set limits to the further multiplication
of the human species ; and it can do so in no other way than
by destroying a great part of the children which their
fruitful marriages produce."
In discussing the rent of land, Adam Smith observes
that :
" Countries are populous, not in proportion to the number
of people whom their produce can clothe and lodge, but
in proportion to that of those whom it can feed. When
food is provided, it is easy to find the necessary clothing
and lodging. But though these are at hand, it may often
be difficult to find food. . . .
" But when, by the improvement and cultivation of
land, the labour of one family can provide food for two, the
labour of half the society becomes sufficient to provide food
for the whole. The other half, therefore, or at least the
greater part of them, can be employed in providing other
things, or in satisfying the other wants and fancies of
mankind."
If Hume, Wallace and Adam Smith supplied Malthus
with the materials from which he evolved his essay,
William Godwin, the father-in-law of Shelley, performed
EARLY POPULATION THEORIES 19
the equally important service of provoking him to
write it. Godwin was a philosophical Radical, whose
great work on political science, The Inquiry concerning
Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and
Happiness, had a considerable influence upon the
advanced politicians of his day. The French Revolution,
the ideas which caused it and the ideas which were
caused by it, had produced a school of optimism that
was entirely new. A belief in progress, in the practica-
bility of transforming men into angels and the world
into a paradise, spread rapidly from France to England.
Those who resisted the new idea seemed to do so because
they clung to old privileges and abuses rather than
through honest doubt. Wisdom and enlightenment
were apparently on the side of the Radicals. Godwin
was a disciple of Condorcet and believed in the per-
fectibility of man. The characters of men were blanks,
he held, which their external circumstances and, above
all, political institutions, filled in. Government was a
necessary evil, perpetuated " by the infantine and un-
instructed confidence of the many." Private property
in the labour of others was unjust ; the goal must be
complete equality of conditions.
This belief in equality and perfectibility brought
Godwin, as it had brought Condorcet, to consider
whether the pressure of population upon the means of
subsistence might not prove an insurmountable obstacle.
He rashly answered with the conjecture that passion
between the sexes may one day be extinguished, and
that, anyway, " to reason thus is to foresee difficulties
at a great distance. Three-fourths of the habitable
globe is now uncultivated. The parts already cultivated
o
20 POPULATION
are capable of immeasurable improvement. Myriads of
centuries of still increasing population may pass away,
and the earth be still found sufficient for the subsistence
of its inhabitants."
This utterance sealed the fate of William Godwin.
" Malthus," wrote Sydney Smith, a few years later,
" took the trouble of refuting him, and we hear no
more of Mr. Godwin."
An account of the restrictive practices of primitive
communities is given in The Population Problem, by
A. M. Carr-Saunders.
Early population theories are collected and summarised
in Pre-Malthusian Doctrines of Population, by C. E.
Stangeland.
CHAPTER II
MALTHUS
' When goods increase, they are increased that eat thern."
Ecclesiastes v. 11.
§ 1. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Thomas
Robert Malthus was the son of an English country-
gentleman who had been the friend and executor of
Rousseau and held advanced political opinions. God-
win's utopian communism inspired the elder Malthus
with all the enthusiasm that a kindly man can feel for
a doctrine which promises untold happiness to future
generations without in the least interfering with his
own present comfort. The son, however, though he
was not lacking in sympathy for the ideals which
accompanied the French Revolution, had not, he said,
" acquired that command over his understanding,
which would enable him to believe what he wishes,
without evidence, or to refuse his assent to what might
be unpleasing, when accompanied with evidence."
There was thus a difference in point of view between
the father and the son which led to endless arguments,
or perhaps to the repetition of one unending argument
in various disguises. The publication by William Godwin
of a book called The Enquirer supplied fresh fuel to the
fire, and the debate blazed up, in 1797, so that Malthus
21
22 POPULATION
found it necessary to resort to pen and ink in order to
state his thoughts in a clearer manner than he could do
in conversation. "But as the subject opened upon
him, some ideas occurred which he did not recollect to
have met with before ; and as he conceived that even
the least light, on a topic so generally interesting,
might be received with candour, he determined to put
his thoughts in a form for publication."1
The result of this determination was An Essay on the
Principle of Population as it affects the future improve-
ment of society, with remarks on the speculations of Mr.
Godwin, M. Condorcet and other writers, published
anonymously in 1798. The book had a splendid re-
ception. Within five years, more than twenty replies
to it had appeared in print, and the matter had been
fully argued in periodicals and parliamentary speeches.
Pitt dropped his Bill to amend the Poor Law in deference
to the objections of " those whose opinions he was
bound to respect," meaning Bentham and Malthus. In
short, Malthus found himself in the centre of a
tremendous controversy, and he determined to go
more deeply into the subject, in order to support his
argument by a formidable array of illustrations, drawn
from " the best authenticated accounts that we have
of the state of other countries." Thus the second
edition of the Essay, published in 1803, differed in many
respects from the first edition. The essence of the
argument remained unchanged, except in one respect,
which will be mentioned later, but it was very differently
dressed. The version published in 1798 was a tour de
force, full of striking metaphors and original thought ;
1 Malthus. Preface to first edition of the Essay.
MALTHUS 23
the later version was a scientific treatise, four times
the length, infinitely duller, and " one of the most
crushing answers that patient and hard-working science
has ever given to the reckless assertions of its adver-
saries."1 The root of the matter will be found in the
first two chapters of the Essay, which everyone should
read for himself.
§ 2. The Malthusian Argument. The argument may
be summarised as follows :
2 " Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms
Nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the
most profuse and liberal hand ; but has been com-
paratively sparing in the room and nourishment neces-
sary to rear them. . . . The race of plants and the
race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law ;
and man cannot by any efforts of reason escape from
it." Thus, population has a constant tendency to
increase beyond the means of subsistence. If the supply
of food were unlimited, the number of human beings
would double in less than twenty-five years (as the
population of North America had actually done apart
from immigration, for a century and a half), and go on
doubling itself four times in each century, or in other
words, increase in a geometrical ratio. On the other
hand, the produce of this island could hardly be doubled
in the next twenty-five years and it certainly could not
be quadrupled in fifty years. " Let us suppose that the
yearly additions which might be made to the former
produce, instead of decreasing, which they certainly
1 Marshall, The Economics of Industry, 1879, p. 30.
* The passages in inverted commas are quoted verbatim from
Malthus.
24 POPULATION
would do, were to remain the same ; and that the
produce of this island might be increased every twenty-
five years by a quantity equal to what it at present
produces. The most enthusiastic speculator cannot
suppose a greater increase than this. In a few centuries
it would make every acre of land in the island like a
garden." It is clear, then, that " the means of sub-
sistence . . . could not possibly be made to increase
faster than in an arithmetical ratio. . . .
" The necessary effects of these two different rates
of increase when brought together will be very
striking. . . ." Taking the whole earth, and thereby, of
course, excluding emigration, "the human species would
increase as the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256,
and subsistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. In two centuries
the population would be to the means of subsistence
as 256 to 9 ; in three centuries as 4096 to 13, and in
two thousand years the difference would be almost
incalculable.
" In this supposition no limits whatever are placed
to the produce of the earth. It may increase for ever
and be greater than any assignable quantity ; yet still
the power of population being in every period so much
superior, the increase of the human species can only be
kept down to the level of the means of subsistence by
the constant operation of the strong law of necessity,
acting as a check upon the greater power.
" The ultimate check to population appears then to
be a want of food, arising necessarily from the different
ratios according to which population and food increase.
But this ultimate check is never the immediate check,
except in cases of actual famine.
MALTHUS 25
" The immediate check may be stated to consist in
all those customs, and all those diseases, which seem
to be generated by a scarcity of the means of sub-
sistence ; and all those causes, independent of this
scarcity, whether of a moral or physical nature, which
tend prematurely to weaken and destroy the human
frame.
" These checks to population, which are constantly
operating with more or less force in every society . . .
may be classed under two general heads — the preventive
and the positive checks.
" The preventive check, as far as it is voluntary, is
peculiar to man." Unlike plants and animals, man is
apt to consider whether he will be able to support his
offspring before he brings them into the world. " In a
state of equality, if such can exist, this would be the
simple question. In the present state of society, other
considerations occur. Will he not lower his rank in
life, and be obliged to give up in great measure his
former habits ? . . . Will he not at any rate subject
himself to greater difficulties and more severe labour,
than in his single state ? Will he not be unable to
transmit to his children the same advantages of educa-
tion and improvement that he had himself possessed ? ':
May he not even be reduced to poverty " and obliged
to the sparing hand of Charity for support ?
" These considerations are calculated to prevent, and
certainly do prevent, a great number of persons in all
civilized nations from pursuing the dictate of nature in
an early attachment to one woman. If this restraint
do not produce vice, it is undoubtedly the least evil
that can arise from the principle of population. . . .
26 POPULATION
When this restraint produces vice, the evils which
follow are but too conspicuous. . . .
" The positive checks to population include ... all
unwholesome occupations, severe labour and exposure
to the seasons, extreme poverty, bad nursing of children,
great towns, excesses of all kinds, the whole train of
common diseases and epidemics, wars, plague and
famine. ..."
These checks to population, both preventive and
positive, are " all resolvable into moral restraint, vice
and misery." (The addition of " moral restraint " to
the two other factors of " vice " and " misery " con-
stituted the one important change in the argument of
the essay when it developed into the weighty second
edition. It transformed the " principle of population "
from an inexorable decree of unending misery for the
human race into a danger which man could avoid
altogether by the exercise of a proper sense of his
responsibility for his actions.)
" Of the preventive checks, the restraint from
marriage which is not followed by irregular gratifica-
tions may properly be termed moral restraint. ... Of
the positive checks, those which appear to arise un-
avoidably from the laws of nature may be called
exclusively misery ; and those which we obviously
bring upon ourselves, such as wars, excesses and many
others which it would be in our power to avoid, are of
a mixed nature. They are brought upon us by vice,
and their consequences are misery. . . .
" The preventive and positive checks must vary
inversely as each other ; that is, in countries either
naturally unhealthy or subject to a great mortality,
MALTHUS 27
from whatever cause it may arise, the preventive check
will prevail very little. In those countries, on the
contrary, which are naturally healthy, and where the
preventive check is found to prevail with considerable
force, the positive check will prevail very little, or the
mortality be very small.
" In every country some of these checks are in
constant operation, yet . . . there are few states in
which there is not a constant effort in the population
to increase beyond the means of subsistence," which
" tends to subject the lower classes of society to distress,
and to prevent any great permanent melioration of
their condition."
To sum up :
" 1. Population is necessarily limited by the means
of subsistence.
"2. Population invariably increases where the means
of subsistence increase, unless prevented by some
very powerful and obvious checks.
" 3. These checks, and the checks which repress th
superior power of population, and keep its
effects on a level with the means of subsistence,
are all resolvable into moral restraint, vice and
misery."
" The first of these propositions," said Malthus,
" scarcely needs illustration. The second and third
will sufficiently be established by a review of the im-
mediate checks to population in the past and present
state of society."
This review occupies the remainder of the first, and
the whole of the second, of the four books into which
I\
28 POPULATION
the essay is divided. In the light of the facts revealed
therein, Malthus then resumes his general argument
with a pointed question : " Whatever was the original
number of British emigrants which increased so fast
in North America, let us ask, Why does not an equal
number produce an equal increase in the same time in
Great Britain ? " " The obvious reason," he answers,
" is the want of food ; and that this want is the most
efficient cause of the three immediate checks to popula-
tion, which have been observed to prevail in all societies,
is evident from the rapidity with which even old states
recover the desolations of war, pestilence, famine
and the convulsions of nature."
" Other circumstances being the same," he adds, a few
pages later, " it may be affirmed that countries are populous
(/according to the quantity of human food which they
produce or can acquire ; and happy according to the
liberality with which this food is divided, or the quantity
which a day's labour will purchase. Corn countries are
more populous than pasture countries, and rice countries
more populous than corn countries. But their happiness
"does not depend either upon their being thinly or fully
inhabited, upon their poverty or their riches, their youth
or their age ; but on the proportion which the population
and the food bear to each other. . . .
" It is probable that the food of Great Britain is divided
in more liberal shares to her inhabitants at the present
period than it was two thousand, three thousand, or four
thousand years ago. And it has appeared that the poor
and thinly-inhabited tracts of the Scotch Highlands are
more distressed by a redundant population than the most
populous parts of Europe."
This was Malthus's Principle of Population. What
did it add to the sum of human knowledge ? The
MALTHUS 29
idea that human beings might become so numerous
that the earth could not produce sufficient food for their
support had been familiar, as we have seen in Chapter I,
to various writers at different periods in history. Indeed,
it is self-evident. " I do not much see," said Hazlitt,
" what there is to discover on the subject, after reading
the genealogical table of Noah's descendants, and
knowing that the world is round." Mai thus admitted
that the subject had been ably treated by earlier
writers, but he claimed to have made the comparison
between the increase of population and food with
greater force and precision. The precision, however,
was more apparent than real. When he said that
population, if unchecked, would increase in a geo-
metrical ratio, whereas subsistence cannot increase in
more than an arithmetical ratio, Malthus appeared to
be making effective use of his mathematical knowledge.
(He was ninth wrangler at Cambridge.) In fact, he
was stating his case badly. " For every mouth, God
sends a pair of hands," and if, as Malthus supposed,
" the human species would, if unchecked, increase as
the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and sub-
sistence as the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 " it would
follow that an addition of 128 workers in the period 2000-
2025 would have a total productive value equal to that
of only one additional worker in the period 1800-1825.
This in spite of all the improvements in the methods
of cultivation which might have been evolved in 175
years ! There is nothing in the essay, except an appeal
to " the known qualities of land," to establish the
truth of this statement, or indeed to show conclusively
that the hands which normally accompany each mouth
30 POPULATION
could not make the earth yield the subsistence for an
indefinite increase in population.
§ 3. The Law of Diminishing Returns. Unfortunately
for the human race, the essential validity of the Mal-
thusian principle of population is not destroyed by the
substitution of an accurate account of the growth of
the food supply for the fallacious arithmetical ratio.
Turgot stated the truth of this matter quite clearly when
Malthus was two years old ; Malthus himself showed
that he understood it in his later writings, and Ricardo
and Mill elaborated it in what is called The Law of
Diminishing Returns.
This law arises out of the peculiarity of land from an
economic standpoint, to which attention was called in
the first volume of this series. It is unlike capital or
labour in that its supply is, broadly speaking, fixed and
unalterable. An increase in population implies an
increase in the supply of labour. The supply of capital
will probably expand at least proportionately to the
increase in population. But the. supply of land remains
unchanged.
At certain periods in history this characteristic of
land was probably unimportant to mankind. Nobody
wanted to increase the supply of land when there was
room enough and to spare for all. When " Abram was
very rich in cattle. . . . And Lot also, which went with
Abram, had flocks, and herds, and tents. . . . And
the land was not able to bear them that they might
dwell together : for their substance was great so that
they could not dwell together," they had only to walk
off in different directions and all was well, unless they
MALTHUS 31
chanced to come in conflict with other tribes. But in
the modern world, the herdsman and the shepherd
have to compete for land, not only with other herdsmen
and shepherds, but, in many places, with the grower of
wheat and other crops, and even with the builder of
houses and factories. Thus, as the population increases *
the demand for land increases, and, the supply being
fixed, men are obliged to study the means by which
they can bring new and presumably inferior land into
cultivation, or get an ever-increasing quantity of
produce from the same quantity of land. There are '
two ways in which this can be done. The first is by
discovering and applying improved methods of pro-
duction. The second is by using increasing quantities
of the other agents of production : capital and labour.
The discovery of better methods of production is
obviously a variable and incalculable factor in the
problem ; but experience has shown that certain definite
results may be anticipated from the application, in any
given stage of agricultural knowledge and skill, of
steadily increasing quantities of capital and labour to
the unexpanding earth.
Turgot said :
" Seed thrown on a soil naturally fertile but totally
unprepared would be expenditure almost entirely wasted.
If the ground were once tilled the produce would be
greater ; tilling it a second and a third time, might not
merely double and triple, but quadruple or decuple the
produce, which will thus augment in a much larger pro-
portion than the expenditure, and that up to a certain
point, at which the produce will be as great as possible
compared with the expenditure. Past this point, if the
expenditure be still increased, the produce will still increase,
32 POPULATION
but less and less, and always less and less, until the fecundity
of the earth being exhausted, and art being unable to do
anything further, an addition to the expenditure will add
nothing whatever to the produce." i
On the basis of this experience, which is confirmed by
every farmer, it is customary to say that when suc-
cessive doses of capital and labour are applied to land,
increasing returns to each dose are first obtained, but
that after a certain point has been reached, diminishing
. returns to each subsequent dose inevitably follow,
unless an improvement is made in the methods of
agriculture. Moreover, in old countries, practically all
the land has been worked at least as thoroughly as is
necessary in order to reach the point at which the
maximurn^returns are obtained ; and it is therefore
broadly true to say that, unless better methods of
cultivation are used an increase in the capital and
labour applied in the cultivation of land causes a less
than proportionate increase in the amount of produce
raised. This statement is called the Law of Diminish-
ing Returns.
If we now substitute the Law of Diminishing Returns
in agriculture for the arithmetical ratio of Malthus's
Essay, we shall see that the conclusion remains un-
changed. " It is vain to say that all mouths which the
increase of mankind calls into existence bring with
them hands. [The new mouths require as much food as
the old ones, and the hands do not produce as much!"-
Population must still press upon the means of sub-
1 Quoted by Carman, Wealth, p. 60.
2 J. S. Mill, Principles, Book I, Chap. XIII, § 2.
MALTHUS 33
sistence unless the checks of vice, misery or moral
restraint intervene.
Reconsidering the Principle of Population in the light ,
of Diminishing Returns, it is important to note thej
emphasis which Malthus placed upon the constant':
operation of the checks to population which arise out of 1
a want of food. This was perhaps his most solid con- j--- l
tribution towards an understanding of factors which
limit the number of human beings upon the earth.
Hume, Wallace, Condorcet and even Godwin had
written of the danger of over-population, but they had
regarded it as an evil which might arise in a more or
less remote future. Malthus pointed out that the i^r ■=
population was constantly held in check, at all times J j ^/
and in all countries, by the evils which arose, directly
or indirectly, from pressure upon the food supply. If
people refrained from having children because they had
insufficient means to support a family, or if children
died in infancy from diseases caused by mal-nutrition,
the population was being kept down by want of food,
though no one might die of starvation. "Aman who is
locked up in a room," said Malthus, " may fairly be
said to be confined by the walls of it, though he may
never touch them." Even so was the human race
confined to the numbers which the world's produce
would support at any given timeX Unless we deliberately
restricted our numbers, they would be kept down by
the powerful checks which he described. This was the
point that Hazlitt overlooked when he made his joke
about " the genealogical table of Noah's descendants,"
and it is not infrequently overlooked by more serious
critics of the Malthusian doctrine.
34 POPULATION
§ 4. The Relevance of the Malthusian Argument to
Present Gircumstances. In the days of Malthus each
country was practically a self-contained and self-
supporting community. In England the Industrial
Eevolution had begun. Its disturbing influence con-
tributed to the misery and discontent which Malthus
saw around him. The spinning jenny came into use in
the same year in which the essay was first published.
Cartwright's loom began to be used in 1801. But it
was not until 1838 that the first commercial steamer
crossed the Atlantic, and not until about 1870 that the
full effect of inventions and international trade had
worked itself out in the world-wide division of labour.
Goods can now be brought from the most distant
countries more cheaply and almost as quickly as they
could be carried from London to Cornwall in the tirrie of
Malthus. The population of Great Britain and Ireland
was 16,000,000 in 1801, and 41,500,000 in 1901. Total
British imports and exports were £37,000,000 in 1791,
and £870,000,000 in 1 90 1 . The population problem with
• which Malthus was especially concerned, the problem
of feeding a rapidly increasing number of Englishmen
on the produce of an island which remained the same
size, was solved, for a hundred years at least, by an
immense increase in the production of manufactures
and the exchange of these for food and raw materials
from new continents. As numbers increased food
actually became cheaper ; more emigrants were available
to grow food abroad, and more workmen were absorbed
in Europe in the production of the agricultural machinery,
steamers and railways which enabled the food to be
produced and carried home for their consumption.
MALTHUS 35
During the latter half of the nineteenth century, a
unit of labour applied to industry in Europe could be
exchanged for a steadily increasing quantity of food.
It would seem, at first sight, that the teaching of
Malthus could have little relevance to the problems of
the twentieth century. Fundamentally, however, the (^
issue remains the same. How is the population of the
world to be restrained from increasing faster than the
world's food supply, except by the evil checks
enumerated by Malthus 1
The teeming population of Europe does not produce
nearly as much food as it consumes ; it is dependent
upon the resources of the New World. But the New
World is no longer wholly dependent upon Europe for
its manufactures. It produces them itself in increasing
quantities.
Population is growing in the food-producing countries.
The United States, which is one of the chief sources
from which Europe draws her food, now consumes more
than three-fourths of the wheat she produces. It is
true that the food-producing area of the world may still
be greatly extended ; but this will only be done under
the stimulus of a rise in the price of produce. This
means that, in all probability, diminishing returns in
food will in future be obtained for each successive dose
of capital and labour applied in industry.
The position with regard to the raw materials of
European industry, in so far as these are products of
the soil, is very like that of the food supply. The
production of cotton, for instance, has not kept pace
with the world's "requirements. Since about 1900 a
considerable increase in price has been needed to enable
D
-.?
36 POPULATION
the supply of cotton to equal the demand for it, and it
is anticipated that a further rise in price will be necessary
■' to call forth any substantial increase in the quantity
produced. Here, again, we may see the Law of Diminish-
ing Returns at work.
/ Other raw materials of industry, such as coal and
iron, are in a different category. These minerals are
in the nature of stored-up capital. The yield from
mines is like the yield from lands which have been for
some time under cultivation, in that each additional
dose of capital and labour applied to the extraction of
minerals will produce a smaller proportionate return
than the last preceding dose, unless some improvement
takes place in the arts of mining. But the produce of
a mine is part of a fixed stock. Once a vein has given
up its treasure, it can produce no more ; whereas a
properly cultivated field retains its fertility, and yields
a constantly recurring income. When, therefore, a
country like Great Britain finds itself, by the inter-
national division of labour, in the position of exchanging
minerals, and the goods manufactured from minerals,
for the raw products of distant lands, an anxious
question arises as to whether the process can in-
^ definitely continue. A country which possessed a
monopoly of an absolutely indispensable mineral would
no doubt be in a strong position. By husbanding her
resources she might extract an enormous tribute from
the rest of the world. But even a unique commodity
like Welsh steam coal has to compete in the world's
markets with other fuels such as oil. It is not indis-
pensable.
From the point of view of the human race as a whole,
MALTHUS 37
it is comforting to know that science is perfecting other
devices, such as water-power, to carry on the work of
the world when the coal supply is exhausted. Mankind
may not be forced t# return to the primitive methods
of hand-labour. Particular nations, however, which
have built up great industries and become densely
populated through a differential advantage over other
nations in the possession of mineral wealth, are faced
by the possibility of losing that advantage, and being
forced to compete for their share of the world's food
supply with the handicap against them.
The law «f diminishing returns is net, of course, a force
which exerts itself suddenly with catastrophic effects.
The period of abundant supplies, resulting from the
development of vast food-producing areas, fades almost
imperceptibly into a period of relative scarcity. If the
organization of European life had not been torn asunder
by the war, the tendencies outlined in the preceding
paragraphs, vaguely menacing the future well-being of
Europe's population, would not yet have been noticed
by practical men. Improvements in the organization of.
industry in Europe may so increase productive power
that no falling off in the general well-being need result
from an increase in the cost of food. It is even possible
that improvements in the arts of agriculture may still
for a time keep pace with the growth of population,
and that food may remain as cheap and plentiful in
the immediate future as it has been in the last fifty
years. Nevertheless, the tendency for population to
outrun the means of subsistence is a potent fact in the
life of humanity. The number of people in the world
has increased greatly during an exceptional period in
38 POPULATION
economic history. Some of the factors which made
that increase possible appear to have run their course ;
others are beginning to show signs of exhaustion. If
population continues to increase " in geometrical
/ratio," a decline in the general standard of life seems
wellnigh inevitable. But a decline in the general
standard of life means want and misery and suffering
for the majority of human beings. Is there no other
hope ? Let us turn again to Malthus and see what light
he can throw upon the matter.
*
§ 5. An Important Development. On the evidence
before him, it was natural that Malthus should take a
gloomy view of the prospects of mankind. The infor-
mation he collected seemed to show that in all countries
at all times population rapidly increased up to the
means of subsistence, and that the lower classes were
consequently always living on the verge of destitution.
In England, at the time when he was writing, a number
of causes had combined " to bring the working classes
into the greatest misery they have ever suffered, at all
events since the beginning of trustworthy records of
English social history."1 And their pastors and masters
were still exhorting them to " increase and multiply " !
Nevertheless, Malthus was not without hope that
conditions might be improved :
" The object of those who really wish to better the
condition of the lower classes of society," he said, " must
be to raise the relative proportion between the price of
labour and the price of provisions, so as to enable the
labourer to command a larger share of the necessaries and
1 Marshall, Principles o\ Economics, Book IV, Chap. IV, § 2.
/
MALTHUS 39
comforts of life. In an endeavour to raise the proportion
of the quantity of provisions to the number of consumers
in any country our attention would naturally be first
directed to the increasing of the absolute quantity of pro-
visions ; but finding that, as fast as we did this, the number
of consumers more than kept pace with it, and that with
all our exertions we were still as far as ever behind, we should
be convinced that our efforts directed only in this way would i
never succeed. It would appear to be setting the tortoise
to catch the hare. Finding, therefore, that from the laws
of nature we could not proportion the food to the population,
our next attempt should naturally be to proportion the
population to the food. If we can persuade the hare to
go to sleep, the tortoise may have some chance of over-
taking her.
" We are not, however, to relax our efforts in increasing
the quantity of provisions, but to combine another effort
with it ; that of keeping the population, when once it has
been overtaken, at such a distance behind as to effect the
relative proportion which we desire ; and thus unite the
two grand desiderata, a great actual population and a state
of society in which abject poverty and dependence arc
comparatively but little known ; two objects which are
far from being incompatible."1
There is more reason now than there was when the
above passage was written to think that the hare may
be persuaded to go to sleep. Malthus firmly refused
to entertain mere conjectures :
" A writer may tell me," he said, " that he thinks man
will ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly
contradict him. But before he can expect to bring any
reasonable person over to bis opinion, he ought to show
that the necks of mankind have been gradually elongating ;
that the lips have grown harder, and more prominent ;
that the legs and feet are daily altering their shape ; and
1 Essay, Book IV, Chap. III.
40 POPULATION
that the hair is beginning to change into stubs of feathers.
And till the probability of so wonderful a conversion can
be shown, it is surely lost time and lost eloquence to
expatiate on the happiness of man in such a state. . . ."1
Well, we have evidence to-day, of the kind that
Malthus properly demanded, that there is a tendency
for men deliberately to restrict the number of their
children, with a view to maintaining a certain standard
of well-being and happiness. It is only a tendency at
present, but it is a significant tendency. In France,
the population is stationary. In Great Britain the
birth-rate has rapidly declined during the last half
century, and a similar tendency has manifested itself
in most Western countries. There is no doubt that
this change is mainly due to what is called " birth
control," the conscious limitation by married people
of the size of their families. So far, the coloured races,
with the possible exception of Japan, have not adopted
birth control. Moreover, in those countries where
its influence is already perceptible, the richer classes
are at present more affected by it than their poorer
neighbours. Thus this new check to population may be
said to be beginning at the wrong end of human society,
and restricting the families of those who could best afford
to multiply. The importance of this aspect of the
subject will be discussed in a later chapter. Here it
is only necessary to note a new development which
may enable the population to adjust itself to changing
circumstances without suffering the degrading miseries
of privation.
1 Essay, First Edition, Chap. I.
CHAPTER III
POPULATION THEORIES IN CHANGING
CIRCUMSTANCES
:' For man also knoweth not his time : as the fishes that
are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught
in the snare ; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time,
when it falleth suddenly upon them." Ecclesiastes ix. 12.
§ 1. Why Malthns had many Disciples. Very few books
have the distinction of being so fully discussed at the
time they are first published as was Malthus's Essay.
Tories like Southey vied with Radicals like Godwin and
Hazlitt, and revolutionaries like Cobbett, in the violence
of their attacks upon the book and its author. It was
said by the same critics that the doctrine was obvious,
that it wasn't true, and that Malthus didn't discover it.
The Tory opposition was based on the feeling that the
ordering of the universe by Providence was being
criticised. But it was Godwin, the Freethinker, who
quoted texts from the Bible against " Parson Malthus,"
and Cobbett who invented that name for him.
In spite of, or perhaps because of these attacks, the
Essay was very widely accepted among the Whigs and
Utilitarians. Pitt, as we have seen, was much im-
pressed by it. Paley was a distinguished convert.
Senior, Ricardo and Whitbread all supported Malthus.
41
I
42 POPULATION
So did James Mill, of whom Leslie Stephen says that
" he ultimately became the father of nine children,
an oversight for which his eldest son apologises." On
the whole it may be said that the Principle of Population
received the assent, during the lifetime of its author,
of most reasonable men, with some additional support
from men of property who were glad to throw upon the
poor the whole responsibility for their poverty, and to
be satisfied that nothing could be done for them while
they remained so improvident as to marry and beget
children.
How, then, are we to accoimt for the fact that this
doctrine, which achieved such prominence at the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, gradually slipped out of
men's minds and, without being superseded or con-
troverted, was almost forgotten a hundred years later ?
The answer to this question is to be found in the economic
developments of the period.
We saw in the first chapter of this handbook that
population theories, not only the ignorant prejudices of
the ordinary man, but the considered opinions of
philosophers and statesmen, could generally be asso-
ciated with the temporary circumstances of the countries
in which the theorists lived. Plato and Aristotle
approached the question from the point of view of the
City State, and consequently recommended a stationary
population ; the Bomans, with the world at their feet,
desired an ever-increasing supply of citizens ; the
Elizabethans^face to face with an immense problem
of poverty and destitution, the result of many causes —
the enclosing of land for pasture, the dissolution of
monasteries, the debasing of the currency and the decay
POPULATION THEORIES 43
of the guilds — were fully alive to the dangers of over-
population ; while the Mercantilist writers of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries all favoured the
greatest possible numbers as a means to national
power ; their cry was " Population, population !
Population at all events ! M1
This relation between doctrines of population and the
conditions under which they are formulated can be
traced in more recent controversies at least as clearly
as in earlier times. F. S. Nitti, contrasting2 the optimism
of Adam Smith with the pessimism of Malthus, attributes
the difference in outlook between the two to the events
which took place in the twenty years which intervened
between the publication of The Wealth of Nations in
1776 and that of Malthus's Essay. In that period,
England experienced a succession of bad harvests, the
effects of which were aggravated by an exhausting war
and the dislocating influence of the industrial revolution.
The average price of wheat in the decade 1771-1780
was 34/7 ; in 1781-1790 it was 37/1 ; in 1791-1800 it
was 63/6 ; in 1801-1810 it was 83/11 ; and in 1811-
1820 it was 87/6. Moreover, as in the crowded days of
Elizabeth, the enclosing of common land and a disastrous
Poor Law vastly increased the number of the destitute.
Malthus has told us that he wrote his book because
he had an argument with his father about Godwin's
views on the perfectibility of man. The first edition
of the Essay was indeed manifestly designed to combat
the theories, which became so popular during the
French Revolution, as to the infinite potentialities of
1 Joseph Townsend, Dissertation on the Poor Laws, 1786.
2 Population and the Social System.
44 POPULATION
the human race. By the time he reached his second
edition, however, Malthus was more concerned to throw
light upon the cause of the poverty and distress of his
fellow-countrymen than to pursue an abstract argument.
Moreover, if it had not in fact dealt with a problem
about which all thoughtful men were agitated, it is
probable that the first anonymous essay would have
passed unnoticed, and that the later tome would never
have been written. So we may take it that the Mal-
thusian Principle of Population was enunciated because
■ England was (at least in a narrow sense) over-populated
at the end of the eighteenth century.
§ 2. How Diminishing Returns Revealed Themselves.
The formulation of the tendency to diminishing returns
arose even more directly out of the social and political
conditions of England at the end of the Napoleonic
Wars. The high price of corn had given rise to a great
extension of cultivation and to improved methods. The
Corn Laws probably had very little to do with the high
prices, but landlords and farmers of course desired the
high prices to continue, and urged Parliament to
restrict imports. The Commons and the Lords both
appointed Committees which reported in favour of a
protectionist policy, and it was in the course of criticizing
these Keports that Edward West, Malthus1 and Bicardo
stated the tendency to diminishing returns and drew
inferences from it. To them the case was perfectly
clear. They had seen the tendency at work.
1 Malthus was a protectionist, but he could not swallow all the
arguments of the landlords. There is an excellent account of the
controversy in Cannan's Theories of Production and Distribution,
Chap. V.
POPULATION THEORIES 45
" With every increase of capital and population,"
wrote Ricardo, " food will generally rise, on account
of its being more difficult to produce."
" The division of labour and application of machinery,"
said Edward West, " render labour more and more pro-
ductive in manufactures, in the progress of improvement ;
the same causes tend also to make labour more and more
productive in agriculture in the progress of improvement .
But another cause, namely, the necessity of having recourse
to land inferior to that already in tillage, or of cultivating
the same land more expensively, tends to make labour in
agriculture less productive in the progress of improvement.
And the latter cause more than counteracts the effects
of machinery and the division of labour in agriculture."
Thus, there are two opposing tendencies in produc-
tion. On the one hand, there is the tendency for each
successive dose of capital and labour to facilitate im-
provements in organization and so to yield increasing
returns. On the other hand, there is the tendency,
discussed in the last chapter, for nature to yield diminish-
ing returns. Both these tendencies showed themselves
very clearly in England during the first half of the
nineteenth century. By 1815 the power loom was
coming into general use, enabling the weavers to keep
pace with the spinners, whose jenny had been worked
by water-power for some years before that date. In
1740, about a million and a half pounds of cotton was
imported, in 1815 nearly one hundred millions. In
1742, about 100,000 pieces of cloth were milled in
Yorkshire, in 1815 the number had risen to 500,000,
and each piece was double the former length. Coal,
iron and transport developed in an equally amazing
46 POPULATION
way ; while the population, fully justifying the faith
of Malthus, increased in the industrial North by 75
per cent between 1801 and 1821.
The very magnitude of these developments involved
the working classes in misery and discontent. The
population of England was on the move, and the process
created an "economic friction" of a very painful kind.
The price of food rose alarmingly, and wages lagged
drearily behind. Adult labour was displaced to a con-
siderable extent by child-labour in the factories and
mines ; and the misapplication of the laissez-faire doctrine
aggravated the distress and fomented the discontent.
§ 3. Reaction against Malthus and Ricardo. By degrees,
however, England recovered its equilibrium, and voices
began to make themselves heard, saying that there was,
after all, no tendency to diminishing returns. James
Mill, M'Culloch and J. S. Mill adhered to the teaching
of Malthus and Ricardo, but Senior, Chalmers and the
American economist, Carey, attacked it.
" Any given quantity of labour," said Carey, " will
now command a much larger quantity of food than at
any former time, and the tendency is to a constant
increase. ..."
This bold statement he supported by comparing the
productiveness of agriculture in 1840 with the miserable
returns obtained in 1389, as recorded in Eden's History
of the Poor :
" It is entirely impossible," he said, " to read any book
treating of the people of England of past times, without
being struck with the extraordinary improvement of the
means of living — with the increased facility of obtaining
POPULATION THEORIES 47
food, clothing and shelter, and with the improved quality
of all — enabling the common labourer now to indulge in
numerous luxuries that in former times were unknown to
people who might be deemed wealthy."
Carey was, of course, quite right as to the facts.
The fertile lands of the New World in which he lived
were in the early stages of cultivation, yielding in-
creasing returns, and the people of England were now
beginning to reap the benefit of that development
combined with some share in the fruits of their own
industrial activity. The tendency of that time was to a
constant increase, and many a wiser man than Carey
has treated that extraordinary boom in world produc-
tion as the normal return to human efforts which would
increase at the same rate for ever.
The changes of the Industrial Revolution caused a
double reaction against the doctrines of Malthus and
Ricardo. The growth of industry and wealth, on the
one hand, gave rise to an optimism which rejected the
notion that the bulk of mankind must always live upon
the brink of destitution. The distress which accom-
panied the great redistribution of labour, on the other
hand, led to a demand for a more even distribution of
weath, which seemed equally to conflict with the
teaching of the economists.
o
" In every experimental science," wrote Macaulay, in
1848, " there is a tendency towards perfection. In every
human being there is a wish to ameliorate his own con-
dition. These two principles have often sufficed, even
when counteracted by great pubhc calamities and by bad
institutions, to carry civilization rapidly forward. No
ordinary misfortune, no ordinary misgovernment, will do
48 POPULATION
so much to make a nation wretched, as the constant pro-
gress of physical knowledge, and the constant effort of
every man to better himself will do to make a nation
prosperous. ... It can easily be proved that, in our own
land, the national wealth has, during at least six centuries,
been almost uninterruptedly increasing ; that it was greater
under the Tudors than under the Plantagenets ; that it
was greater under the Stuarts than under the Tudors ;
that, in spite of battles, sieges and confiscations, it was
greater on the day of the Restoration than on the day
when the Long Parliament met ; that, in spite of mal-
administration, of extravagance, of public bankruptcy, of
two costly and unsuccessful wars, of the pestilence and of
the fire, it was greater on the day of the death of Charles
the Second than on the day of his Restoration. This
progress, having continued during many ages, became at
length, about the middle of the eighteenth century,
portentously rapid, and has proceeded, during the nine-
teenth, with accelerated velocity. In consequence partly
of our geographical and partly of our moral position,
we have, during several generations, been exempt from
evils which have elsewhere impeded the efforts and
destroyed the fruits of industry. . . . The consequence
is that a change to which the history of the old world
furnishes no parallel has taken place in our country."1
Nine years later, Macaulay added :
" During the interval which has elapsed since this
chapter was written, England has continued to advance
rapidly in material prosperity. . . . There is scarcely a
district which is not more populous, or a source of wealth
which is not more productive, at present than in 1848. "2
This was the intellectual atmosphere in England in
the middle of the nineteenth century. The formal
accuracy of the statement about diminishing returns
1 History of England, Chap. III. 2 Ibid. (note).
POPULATION THEORIES 49
was not generally denied, but there seemed to be little \l \y
significance in a tendency which was continuously \
counteracted by more powerful opposing tendencies.
The history of civilization seemed to show that mankind
always had, from the days when human co-operation
first began, risen superior to the tendencies to which
Malthus and Ricardo called attention. Primitive
savages were limited in numbers by the means of
subsistence which they found within their reach ; but
as soon as men learned to combine together and to
fashion implements, they began to harness wild nature
and to make her yield more and more food and warmth
and shelter for their satisfaction. Therein lay the
difference between human beings and brute beasts ;
the former could learn to exercise a constantly increasing
control over their environment, and the latter could
not. It was not true to say that population invariably
increased up to the limits of the available subsistence.
On the contrary, every increase in the numbers of the
people brought with it a more than proportionate
increase in human wealth, so that the standard of life
had been steadily improving and every additional
worker put more into the common stock than he drew
out of it. Hence the most densely populated districts
offered the greatest and most varied supply of the
amenities of life.
Thus, " the tendency of every experimental science
towards perfection," and " the wish of every human
being to ameliorate his own condition " were seen by
Macaulay and his contemporaries to carry civilization
rapidly forward in spite of the tendency to diminishing
returns and all other obstacles.
50 POPULATION
§ 4. J. S. Mill's Vieiv of Population Problems. John
Stuart Mill, however, adhered firmly to the general
teaching of Malthus and Ricardo, which he restated
in a more complete and scientific form. Professor
Cannan says he did this because " he was never able to
shake off completely the effects of the gloomy theories
. . . with which his father had indoctrinated him,"
and that " if he had done so he would have had to find
a new way of accounting for the historical fall of profits
and also to change most of his views with regard to
the whole question of economic progress."1 Another
possible explanation of Mill's attitude is, however,
that he had too well-disciplined a mind to be deflected
from a permanent truth by the special circumstances of
the century in which he lived, however astonishing and
overwhelming those circumstances might be.
" It is but rarely," said Mill, " that improvements in the
condition of the labouring classes do anything more than
give a temporary margin, speedily filled up by an increase
in their numbers. The use they commonly choose to make
of any advantageous change in their circumstances, is to
take it out in the form which, by augmenting the population,
deprives the succeeding generation of the benefit. Unless,
either by their general improvement in intellectual and
moral culture, or at least by raising their habitual standard
of comfortable living, they can be taught to make a better
use of favourable circumstances, nothing permanent can
be done for them ; the most promising schemes end only
in having a more numerous, but not a happier people."2
By their habitual standard, Mill meant the standard
below which the people would not multiply, and he
1 Theories of Production and Distribution, Chap. V, § 5.
* Principles, Book I, Chap. X, § 3.
POPULATION THEORIES 51
noticed with satisfaction that every advance in education,
civilization and social improvement tends to raise this
standard.
" Subsistence and employment in England," he said,
" have never increased more rapidly than in the last forty
years, but every census since 1821 showed a smaller
proportional increase of population than that of the period
preceding ; and the produce of French agriculture and
industry is increasing in a progressive ratio, while the
population exhibits, in every quinquennial census, a smaller
proportion of births to the population."1
Mill was fully alive to the fact that " there is another
agency, in habitual antagonism to the law of diminishing
return from land. ... It is no other," he said, " than
the progress of civilization. I use this general and
somewhat vague expression, because the things to be
included are so various that hardly any term of a
more restricted signification would comprehend them
all."2
In " the progress of civilization " Mill included, first,
the progress of agricultural knowledge, skill and in-
vention. A development such as the introduction of
rotation of crops, or the irrigation of a barren plain, may
make a great permanent change in the yielding capacity
of land, altering the point at which maximum returns
are obtained. Secondly, he included improved means
of communication. Thirdly, mechanical improvements
which have apparently no connection with agriculture ;
such as a better method of melting iron, which would
cheapen agricultural implements and transport ; or
1 Principles, Book I, Chap. X, § 3.
2 Ibid., Chap. XII, § 3.
52 POPULATION
the use of power in grinding corn, which would tend to
cheapen bread. Fourthly, inventions which facilitate
the production of manufactures and so compensate
the poorest class for the increased cost of food by
supplying them with, for instance, cheaper clothing.
Fifthly, improvements in government, and almost
every kind of moral and social advancement, which
react upon the efficiency of agricultural labour.
When all these factors are outstripped by the growth
of numbers, there are still two expedients, noted by
Mill, by which a country may hope to lessen the pressure
of its population upon its food supply. One of these
expedients is the importation of food from abroad.
The other is emigration.
§ 5. A Criticism of MilVs View. Throughout the
nineteenth century the tide of civilization, flowing
through all the channels indicated by Mill, continued
to rise, easily overcoming the tendency to diminishing
returns. Hence it became fashionable to speak of this
" pseudo-scientific law," and even so acute a critic as
Professor Cannan asked, in 1903, why :
/" Mill should be at the trouble of developing a law which
1. does not come into operation at a very early date in
the history of society ;
2. is liable to temporary supersessions ; and
3. has been made head against by an antagonizing
principle, namely, the progress of civilization,
throughout the known history of England."
As against this view it may be urged that if we were
to ignore all those scientific laws which are counteracted
POPULATION THEORIES 58
by other laws, we should not get very far in our inter-
pretation of phenomena ; that, in fact, the tendency to
diminishing returns had already played an important
part in economic history ; and, finally, that at the very
time when Professor Cannan was writing, the tendency
was, as we have seen, " making head " against " the
progress of civilization," and was perhaps preparing
the way for great and painful changes in the welfare of
the inhabitants of the Old World.
Thirteen years later, Professor Cannan was quoting,
with approval, the following passage :
" The conditions which made possible the unprecedented
expansion of the European peoples in the last fifty years
are passing away. The agricultural development which
came as a result of rapid transportation, the invention of
labour-saving farm machinery, and the abundance of new
and fertile lands cannot be duplicated. The system of
transportation can be greatly improved, but no revolution
such as came with the development of the steam engine
seems likely to take place again. The efficiency of agri-
cultural implements will probably be greatly increased,
but they have already reached the limit of practicability
for extensive farming, not because the implements might
not be improved upon, but because the days of extensive
farming are rapidly passing as the new countries become
more thickly settled. Fertile land is no longer to be had
for the asking in the United States, and will soon be taken
up in the other places where Europeans can thrive."1
" I should like to suggest," comments Mill's critic,
" that the next bishop who proposes to recommend
unreasoning multiplication as a universal rule of
1 Population : A Study in Malthusianism, by Warren S. Thomp-
son, Ph.D. (New York).
54 POPULATION
human conduct should take this passage from Dr.
Thompson's book as his text. The predictions which
it contains may be premature, but they cannot be
erroneous in any other sense. This little planet is
getting filled up ; if we go on increasing our numbers
indefinitely, we must eventually make it too full, in
spite of that steady progress in material equipment
and knowledge which tend to set the limits of desirable
density farther on."1
The limits of desirable density are indeed difficult to
determine. Even if we could say for certain that the
average worker in a country is better off to-day than
he has ever been before, we must still admit that he
might be even richer if the population were smaller.
On the other hand, while it is safe to say that the
developments in agriculture and industry have a causal
connection with the growth of population, no one can
gauge to what extent the one would have taken place
without the other. These are matters upon which there
is room for the widest difference of opinion. Moreover,
even if we could say precisely what number of people
would at any given moment obtain the maximum
wealth per head, we should still be very far from deter-
mining the limits of desirable density. For who will
measure the value of human life ? How much material
wealth shall we be willing to forgo in order to have
children of our own ? What proportion of national
wealth per head will the statesman sacrifice in order
to obtain more soldiers and colonists for the enhance-
ment of national prestige ?
Malthus assumed that it was undesirable for
1 Economic Journal, Vol. XXVI, No. 102, June, 1916.
POPULATION THEORIES 55
population to press upon the means of subsistence up
to the point at which the checks of vice and misery-
begin to operate. So far, perhaps, there may be general
agreement. But, as Mill pointed out, the standard \
of living below which the people will not multiply .\
varies from time to time and in different countries and j
among the classes and occupations within each country. H
The tragedy of vice and misery is most apparent when
any class is forced to lower its standard of living.
That is the catastrophe which has befallen large sections
of the population of Europe during the years imme-
diately succeeding the war. Is it a temporary product
of the great upheaval, from which a recovery may be
expected when the statesmen have at last put their
houses in order ? Or has the war merely accelerated
an inevitable decline in European prosperity ; the
result of the changing ratios of raw products and
manufactured goods ? Are we witnessing a world-wide
manifestation of the tendency to diminishing returns ?
It will be the principal object of the following chapters
to indicate some of the factors which must be taken into
account in answering that question.
§ 6. The Return to Malthus. Whatever the causes
may have been, the Wheel of Things to which, in the
lama's philosophy, the human race is bound, has turned
full circle. Again, as in the days of Malthus, Europe •
has been exhausted by a great war ; famine and disease
ravage large tracts of Russia and the Balkans ; inter-
national trade is dislocated, and Britain is struggling
once more with the dual problem of unemployment and
doles.
56 POPULATION
Opinion has swung round with the tide of events.
Far more striking than the contrast between Adam
Smith and Malthus is that between the passage from
Macaulay quoted above1 and the following extracts
from a book published in the year 1919 :
" Before the eighteenth century mankind entertained no
false hopes. To lay the illusions which grew popular at
that age's latter end Malthus disclosed a Devil. For half
a century all serious economical writings held that Devil in
clear prospect. For the next half century he was chained
up and out of sight. Now perhaps we have loosed him
again. . . .
" The prosperity of Europe was based on the facts that,
owing to the large exportable surplus of foodstuffs in
America, she was able to purchase food at a cheap rate
measured in terms of the labour required to produce her
own exports, and that, as a result of her previous invest-
ments of capital, she was entitled to a substantial amount
annually without any payment in return at all. The second
of these factors then seemed out of danger, but, as a result
of the growth of population overseas, chiefly in the United
States, the first was not secure. . . .
" In short, Europe's claim on the resources of the New
World was becoming precarious ; the Law of Diminishing
Returns was at last reasserting itself, and was making
it necessary year by year for Europe to offer a greater
quantity of other commodities to obtain the same amount
of bread ; and Europe, therefore, could by no means
afford the disorganisation of any of her principal sources
of supply. . . .2
" The essential facts of the situation, as I see them, are
expressed simply. Europe consists of the densest aggrega-
tion of population in the history of the world. This
population is accustomed to a relatively high standard
1 See pages 47 and 48.
2 The Economic Cgnaequences of the Peace, by J. M. Keynes,
Chap. II.
POPULATION THEORIES 57
of life, in which, even now, some sections of it anticipate
improvement rather than deterioration. In relation to
other continents Europe is not self-sufficient ; in particular
it cannot feed itself. . . . The danger confronting us,
therefore, is the rapid depression of the standard of life
of the European populations to a point which will mean
actual starvation for some (a point already reached in
Eussia and approximately reached in Austria). Men will
not always die quietly. . . .
" Some of the catastrophes of past history, which have
thrown back human progress for centuries, have been due
to the reactions following on the sudden termination,
whether in the course of Nature or by the act of man, of
temporarily favourable conditions which have permitted
the growth of population beyond what could be provided
for when the favourable conditions were at an end."1
The view-point from which the foregoing passages
were written is not adopted only by economists. In
a somewhat different vein, but equally significant of
the trend of opinion, is the following sketch of British
economic history, also written in 1919 :
" It was not till the accession of George III that the
increase in our numbers became rapid. . . . The Industrial
Revolution came upon us suddenly ; it changed the whole
face of the country and the apparent character of the people.
In the far future our descendants may look back upon the
period in which we are living as a strange episode which
disturbed the natural habits of our race. . . . The basis
of our industrial supremacy was, and is, our coal. . . .
We were no longer able to grow our own food ; but we made
masses of goods which the manufacturers were eager to
exchange for it ; and the population grew like crops on
a newly irrigated desert. During the nineteenth century
the numbers were nearly quadrupled. Let those who
1 The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Chap. VI.
58 POPULATION
■
think that the population of a country can be increased
at will reflect whether it is likely that any physical, moral
or psychological change came over the nation coincidently
with the inventions of the spinning jenny and the steam
engine. It is too obvious for dispute that it was the posses-
sion of capital wanting employment, and of natural
advantages for using it, that called these multitudes of
human beings into existence, to eat the food which they
paid for by their labour. And it should be equally obvious
that the existence of forty-six millions of people upon
121,000 square miles of territory depends entirely upon our
finding a market for our manufactures abroad, for so only
are we able to pay for the food of the people. It is most
unfortunate that these exports must, with our present
population, include coal, which, if we had any thought for
posterity, we should guard jealously and use sparingly ;
for in five hundred years at the outside our stock will be
gone, and we shall sink to a third-rate Power at once. We
are sacrificing the future in order to provide for an excessive
and discontented population in the present."1
It may be that the writers of these passages are
not so representative of the general opinion of their
time as Macaulay was of nineteenth-century culture.
Perhaps there is to-day no general opinion upon broad
social issues which we can compare with the coherent
formularies of the Early Victorians. Here, at any rate,
we have definite opinions, clearly expressed by writers
who are widely read and discussed in Europe and
America. By them we are brought face to face with
the most fundamental oi all economic problems ; the
relation of the number of human beings to the supply
of the necessaries of life. They tell us, in effect, that we
are living, and that our parents have been living, for
1 W. R. Inge, Outspoken Ettays, pp. 91 and 92,
POPULATION THEORIES 59
fifty years, in a fool's paradise ; believing that they were
building up our economic life upon solid foundations,
and preparing the way for a happier posterity, whereas,
in reality, they were squandering our family estates and
wasting the gains of civilization on a mere increase in
numbers.
This is a very different story from Macaulay's vision
of a world in which the tendency to perfection overcomes
all obstacles. It demands instant and thorough in-
vestigation. Thus far we have been mainly concerned
with the history of a controversy. This was necessary
if only to account for the neglect of population problems
by the pre-war world. However pardonable that
neglect may have been hitherto, it is clear that it must
not and cannot continue. We must face the facts.
CHAPTER IV
FOOD AND RAW MATERIALS
" All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the
appetite is not filled." „ , . , . -
rr Lcdesiasles vi. 7.
§ 1. Analogy between a Shrinking Earth and a Growing
Population. If the world were gradually growing
smaller and population remaining constant, the effect
upon human beings would be very like that produced
by the growth of population in a world which remains
the same size. It has been estimated that if the popula-
tion of the world continued to increase at the rate at
which it was growing between 1906 and 1911, it would
double in sixty years. Let us imagine, therefore, that
the world is shrinking at such a rate that it will be half
its present size in sixty years. The suggestion seems
rather an alarming one as it stands, but to make the
analogy more accurate we must assume that the
shrinkage is all taking place in the food-producing
areas. We should rightly regard such a state of things
as more serious than that which actually faces us. For,
in the first place, the growth of population carries with
it an opportunity for increased efficiency in production,
which must be set off against the increased demand
for food. Other things being equal, a thousand million
people on half the earth would not, therefore, be so
60
FOOD AND RAW MATERIALS 61
well off as two thousand millions on the whole earth.
In the second place, we know from experience that,
unless some new discovery enables us to produce food
more easily, the population will not, in fact, continue
to increase at its present rate.
Though the analogy is not complete, however, it may
serve to bring out a few points which would otherwise
remain somewhat obscure. It illustrates the Law of
Diminishing Returns. If the returns to agriculture
remained constant, we should have no economic reason
for alarm at the shrinking of the earth. The same
quantity of capital and labour would be available
and would yield the same amount of food when it was
applied to a smaller quantity of land. Even a single
field would then suffice to maintain the whole population
at their present standard of living ! Such a supposition
is obviously absurd ; but it is no more absurd than it
would be to deny the tendency to diminishing returns.
Recognizing then, as we should, that the shrinking j
earth would yield a smaller return of food to each
successive dose of capital and labour applied to it, we
should be forced to tackle the problem of maintaining
the population on the food produced from a smaller
acreage. The price of food would rise. Increasing
quantities of capital and labour would be transferred
from the production of other articles, such as clothes
and houses, to the production of food. Some land,
which is now more profitably used for other purposes,
would also be ploughed up and put under cultivation.
Thus, by a considerable transference of resources from
the production of less essential commodities, the
primary need of human beings for food would be supplied
62 POPULATION
and the whole population might continue to exist on a
lower standard of comfort and well-being.
In all probability no actual famine would result from
such a decrease in the size of the earth as we have
supposed ; no one need die of starvation ; it is possible
that no one need eat less food than before ; but food
would be dearer and many other things would also
be dearer and scarcer, because capital and labour
would be diverted from making them in order to keep
up the food supply. A unit of labour applied in industry
would consequently yield a purchasing power over a
smaller quantity of commodities of all kinds.
§ 2. The Transference of Resources in War-time. It is
in this way that the pressure of population on the food
supply makes itself felt. Those who were in England
| during the war will remember how tennis lawns were
(turned into potato patches and public parks divided
up into allotments. It is impossible to say what loss
of satisfaction was involved in this change. We only
know that before and after the special food-shortage
caused by the war, people preferred to take this part
of their income in the form of games and flowers, but
that when the pressure on subsistence reached a certain
pitch they sacrificed these enjoyments in order to
obtain fresh vegetables. A similar transference of
| resources was taking place on a much greater scale in
the food-producing parts of the world. India, the first
country to have a sowing time after the outbreak of
war, immediately increased her wheat-growing area by
4,000,000 acres. In North America, 12,000,000 acres
more wheat were sown in the spring of 1915. Australia
FOOD AND RAW MATERIALS 63
added 3,000,000 acres, about 30 per cent, to her wheat
area. Altogether, therefore, the area of the world's
surface devoted to the growing of wheat was increased
during the first year of war by about 19,000,000 acres.;
These figures indicate considerable elasticity in the
world's food supply. American and Canadian farmers
had to decide whether to increase their acreage before
they knew how far prices would rise or even whether
they would be able to get their wheat to the European
markets. They were therefore willing to make a con-
siderable extension for a speculative return. In fact,
they rather over-estimated the demand, or the ex-
ceptional harvests of 1915-16 upset their calculations ;
prices did not reach the expected level and the acreage
under wheat decreased a little during the later years of
the war. The farmers had shown, however, what they
could do in a single year if more food were required.
Moreover, there is still land in Canada uncultivated,
and the possibilities of intensive cultivation there are
enormous. The average yield of wheat in Canada is
under 19 bushels an acre, while in the United Kingdom
it is 32 bushels. In the Argentine, also, there has been
during the last thirty years a tremendous extension of
the area under wheat, and the application of intensive
methods there may be expected to produce huge
supplies. The United States had 71,500,000 acres
under wheat in 1919, or 11,000,000 more than in
any previous year ; and 6,600,000 acres under rye,
or three times the area under the crop in 1912. *
This great extension of cultivation took place under
the stimulus of Mr. Hoover's guaranteed price and,
1 Sir R. Henry Rew, Food Supplies in Peace and War.
64 POPULATION
though very unlikely to be maintained, it shows what
can be done.
' Why all this fuss, then, about the Law of Diminishing
Returns and the pressure of population on the means of
subsistence ? " the reader, reassured by the foregoing
paragraph, may ask. Why, dear sir, do you walk, or
take a bus in the City of London, when there are taxis
about and a Rolls-Royce to be bought round the
corner ? The question is whether the world, and more
particularly Europe, can afford to go on increasing its
population and paying the price required to extract
these potential food supplies from the soil.
Why have so many city clerks given up their allot-
ments since the war ended ? Their reasons are in-
structive. One will tell you that he foimd " it didn't
pay." He was tired when he returned from the office
in the evening and did not feel inclined to go in for hard
manual labour ; and if he rose early in the morning to
dig, he found himself sleepy and inefficient later in the
day. Another would have liked to keep on his allot-
ment, but the land was unfortunately required for other
purposes. A third has changed his main occupation
and no longer has time for cultivating the soil. A fourth
is " fed up " with the disappointments due to drought,
or insect pests, or some of the other obstacles which
impede the cultivator, especially if he is not equipped
with the most scientific knowledge and implements.
All these reasons illustrate the tendency for resources
to be diverted into those occupations in which they can
contribute the maximum net product. If food again
became as scarce in Britain as it was during the war,
these clerks would resume their agricultural efforts. If
FOOD AND RAW MATERIALS 65
it became still scarcer, they might even be induced to
give up their city jobs and devote themselves to food
production. It is the same in the world as a whole.
The growth of population increases the demand for
food. The Law of Diminishing Returns shows itself
in an increasing difficulty in extracting further food
supplies from the soil. More and more capital and
labour are required for each proportionate increase in
the supply, and, consequently, more and more human
effort must be put into the making of other things that
we ask the farmer to take in exchange for his produce.
Otherwise, he will not think it worth while to cultivate,
his land more intensively. He will be content to growl
the same quantity each year, unless he sees a prospect)
of making a profit out of the application of more capital
and labour to his land. Thus, as the city clerk gave up
his leisure or his tennis for potatoes, so every one may
have to sacrifice various things from which he derives
satisfaction in order to obtain a sufficient share of the
food produced under these circumstances of increasing
difficulty.
§ 3. The Pressure of Population upon Subsistence. It/*
has already been indicated that the growth of popula-i
tion is not likely to be the cause of famine. The pressure
upon the food supply produced by numbers alone is
sufficiently gradual to allow an adjustment to be made
in the allocation of resources before any danger of
starvation occurs. People will give up luxuries of all/
kinds, and even necessities like fuel and shelter, before \
they will go without food. It is this gradual depression
of the standard of life, rather than actual famine, that
66 POPULATION
is likely to result from an excessive growth of population.
For when the standard of life has been reduced to any
considerable extent, the death-rate will rise, children
and old people succumbing to privation ; and, even if
the birth-rate remain unchanged, numbers will be kept
within the bare means of subsistence. It is obvious,
however, that a community which is thus reduced to
the lowest necessities of life will suffer much more
severely from a sudden dearth than one which has a
margin of resources to draw upon. In this way over-
population may be the main, though not the immediate,
cause of famine. The population of European Russia
increased from less than 100,000,000 in 1890 to about
150,000,000 at the outbreak of war ; and the excess
of births over deaths in Russia as a whole was at the
rate of 2,000,000 per annum in the years immediately
preceding 1914. This tremendous increase must have
contributed greatly to the magnitude of the catastrophe
before which the world now stands in horrified im-
potence. In India, too, the population has been in-
creasing with disquieting rapidity owing to the removal
by British rule of many of the checks to population
which formerly prevailed ; and it is probable that the
recurrence of famines in that country is partly attribut-
able to this increase. In large parts of India people are
entirely dependent on agriculture, and the harvest is
so completely destroyed by a single monsoon failure
that the labourer is thrown out of work for a whole
year. If he has no savings, he and his family must
starve, or be kept alive by relief work, even though
food may be obtainable from neighbouring districts.
It is clear, therefore, that an increase in population
FOOD AND RAW MATERIALS 67
which absorbs the whole surplus of a normal harvest
may transform the effect of a monsoon failure from
unemployment into famine. Certainly the Indian
Government has taken energetic steps to grapple with
the famine problem, both in the way of prevention, by
transport and irrigation schemes, and by the organiza-
tion of relief when famines occur. No criticism of
British rule is therefore implied here. It is only sug-
gested that the growth of population may account for
the fact that famines still occur in India, in spite of
the measures which have been taken to avert them.
The preceding argument might be thought to imply
that an increase in the number of the inhabitants of a
country must always lower the standard of life which
has hitherto prevailed there. That is not so. The
factors that Mill grouped together under the compre-
hensive title of " the progress of civilization " make a
certain increase in numbers frequently desirable. Some
of these factors, indeed, depend upon an increase in
numbers to enable them to come into action. If,
therefore, we do not dwell so much upon the need for a
certain increase as upon the disadvantages of an ex-
cessive increase, it is only because that " power of
population," to which Malthus called attention, is so
great that the former is always forthcoming when it
is required. A multitude of the unborn are always
crowding round the door of life. Open it a little way
and they squeeze through in such numbers that you
will have much ado to close it again !
§ 4. The Economic Advantages of a Growing Population.
In comparing the growth of population with a shrinkage
68 POPULATION
of the earth, it was remarked that the former would be
less alarming than the latter, because an increase in
population carries with it an opportunity for increased
efficiency in production. It will be worth while to
examine that statement more closely.
The raw materials of manufactures are all either
griculturalor mineral products, and the Law of Diminish-
ing Returns applies, as we saw in Chapter II, to these
as well as to food. The cost of raw materials, however,
is often a very small part of the total cost of production
in manufactures, and all the other costs tend to decrease
as the amount of production increases. Manufactures
are much more susceptible than agriculture to improve-
ments in mechanical skill. Mass induction enables
i yejy__gr_eat^ economies to be made, and facilitates that
world-wide division of labour which has contributed so
enormously to the general wealth. In manufactures,
therefore, the causes which tend to diminish costs as
the amount produced increases have generally pre-
ponderated greatly over the tendency of the raw
materials to increase in cost, and it is probable that
in most industries the balance will remain tilted in a
favourable direction for a long time to come. More-
over, the growth of population has facilitated that
development of the means _of transport both by land
and sea, which as we have seen, enables the products
of distant lands to be exchanged at trifling costs. The
actual proximity of large numbers of human beings to
one another, objectionable as it may be to those who
love solitude and country scenes, enables great economies
to be made in the distribution of goods, and renders
possible some amenities of civilization, such as picture-
FOOD AND RAW MATERIALS 69
palaces and picture galleries, which could not be pro-
vided in a sparsely populated world. This gathering
together of multitudes also has some effect in counter-
acting the tendency_to_ diminishing returns in agri-
culture, by introducing an economy in the distribution
of food. It is clear that British agriculture could not
be profitably carried on so much more intensively than
that of Canada unless proximity to the consumers
exercised a powerful influence on costs. It is equally
clear that if much smaller quantities of Canadian wheat
were required in this country, the cost of bringing
them to market would be increased.
Taking all these factors together it wall be seen that!
tha^gr^wth^j^jyo^dation may under certain circum-
stances actually increase the amount of wealth perl
hea37~even though food may be getting dearer.!
Diminisinngreturns toa^riculture and the diversion
of an ever-increasing proportion of the total supply of
capital and labour into the production of food and raw
materials may be outweighed I>y the increasing returns
obtained in manufactures. A smaller proportion of
the "total population employed in manufacturing
industries may thus supply the aggregate wants of the
community more fully than before. Houses and
clothing may be so plentiful as to more than compensate
for the comparative scarcity of food.
To put the same point in another way, let us assume 1
that owing to improved machinery and business \.
organization the Lancashire cotton industry is yielding
increasing returns, in spite of some increase in the
price of raw cotton. The wages of the cotton operative
will tend to rise and the price of cotton goods to fall.
70 POPULATION
JHe may therefore be able to buy as much food as before
/at a higher price and still have more money to spend
/ on other things ; and these other things — boots and
) gramophones and rides on motor-coaches — may also be
/ getting cheaper through economies obtained in their
| production on a large scale. His real income may thus
be considerably increased.
It would be very interesting if we could distinguish
between those economies in production which depend
upon an increase in numbers and those which would
take place if the population remained stationary.
Unfortunately they are inextricably mixed up together.
Many discoveries and inventions which depend upon
the brain-work of a few men working in seclusion would
certainly be made in any civilized society, whether the
population was increasing or not. Some of these could
be profitably applied under any circumstances. Others,
however, like the discovery of steam, and electricity,
require a dense population if their potentialities are to
be fully developed in such enterprises as railways and
telegraphs. Probably an increasing population was
necessary to call forth the capital for the great
railway systems which were created throughout the
world towards the end of last century. Manufacturers,
; again, certainly require a considerable density of
population in order to obtain those economies of mass
production and the division of labour which lead to
such astonishing supplies of cheap and sometimes
nasty goods. It is true that many people would
rather have one suit of hand-made cloth than twenty
suits of the stuff which is turned out by machinery,
| but it is clear, at any rate, that much larger quantities
FOOD AND RAW MATERIALS 71
of clothing, per head, are available in a densely populated
world than could be produced by a scattered com-
munity. Finally, as we have already seen, there are
economies in distribution which depend entirely upon
a large population being congregated in a relatively
small area, and many developments of civilization,
some wholly good and others of more questionable
intrinsic value, but all sought after by the modern
town-dweller, which could not have been introduced
into a less populous world.
It is not possible, then, to say with any precision
how far the progress of civilization and the accumulation
of wealth depend upon an increasing population. Up
-to. a point, the growth of numbers has certainly con-
tributed-largely to the growth of wealth- There are
indications, however, that the most sweeping economies
which result from increasing numbers have already
been secured in the industrial areas of Europe and the
United States. It is probable that the wealth of
civilized countries was still growing faster than the
population, that the wealth per head was still increasing
in the years immediately preceding the war. But it is
probable also that the wealth per head would have been
increasing faster still, if the population had not been
growing so rapidly. From the economic point of view,
at all events, there seems no reason to bemoan that
slowing down of the rate of growth of the population
of the Western world which_has alarmed some English
bishops and Jjejnch patriots in recent years.
Taking a somewhat longer view, we may indeed see
good reason to strengthen this tentative opinion. For
if it appears to be somewhat undesirable for numbers
72 POPULATION
to continue to multiply rapidly when we are considering
the immediate effect upon the welfare of the people, it
will appear much less desirable when we look to the
future.
The main raw materials of European industry are
either imported from other continents or raised from
mines. Those which are imported are chiefly agricultural
products, like cotton and wool, which are subject to
the Law of Diminishing Returns.
§ 5. The Supply of Haw Cotton. Now the production
of cotton, as we saw in Chapter II, is not keeping pace
with the demand for it. Between 1875 and 1895 the
quantity of cotton produced in the United States
increased so much that the price fell 54 per cent. Thus
in a period of falling prices, cotton fell more than almost
any other commodity. Between 1895 and 1910, how-
ever, when the average price of raw materials rose
25 per cent, the price of cotton rose 71 per cent, while
wheat rose only 17 per cent. The American cotton
belt had been invaded by wheat and other crops. The
Western extension of the belt had been prevented by a
shortage of negro labour. For the picking of cotton is
disagreeable work, which must be done by hand, and
it is practically confined in the United States to negro
labour. Moreover, the growing demand of American
mills had limited the amount of American cotton
available for Lancashire, and though there are several
other parts of the world in which cotton can be grown,
there are few where labour conditions and climate are
both favourable. Fully 60 per cent of the world's total
supplies of cotton are grown in the United States, and
FOOD AND RAW MATERIALS 73
about 73 per cent of British imports of raw cotton
come from that source.
In the years immediately preceding the war the
acreage under cotton in America was considerably
extended, but the yield per acre was reduced by the
ravages of a very serious insect pest, the boll weevil,
and the price continued to rise. That this rise in price
was due to the increased cost of production was shown
by the fluctuations in supply. A good crop caused a
sharp fall in prices, and so much of the cotton was
produced near the margin of profitable production that
a fall in prices caused a restriction of the acreage in the
following year ; and this restriction of acreage naturally
led, in a normal year, to a reduced crop, a rise in prices
and an extended acreage again. In the language of
economics, the supply showed great elasticity.
The war caused a great decrease in the demand for
cotton ; and the supply, under the conditions indicated,
inevitably shrank correspondingly. Meanwhile, the boll
weevil invaded new territories and annexed great areas
of the American cotton belt, sadly reducing the yield of
the crop. The result of the depredations of this enemy
is that it is doubtful whether the American cotton crop
will ever again reach its pre-war magnitude, unless
improved methods of production, including the defeat
of the boll weevil, are devised, or a great permanent
rise in prices makes it profitable to increase supplies
under the present adverse conditions. When it is
remembered that the pre-war supply was not keeping
pace with the world's demand, it will be obvious that
the position is an anxious one for the manufacturers of
cotton goods. There are, no doubt, many countries —
74 POPULATION
India, Egypt, the Sudan, Mesopotamia, China — which
are potentially capable of growing all the cotton which
the manufacturing countries may need. Unfortunately,
the essential condition upon which the development of
these sources of supply depends is the same as that
demanded by the American producers : a rise in
prices, to compensate for the Law of Diminishing Returns
operating, in this case, through the extension of pro-
duction into less favourable localities.
§ 6. The Supply of Wool. Wool, like cotton, fell in
price very heavily between 1875 and 1895, but owing
to the great development of Australian production, it
only rose the average 25 per cent during the years
between 1895 and 1910. The war caused a serious
diminution in the supply, but there is little doubt that,
when the world at last recovers from the paralysing
effects of concussion, the pre-war production of wool
will be restored. If a great increase of supply is required,
it is probable that a tendency to diminishing returns
will necessitate a rise in the price of this commodity
also. But readers of the first volume in this series will
remember that wool is a joint product, subject to special
conditions of supply. When Charles Lamb was asked
by an agricultural travelling companion what he
thought of the prospects of turnips, he replied : " That
must depend on boiled mutton." He was thinking of
joint demand ; but on the supply side, wool depends,
even more intimately than turnips, upon mutton. The
proportions of the two commodities to one another can
be considerably varied by cross-breeding, and it is
therefore probable that a small rise in the price of wool
FOOD AND RAW MATERIALS 75
will cause a considerable increase in the quantity
produced.
The prospects of the wool supply during, say, the
next fifty years, are not therefore so disquieting as
those of cotton. Nevertheless, we must remember
that the production of this commodity requires great
open spaces. The growth of population and transport
facilities inevitably lead to the transference of land
from pasture to arable and dairy farming. We are
concerned with the ebb and flow of the great tides in
human progress and must not be deceived by the little
waves which advance and recede continually on the
fringe of the ocean. Civilization is always encroaching
on the pasture lands and driving the shepherds into
remoter areas. The River Plate Republics and the
United States are reducing their production of wool.
Only Australia is still to a small extent on the up-grade.
The question arises as to how long it will be before
Australia, and even Siberia, grows too populous and
accessible for sheep-farming, on anything like its
present terms, to remain its most profitable industry.
Nobody wants to hold back these countries. We look
to them to help to maintain the necessary supply of
wheat and other food for human consumption. We
want to see them developing and supporting flourishing
communities of their own. But the European textile ,
industries are faced by the uncomfortable fact that the
food they need for their operatives is competing with
the raw material upon which they work, for room to
grow in sufficient quantities to satisfy their demand for
each of them. The fertile places on the earth which
have not already been made to contribute something
76 POPULATION
towards the maintenance of human life are hard to
find. This planet is filling up, and unless mankind
makes some sudden leap forward in knowledge and
power, it will not be long before a steady permanent
fall in real wages warns us that world-population is
increasing faster than the world's produce.
The conditions which govern the supply of the other
kind of raw materials — those which are raised from
mines — will be discussed in the next chapter, and it
will be convenient to reserve further consideration of
the relations between raw products and population
until we are able to lump all the former together.
§ 7. Fisheries. Before we pass on from vegetables and
animals to minerals, however, mention should be made
of a food which has played an important part in history
and may become still more influential in the future.
This food is "neither flesh nor fowl," but "good red
herring."
In years gone by the fisheries were regarded by both
Holland and England as " the chief est trade and gold-
mine " and " the way to winne wealth." British
fisheries were nursed by kings and statesmen, not only
for the food they produced, but because the fishing
fleets supplied the finest seamen for the Navy, and
because " he that hath the trade of fishing becomes
mightier than all the world besides in number of ships."
River-fisheries are undoubtedly subject to the Law of
Diminishing Returns, though the English salmon rivers
might with a little care be made to yield an increasing
return to considerable doses of capital and labour at
the present time. As to the sea, opinions differ. A
FOOD AND RAW MATERIALS 77
herring produces about 30,000 eggs, and a plaice may
lay as many as half a million. A very large proportion
of these eggs are destroyed, and probably only a small
minority of little fishes grow to maturity. It is there-
fore arguable that the capture of grown fishes merely
releases space and food for others to replace them. On
the other hand, experience seems to show that the
stock of plaice in the North Sea has actually been
diminished by vigorous fishing operations. Very little
is at present known about fish and their way of life, but
the question is an important one for, whether they are
subject to diminishing returns or not, they constitute
an immense self-replenishing reservoir of human food.
In the words of an old " Fisher's Song " :
" The husbandman has rent to pay
(Blow, winds, blow)
And seed to purchase every day
(Row, boys, row),
But he who farms the rolling deeps,
Though never sowing, always reaps ;
The ocean's fields are fair and free,
There are no rent days on the sea."
CHAPTER V
COAL AND IRON
" Look unto the rock whence ye were hewn, and to the
hole of the pit whence ye were digged."
Isaiah li. 1.
§ 1. Jevons and the Coal Question. Another dis-
tinguished Englishman, besides John Stuart Mill,
realized the temporary character of the great boom in
wealth and trade which intoxicated the world in the
nineteenth century. In 18G5 W. Stanley Jevons gave a
shock to British complacency and even, it is said,
startled Mr. Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer, by publishing his book on The Coal Question :
An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and
the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal-mines.
The book is a classic. Other people, including
Jevons's own son, have written more exhaustively on
the subject, in the light of fuller statistical data. Two
Royal Commissions, one appointed especially to in-
vestigate the allegations made by Jevons, have sat upon
the subject. Subsequent events have confirmed some
and falsified other of the prophecies contained in the
book. But it still remains the best and most disturbing
exposition of the Coal Question and it still seizes the
reader's attention as only a work of genius can.
78
COAL AND IRON 79
Even a work of genius, however, if it deals with a
practical question, must be ruthlessly handled, and
Jevons's argument can be summarised as follows : 1
If Britain at present possesses a certain leading and
world-wide influence, it is not due to any general in-
tellectual superiority, but to " the union of certain
happy mental qualities with material resources of an
altogether peculiar character."
We must apply the Malthusian principle of popula-
tion to the consumption of coal. " Our subsistence
no longer depends upon our produce of corn. The
momentous repeal of the Cora Laws throws us from corn
upon coal. It marks, at any rate, the epoch when coal
was finally recognized as the staple produce of the
country ; it marks the ascendency of the manufacturing
interest, which is only another name for the development
of the use of coal."
By virtuejjfjjurj^ssessjonj^
several quarters of the globe our willing tributaries.
" The pTainsof NoTtlTSmerlca alid "Russia are our corn-
fields ; Chicago and Odessa our granaries ; Canada and
the Baltic are our timberjforests ; Australasia contains
our sheep-farms, and in Argentina and on the western
prairies of North America are our herds of oxen ; Peru
sends her silver, and the gold of South Africa and
Australia flows to London ; the Hindus and the Chinese
grow tea for us, and our coffee, sugar and spice planta-
tions are in all the Indies. Spain and France are our
vineyards, and the Mediterranean our fruit-garden ;
and our cotton grounds, which for long have occupied
1 The passages between inverted commas are quoted verbatim
from Jevons.
80 POPULATION
the Southern United States, are now being extended
everywhere in the warm regions of the earth."
Thisjs i whaJL£oaI_has_done Iqilus, and " those persons
very much mistake the power of coal and steam, and
iron, who think that it is now fully felt and exhibited ;
it_will be almost indefinitely greater in future years
than^Jtjoowjs. Science points to this conclusion, and
common observation confirms it." But " we should be
hasty in assuming that the growth of general commerce
ensures for this island everlasting riches and industrial
supremacy." We have to remember that, " while
other countries mostly subsist upon the annual and
ceaseless income of the harvest, we are drawing more
and more upon a capital which yieldTno annual interest,
But once "turned into light and heat and motive power,
is gone for eyerjnta space-.
""""^Rather more than a century of our present progress
would exhaust our mines to the depth of 4000 feet, or
1500 feet deeper than our present deepest mine."
If all our coal were brought from an average depth
of some 2000 feet, our manufacturers would have to
contend with a doubled price of fuel. If the average
depth were increased to 4000 feet, a further great but
unknown rise in the cost of fuel must be the conse-
quence.
" But I am far from asserting, from these figures,
that our coal-fields will be wrought to a depth of 4000
feet in little more than a century.
" I draw the conclusion that I think anyone would
draw, that we cannot long maintain our present rate
of increase_of consumption ; that we can never advance
to" the"Eigher amounts of consumption supposed. But
COAL AND IRON 81
1<his_ only means that the check. to_our progress must
become perceptible within a century from the present
time ; that the cost of fuel must rise, perhaps within a
lifetime, to a rate injurious to our commercial and
manufacturing supremacy; and the conclusion is
inevitable, that our present happy ^progressive con-
dition is a thing of limited duration."
The public seems unaware that " a sudden check to
the expansion of our supply would be the very mani-
festation of exhaustion we dread. It would at once
bring on us the rising price, the transference of industry,
and the general reverse of prosperity, which we may hope
not to witness in our days."
Economy in the use of fuel offers no way out of our
difficulty. Economy in the domestic consumption of
coal would be a good thing, but would only affect a
small portion of the total consumption. ' But the
economy of coal in manufactures is a different matter.
It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the
economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished
consumption. The very contrary is the truth." The
whole history of the steam engine is one of economy,
and " the reduction of the consumption of coal, per ton
of iron, to less than one-third of its former amount, was
followed, in Scotland, by a tenfold total consumption,
between the years 1830 and 1863, not to speak of the
indirect effect of cheap iron in accelerating other coal-
consuming branches of industry."
" The addition to our population in four years now
(1865) is as great as the whole increase of the century
1651-1751, and the increase of coal consumption
between 1859 and 1862 is equal to the probable annual
82 POPULATION
consumption at the beginning of this century. It is
on this account that I attach less importance than might
be thought right to an exact estimate of the coal
existing in Great Britain. . . . The absolute amount of
coal in the country rather affects the height to which
we shall rise than the time for which we shall enjoy the
happy prosperity of progress.
" It has been suggested by many random thinkers
that when our coal is done here, we may import jt as
we import so many__other raw materials from abroad. . . .
I am sorry to say that the least acquaintance with the
principles of trade, and the particular circumstances
of our trade, furnishes a complete negative to all such
notions. While the export of coal is a great and growing
branch of our trade, a reversal of the trade, and a future
return current of coal, is a commercial impossibility and
absurdity. . . . No one will properly understand the
trade in coal who forgets that coal is the most bulky
and weighty of all commodities; . . . The cost of
camagelsTihe main element of price everywhere except
in the coal-field, or its close neighbourhood." If our
supplies were imported from America, about 1200
vessels would be required to maintain our present
supplies only. " Our industry would then have to
contend with fuel, its all-important food, three or four
times as dear as it now is in England and America.
" But it is asked, How is a large export trade of coal
possible, if an import trade is commercially impossible ?
... It is mainly due to the fact that coal is carried as
ballast, or makeweight, and is subject to the low rates
of back^carnage. . . . Our imports., consist of bulky
raw materials and food. ... A large part of our
COAL AND IRON 83
shipping would thus have to leave our ports half empty,
or in ballast, unless there were some makeweight or
natural supply of bulky cargo as back-carriage. . . .
]To import coal as well as other raw materials would be
(against the essentially reciprocal nature of trade. The
weight of our inward cargoes would be multiplied many
times, and but little weight left for outward carriage ;
almost every influence which now acts, and for cen-
turies has acted, in favour of our maritime and manu-
facturing success would then act against it, and it would
be arrogance and folly indeed to suppose that even
Britain can carry forward her industry in spite of
nature, and in the want of every material condition.
In our successes hitherto it is to nature we owe at least
as much as to our own energies."
It is impossible to do justice to Jevons's closely knit
argument in a brief summary, but the foregoing sen-
tences from his book may serve the double purpose of
conveying some notion of the drift of his thought and
at the same time introducing the subject to the reader
of this handbook. If anyone is thereby encouraged to
read Jevons for himself, he will be amply rewarded.
§ 2. The Meaning of " Exhaustion." Although he was
a singularly clear writer, Jevons was misunderstood.
There seems to be a deeply rooted human instinct to
resist a disagreeable truth and to misrepresent its
exponents if they cannot be ignored. Just as Malthus
was accused of having said that population would in-
crease beyond the means of subsistence, when, in fact,
he said that it couldn't ; so Jevons was supposed by
many people, including both the Royal Commissions
84 POPULATION
appointed to investigate the question, to have said that
the coal consumption of the United Kingdom would
reach certain very large amounts, whereas his whole
point was that the rate oj^rowihjn_cqal consumption
would inevitably_be checked.
One of the most vital points to grasp in the study of
the rise and fall of human welfare is that put forward
by Malthus when he said : "A man who is locked up
in a room may fairly be said to be confined by the
walls of it, though he may never touch them." This
was what Jevons was driving at in connection with the
coal supply. " Many people," he wrote, " perhaps
entertain a vague notion that some day our coal seams
will be found emptied to the bottom, and swept clean
like a coal-cellar. Our fires and furnaces, they think,
will then be suddenly extinguished, and cold and dark-
ness will be left to reign over a depopulated country.
It is almost needless to say, however, that our mines
are literally inexhaustible. We cannot get to the
bottom of them ; and though we may some day have
to pay dear for fuel, it will never be positively wanting."
When he discussed the inevitable " exhaustion of our
coal-mines," therefore, Jevons meant their depletion
to a point at which we could no longer maintain our
extraordinary rate of progress. The average annual
rate of growth of our coal consumption, at the time
when Jevons wrote, was 3| per cent. If our consumption
of coal had continued to multiply at that rate for
110 years, the total amount consumed in that period
would have been one hundred thousand million tons.
Now the most reliable estimate that Jevons could
obtain of the available coal in Britain showed eighty-
COAL AND IRON 85
three thousand million tons within a depth of 4000
feet. He naturally concluded, therefore, as we have
seen, that we could not long maintain that rate of
progress.
Within twenty years the rate of growth began to
diminish. The average rate of increase during the last
forty years has been about 2 per cent per annum.
Jevons's anticipation has thus been justified. On the
other hand, the estimate, which he adopted, of the
available coal in Great Britain has been rejected as
too low by later authorities. The Royal Commission
which issued its final report in 1905, taking, as Jevons
had done, the limit of practicable depth as 4000 feet,
estimated the available quantity of coal in the proved
coal-fields of the United Kingdom as just over one
hundred thousand million tons. Although about six
thousand million tons had been raised in the interval,
this estimate was nearly eighteen thousand million
tons higher than that used by Jevons. The coal-fields
of Ireland, which are included in the later estimate
and not in the earlier one, are thought to contain less
than two hundred milliontons,but the excess is accounted
for partly by the difference in the areas regarded as
productive and partly by new discoveries and more
accurate knowledge.
If after another forty years of diligent coal-getting
we could hope for a similar increase in the quantity
remaining in the earth, we should conclude that we were
the happy owners of a widow's cruse and could regard
Jevons as a discredited prophet. As, however, that is
a supposition which, as Malthus would have said, " can-
not be inferred upon any just philosophical grounds,"
86 POPULATION
we must remember that Jevons himself did not attribute
much importance to the accuracy of the estimate in
question. " Were our coal half as abundant again,"
he wrote, " as Mr. Hull (the author of the estimate)
states, the effect would only be to defer the climax of
our growth perhaps for one generation. And I repeat,
the absolute amount of coal in the country rather affects
the height to which we shall rise than the time for which we
shall enjoy the happy prosperity of progress."
§ 3. The Influence of Protection. It is probable that
the competition of other countries, especially Germany,
has caused British coal production to take a somewhat
different course from that anticipated by Jevons. He
seems to have expected that the rate of growth would
be continued and perhaps accelerated until a sharp
rise in price warned the blindest manufacturer that the
point of exhaustion was approaching. Germany's
coal-fields he passed over as negligible, and though he
tended to the other extreme with reference to the
United States, over-estimating the coal resources of
that country, he regarded her rather as the inevitable
successor to Great Britain in the industrial leadership
of the world than as an immediate competitor. He
could scarcely bring himself to believe that America
would persist in a protectionist policy, which he regarded
as idiotic. " Its effect upon America," he said, " is
to cut it off from intercourse with the rest of the civilized
world, to destroy its maritime influence, and to arrest,
as far as human interference can arrest, the develop-
ment of a great state. No doubt it enables a manu-
facturing interest to grow half a century or more before
COAL AND IRON 87
its time ; but just so much as one interest is forcibly
promoted so much are other interests forcibly held
back."
This, no doubt, is an extreme expression of the Free
Trade view. But there is more in it than most
Americans, or even twentieth-century Englishmen,
generally suppose. The protection of manufactures in
America has starved the country for the benefit of
the towns. Everything that the farmer buys is taxed,
while the great bulk of his produce is necessarily open
to free competition. The result is that capital and
labour are diverted from the production of food and
cotton and wool to the production of manufactured
articles, ancTthe evils which the world and, in the long
run, America too, has to fear through the Law of
Diminishing Returns are artificially accelerated by state
action.1
Though Jevons, like the other Free-traders of his
time, expected other countries to follow the example of
Britain and abolish their import taxes, he recognized
that this was by no means certain ; and he made a
forecast of the effect which the opposite policy would
have upon our welfare.
1 In 1921 an extraordinary twist has been given to American
tariS policy by the growing political power of the farmers. The
support of the " agricultural block " in Congress for a protectionist
policy has been bought by high protective taxes upon wheat, cotton,
fruits, wool and practically all the other farm products. As, however,
America still exports the more important of these commodities, the
import taxes upon them are purely make-believe, and the effect of
this development is not, at present, great. The important fact is
that American farming interests are making themselves felt in
Federal politics and claiming, not free trade, but protection ! Thus
the manufacturing industry which has been forced into rapid growth
in the protectionist hothouse may be checked and hampered by
artificial restrictions upon the supply of food and raw materials.
1.1).
88 POPULATION
" The rate of our progress and exhaustion," he said,
" must depend greatly upon the legislation of colonies and
foreign States. Should France revert to a less enlightened
commercial policy ; should Europe maintain or extend a
prohibitory system ; should the Northern States succeed
in erecting a permanent Morrill tariff for the benefit of
Pennsylvanian manufacturers ; and should the tendency
of all our colonies towards Protection increase, the progress
of trade may indeed be vastly retarded. Under these
circumstances the present rapid rate of our growth may soon
be somewhat checked. The introduction of railways, the
repeal of the Corn Laws, the sudden settlement of our
Australian colonies, may prove exceptional events. Then,
after a period of somewhat painful depression, we may fall
into a lower rate of progress, that can be maintained for
a lengthened period, passing out of sight."
There is something almost uncanny in the foresight
exhibited in this passage. Europe, America and the
British Dominions have, as we know, persisted in their
policy of protection for manufactures and the result
has corresponded closely with that anticipated by
Jevons. The lower rate of increase in the consumption
of British coal is at present attributable to the com-
petition of other industrial communities, rather than
to the approaching exhaustion of our coal-mines.
§ 4. The World's Coal Reserves. At the end of last
century the world production of coal averaged about
six hundred millions of tons a year. By 1913, the
output had doubled. Of the twelve hundred millions of
tons produced in that year, over 40 per cent were raised
in the United States, about 24 per cent in Great Britain
and about 15 per cent in Germany. The world's total
reserves of hard coal are estimated at about four
COAL AND IRON 89
billions (4,000,000,000,000) of tons ; enough for more
than three thousand years at the present rate of con-
sumption. About half of these reserves are attributed
to the United States ; a quarter to China, and rather
more than a fifth to Europe. Within Europe, pre-war
Germany claimed more than half, and Britain a quarter
of the reserves of available coal. It is said that American
coal-fields would last, at the present rate of production
(not, be it noted, on Jevons's basis of the rate of in-
crease), for twelve to fifteen centuries. The great bulk
of China's coal is in the Shansi field in the far interior ;
this has only been scratched as yet, but it may become
vastly important in years to come. Her more accessible
mines, nearer the coast, are not expected to last very
long, if they are thoroughly worked.
On the basis of the production of coal in 1900, a
German expert expressed the opinion that " in 100 to
200 years the coal-fields of Central France, Central
Bohemia, the Kingdom of Saxony, and the North of
England would be exhausted ; in 250 years the other
British coal-fields, the Waldenburg-Schalzlar coal-field,
and that of the North of France ; in 600 to 800 years
the coal-fields of Saarbrucken, Belgium, Aachen and
Westphalia ; and in more than 1000 years the coal-
fields of Upper Silesia."1
A more recent estimate is that " at the rate of pro-
duction of 1913, Britain had supplies only for five or
six centuries, Germany for eighteen to twenty."2
The divergence between these estimates need not
x P. Freeh, quoted in Part XI of Appendices to the Final Report
of the Royal Commission of 1901.
2 Prof. A. J. Sargent, Coal in International Trade, p. 16.
90 POPULATION
detain us. The figures have no significance except as
a broad indication of the magnitude of the supplies
available in different parts of the world. No one would
venture to predict the rate at which coal will be raised
and consumed during the next fifty years. But a
variation in the rate, of course, makes all the difference
to the length of time that the reserves will last. In the
fifteen years before the war the world's output of coal
doubled. If it doubled every fifteen years until 1995,
the consumption in that year would be at a rate which,
if continued, would exhaust the world's supposed
reserves in about one hundred years, instead of spread-
ing them over three thousand years !
It is obvious, therefore, that the rate of increase in
the consumption of coal must decline before many
years have passed, not only in Great Britain, but in
America also, and in the world as a whole. The spirit
of man is so competitive that this fact is likely to be
received quite calmly, if not with jubilation, while the
relative decline of one's own country would give rise
to alarm. Progress is measured not by any absolute
standard of well-being, but by a relative superiority over
other countries. There is perhaps some justification
for this method of calculation in the mechanism of
international trade.
Even from this point of view, however, the position
of Europe in general and of Great Britain in particular
is a disquieting one. For, while it is quite possible that
the mines of America may be exhausted as rapidly as
those of Europe, the " height to which she may rise "
(to use Jevons's phrase) greatly exceeds that which can
be attained by the Old World. She is thought to
COAL AND IRON 91
possess at least half the reserves of hard coal, and over
90 per cent of the reserves of lignite. She is already
responsible for nearly half the world's production of
the former commodity. A large part of her supplies
are easily raised ; so that just before the war the output
per person employed in the coal-mining industry was
nearly 680 tons in a year in the United States, as against
260 tons in Great Britain and 270 in Germany. The war
increased this advantage considerably ; Germany's coal
production being, of course, completely disorganized
by the Peace Treaty, while British costs quadrupled and
American costs only doubled, between 1913 and 1921.
§ 5. The Export Trade in Coal. Since American coal
can at present be raised so much more cheaply than
British coal, it might be supposed that America was
now in a position to capture the whole of the export
trade in coal. This, however, does not necessarily
follow. The question of shipping freights is extremely
important with respect to so bulky a commodity. The
distance of America from European markets thus
places a handicap upon that country in competing with
Great Britain there, which may counterbalance her
advantage in initial costs ; while other markets, such
as those of South America and the Far East, may be
preserved to Great Britain by another factor upon
which Jevons laid much emphasis. Great Britain
still imports large quantities of bulky commodities —
food-stuffs and raw materials — and, as the world
settles down, shipowners are again finding it necessary
to carry British coal abroad at low freights, as make-
weight or back-carriage.
92 POPULATION
Even if Great Britain retains the whole of her pre-
war export of coal in bulk, however, she must still feel
the competition of American coal very keenly through
its use in industry. If coal is in the future to be as
important a factor in the production of manufactured
articles as it has been in the past, it will be difficult
for Europe to hold its own against the New World.
But it is sometimes said that the influence of coal in
the world is waning. Rival sources of energy are
coming into prominence. What, then, are the known
substitutes for coal ? How will these affect the dis-
tribution of the world's wealth ? These are questions
which will naturally occur to the reader, and they
must be answered as far as our present knowledge
permits.
§ 6. Substitutes for Coal. Oil and_water are the two
sources of power most talked aEout nowadays.
In 1873 the world production of crude oil was less
than 1,500,000 tons ; in 1913 it was rather over fifty
millions of tons ; in 1920 it was well over ninety millions
of tons. The United States produced 64 per cent of the
world's supply in 1920 and Mexico 22 per cent. The
actual exhaustion of America's oil-fields is said to be in
sight, An official estimate gives them twenty years of
life. The reserves of coal are estimated in centimes.
The life of an oil-well is reckoned in months. While,
therefore, there are no reliable data as to the world's
oil resources, it seems likely that we may be reduced to
the use of shale-oil long before our coal reserves are
seriously depleted. Meanwhile, the United States have
the temporary advantage in this fuel also, and Mexico,
COAL AND IRON 93
her near neighbour, will be able to supplement her
supplies.
In water-power America has not so great an advantage
over Europe. An official estimate for the United States
in 1912 gives a maximum of over sixty million horse-
power and a minimum of over thirty millions. The
horse-power of Niagara is about six millions, and this
is the equivalent of about thirty millions of tons of coal
a year. The total water-power that the States claim to
possess would, therefore, be the equivalent of from 300
to 150 millions of tons of coal a year. It is thought
by some British authorities that this estimate is very
excessive. The most conservative, however, would
allow that North America as a whole has effective re-
serves of water-power equivalent to the saving of 100 to
150 millions of tons of coal a year on the present basis
of consumption.1 This represents no more than a
quarter of the present annual production of coal by the
United States ; and when we remember that a large
part of the water-power is in the far west and that it
cannot be economically distributed far from its source, it
will appear that even America's great rivers and water-
falls do not provide a satisfactory substitute for coal.
~ The whole of Central and Western Europe together
has probably from twenty to thirty million horse-power
available in water energy ; the equivalent of at least
a hundred million tons of coal a year. The Alps and the
mountains of Norway and Sweden are the chief sources
of power. Germany is said to possess only a million
and a half and Great Britain only one million horse-
power.
1 Prof. A. J. Sargent, Coal in International Trade, p. 64.
94 POPULATION
As in America, so in Europe, the water-power is
' mainly located at long distances from the coal-fields and
therefore from the present centres of industry. These
distances are, however, much greater in America than
in Europe, and the countries which converge upon the
Alps have therefore a potential source of power which
may partly compensate them for their inferiority in
reserves of coal.
No consolation of this kind is open to Great Britain,
whose insignificant reserves of water-power are scattered
about in the least accessible parts of the island ; unless,
indeed, a way is found of harnessing the tides which
ebb and flow unceasingly around her shores.
In general, it may be said that the resources of science
and industry are not likely to be defeated by the
problem of devising some adequate substitute for coal
to carry on the business of the world when that good
workman is at last exhausted by his labours. Jevons
saw no prospect of prolonging the life of coal by economies
in the use of fuel, because the fruits of such economies
were invariably taken out at once in the extension of
industry. No doubt he was right in the circumstances
of his own period. As coal grows scarcer, however,
and its price rises, economies will be forced upon us.
Industries which would otherwise have to close down
through inability to meet the increasing cost of coal
will be maintained by electricity. Coal will still, no
doubt, have to be used to generate the electricity,
where water-power is not available ; but a considerable
saving in coal will be effected by such means ;x and it
1 " If power supply in the United Kingdom were dealt with on
comprehensive lines and advantage taken of the most modern
COAL AND IRON 95
will be a real saving, by which the date of ultimate
exhaustion may be indefinitely postponed.
Though, however, it would be silly to be much
disturbed by the fear that the world may one day be
deprived of fuel, the problems raised by the relative
disadvantage of Europe in regard to fuel at the present
time are very real and pressing. In order that we may
see this disadvantage in its true proportions, it is
necessary to take account of another mineral, coal's
great ally in the domination of the world — iron.
§ 7. Iron. It used to be thought by large numbers of
Englishmen that the presence of coal and iron near
together in various parts of Britain was specially
arranged by Providence for the convenience of the
inhabitants. Certainly this proximity gave the iron
trade of Great Britain a good start and helped to build
the railways and ships which now carry the ore to the
fuel from comparatively distant places. At present,
however, Providence seems to be on the side of the
United States. About 85 per cent of the ore mined in
that country comes from the shores of Lake Superior
and is carried in steamers down to Lake Erie, where it
is either met by the coal or forwarded by rail to Pitts-
burg. In 1913 the United States produced over 40
per cent of the world's pig-iron. Between 1900 and 1913
her output rose from fourteen to over thirty millions
of tons, while that of Germany rose from eight to
engineering development, the saving in coal throughout the country
would, in the near future, amount to 55,000,000 tons per annum on
the present output of manufactured products." — " Final Reportof the
Coal Conservation Committee to the Ministry of Reconstruction,"
Cd. 9084 (1918).
96 POPULATION
twenty millions and that of Great Britain from nine
to a little over ten millions. Pre-war Germany obtained
most of her iron-ore from Lorraine and the rest from
Luxemburg, the Briey district in France, Sweden and
Spain. Great Britain produced two-thirds of the ore
she consumed and imported the rest from Sweden and
Spain.
Americans claim that they have about seventy-five
thousand millions of tons of high-grade ores in the
Lake Superior district, and three or four times that
quantity of low-grade ores. At the present rate of
consumption these would last for three or four thousand
years.
In Europe, the geologists estimate that there are over
fifty thousand millions of tons of workable ore. Most
of this, however, is not of high grade. It is, of course,
the richest and most easily worked deposits which are
exhausted first. There are, for instance, very large
reserves of low-grade ores in Great Britain, which we
may fall back upon when the richer ores of Sweden
and Spain are so far exhausted that their price becomes
prohibitive. The fact that we at present import a
large part of our supply shows that the difference in
quality is sufficiently important to outweigh the cost
of carrying a very heavy freight.
It will be seen that in respect to iron, as well as coal,
America has natural advantages over Europe which are
likely to increase in the years to come. It is inevitable
that in the production of manufactured articles in which
these two minerals are both important factors, the
teeming population of the Old World should feel the
difficulty of competing against the immense resources
COAL AND IRON 97
of the New for the food and raw materials upon which
life itself depends.
§ 8. Great Britain's Problem. Central Europe is for
the time being submerged in the mire of post-war
difficulties ; no one can foresee what the future of those
populous districts may be. But Great Britain is
struggling back to her normal economic life. Let us
then consider how Great Britainstands in relation to
the^suoplies of food^JueLand raw material upon which
she depends in a unique degree for the support of her
great population^
~T6r~nearTy two-thirds of our food we depend upon
other countries. The supply, however, is elastic, that
is to say, a slight increase in the price is likely to call
forth considerably increased supplies. For these great
imports of food we have to pay by our_expjoits, which
consist mainly of manuf^tuxe^
(shipping, banking, insurancev.etc). For our manu-
factures we require rawjnateriala, most of which we
have to import. The most essential of these are cotton,
which is rising in p£^^nd^rj£lajtic_jn^supply ; wool,
which is fairly plentiful at present but depends upon
great open spaces in the world and is subject to en-
croachments by arable and dairy farming ; iron ore,
of which we import from a third to a half of our supply,
though we have great deposits of low-grade ores in our
own soil ; and coaj, which we produce ourselves and
export largely in bulk in addition to using it as a most
important ingredient in our manufactures.
The question which we have to consider is whether
a rapidly increasing population can be supported by
98 POPULATION
industries which depend upon imported raw materials at
rising prices, and coal produced at home with increasing
difficulty, in competition with similar industries in
America which have greater natural advantages.
Before we can answer that question, we must com-
prehend the nature of international trade. Two
countries trade with one another when tFey have
different comparative advantages in producing goods.
If a given quantity of capital and labour could produce
just twice as much wheat and twice as much pig-iron
in America as in England, there would be no point
in trading in those two commodities between the two
countries. But if the same quantities of capital and
labour produced twice as much wheat and only one
and a half times as much pig-iron in America, it would
be profitable to both countries to exchange American
wheat for British pig-iron. This is a simple illustration
of what is called the Law of Comparative Costs. The
important point is that a country may, and often does,
export goods in the production of which it is at an
absolute disadvantage as compared with the country
to which it sends them.
International trade is, in practice, a complex series
of operations in which many nations are involved. The
simple case that we have taken will, however, enable
us to tackle the question with which we are now con-
cerned.
The answer is that Great Britain can continue to
* compete with America on certain terms. Hitherto, as
we have seen, her international trade has been carried
on in comparatively favourable circumstances. The
rapid development of new sources of food and raw
COAL AND IRON 99
materials has enabled her industries to expand and at
the same time to exchange their products on increasingly
advantageous terms, with agricultural countries. Now
there are signs of a change, and Great Britain may have
to adjust herself to new conditions. If she cannot
maintain her trade by superior skill or greater energy
and enterprise, she must do so by cutting costs, including
labour costs. It serves no good purpose to ignore un-
pleasanOacts. A fall in the standard of living is one—
of the greatest calamities which a nation may have to
face. But the less it is foreseen the greater is the
misery to which it gives rise. The danger is that the
population of Europe in general and of Great Britain
in particular may go on increasing almost automatically
when the field for employment on a decent level of
subsistence is contracting. Emigration, as we shall
see in the next chapter, offers a very poor measure of
relief under such circumstances. But a well-organized
nation that looks ahead and lays its plans well should
be able to adjust itself to changing circumstances with
the minimum of suffering and hardship.
Jevons put upon his title-page the following quotation
from Adam Smith :
" The progressive state is in reality the cheerful and
the hearty state to all the different orders of the society ;
the stationary is dull ; the declining melancholy."
No doubt there is a measure of truth in the statement.
But the progressive state is also one of discontent and
inequality, when the rich tend to grow richer and the
poor relatively, if not absolutely, poorer. We have
been so busy accumulating wealth and rushing about
the earth in vehicles of increasing velocity that we have
100 POPULATION
paid too little attention to the wise use of the things
we have acquired. The stationary state, if it is to that
we are coming, may prove to be not dull, but tranquil ;
a state in which we may for the first time taste the
pleasures of a true civilization. There is plenty of hope
for the future, if we face the situation in which we find
ourselves with courage and wisdom. But one thing is
essential if a stationary state is to be tolerable — it
must be accompanied by a stationary population.
CHAPTER VI
THE GROWTH OF POPULATION
" Desire not a multitude of unprofitable children."
Ecclesiasticus xvi. 1.
§ 1. Changes in the Birth-rate. " Russia being mentioned
as likely to become a great empire, by the rapid increase
of population : Johnson, ' Why, Sir, I see no prospect of
their propagating more. They can have no more children
than they can get. I know of no way to make them breed
more than they do. It is not from reason and prudence
that people marry, but from inclination. A man is poor ;
he thinks, " I cannot be worse, and so I'll e'en take Peggy." '
Boswell, ' But have not nations been more populous at
one period than another ? ' Johnson, ' Yes, Sir ; but that
has been owing to the people being less thinned at one
period than another, whether by emigrations, war, or
pestilence, not by their being more or less prolifick. Births
at all times bear the same proportion to the same number
of people.' "
Hazlitt put this quotation in the forefront of his
Reply to Malthus. How he thought it damaged the
Malthusian doctrine is not clear, but he evidently
regarded it as an example of the highest wisdom. Mr.
G. Udny Yule, the statistician, on the other hand, says
that to him " this remarkable dictum appears to be
contradicted by the experience of every nation for which
101
102 POPULATION
we have records over a sufficient period of time and of
sufficient accuracy."1
Now statistics, especially " vital statistics," as the
figures about births, deaths and marriages, are called —
are full of pitfalls ; and the present writer is by no
means anxious to challenge a statistician upon his own
ground. No doubt Mr. Yule is right in denying the
accuracy of Dr. Johnson's statement. Nevertheless, it
seems to have been inspired by the robust common
sense for which the speaker was conspicuous, and,
allowing for that exaggeration which is permissible in
conversation, to have been broadly true. Since about
1880 it has ceased to be true of countries under the
influence of Western civilization. That is a fact of the
greatest importance which we shall consider in the
latter part of this chapter. The change is due to in-
fluences of which Dr. Johnson knew nothing, and it is
hardly admissible as evidence against him.
Going back for a moment to Gregory King, the
ingenious Lancaster Herald, from whose observations
upon the state of England in 1696 some extracts were
given in Chapter I, we may note that his estimate of
the yearly births of the kingdom amounted to one in
twenty-eight of the total population. In order to bring
it into comparison with more recent figures, we may
translate this estimate into 35-75 per 1000.
Now the civil registration of births was not established
until 1837, and registration was not compulsory until
1874, but the following figures are likely to be more
accurate than those of Gregory King. These are the
annual birth-rates recorded for England and Wales :
1 The Fall of the Birth-rate, by G. Udny Yule, M.A.
THE GROWTH OF POPULATION 103
Period.
1841-50
1851-55
1856-60
1861-65
1866-70
1871-75
1876-80
1881-85
1886-90
1891-95
1896-00
1901-05
1906-10
1911-15
BlitbH per 1000 living
at all ages.
34-6
33-9
34-4
351
35-3
35-5
35-3
33-5
31-4
30-5
29-3
28-2
26-3
23-6
Statisticians warn us against attaching too much
importance to the rise in the birth-rate before 1876,
as it is uncertain how far it may be due to increasing
completeness of registration. With the fall after 1880
we shall be concerned later. The point to which the
reader's attention should be given at present is the
remarkable correspondence between the estimate of
Gregory King of the birth-rate in 1696 with the rates
actually recorded between 1841 and 1880.
Itjstrue, of_course, that small changes in the number
of births per 1000 of the population make a very con-
siderable difference in the total population. Between
"1861- and 1871 the number of persons in Great Britain
increased from twenty-three millions to twenty-six
millions. If, therefore, one more baby was born each
year to every thousand people living, the additional
104
POPULATION
births in those ten years amounted to about a quarter
of a million. Nevertheless, when compared with the
change in the death-rate this possible variation in the
birth-rate is slight, and we are cautioned not to assume
that it actually took place.
§ 2. Changes in the Death-rate. Gregory King said that
the annual burials in his time were about one in thirty-
two, and to these he added another ten thousand deaths
per annum as an allowance for plagues, wars and ship-
wrecks. This addition makes the estimate of deaths
about one in thirty, or 33-3 per 1000, nearly equal to
the birth-rate during the nineteenth century !
Compare this with the annual death-rate since 1851 :
Deaths per 1000 Deaths of Infants under
Period living at all ages one year per 1000 births
1851-55 .
. 22-7 .
. 156
1856-60 .
. 21-8 .
. 152
1861-65 .
. 22-6 .
. 151
1866-70 .
. 224 .
. 157
1871-75 .
22-0 .
. 153
1876-80 .
20-8 .
145
1881-85 .
19.4 .
139
1886-90 .
18-9 .
145
1891-95 .
18-7 .
151
1896-00 .
17-7 .
156
1901-05 .
16-0 .
138
1906-10 .
14-7 .
117
1911-15 .
14-3 .
110
It will be seen that if King's estimate was approxi-
mately correct, there was a fall of one-third in the
THE GROWTH OF POPULATION 105
death-rate between 1696 and 1851, and that it has
declined continuously since 1861-65, making altogether
another fall of over one-third. The figures for the
deaths of iofants under one year are also given, because
it is among these that the highest mortality occurs.
It is remarkable that there was no great improvement
in this respect until the turn of the century.
§ 3. The Relative Influence of Birth-rale and Death-rate
upon the Growth of Population. Now it is possible that
Gregory King's estimates may have been hopelessly
wrong. He may have grossly overestimated both the
birth-rate and the death-rate. If, indeed, he erred in
one, he must have erred in both, for the growth of
population in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
corresponds roughly with the rate of increase which
would result from his figures. In 1600 the population
of England and Wales is thought to have been about
five millions ; in 1700 about five and a half millions ;
in 1750 about six and a half millions ; in 1800 eight
million nine hundred thousand ; in 1901 thirty-two and
a half millions. It is clear that the birth-rate and
death-rate must have been nearly equal throughout the
seventeenth century, and that since 1750 there must
have been a great increase in the birth-rate or a great
decline in the death-rate, or both.
Sweden is the only country that has kept reliable
vital statistics for" a long period. It will be useful
therefore to look at the evidence which that country
can give respecting variations in the birth-rate. The
following are the legitimate births per 1000 married
women aged 15 to 50 in Sweden :
16
POPULATION
1756-65 .
. 251
1836-45 .
. 235
1766-75 .
. 240
1846-55 .
. 241
1776-85 .
. 242
1856-65 .
. 248
1786-95 .
. 245
1866-75 .
. 235
1796-05 .
. 232
1876-85 .
. 240
1806-15 .
. 232
1886-95 .
. 231
1816-25 .
. 253
1896-05 .
. 219
1826-35 .
. 240
It will be seen that though the figures are not con-
stant, the variations are irregular and inconsiderable
until the sudden drop in the last period.
Sweden being a peaceful and established country,
with a large emigration may reasonably be expected to
have a steady birth-rate. Let us, therefore, take
Australasia as a final illustration on this point. Here
are the birth-rate and death-rate for forty years :
Period
Birth-rate
Death-rate
Natural Increase
1861-65
41-92
16-75
25-17
1866-70
39-84
15-62
24-22
1871-75
37-34
15-26
22-08
1876-80
36-38
1504
21-34
1881-85
35-21
14-79
20-42
1886-90
34-43
13-95
20-48
1891-95
31-52
12-74
18-78
1896-00
27-35
12-39
14-96
1901-09
26-35
—
—
Here it will be seen that the birth-rate has declined
more rapidly and to a greater extent than the death-
rate. Dr. Johnson's dictum ceases apparently to have
any validity whatever when Australasia is considered.
There are, however, special circumstances to account
THE GROWTH OF POPULATION 107
for the high level of this birth-rate in the years 1861 to
1875, which justify us in regarding it as abnormal.
There was a wave of immigration into Australia in the
'fifties and 'sixties, and it is undeniable that healthy
immigrants cause a temporary increase in the birth-
rate and decrease in the death-rate. This result is due
to a change in the composition of the population. The
birth-rate jumps up because a larger proportion of the
people are at the child-producing ages. The death-rate
declines because the population as a whole is younger
than in established countries. It will be observed that
between 1880 and 1890, when the effect of the great
immigration had worked itself out, the birth-rate
became comparable to that of England and Wales.
It is much to be regretted that America has not
recorded its vital statistics until quite recently, since
they might have thrown a flood of light upon that great
boom in population which impressed Malthus and his
contemporaries at the end of the eighteenth century.
Without_going further into the evidence, it may be
tentatively asserted that the tremendous increase in
the population of Europe and America during the last
century and a half is attributable far more to a
diminished death-rate than to a change in the birth-
rate. " Poverty," said Adam Smith, in a passage
quoted above (in Chapter I), "... seems even to be
favourable to generation. A half-starved Highland
woman frequently bears more than twenty children,
while a pampered fine lady is often incapable of bearing
any, and is generally exhausted by two or three. . . .
But poverty, though it does not prevent the generation,
is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children.
108 POPULATION
... It is not uncommon, I have been frequently told,
in the Highlands of Scotland, for a mother who had
borne twenty children not to have two alive. ..."
§ 4. Preventive Checks to Population. Curiously enough,
Western civilization seems, until the last few years, to
have diminished what Malthus called " the preventive
check " to population and to have encouraged people,
especially poor people, to bring more children into the
world than the soil could support. Mr. Carr-Saunders
has collected1 a mass of evidence showing that every-
where among primitive races either abortion, infanticide
or prolonged abstention from intercourse are practised
in such a degree as greatly to restrict increase in popula-
tion. Up to the mediaeval period one or other of these
methods was prevalent in all countries. They were then
replaced, in Europe, by postponement of marriage. The
social customs throughout Europe in the Middle Ages
seem to have tended to discourage matrimony in early
life. The unmarried labourer lived at the farmhouse or
with his parents, and had to wait for a cottage to become
vacant through death before he could set up an estab-
lishment of his own. Migration was not generally
permitted, nor were the opportunities of employment
away from home such as to encourage wanderings. The
servants of the nobility, it is true, were an exception
to this rule. They were sometimes moved about, but,
like domestic servants nowadays, they tended to be a
celibate class. Under these circumstances most men and
women married rather late in life, and many did not have
a chance of marrying at all. The religious Orders became
1 In The Population Problem, by A. M. Carr-Saundera.
THE GROWTH OF POPULATION 109
a refuge for some of these involuntary celibates, and
drew others, who could have married, into their folds.
Perhaps the preventive checks of primitive society
became unnecessary through the accidental growth of
these social restraints, and the stationary population of
the Middle Ages caused men to forget the miseries of
over-population. Perhaps the teaching of the Catholic '
Church in favour of large families and the dictum of
Luther, " Let God provide," played a dominant part in *i
social history. Perhaps the demand for soldiers to fight
the battles of kings and emperors led to a relaxation of
the customs which interfered with marriage. Or perhaps
the growth of industries, other than agriculture, opened 1
the door for migration and created a new demand for
labour. All these influences may indeed have played a
part in bringing about that unrestrained birth-rate which
Dr. Johnson regarded as normal to humanity.
§ 5. Under-Population. It may here be asked why we
so seldom speak of the evil of under -pop illation. It is
obvious, for instance, that America is a much better
country to live in now that it has a hundred millions of
inhabitants than it was when there were only a few
thousands, or even when there were a few millions.
Was it not under-populated, then ?
The answer is that the power of population is so great
that it will very rapidly fill up any opening which may
appear for its expansion. Between 1906 and 1911 the
population of the world increased at such a rate that it
would double in about sixty years ; and it has been
calculated that, at the same rate, the present world
population of 1,694,000,000 might proceed from one
110 POPULATION
couple in 1782 years. America is really a striking
example of the reproductive energy of the human race.
The development of a country takes time. To dump a
hundred millions, or even ten millions, of people on the
virgin soil of America all at once would have caused the
death by starvation of the great majority of them. The
settlers had to be provided with implements, and an
immense and intricate mechanism had to grow up for
supplying them with the products of Europe while they
were developing the resources of a new continent. At
every stage in the evolution of America enough people
were forthcoming both there and in Europe to facilitate
the greatest possible rate of progress. The opening up
of a new source of subsistence has called forth an
immense increase in numbers not only in America itself,
but in Europe also. Could there be a more impressive
demonstration of the truth of the Malthusian doctrine ?
It is quite true that many parts of the world have
become better to live in as the number of inhabitants
has increased, but this has been due, not to the increase
alone, but to the improved methods of production which
man in co-operation has learned to practise. At each
stage of development the population has been at least
as great as could be maintained without depressing the
standard of life^
§ 6. A Falling Birth-rate Now if, as has been sug-
gested in the foregoing chapters, the extraordinary
demand for population, occasioned by the development
of America, has been largely met, how is the rate of
increase to be checked ? Must we choose between the
primitive check of infanticide, the mediaeval check of
THE GROWTH OF POPULATION 111
late marriage and enforced celibacy, or the positive
check of a high death-rate, especially among infants ?
A happier solution than any of these seems to be in-
dicated by the statistics quoted at the beginning of this
chapter. From them we learnt that the, birth-rate in
England and Wales has fallen since 1876 by about one-
third, while the death-rate has fallen almost as much as
the birth-rate. The diminished mortality has nearly
compensated so far for the smaller number of births,
the " natural rate of increase " — that is, the excess of
births over deaths — having fallen only from a maximum
of 14 for the decade 1871-80 to 11-8 for 1900-10. The
death-rate, however, cannot fall to zero, unless Godwin's
dream is realized and we live for ever ; so if the birth-
rate continues to fall, the rate of increase must diminish
and eventually become a rate of decrease.
This phenomenon of a falling birth-rate has not been
confined to England, but has been experienced to some
extent in every country in Europe, and even in most
parts of the New World where Europeans have settled.
In France the birth-rate has been falling since the
beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1811-20 the
average rate was 31-8 in that country ; in 1841-50 it
was 27-4 ; in 1871-80 it was 25-4 ; and in 1901-10 it
was 20-6. The population in France has been practically
stationary for the last thirty years. This is altogether
an exceptional case. France, being to a large extent a
self-supporting country, has stood aside from the in-
fluence of American expansion which has stimulated
the rate of increase in most other countries. The French
are a saving people, and the instinct of accumulation
inclines men to have small families. Moreover, the law
112
POPULATION
which provides for a division of landed property at death
is said to exert a considerable influence in the same
direction, since men do not wish their farms to be cut
up into small parcels.
In many other countries a fall in the birth-rate has
been a conspicuous feature of the last forty or fifty
years. Between 1871-80 and 1901-10 the rate fell in
Denmark from 31-4 to 28-6 ; in Norway, from 31-0 to
27-4 ; in Sweden, from 30-5 to 25-8 ; in Finland, from
37-0 to 31-2 ; in Austria, from 39-0 to 34-7 ; in Switzer-
land from 30-7 to 26-9 ; in Germany, from 39-1 to 32-9 ;
in Holland, from 36*2 to 30-5 ; in Belgium, from 32-3
to 26-1 ; in Italy, from 36-9 to 32-7 ; in Australia, from
36-1 to 26-5 ; and in New Zealand, from 40-5 to 26-8.
The United States, as we have already remarked, does
not possess records of births, deaths and marriages, but
the approximate figures for the total population are
available for each decade since 1800. They are as
follows : —
» .
Millions.
Increase per cent
1800 . . . 5-3 .
1810 .
7-2
36
1820
9-6
33
1830
12-9
34
1840
17-1
33
1850
23-2
36
1860
31-4
A
36
1870
38-5
^
23
1880
50-1
30
1890
62-6
25
1900
75-7
21
1910
91-9
21
1920
105-7
15
%
THE GROWTH OF POPULATION 113
Without going into further figures, it may be con-
fidently asserted that this falling off in the rate of
increase cannot be explained, though it may be slightly
modified, by changes in the immigration rate^ There is
no doubt that the general decline in the birth-rate is
effective in the United States, as well as in Europe and
the British Dominions.
§ 7. Some Explanations of the Decline in the Birth-rate.
Returning to the position in England, all statisticians
seem to be agreed that this declining birth-rate is
mainly due to a decrease in the number of children
in the average family. This may be partly caused
"by postponement of marriage ; but, while about 17
per cent may be attributed to this cause, about 70 per
cent is due to a decrease in the fertility ol married
women.
Here the agreement ends. Everyone is entitled to his
own opinion as to the cause of the decline, which all
admit has taken place. Mr. Yule has an interesting
theory that the birth-rate falls in sympathy with falling
prices. " That the nexus is economic, and that it
probably operates via psychology rather than directly
through physiology." He doubts — in fact, he dis-
believes— its being wholly conscious, or, as the phrase
now goes, " volitional."1 Another statistical philos-
opher makes the flattering suggestion that fluctuations
in human fertility are analogous to those outbursts of
vital energy which lead to plagues of field-mice or
locusts. Very little is known, apparently, about the
causes of these exuberant manifestations of life, but a
1 The Fall of the Birth-rale, p. 39.
114 POPULATION
similar eccentricity has been observed in some species
of fish, and in this case a Norwegian scientist, Dr. J.
Hjort, has found a satisfactory explanation. In 1908
Dr. Hjort noticed that nearly all the cod — whose ages
can be learned from their scales — caught by his country-
men were hatched in 1904. Again, in 1913 he observed
an extraordinary number of one-year-old cod on the
coast of Norway, and the 1912 brood has since been
found to preponderate greatly in the catches. Investi-
gating this apparent fluctuation in fertility, Dr. Hjort
discovered that the diatoms upon which the tiny cod
feed when they first hatch out vary very greatly in their
density ; and he believes that in the years 1904 and 1912
a large quantity of these diatoms happened to be avail-
able when the baby cod began to feed, with the result
that an unusually large proportion survived. Now, if
any explanation of this kind is applicable to the field-
mice and the locusts, the analogy with those interesting
organisms will merely bring us back again to the
Malthusian hypothesis that population increases up to
the means of subsistence.
The explanation of the falling birth-rate which is most
widely accepted is that since 1877 the knowledge of the
means by which married people can deliberately prevent
the conception of children has been rapidly disseminated
and used. There is strong circumstantial evidence in
favour of this view. In 1877, Bradlaugh and Mrs.
Besant were prosecuted for publishing a pamphlet
written by a Dr. Knowlton, in which information of the
kind was given. This trial attra^ed a tremendous
amount of public interest. There can be no doubt that
the subject-matter of the pamphlet received an extra-
THE GROWTH OF POPULATION 115
ordinary advertisement, or that the fall in the birth-
rate coincides in a remarkable way with the date of the
trial. Moreover, there is evidence that the practices
which were thus made known for the first time to great
numbers of people in England had been prevalent in
France for many years before, and the account which
has been given above of the motives which may have
led the French people to restrict their population can
thus be supplemented by the information that the means
of doing so were available to them.
§ 8. Variations in the Birth-rate between Different Classes.
If, however, we accept the view that the fall in the birth-
rate is mainly due to the deliberate action of married
people, we have still to consider what motives may have
caused them to take that action in countries other than
France during the last forty or fifty years. Here another
factor of first-rate importance presents itself. The de-
crease in fertility has not affected all classes in the
community equally. At the present time the birth-rate
is lowest in what are called the upper and middle classes,
and rises, generally speaking, inversely with the average
earnings of each class in the community. The people,
however, in certain industries do not conform to this
gradation. Textile workers, for instance, have as few
children as the middle classes ; while miners have the
largest number of all — more than the unskilled labourers.
The difference in the fertility of different classes is much
greater now than it was fifty years ago, but there is some
evidence that it is beginning to decrease again. In
enquiring into the causes of a falling birth-rate we have,
therefore, the clue to follow that, in general, they act
116 POPULATION
more strongly upon the rich than the poor, and that
they have more influence upon skilled workmen, other
than miners, than upon unskilled.
In order to get this clue in its right perspective, how-
ever, it should be observed that the working classes have
always — or, at any rate, for many years — married
younger and had more children than the middle classes.
An unskilled or partly skilled workman earns as much
when he is twenty-one as he is likely to earn when he
is forty, and his children do not get an expensive
education ; but a lawyer or a doctor is seldom in receipt
of sufficient income from his profession to maintain a
wife and family until he approaches thirty, and he may
find it very difficult to educate his children in the way
he considers necessary until he is well over forty. The
difference between classes in the production of children
must not therefore be regarded as a new development
coincident with the falling birth-rate, though it has
certainly been accentuated during the last forty years.
The birth-rate among textile workers, again, has been
lower than that in other industries for many years, and
this difference also must therefore be discounted in
following the clue to the recent change.
Now, extremely poor people are notoriously careless
as to the future. If they get a short burst of high wages,
by making munitions in wartime, for instance, they are
apt to spend recklessly and to relapse into their former
condition as soon as the burst is over. On the other
hand, it has frequently been noticed that when a com-
munity, or a class, has attained a decent standard of
life and has maintained it for a time, it is extremely
tenacious of that standard. If, then, we can discover
THE GROWTH OF POPULATION 117
that for some reason the people of this and other
European countries have increased the number of things
which they consider necessary to a tolerable existence
during the period under review, we shall have supplied
at least one reason for their smaller families.
The growing wealth of Europe during the latter part
of the nineteenth century does not in itself provide the
evidence we require, for why was not that wealth taken
out in mere numbers, in accordance with the Malthusian
principle ? The answer seems to be that people decide
whether or not they can afford to have children on a
calculation of their money incomes, without considering
changes in purchasing power ; and that, consequently,
falling prices tend to produce a higher standard of life
instead of more children. Prices fell continuously and
considerably during the 'eighties, and the same money
incomes therefore enabled people to buy more things
without feeling richer, and they thus became accustomed
to living upon a scale which could only be maintained
with smaller families.
§ 9. Other Factors Influencing the Birth-rate. Here,
then, is one probable cause of the fall in the birth-rate.
Is it the sole cause ? To attribute complex results to
single causes is said to be the characteristic vice of un-
trained and narrow minds ; it is certainly a fruitful
source of error. This population problem is highly
complex. It depends upon human psychology, which
may be influenced by a thousand different, and some-
times conflicting, impulses, rational and irrational. It
would therefore be foolish to be dogmatic about the
matter. One can only say that certain influences have
118 POPULATION
been at work and that they have probably contributed
to certain results. It is not possible, even, to discuss all
the evidence, or to state fully the case for the view which
has been put forward above. The importance attributed
to the deliberate limitation of families as a cause of the
falling birth-rate receives, for instance, some additional
justification from statistics showing that Roman
Catholics tend to have more children than Protestants
in similar circumstances, for the Roman Church has
strenuously opposed the practice of birth control. It is
not necessary, however, to labour the point, for the
reader who wishes to reach any final conclusion will
pursue the subject far beyond the scope of this hand-
book.
Another factor which may have had an enormous
influence upon the birth-rate is the change in the_social
status of women. _ Mill, who is much more illuminating
upon population problems than the later economists,
remarked that
" it is seldom by the choice of the wife that families are
too numerous ; on her devolves (along with all the physical
suffering and at least a full share of the privations) the
whole of the intolerable domestic drudgery resulting from
the excess. To be relieved from it would be hailed as a
blessing by multitudes of women who now never venture
to urge such a claim, but who would urge it, if supported
by the moral feelings of the community. . . . Let them
cease to be confined by custom to one physical function
as their means of living and their source of influence, and
they would have for the first time an equal voice with men
in what concerns that function : and of all the improve-
ments in reserve for mankind which it is now possible
to foresee, none might be expected to be so fertile as this
in almost every kind of moral and social benefit."
THE GROWTH OF POPULATION 119
Here, then, is a social force which may well have
played as big a part as the rise in the standard of life
in diminishing the birth-rate and, with it, the death-
rate. The position of women, especially in the middle
classes where the limitation of families has been most
marked, has changed greatly during the last fifty years.
Not only have they entered into competition with men
in many callings, but the subtler difference of status
in home life is even more significant. Anyone who has
read an early Victorian novel, or even the works of
Dickens, will know, if he be not devoid of imagination,
that Mill's forecast of the benefits to be derived from
the change was not in the least exaggerated. " Almost
every kind of moral and social benefit " may, indeed,
spring from the admission of women to an equal share
with men in the direction of human affairs ; and not
the least of these may prove to be a rational limitation
of the birth-rate. It is possible also that the small
families of the textile workers may be accounted for
by the status of women as wage-earners among them ;
while the position of women in the isolated mining
districts may equally explain the enormous birth-rate
there.
§ 10. The Importance of the Decline in the Birth-rate.
To whatever causes we may attribute the fall in the
birth-rate, the most important fact from the economic
standpoint is that it has fallen and is likely to fall still
Am . Changes in the size of the population are neces-
sary from time to time, because changes take place in
the natural resources upon which human beings depend.
The necessary adjustment may be forced upon us, with
120 POPULATION
infinite pain and misery, through the death-rate, or it
may be brought about, if man will exercise his pre-
rogative as a rational creature, through the birth-rate.
It is an obvious fact that the same rate of increase may
be produced in a community by a high birth-rate com-
bined with a high death-rate, as by a low birth-rate and
a low death-rate ; but it is difficult to imagine anything
that could make more difference to the health and
happiness of the people than the change from the one
to the other. Statisticians may talk coldly of a high
rate of infant mortality being " compensated for " by
a high birth-rate. The same idea expressed in terms of
human misery ; of so many dead babies and an equal
number of mothers suffering in vain would be intolerably
tragic.
Why, then, is it that the phenomenon of a falling
birth-rate in Europe has not been generally welcomed ?
If it came to a choice between a rational limitation of
births, on the one hand, and a degradation of the
standard of life, on the other, could there be any doubt
that the former would be infinitely preferable ? In a
world where human beings were all alike the answer
would be plain ; but statesmen will not rejoice in a
declining birth-rate among their own people, if menacing
neighbours continue to multiply ; and, within each
community, men are not pleased to see the class to
which they belong being crowded out of existence by
another. The complications introduced by racial,
national and class distinctions have been left out of
account in the foregoing argument. They must be
considered in the next two chapters.
CHAPTER VII
INTERNATIONAL POPULATION
PROBLEMS
' Why do the nations so furiously rage together ; and
why do the people imagine a vain thing ? "
Psalm ii. 1 .
§ 1. The Influence of Nationality. People nowadays are
obsessed with national and racial differences. The
growth of nationalities during the nineteenth century
was partly a unifying process, by which artificial
barriers were removed between people of like traditions
and interests, the area of centralized government
enlarged, and internal peace, free trade and unre-
stricted communication secured to great aggregations
of human beings, like the inhabitants of Germany and
Italy. For the rest, the nationalist movement was
concerned with the right of communities which felt
themselves to be separated from their neighbours in vital
matters, to govern themselves in their own way and
to be freed from the interference and domination of
alien states. The tragedy of recent history is the trans-
formation of the spirit of nationalism from one which
seeks unity and resists oppression into a jealous exag-
geration of differences and a desire to oppress others.
The idealists who looked forward to the break-up of the
121
122 POPULATION
Austrian Empire as the greatest blessing which could
come to Europe, have seen the Succession States using
their freedom to impoverish themselves and their
neighbours by every device which could impede trade
or foster bitterness.
Contempt for this grotesque parody of national feeling
must not, however, blind us to the fact that there are
racial and national differences of a very real kind. " It
takes all sorts to make a world," as country-folk say
in excusing eccentricities, and the world would be a
poorer and duller place were it not for the diversity of
human types each capable of contributing some charac-
teristic art or industry or wisdom to the common stock.
If we ever learn to live together in peace and mutual
forbearance, settling collectively the problems which
affect us all and refraining from interference with one
another in the things which concern us only within our
national groups, we shall realize the value of that
variety. Meanwhile the problems of population are
multiplied by the number of the nations and increase
in geometrical progression with the jealousies and
hostilities between them.
§ 2. Japan and India. There is the problem of the
East and the West. How are the necessities and pre-
judices of Western civilization to be reconciled with
the venerable traditions of Asia ? This is largely a
population problem and one of the toughest. For even
now the people of Japan are seeking an outlet for their
surplus offspring and finding the coasts of North America
and Australia barred against them by Western arma-
ments. Can we tell them that they must limit their
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS 123
numbers while Europe continues to increase and spread
its children over the whole earth ? That is the attitude
which is tacitly adopted by America and Britain at
present ; but it is not easily to be reconciled with
international justice. Moreover, the claims of the
ancient East are now put forward by Japan in a
language which Europe understands, the language of
modern armaments. What if the teeming population
of China were equipped with the latest weapons of
destruction ?
It is impossible in this handbook to discuss these
immense questions of world politics or to do more
than indicate their existence. The " White Australia "
policy, by which a population considerably smaller
than that of London claims a whole continent and
excludes Asiatics not only from the districts now
inhabited, but also from the tropical North where
European settlement has not yet been successful, is a
typical, if extreme, instance of the attitude which the
white man has adopted. The implication is that the
Asiatic is not only different from, but inferior to the
European. Whether this can be justified scientifically
is at least doubtful. To reconcile it with a future of
peace and disarmament is impossible.
Another population problem which arises out of the
contact between East and West is that of over-popula-
tion in India. British rule has done much to improve
the conditions of life in India, but it has also cut away
the checks to population which formerly prevailed there.
Apart from the checks of almost continuous warfare
and destructive famines, the peoples of India used to
restrict their numbers by various religious and social
\s
124 POPULATION
customs akin to those which are found among primitive
peoples. These customs were abhorrent to European
minds and have been almost entirely stamped out, with
the result that the population has increased alarmingly.
India suffers from the dual evil of a high birth-rate and
a high death-rate. The average rates per 1000 living
for the period 1896-1905 were: birth-rate 38-58;
death-rate 34-2 ; while in England the birth-rate was
26-8 and the death-rate 15-15. Out of every 1000
children born in India 250 die before they are a year
old ; in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh the
rate of infant mortality *is 352 per 1000 ; in England
and Wales it is 127-3.
Mr. P. K. Wattal, of the Indian Finance Department,
in an able pamphlet,1 sums up the evils from which
India is suffering, as follows :
" As compared with European countries we have :
(a) A smaller natural increase in spite of a higher
birth-rate.
(b) A smaller fecundity in spite of a larger per-
centage of married persons.
(c) An infantile mortality twice or thrice or even
four times as high.
(d) A much smaller average expectation of life
with a steady downward tendency.
(e) A higher death-rate among young mothers ;
and lastly,
(/) In common with European countries the
tendency to increase is greater among the
lower classes than among the higher."
1 The Population Problem in India, 1916.
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS 125
Mr. Wattal does not ask that India's former checks to
population should be restored, but that the check which
Europe has partially adopted, the voluntary limitation
of families, should be popularized in India also.
§ 3. The Big Four. The importance of mere numbers
in world politics is very great. Everyone will remember
when the Allies assembled at Versailles in 1919 to arrange
the terms of the Peace Treaties how rapidly they were
reduced for business purposes from a conference of
thirty-two nations to a Council of Ten and from a
Council of Ten to a Council of Four — the Big Four. No
less significant was the way in which the Genoa Con-
ference, at which Russia and Germany met the other
European states for the first time after the war on
terms of equality, resolved itself into a debate between
the big countries only. Even the League of Nations,
in which all the nations have an equal status, conducts
most of its business in a Council composed of the Big
Four and four others. The Big Four at Versailles were
America, Britain, France and Italy ; at Genoa, they
were Russia, Germany, France and Britain ; and on the
Council of the League of Nations they are the British
Empire, France, Italy and Japan. Thus there are
seven Great Powers to reckon with in the world to-day.
Let us briefly examine the position of some of them.
§ 4. The United States. The population of the United
States in 1820 was about nine and a half millions, in
1920 it was 105,710,620. Between 1910 and 1920 the
population increased by 13,738,354. This, as we saw
in the last chapter, represented a substantial falling
126 POPULATION
off in the rate of growth ; but it is absolutely a huge
increase. If numbers continue to multiply at this
diminished rate, the population will double in about
eighty years. The significance of these figures is in-
creased by the fact that American supplies of food and
raw materials have enabled the population of Europe
also to expand greatly during the past hundred years,
so that altogether the growth of numbers due to
American development is gigantic. The United States,
however, unlike most European countries, can be
entirely self-supporting. Within her vast territories
she possesses almost every variety of climate and
natural resources. She has developed within her own
borders the manufacturing industries which in earlier
times she stimulated in Europe. The bare existence of
this great swarm of active beings across the Atlantic
must influence the political psychology of Europe, but
it is not altogether inevitable that America should
take a large direct part in the industry or the politics
of the Old World during the next hundred years. If
Europe disappeared, America could still live on.
§ 5. The British Empire. The remarkable character
of the British Empire is revealed by a few population
figures. In 1821 there were 14,000,000 in Great Britain
and 6,800,000 in Ireland. In 1921 there were 42,800,000
in Great Britain, 4,500,000 in Ireland, 5,500,000 in
Australia, 1,200,000 in New Zealand, 319,000,000 in
India, 1,500,000 Europeans in South Africa and
eight or nine millions in Canada.1 The position in
1 There were 7,200,000 in Canada in 1911 ; the 1921 figures are
not yet available, i -
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS 127
Great Britain has been discussed in the preceding
chapters ; the size of her population is disquieting to
those who realize how unstable is the foundation upon
which her welfare has been built, but it will be seen
from these figures that there is still room in the
Dominions for a great expansion of population. It is
probable that in time Canada and Australia will be
able to support between them something like two
hundredjoaillions of people. How far this growth may-
be expected to relieve the situation in Great Britain
will be considered later.
A curious sidelight on the influence which popula-
tion changes may have on political issues is cast
by the above figures respecting Great Britain and
Ireland. In 1821 the Irish people were half as numerous
as the people of Great Britain. At that time, therefore,
and for many years after, an independent and hostile
Ireland would have been a frightful menace to this
country. This may partly account for the tradition
that the very existence of Britain depended upon the
subjection of Ireland, which survived long after the
circumstances had undergone a radical change ; until,
at last, in 1921, when the British outnumbered the
Irish by ten to one, complete self-government was
conceded to them and an apathetic British public
wondered vaguely why the concession had been so long
withheld !
§ 6. France. France had a population of 29,000,000
in 1815, at the close of the Napoleonic Wars ; in 1870,
before the cession of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany, she
had 38,400,000; in 1913, 39,700,000; and in 1921,
?
\
128 POPULATION
when the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine is set off
against the fearful losses of the war, 39,200,000 in-
habitants. The causes of a stationary population in
France were briefly discussed in the last chapter. Its
effect on the general social welfare of that country does
not seem to be bad. M. Levasseur, who has studied
the problem very thoroughly, implies in his book, La
Population Frangaisc, that, while the political and
military effects of a low birth-rate may be serious,
there are compensating advantages in its influence on
material comfort and social progress. Unfortunately,
the reaction of France from seeing her neighbours
growing rapidly in numbers while her own population
remains unchanged, appears to be far from pacific. A
nervous consciousness that the biggest battalions must
henceforth belong to other nations makes French states-
men pursue an external policy designed rather to
weaken potential enemies than to win the confidence of
allies. By the year 1914 the population of Germany
was nearly 70 per cent in excess of that of France, and
it seems, at the time of writing, as though French
policy aimed at retarding the economic recovery of the
German people in order to counterbalance the military
advantage which their greater numbers imply.
It is perhaps unfortunate from an international
point of view that France is not dependent upon foreign
trade for the essential means of existence. Her geo-
graphical position precludes her from the measure of
isolation which is possible to the United States, but the
weakness and poverty of her neighbours does not
react upon her own welfare so directly and acutely as
it would if she, like Great Britain, were obliged to
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS 129
exchange her manufactures for food and raw materials
from other countries in order to live at all.
It is curious that French anxiety respecting the
problem of population has been until quite recently so
completely concentrated upon the birth-rate, to the
neglect of the death-rate. The birth-rate in France
between 1900 and 1909 stood at 20-25, the death-rate
at 17-32 ; while in England and Wales, with a birth-rate
of 26-8, the death-rate was only 15-15 ; in New Zealand,
with a birth-rate of 26-79, the death-rate was 9-76 ;
and in Sweden, with a birth-rate of 26-17, the death-
rate was 14-68. It is obvious that if the French could
secure a death-rate as low as that of Sweden there
would be a considerable natural increase in their num-
bers. It is an important fact, however, that a declining
birth-rate means that the proportion of old to young
increases and that therefore a higher death-rate is
inevitable. Let us then look at the rate of infant
mortality which cannot be affected by the age-com-
position of the community. In France the deaths
of children under one year, per 1000 births, in the
period 1902 to 1911, averaged 132-4 ; in England and
Wales 127-3 ; in New Zealand 64-3 ; in Sweden 84-4.
Here, surely, is a source of population which France
should exploit, before resorting to desperate measures
to bring more children into the world ! It is satis-
factory to learn that vigorous measures are now being
taken for the protection of both mothers and babies in
France.
§ 7. Germany. The population in 1815 of the various
states and principalities which are now Germany was
130 POPULATION
twenty-one millions ; in 1880 it was forty-five millions ;
in 1913 it was sixty-seven millions. In the last few
years before the war the population was increasing
annually by about 850,000, and emigration had prac-
tically ceased. From a self-supporting agricultural
country, Germany had become, in a comparatively
few years, a highly developed industrial country, im-
porting, in 1913, twelve million tons of foodstuffs, or
about 15 per cent of her total consumption. The output
of German coal grew from 30,000,000 tons in 1871 to
190,000,000 tons in 1913, and the industrial develop-
ment of the country corresponded, as Jevons would have
expected, with this increase. Thirty-nine per cent of
Germany's exports in 1913 consisted of iron goods,
machinery, coal, woollen goods and cotton goods.
Thirty-five per cent of her imports were raw materials
and 28 per cent food-stuffs. Germany before the war
was the very heart of the European industrial system.
The circulation of trade and credit to and from this
active centre was the life-blood of all the neighbouring
peoples. More goods flowed into Russia, Norway,
Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Austria-
Hungary, Roumania and Bulgaria from Germany than
from any other country, and she was the second largest
source of supply to Great Britain, Belgium and France.
More goods flowed into Germany than into any other
country from Russia, Norway, Holland, Belgium,
Switzerland, Italy and Austria-Hungary, and she was
the second best customer of Great Britain, Sweden and
Denmark. To the countries lying east and south of
her frontiers, Germany gave not only trade, but capital
and organization for their development, and they were
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS 131
thus to a great extent dependent upon her for the
means of maintaining life itself. The population of
Germany and Austria-Hungary together was about
equal to that of North America ; and the whole of this
great economic system could only be supported by a
constantly increasing activity at the centre. " The
German machine," it has been well said, " was like a
top which to maintain its equilibrium must spin ever
faster and faster."1
§ 8. Russia. Russia in Europe increased her popula-
tion in the interval between the two great wars almost
as rapidly as the United States — from forty-eight
millions in 1815 to about one hundred and fifty millions
in 1914. The birth-rate in European Russia for the
period 1902-11 was stated to be 4847 ; the death-rate,
31-41 ; and the rate of infant mortality from 1895-1904
was about 260 per 1000 births.
As long ago as 1882 Sir Robert Giffen, the most
sagacious of statisticians, called attention to the diffi-
culties which threatened Russia through her enormous
rate of increase.
" Until lately," he said, " Russia has been largely in the
condition of a new country, with vast quantities of land
over which a growing agricultural population could spread.
Now the European area is more or less filled up, and unless
the vast territory of Siberia can be largely utilized for settle-
ment, which appears doubtful, the pressure of population
on the means of subsistence in Russia may soon become
very great. The soil may be capable of supporting with
better agriculture a larger population : but this is not the
point. The kind of agriculture possible in any country is
1 J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, p. 11.
132 POPULATION
related to the existing capacity of the population, or to
such improvements in that capacity as are in progress, and
with the Russian population as it is, there are certainly
traces in Russia of an increasing severity in the struggle
for existence, which may at any moment become most
serious."1
We know now how well-founded these forebodings
were. The war disturbed the precarious equipoise of
Russian life. Revolution and famine were lying in wait
for an opportunity to seize their gigantic prey. Without
the armour of social stability or the strength of economic
reserves, Russia was soon swallowed up by these two
monsters ; and the country, which before the war
supplied a quarter of the world's exportable wheat
surplus, is now begging for bread to save her children
from dying in millions of sheer starvation.
§ 9. War and Population. These, then, are the prin-
cipal characters in the great world drama. Let us now
turn to the drama itself and consider what part in it is
played by the Malthusian principle of population ; how
far the struggle for supremacy among the nations is
indeed a struggle for bread forced upon them by the
pressure of population on the means of subsistence,
and how far war may truly be regarded as a check to
population, and therefore as a dreadful remedy for
the excessive growth of numbers.
Sir Walter Raleigh, in a passage quoted above (in
Chapter I) said : —
" When any country is overlaid by the multitude which
live upon it, there is a natural necessity compelling it to
1 Inaugural Address as President of the Statistical Society,
reprinted in Economic Enquiries and Studies, Vol. II, pp. 13, 14.
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS 133
disburden itself and lay the load upon others, by right or
wrong, for (to omit the danger of pestilence, often visiting
them that live in throngs) there is no misery that urgeth
men so violently unto desperate courses and contempt of
death as the torments and threats of famine. Wherefore,
the war that is grounded on general remediless necessity
may be termed the general and remediless or necessary
war "
This thought has been expressed many times since
the days of Raleigh, in many languages and a great
variety of forms. General von Bernhardi, for instance,
says : —
" Strong, healthy and flourishing nations increase in
numbers. From a given moment they require a continual
expansion of their frontiers, they require new territory for
the accommodation of their surplus population. Since
almost every part of the globe is inhabited, new territory
must, as a rule, be obtained at the cost of its possessors —
that is to say, by conquest, which thus becomes a law of
necessity."1
Now, it is fairly obvious that wars of the type
suggested in the phraseology of these passages — wars
in which a rapidly multiplying people, in imminent
danger of starvation, burst through their national
boundaries and seized the fertile lands of some neigh-
bouring country— did not occur in the days of Sir Walter
Raleigh, and have not occurred on any great scale since
his time. History does not recognize, for instance, the
Napoleonic Wars or the World War of 1914-18 as
"remediless or necessary wars" in the sense in which
Sir Walter Raleigh used these words. The French were
1 Germany and the Next War, p. 14.
134 POPULATION
not forced at the beginning of the nineteenth century to
choose between starvation or aggression, nor were the
Germans a hundred years later. It would be safe to say
that among the considerations which influence the minds
of emperors and statesmen when they go to war, popula-
tion problems have hitherto played an inconspicuous
part.
Wars, however, like all the events in which great
masses of men are involved, are brought about by many
and complex causes, among which conscious motives
are often less important than hidden influences lying
beneath the surface of things. To reveal these hidden
influences is a necessary preliminary step to their
control, and it is only by understanding the forces which
are at work among us that we can hope to substitute
human reason for blind impulse in the governance of
the world. In this matter, therefore, as in others that
have been touched upon in proceding pages, it is neces-
sary to enquire whether the pressure of population may
not have had an indirect influence of which the chief
actors in the drama were scarcely conscious.
If provisions are scarce and employment difficult to
obtain at home, it is natural that adventurous spirits
should go abroad in search of better fortune. That was
how the American colonies came into existence ; and
that is perhaps the main reason why the inhabitants of
these small islands have spread themselves over the
globe. If there had been ample room for an expanding
population in the United Kingdom, it is very probable
that the Empire would not have been invented. Then
the colonial wars with France would not have taken
place ; a later generation would have had no reason to
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS 135
fear the power of Russia ; the American and Boer wars
would have been impossible, and the whole course of
European history would have been different. Thus it
may be seen at a glance how closely population questions
are involved in the underlying causes of national and
racial conflicts. But this, it must be admitted, is little
more than saying that if human beings did not come
into contact with one another they could not fight ! The
vital question is whether conflicts actually tend to arise
through the competition of nations for the limited sub-
sistence yielded by the earth to human efforts. Here,
as we have seen, there are two opposing tendencies at
work. On the one hand, there is the tendency for the
total amount of human subsistence to be greatly in-
creased by co-operation between man and man, by the
division of labour and the application of science to
nature. On the other hand, the Law of Diminishing
Returns tends to develop a constantly increasing com-
petition between nations for sources of food and raw
materials and for markets in which to sell the manu-
factures which pay for the food. Unfortunately, the
latter tendency exercises a greater influence on the
conduct of diplomacy than the former. We have only
to glance through the list of subjects which occupied
statesmen during the ten years before the war — Morocco,
Tripoli, the Bagdad Railway, the Congo, Mexico, China
— to see that this is true. The scramble for first place
in the exploitation of backward races and undeveloped
territories, for markets and for sources of raw materials •
is one of the most potent causes of international friction.
Are we not then forced to the conclusion that the
fundamental problem of human life — the pressure of
136 POPULATION
population on the means of subsistence — plays a con-
siderable part in creating the atmosphere in which wars
arise ? The fact that the real nature of these issues is
little recognized, and still less discussed, by diplomats
is itself a source of danger. In many cases a solution
tolerable to all parties to the dispute could be found :
free access to raw materials or markets — the Open Door
in Morocco, for instance — would be a small price to pay
for co-operation instead of conflict ; but the underlying
issue is seldom brought to light, and some artificial cause
of quarrel, like the despatch of a gunboat to an obscure
harbour, proves more dangerous than the tangible
interests would be if they were squarely faced. Not,
indeed, that there is any way by which the nations can
go on multiplying without creating a scarcity in the
products of the soil. It is not suggested that an easy
solution of the subsistence problem awaits the statesman
who is clear-sighted enough to face it. It is a hard nut
to crack. But it is not made any easier by war ; on
the contrary, it is rendered more difficult. If war had
been avoided in 1914, the inhabitants of Europe would
have been living to-day on a relatively high standard
and receiving generous supplies of food and raw materials
from every quarter of the globe. It is the war itself
which has made the population problem a burning
question.
§ 10. War and Subsistence. Malthus included war in
his list of checks to population. It is natural that he
should do so, for it is destructive of human life, both
directly and indirectly, through the famine and disease
which it brings in its train. As a means of reducing
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS 137
population relatively to the food supply, however, war
is a disastrous failure. The Thirty Years' War, as we
saw in Chapter I, was immensely destructive of human
life ; but at the same time it was destructive of human
food and the means of producing food to such an extent
that it probably lowered the standard of life of the
peopL who survived. " Bavaria, Franconia and Swabia,"
we read, " were desolated by famine and disease, while
the rest of Germany and Austria fared little better. . . .
Cattle and sheep diminished to an extraordinary extent,
and many once fertile districts became forests inhabited
by wolves and other savage beasts."
One may reasonably doubt whether the proportion of
the means of subsistence to population was increased by
this process.
In modern war the same difficulty arises. The
destruction of human life is accompanied by a greater
diminution of the means of subsistence through a dis-
location of production and transport, and a deterioration
of the soil through neglect ; and, in some cases, the food
supply takes longer than the population to recover its
former magnitude. Let us look at the grim balance-
sheet of the great war by which Europe is still (four
years after the armistice) half paralysed. France, the
country which, with her stationary population, must be
the slowest to recover her numerical strength, lost more
than two million people between 1914 and 1921. This
figure is exclusive of the inhabitants of the restored
provinces of Alsace-Lorraine, but it includes civilian
deaths, which were swollen by an increased rate of
mortality attributable to war conditions, including the
influenza epidemic of 1918. With the return of peace,
138 POPULATION
the number of marriages and births rapidly increased
and the number of deaths decreased. In 1920 there
were twice as many marriages as there were in 1913.
The excess of births over deaths, excluding those in
Alsace-Lorraine, was 143,000 in 1920, and 100,000 in
1921, as against an average from 1904 to 1913 of 33,500.
The increase in 1920 has been paralleled only in the
years immediately after the Franco-Prussian war.
Apart, then, from the restored provinces, it will take
France about seventeen years to regain her 1913 popula-
tion, if the natural increase remains at the level of the
last two years ; or thirty to forty years if the rate falls
to the pre-war level. Alsace-Lorraine contains about
1,700,000, and if these are included the total population
of France is already within half a million of its former
size.
When one thinks of the shattering experiences through
which the German people have passed since July, 1914,
the vital statistics of Germany are astounding. About
1,700,000 Germans were killed in the war. The loss due
to the reduction of the birth-rate in the war years is
estimated at 3,300,000 ; and the increased mortality
among the civilian population at 500,000. The sur-
rendered territory, including Upper Silesia, contained
six and a half millions of inhabitants. Yet the total
decrease in the population of Germany between 1913
and 1921 was only four and a half millions ! In other
words, the population of post-war Germany has increased
since 1913 by two millions ! This extraordinary fact is
partly accounted for by an influx of refugees — Germans
expelled from abroad and others — the number of whom
cannot be accurately determined, but is estimated at
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS 139
about a million. For the rest, a post-war boom in
marriages and births and a low mortality (especially-
infant mortality, which has actually been less since the
war than in 1913) must be held responsible.
The population of Russia has, of course, been greatly
diminished by the chaos into which that country has
been flung since the war began. As, however, it is pain-
fully evident that Russia is suffering more from over-
population in 1922 than she was in 1913, it is unnecessary
to go into the statistics. The same remark applies in a
lesser degree to Austria. In Great Britain, Belgium and
Italy the population in 1920 was equal to, or greater
than, that of 1913.
Turning now to the other side of our balance-sheet,
to the effect of the war on the means of subsistence,
what do we find ? That everywhere among the belli-
gerents productivity has decreased in a much greater
degree than population. In 1919, Mr. Hoover, the
American Food Controller and Director-General of
Relief in Europe, estimated that the population of
Europe was at least one hundred millions greater than
could be supported without imports, and warned the
world that unless productivity could be rapidly in-
creased there could be nothing but " political, moral
and economic chaos, finally interpreting itself in loss of
life hitherto undreamed of."1 Three good harvests and
the extraordinary recuperative power of human beings
have gone a long way towards falsifying that estimate.
Nevertheless, the German people still have to subsist
on 55 per cent of the supply of the most necessary
articles of diet which was available per head before the
1 Times, August 13, 1919.
140 POPULATION
war. The standard of living has been lowered 45 per
cent. Even so, Germany has now to import 17-7 per cent
of the most necessary foodstuffs, as against 5 per cent in
1913. In order to give back to it its pre-war produc-
tivity, the soil of Germany must have restored to it the
nitrates and phosphates taken from it during the war ;
but the nitrate factories cannot work without the coal
and coke which are sent abroad under the terms of the
Peace Treaty, and phosphates cannot be imported in
sufficient quantities until purchasing power increases.
It is unnecessary to pursue this enquiry into the effect
of the war upon the means of subsistence in Germany,
or to describe the position in the other belligerent
countries. The poverty and disorganization everywhere
are only too conspicuous. There can be no doubt what-
ever that the loss of population in Europe through the
war is far exceeded by the diminution in the means of
subsistence, and that there will be many more people
than there were in 1913 before the recovery of pre-war
productivity has been accomplished. Like the giant in
the fairy story, a modern nation grows new heads faster
than the avenger can cut them off.
It would seem, then, that modern war is not a check
to population in the Malthusian sense at all. An
influence which decreases the number of human beings
to a smaller extent than it diminishes the yield of human
food and the other necessaries of life does not come
within that category.
Far from being a remedy for over-population, war is,
indeed, one of the most powerful influences tending to
keep the standard of life down to the subsistence level.
On the one hand, it interrupts the process of world-wide
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS 141
\ co-operation in the exploitation of nature, without which
Ithe earth could not maintain a tenth of its present
[population. On the other hand, it creates a special and
urgent need for more and more human beings in each
nation in order to supply the man-power which makes
for victory. In the vicious circle thus created the
teaching of Malthus is only too clearly vindicated. The
greater the pressure of population upon the world's food
supply the more likelihood there is that points of
friction will arise between the nations in potential food-
producing areas ; and the instinctive nationalist re-
action to this half-formulated fear, that a redundant
population at home will suffer through the competition
of other nations for " places in the sun " and new
sources of food and raw material, is not to co-operate
more fully with those other nations so as to produce
the maximum supply of the desired commodities as
rapidly as possible, but rather to seek exclusive privi-
leges in undeveloped countries, to claim preferential
treatment from colonies, and to erect protective tariff
barriers and other obstacles to the free exchange of
goods and services throughout the world. In this way
the consciousness of having an excessive population
tends to make a nation adopt a restrictive trade policy
and an aggressive foreign policy, though the former may i
lower the standard of life in its overcrowded cities,
while the latter will lead to a demand for a still greater
population to serve the purposes of war.
It is necessary to repeat that the difficulty does not
arise exclusively from racial and international hostilities.
To suggest that there would be plenty of food and raw
materials to maintain all the nations in comfort no
142 POPULATION
matter how rapidly their numbers increased, if only they
would live together in peaceful co-operation, would be
as unwarrantable as the easy optimism of anti-
Malthusians in the nineteenth century. The population
problem can only be solved by a decline in the world's
birth-rate, and if that solution is not attained, then the
checks which Malthus enumerated will continue from
time to time to reduce excessive numbers through the
instrumentality of vice and misery.
National hostilities, however, interpose a barrier
between mankind and the rational consideration of the
matter, and lead to national policies which aggravate
the evils and increase the dangers by which the laws of
nature have surrounded us. The first step towards the
co-ordination of the number of human beings with the
available food supply will not be taken until we have
ceased to regard a relative advantage over rival nations
as more important than the well-being of humanity as
a whole.
§ 11. Emigration. That the present trend of opinion
is away from a world policy in regard to population
problems, and tending rather to harden in the direction
of exclusive nationalism, is illustrated by the new
attitude towards emigration and immigration which has
been adopted since the war.
Hitherto, the migration of the surplus population of
the Old World to seek a livelihood by developing the
resources of new countries has, generally speaking, been
regarded as beneficial to all concerned. Besides re-
lieving one labour market and supplying another, the
process was held to assist production by transferring
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS 143
resources from places where their productive power was
less to places where it was greater, thus adding to the
joint wealth of the old and new countries. That
acute distress in Ireland, for instance, was relieved
by continuous emigration on a very large scale in
proportion to her population is generally accepted ;
and that the development of the United States has
been quickened by streams of immigrants from Europe
is undeniable.
A great deal depends upon the age and character of
the emigrants. It is clearly impracticable to transfer a
representative section of the community to the other
side of the world. In practice it must be the young men
and women who go abroad, with just a sprinkling of
children, and it is difficult enough to avoid a great
excess of male over female emigrants. One result of
emigration must, therefore, be that the proportion of
workers to non- workers (the young and the old) remain-
ing behind will be diminished, and a serious additional
burden will be thrown upon the former. A more
speculative question is whether the birth-rate among
the home population will not rise. During the Middle
Ages, when the principal check to population was post-
ponement of marriage, there is reason to believe that
any unusual mortality due to war or pestilence was
followed by a sharp rise in the birth-rate, so that the
population rapidly recovered its former magnitude.
Now, postponement of marriage is skill to some extent
operative as a check to population, and it is at least
possible that the emigration of a large number of young
adults would thus stimulate the fertility of those who
remained behind.
144 POPULATION
Emigration, in fact, is an appropriate remedy for a
temporary surplus of labour in industry such as may
so easily arise in the interval before population can
adjust itself to a change in conditions. It is not
by any means a complete remedy for a recurring
annual excess of births over deaths in an overcrowded
country.
The clear-cut division of labour between Europe and
America, which characterized the growth of wealth and
commerce in the 'seventies, made it very obvious that
emigration must benefit both continents. The industrial
development of Europe was assisted by the growth of
new markets for manufactured articles abroad, while
the cost of living was kept down by an ever-increasing
supply of food and raw materials grown by the
emigrants. America, on the other hand, profited by
the supply of labourers from Europe, and by the
implements, capital goods and transport facilities which
accompanied them. It was an ideal arrangement.
During the last thirty years, however, American opinion
has been hardening against the unrestricted admission
of immigrants from Europe. The conditions have
changed. America is filling up ; and economic objec-
tions to the free admission of cheap labour are reinforced
by political considerations with regard to the racial
composition of the population. Since 1917 a literacy
test has been imposed upon immigrants to the United
States, with the object of checking the flow of people
from Southern and Eastern Em-ope without interfering
unduly with those from Western Europe. This measure,
however, was considered altogether inadequate to pro-
tect America against the invasion of hordes of refugees
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS 145
expected after the war ; and in 1921 a law was passed >•
enacting that the number of aliens of any nationality
who may be admitted into the United States in any
fiscal year shall be limited to 3 per cent of the number
of foreign-born persons of such nationality resident in
the United States, as shown by the census of 1910.
Meanwhile a sudden change has taken place in the
attitude of European states towards the emigration of
their citizens. The war-time valuation of " man-power "
has been applied to the affairs of peace. The value of
each individual to the State as a potential soldier, or an
economic asset, is now carefully weighed before he is
allowed to leave the country, and even when emigration
is permitted, the emigrant is still subject to elaborate
regulations designed to preserve some part of his
economic value for his country of origin. Before the
war a few simple international conventions governed the
movements of population ; for the rest, the countries of
destination selected and controlled the immigrants.
Now we have rival policies developing between the
emigration and immigration countries, and some com
promise must be reached if freedom of movement is not
to disappear from the earth.
Great Britain is happily relieved from anxiety regard-
ing this new phase of exclusive nationalism by the
existence of the Dominions overseas. There is plenty
of room within the Empire for British emigrants for many
years to come. " Why, then," it is sometimes asked,
" should we feel any uneasiness about the continued
growth of population at home ? We may be exhausting
our reserves of coal and losing markets for our manu-
factures, but is there not plenty of scope for our surplus
146 POPULATION
labour in the Dominions ? " It is necessary to examine
this suggestion in some detail.
The reader may remember that early in this chapter !a
it was suggested that Australia and Canada togetherj
would eventually be able to support some two hundred!
millions, and an undertaking was given to examine later
how far this room for expansion might be expected to
relieve the situation in Great Britain. This, then, is the
place in which to carry out that enquiry.
During the last ten years the population of England
and Wales, if there had been no deaths due to war,
would have increased by about 2,500,000. The emigra-
tion during the same period has been about 630,000, the
highest figure in any decade since 1871. In order to
keep the population of this country constant, therefore,
an emigration of about 250,000 persons each year, or
five times the present rate, would be necessary. Let us
assume that, with the aid of the British and Dominion
Governments, this number could be carried overseas
and given employment in Canada and Australia. What
would be the effect on conditions in England ?
It is impossible to foresee whether this emigration
would increase or decrease the birth-rate in the old
country. At first sight it would seem probable that the
withdrawal of a number of men and women at an age
for parenthood would diminish the average fertility ;
but we have seen how the birth-rate in all countries
rises after a war, and it must be remembered that
emigration is proposed as a means of benefiting the
home population. Ex hypoihesi, therefore, the imme-
diate effect should be to improve the conditions of
labour, to offer, if not better wages, at least more
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS 147
continuous employment to those who remain. What
guarantee is there that they would not take out this
improvement in earlier marriage and a higher birth-
rate ?
The indirect effect upon the home population of a
great increase in the number of people in Canada and
Australia is also difficult to determine. The world is
now an economic unit. An increase in the supply of
capital and labour in a far country must, therefore,
have a great influence on the welfare of the people
here. We have seen already how the industrial
development of the United States has reacted upon
the life of Europe.
Now if our emigrants had remained at home a large
proportion of them would necessarily have been em-
ployed in manufacturing industries. Must we assume
that they will be so employed in the Dominions ? The
effect of their labour upon conditions in England
depends very largely upon the answer to that question.
If they increase the supply of food and raw materials
in Australia and Canada they will benefit England by
promoting the exchange of those things which she needs
for the manufactures she produces. If, on the other
hand, they develop the manufacturing industries of
the New World, it might have been better for their
countrymen if they had stayed at home. Those who
are not themselves engaged in manufacturing must,
indeed, derive some benefit from the opening-up of a
new source of supply which in the long run will help
to cheapen the articles produced. From the point of
view of England as a whole, however, this advantage
is to some extent counterbalanced by the dependence
148 POPULATION
of a large part of the community upon the production
of articles which would have to meet intensified com-
petition in the markets of the world and especially in
the Dominions themselves. Our 250,000 workers would
overstock the labour market in this country, but, at
the best, some advantage might be obtained from
increasing returns in industry if they remained here,
and, at the worst, they would share with their fellow-
workers the evils of over-population. If they emigrated
and enlisted in the same industries overseas, their
competition would be just as keenly felt at home, it
could not bring with it any compensating economies
in production, and it might be more severe because it
would be based upon the untapped resources of new
lands.
The evidence as to whether the emigrants would, in
fact, tend to go on the land or into industry is con-
flicting. On the one hand, the Dominion Governments
prefer to put new-comers into farming ; the trade
unions in the Dominions do not welcome a great acces-
sion to their numbers ; and the type of man who has
hitherto left Great Britain to seek his fortune in the
New World takes kindly to an open-air life.' On the
other hand, manufacturing industries being fostered
by protection in Australia and Canada, the farmer is
discouraged by taxation for their benefit ; and a great
increase in emigration, such as we are considering,
could not be confined to the type of man who ordinarily
chooses to rough it abroad, but must include a large
proportion of industrial workers, for whom, indeed, it is
designed. There can be no certainty as to what would
happen ; but one may hazard a guess that, even if all
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS 149
the emigrants were in the first place planted upon the
land, a very large proportion of them would eventually
drift into the towns.
It would seem, then, on examination, that emigra- J
tion is by no means a perfect remedy for over-popula-
tion. It involves the withdrawal of a number of people
from the community at a time of life when they are
most active, leaving the young and the old to be pro-
vided for by others. It throws upon a country which
is already feeling the strain of population the burden,
of breeding up human beings to the productive age
and then exporting them free of charge. It may give
rise to an increasing birth-rate at home. And it may
stimulate industries overseas in competition with the
home country and thus increase the very evil which it is!
designed to cure.
§ 12. The Danger to Civilization. In this brief survey
of international population problems we have seen
how human co-operation and the division of labour have
made it possible for vast numbers of people to come into
existence, and to be maintained at a higher standard of
life than the earth has ever yielded before. We have
also seen how national antagonisms intensify the
difficulties which man must overcome in winning his
subsistence from the earth. The present tendency
appears to be away from co-operation and towards a
keener sense of national differences. But that road
leads inevitably to a bitter struggle upon an over-
populated planet for the bare necessities of life. Is
that to be the end of modern civilization, or will human
reason overcome blind impulse in time to avert the
150 POPULATION
catastrophe ? That the twentieth century should be
faced by this question is a striking proof of the wisdom
of Malthus in grasping the issue one hundred and twenty I
years ago. Let us avoid the shallow optimism of his
opponents, for which, indeed, we have less excuse than
they had, and face the problem squarely.
CHAPTER VIII
THE QUALITY OF POPULATION
" A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit ; neither can
a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit."
Matthew vii. 18.
§ 1. Introductory. The first six chapters of this hand-
book were devoted to the quantitative problems of
population ; the influence of increasing numbers of
human beings on the supply of human food — and, in
those chapters, the differences between one human
being and another were almost entirely ignored. In the
last chapter an attempt was made to outline the broadest
of qualitative population problems ; to indicate the
complications that arise through differences in race and
nationality. Now it is necessary to refer to questions of
quality within each community and to consider the
bearing of the relative numbers of one sex to the other,
and of one social class to another, upon population
problems as a whole.
§ 2. Why there are more Women than Men. Before the
war there were nearly eight million more females than
males in Europe, and about 1,300,000 more females than
males in Great Britain. In 1921 the females exceeded
the males in this country by about 1,900,000, and it is
151
152 POPULATION
probable that the disproportion in Europe as a whole
has increased in a like ratio. The first fact to notice in
seeking the cause of this disparity is that in all Western
communities more boys than girls are born ; the excess
of male births ranging from twenty to sixty per thousand.
a The mortality amongst boys, especially in the first year
of life, is greater than that of girls, and the numbers
become equal in most countries between the ages of
fifteen and twenty. Then it appears that the dangers
- to which men are specially subject in middle age,
industrial accidents, war and exposure to weather, are
more deadly than those encountered by women, of which
the chief is childbirth, and the women begin to pre-
dominate in those years. In old age " the weaker sex "
displays more vitality than the other, and increases its
lead. Emigration, too, must play a considerable part
in the disparity between the sexes in Europe, for on the
American continent as a whole the balance is tilted
the other way, the men exceeding the women by over
four millions, while in Australia also there is a shortage
of women.
It is generally agreed that the reaction upon social life
of this disproportion between the sexes on both sides of
the Atlantic is undesirable ; especially so perhaps in
Europe, where the status of women is adversely affected
by the existence of a " surplus." The most obvious
remedy is the promotion of a larger emigration of
women from the Old World to the New. An attempt
is being made in this direction ; but the difficulties are
formidable, since the larger towns in America and the
British Dominions already have a fair proportion of
women, and the less developed districts are not so
THE QUALITY OF POPULATION 153
suitable for women to live in. Moreover, the excess of
women in Europe is at least double the excess of men
in the other countries with white communities, so
emigration could at best only solve half the problem.
The root of the trouble lies in the high rate of mortality
among boy-babies, and it is a disquieting fact that in
this country the difference between the sexes in this
respect has increased. According to Dr. Saleeby,
14 per cent more boys than girls now die in infancy,
and twenty or thirty years ago the difference used to
be only 6 per cent.1 No explanation of this fact has
been offered by the authorities on the subject. We
have seen, however, that infant mortality as a whole is
declining, and as boys are more difficult to rear than
girls, it is not perhaps surprising that the latter should
be the first to benefit from improved conditions of life.
It is to be hoped that as the care of infants further
develops, the boys, too, will be saved. It seems probable
also that as women are tending more and more to
participate in the occupations that were formerly kept
exclusively for men, the risks of middle age will fall
more evenly upon the sexes and thus the disparity will
be reduced.
§ 3. The Fertility of Different Classes. The reader may
remember that in discussing the causes of the decline
of the birth-rate we noted, incidentally, in Chapter VI,
that this decline has not been uniformly distributed
over all sections of the community, but has been more
marked in the more prosperous classes. We must now
1 Evidence before the National Birth-rate Commission. (The
Declining Birth-rale, p. 414.)
154 POPULATION
consider that lack of uniformity in some detail, for it
has an important bearing upon the question of the
quality of our population.
The births in England and Wales in 1911, per 1000
married men under fifty-five years of age, classified
according to the occupation of the father, were as
follows :
1. Upper and Middle Class
. 119
2. Intermediate
. 132
3. Skilled Workmen .
. 153
4. Intermediate
. 158
5. Unskilled Workmen
. 213
The rate of infant mortality in these groups, following
the same order, was 76-4, 106-4, 112-7, 121-5, 152-5.
The proportion of infants born and surviving the first
year of fife in the different classes was therefore :
Class 1, 110 ; Class 2, 118 ; Class 3, 136 ; Class 4, 139 ;
Class 5, 181.
From these figures it is evident that the children born
at the present time in this country are unevenly dis-
tributed among the classes ; the wealthiest people having
as a rule the fewest children, and the size of families
increasing, broadly speaking, as the incomes decrease,
so that unskilled labourers have the most children. It
is evident also that infant mortality tends to reduce
this disparity, but does not eliminate it. There is no
evidence available as to the relative size of families
later in life.
Now the figures given above do not show whether
the differences in the fertility of various classes have
been increased by the fall in the birth-rate ; they only
THE QUALITY OF POPULATION 155
show that there are differences at the present time.
Mr. Udney Yule, however, has compiled a Table in
which he has arranged certain London districts in the
order of the number of female domestic servants em-
ployed, taking this as a measure of the social standing
of a district, so that the fertilities of upper and lower-
class districts can be compared. The results obtained
by this method of comparison are interesting. In 1871
the differences between the districts were by no means
regular or striking. The fertilities of Hampstead,
Kensington and Paddington, for example, exceeded
those of South wark and Shoreditch, although the
former are at the top of the social scale and the latter
at the bottom. In 1901 the position was very different.
The districts at the top of the list then showed a very
low fertility, 23 per cent below that of 1871, while those
at the bottom remained as prolific as they had been
thirty years before. From 1901 to 1911, however, the
top districts decreased their fertility by an average of
3 per cent, while the bottom districts dropped theirs
by about 5 per cent. The figures for individual districts
are so irregular that Mr. Yule does not lay stress on the
last result. " It seems probable enough," he says,
" that the more rapid decrease may have spread from
the upper strata downwards, and in the decade 1901-
1911 have begun to affect even such districts as Poplar,
Bermondsey and Bethnal Green, but more evidence
is necessary before this can be accepted as a demon-
strated conclusion."1
The general deduction, that the difference between
the fertility of different classes is very much greater
1 The Fall of the Birth-rate, p. 27
156 POPULATION
now than it was fifty years ago is confirmed by in-
dependent statistical enquiries undertaken by Drs. Heron
and Stevenson and others, and may be taken as an
established fact.
§ 4. A Cause of the High Birth-rate among the Poor.
It is difficult to regard this distribution of children as
satisfactory. Bernard Shaw's dictum on the distribu-
tion of wealth : " Dinners without appetites at one
end of the town, and appetites without dinners at the
other end," becomes still more disquieting when we
add : " Houses and comfort without children at one
end of the town, and children without houses and
comfort at the other end." Clearly birth control has
begun to exercise an influence on numbers at the wrong
end of the social scale. Probably this was inevitable ;
certainly it was to be expected, if account be taken of
the conspiracy, in which practically the whole of the
educated classes have joined until recently, to keep
working men and women in ignorance both of their
duty not to bring children into the world unless they
have a reasonable expectation of being able to provide
for them, and of the means by which this duty can be
fulfilled.
John Stuart Mill, usually the calmest of philosophers,
was moved to write indignantly on this subject, and
much of his rebuke is, unhappily, applicable to the
present generation.
" Poverty," he wrote, " like most social evils, exists
because men follow their brute instincts without due con-
sideration. But society is possible, precisely because man
is not necessarily a brute. Civilization in every one of its
THE QUALITY OF POPULATION 157
aspects is a struggle against the animal instincts. Over
some, even of the strongest of them, it has shown itself
capable of acquiring abundant control. ... If it has not
brought the instinct of population under as much restraint
as is needful, we must remember that it has never seriously
tried. What efforts it has made have mostly been in the
contrary direction. Religion, morality and statesmanship
have vied with one another in incitements to marriage, and
to the multiplication of the species, so it be but in wedlock.
Religion has not even yet discontinued its encouragements.
. . . The rich, provided the consequences do not touch
themselves, think it impugns the wisdom of Providence to
suppose that misery can result from the operation of a
natural propensity : the poor think that ' God never sends
mouths but He sends meat.' No one would guess from the
language of either that man had any voice or choice in the
matter."1
To this outburst, Mill added a fierce footnote :
" Little improvement can be expected in morality until
the producing of large families is regarded with the same
feelings as drunkenness or any other physical excess. But
while the aristocracy and clergy are foremost to set the
example of this kind of incontinence, what can be expected
from the poor ? "2
§ 5. Eugenic Considerations. It must be admitted that
the aristocracy now set a different example, and even
the clergy (of the Church of England at any rate),
contrary to the popular impression, have only seventy-
two children for every hundred that are born in average
families. Precept, however, has not as yet followed
example to any great extent, and much of Mill's in-
dictment is still relevant. Some authorities think,
1 Political Economy, Book II, Chap. XIII, § 1.
1 Ibid. (Note.)
158 POPULATION
indeed, that our present state is worse than that of
which Mill complained, because, they say, wo are
breeding fastest from the worse stocks, and the physical
and mental deterioration of the race must inevitably
result. Thus, Dean Inge, who manages to combine
the keenest enjoyment of controversy with pessimistic
views on the future prospects of mankind, says that :
' Natural selection, which in uncivilized societies weeds
out all nature's failures, has almost ceased to act. A dwarf
can mind a machine, a cripple can keep accounts. The
general handiness and adaptibility which is second nature
to a savage is useless in an age of specialization. . . . We
are thus faced with a progressive deterioration of our stock,
due to the suspension of natural selection and the entire
absence of anything like rational selection."1
In another place the Dean writes :
" Either rational selection must take the place of the
natural selection which the modern State will not allow to
act, or we shall deteriorate as surely as a miscellaneous
crowd of dogs which was allowed to rear puppies from
promiscuous matings."2
It is easy to pick holes in the Dean's arguments ; to
point out, for instance, that even in uncivilized societies
dwarfs may be successful witch-doctors, and thus
survive and become powerful ; that the natural selection
which prefers muscles to brains and low cunning to
artistic genius is not necessarily desirable, and that '
many dog-lovers consider mongrels to be more in-
telligent, hardy and lively than pedigree animals. The
advocate of eugenics cannot, however, be dismissed
with a few debating points. The purely economic
1 Outspoken Essays, 2nd series, pp. 265-266. ■ Ibid., p. 257.
THE QUALITY OF POPULATION 159
objection to the present distribution of children can
be met to some extent by the provision of free educa-
tion, by housing acts, by the feeding and medical
supervision of children at school, by infant welfare
centres, and so on. But if it is true that these measures
tend to perpetuate the predominance of the worst stocks
in the production of future generations, then they are
positively harmful instead of being beneficial. The
matter is, therefore, one of serious practical importance.
Is there really any reason to suppose that the poor
are physically and mentally inferior to the rich, or even
that unskilled labourers are fundamentally inferior, as
a class, to artisans ? Those who know the poor best
are often ready to maintain the contrary view, and to
assert that only a superiority over the other classes in
stamina and courage could enable them to face the
risks and hardships of their way of life. Thus, Stephen
Reynolds, who lived for some years in the house of a
Devonshire fisherman, wrote that :
" the more intimately one lives among the poor the more
one admires their amazing talent for happiness in spite of
privation, and their magnificent courage in the face of
uncertainty ; and the more also one sees that these qualities
have been called into being, or kept alive, by uncertainty
and thriftlessness. . . . The man matters more than his
circumstances. The poor man's Courage to Live is his most
valuable distinctive quality. Most of his finest virtues
spring therefrom. . . . The poor and the middle class are
different in kind as well as in degree. (More different
perhaps than the poor and the aristocrat.) Their civiliza-
tions are not two stages of the same civilization, but two
civilizations, two traditions, which have grown up con-
currently, though not of course without considerable
intermingling. . . . The civilization of the poor may be
160 POPULATION
more backward materially, but it contains the nucleus of a
finer civilization than that of the middle class."1
The eugenist, while not necessarily questioning the
accuracy of Mr. Reynolds's conclusions with regard to
Devonshire fishermen, wrould say that they are in-
applicable to the poor in large towns and industrial
districts. It is noteworthy, however, that Miss M. Loane,
after long observation of the poor of London, among
whom she worked as a nurse, arrived independently at
much the same opinion.2
Even those who entirely accept the view that the
peasant class is likely to be at least as sound from the
racial standpoint as any other class, must, however,
admit that there are disquieting influences at work. If
the classes remained in watertight compartments, and
the children were evenly distributed within each class, all
might be well for the future of the race. Unfortunately,
from the eugenic point of view, there is a tendency for
the failures of one class to fall into the next ; a con-
verse tendency for the most capable members of each
class to climb up the social ladder ; and, worst of all,
a tendency for the least satisfactory members of each
class to have the largest number of cliildren.
The most serious instance of the tendency last men-
tioned is to be found in the reproductive power of the
feeble-minded. It appears to be an established fact that
feeble-mindedness is a hereditary defect. It follows the
same rules as other hereditary qualities in plants and
animals which have been discovered through the science
1 A Poor Man's House, pp. 262, 2G7, 270.
• See From their Point of View, The Next Street but One, and other
books by M. Loane.
THE QUALITY OF POPULATION 161
of genetics. Feeble-mindedness is a so-called recessive
characteristic and reproduces itself in accordance with
certain clearly defined rules, through the marriage of
two persons who both come from defective stock. It
cannot be bred out of a family in which it has established
itself, but it could be eliminated by the segregation of all
feeble-minded persons. Unfortunately, the birth-rate
of the feeble-minded is 50 per cent higher than that of
normal people ; and as these poor creatures have, in
most cases, to be maintained by the State, it seems most
reasonable for the Eugenics Education Society to
recommend their compulsory segregation. That measure
is, indeed, called for as a protection for the feeble-
minded themselves, apart from the interests of the
community in which they live.
§ 6. Present Limitations of Eugenics. Responsible
students of genetics do not, as a rule, advocate any
immediate action by the community beyond that
indicated in the last paragraph. Their science is still
in its infancy, and there are formidable difficulties to
overcome before positive action can be contemplated.
As an American poet has said : —
" Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist,
What will result from compounding
Fluids or solids.
And who can toll
How men and women will interact
On each other, or what children will result ?
There were Benjamin Pantier and his wife,
Good in themselves, but evil towards each other ;
He oxygen, she hydrogen,
Their son, a devastating fire."1
1 Spoon River A nihology, by Edgar Lee Masters, p. 1 0.
162 POPULATION
Even if we knew how to produce children with certain
characteristics, we are not yet agreed, as even Dean Inge
admits, as to what we should breed for. " The two
ideals," he says, " that of the perfect man and that of
the perfectly organized State, would lead to very
different principles of selection. Do we want a nation
of beautiful and moderately efficient Greek gods, or do
we want human mastiffs for policemen, human grey-
hounds for postmen, and so on ? "*
Many of us would answer that we do not want either
the one or the other ; we would much rather have the
present varieties of human beings !
§ 7. The Relative Importance of Heredity and Environ-
ment. When we turn from ultimate ideals to the
practical issues of the day, we find a real and important
conflict of opinion between those who lay stress on the
influence of heredity and those who concentrate on that
of environment. Measures of social amelioration, such
as those enumerated above, are generally viewed with
grave suspicion by the former as being calculated to
encourage the reproduction of inferior types at the
expense of their superiors. The latter, on the other
hand, frequently urge the adoption of still more drastic
means for improving the conditions under which the
majority of children are born and reared. The endow-
ment of motherhood, and the enactment of a national
minimum wage, are characteristic projects of this school
of thought. There is much, of course, to be said on both
sides in this controversy. The eugenists have not yet
succeeded in proving that there is any close correlation
1 Outspoken Essays, 2nd series, p. 175.
THE QUALITY OF POPULATION 163
between wealth and quality, though their case against
social reform depends mainly upon the assumption that
such a correlation exists. In emphasizing the part
played by heredity they seem to forget that the bluest
blood may be poisoned by the diseases bred in slums,
and that the noblest intellect may be obscured by misuse
in early life. Gray's familiar lines —
" Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood;"
may still contain a lesson of some importance for the
world. The measures designed to give equality of
opportunity to the children of all classes may not only
satisfy the sense of justice, but also enrich the world by
opening up great reservoirs of hidden talent. Moreover,
they may raise the average standard of efficiency in the
ordinary business of life — an object of first-rate import-
ance in view of the increasing difficulty in maintaining
Western standards of civilization.
§ 8. The Relation between Quantity and Quality of
Population. The socialist, however, is apt to ignore
altogether the reaction which his policy may have upon
the growth of population. In placing upon the com-
munity the whole burden of supporting and educating
the children of the poor he does not, as a rule, stipulate
that the community should have any voice as to the
number of children to be brought into existence. It is
true that an improvement in material circumstances has
in recent years been accompanied by a lower birth-rate
in the class affected, but this has probably been due
M
164 POPULATION
mainly to prudential considerations depending upon the
precarious nature of the advance in comfort which has
been secured. There is no reason to suppose that a
national minimum standard of life provided by the
community, irrespective of the efforts of individuals,
would have the same result. It is true that decent
civilized people cannot let their neighbours starve to
death while they themselves have any surplus over the
bare necessities of life ; but to admit the strength and
excellence of that humanitarian instinct is a very
different thing from saying, as many people say nowa-
days, that every human being has a right to a certain
standard of life and comfort. That is a claim that could
not be admitted, without courting disaster, by any
community which did not at the same time take upon
itself the difficult task of regulating the birth-rate. The
arguments used by Malthus to refute the dreams of
Godwin and Condorcet as to the perfectibility of man
and the prospect of banishing poverty and misery from
the life of humanity, are valid to-day in answer to the
extreme socialist. Until there is some guarantee that
population will not increase up to the means of sub-
eistence there can be no security for a national standard
of life. Until some more effective means of restricting
' the birth-rate is discovered it is necessary to insist upon
the responsibility of a parent for the support of his
child.
Economic considerations, based mainly on the quanti-
tative aspect of the problem of population, point, then,
to an attitude midway between those adopted by the
eugenist and the socialist. Even if it were clearly
established that the children of unskilled labourers were
THE QUALITY OF POPULATION 165
the best that could be born, it would still be desirable,
for the urgent economic reasons discussed in the fore-
going chapters, that the birth-rate among unskilled
labourers should be reduced. Most economists would
probably agree, therefore, with the advocates of eugenics
in seeking to increase the practice of birth-control among
that class. Apart from direct propaganda, however, the
most effective means towards that end appear to be a
rise in the standard of life, improved social conditions
and better housing accommodation, as long as these
benefits are not obtained at the expense of parental
responsibility. Here the economist will find himself in
accord with the socialist, up to a certain point, though
he may soon part company with him again as to the
measure of social amelioration which is practicable in
this hard world. The economist is boimd to recognize
that the wants of mankind are manifold while the means
of satisfying those wants are severely limited. That is
a fact which is disguised by inequalities in the distribu-
tion of wealth. Some few people have such an impressive
display of goods and such a large claim upon the labour
of others that it is difficult to believe that there is not
enough wealth even in this rich country to make every-
body comfortable. Nevertheless, as Professor Bowley
has shown, the total income of Great Britain in 1913
divided equally among the population would have yieldod
only £154 for an average family, or about £260 at the
present value of money. In order substantially to
improve the conditions of life in this country, therefore,
it is absolutely necessary to increase the productivity
of labour. Indeed, one may go further and say that,
in view of the increasing competition of countries with
166 POPULATION
greater natural resources, it is necessary to increase]
productivity in order to maintain the standard of life j
represented by Professor Bowley's figures. There is
reason to believe that much could be achieved in this
direction if labour would co-operate whole-heartedly in |
industry. The economist will therefore look very
sympathetically at all schemes which are designed to
encourage that spirit of co-operation, either by in-
creasing the share of the product which goes to the
workman, or by associating him more closely in the
management of industry. For a discussion of the ways
in which the present industrial system may be modified,
the reader is referred to another volume in this series.
Here it is only necessary to add that co-operation will
not be promoted by raising hopes of a standard of
comfort which cannot be reached.
We are living to-day in a world of men who can only I
maintain themselves by the most intricate system of
co-operation between individuals, classes, nations and I
races. Yet the dominant note is one of conflict. Every I
few years the fittest members of the community are
selected to be taken away from their wives in the prime
of life ; a large proportion of them are killed, and many
of the survivors are permanently reduced to a lower
standard of health. Meanwhile the intercourse between
nations is interrupted, and the relations between the
classes in each community are embittered by the conse-
quences of war.
In internal affairs, practical men, whether they call
themselves eugenists, or socialists, or " average sensual
men," are bound to recognize that, in this country at
any rate, we are committed for many years to come to
THE QUALITY OF POPULATION 167
an industrial civilization and a more or less democratic
form of government. Freedom of choice is therefore
narrowed down to an attempt to preserve and accentuate
the present distinctions of class and wealth, or an
attempt, within the limits of restricted material re-
sources, to improve the social environment of the
working classes. The former policy would be designed
to maintain an aristocracy of birth (in which the middle
classes are now generally included) in a position from
which they could impose their will upon their social
and, it is assumed, their racial inferiors, to the benefit
of all concerned. The latter policy would be designed
to develop the latent qualities of mind and body and
character which lie obscured by poverty, and to permit
an educated democracy to select and control its own
rulers. It would be absurd, however, to suggest that
the alternatives are likely to be considered on their
merits from a racial standpoint. The dominant con-
sideration with most people is, and perhaps ought to be, .
the sense that there is something wrong with a com-
munity in which extreme wealth and extreme poverty
exist side by side, and that everybody who is brought
into the world ought to be given a fair chance to develop
into a satisfactory human being. The main contribution
which economics can make at present in this discussion
is to point out that this aspiration can only be realized
if the national output of wealth increases more rapidly
than the population.
CHAPTER IX
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
" But a multitude of wise men is salvation to the world ;
and an understanding king is tranquillity to his people."
Wisdom vi. 24.
§ 1. Recapitulatory. It is not the purpose of this hand-
book to arrive at definite conclusions on population
problems, or to advocate the adoption of any particular
course of action. Its purpose is to indicate the nature
of those problems and to point out some of the factors
which must be taken into account if a sound opinion is
to be formed on the subject. It may be useful, there-
fore, to give here a brief summary of the general situa-
tion outlined in the foregoing chapters.
" Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms," as
Mai thus said, " 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." Thus all plants
and animals have a tendency to increase beyond the
means which nature provides for their subsistence,
and only a small proportion of young plants and
animals can grow to maturity. Man was completely
subject to the same law, until he learned to increase the
supply of human food yielded by nature, through the
168
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 169
cultivation of plants and animals specially adapted to
his needs. Even then he was only freed to a small
extent from the general restrictive rule, for all his
efforts could not produce enough food to provide for
more than an infinitesimal part of the children that
could be born. Finding that the tortoise could not
overtake the hare, primitive man seems to have done
his best to persuade the hare to go to sleep, for every-
where among primitive peoples one at least of three
devices for the limitation of numbers — abortion,
infanticide, or prolonged abstention from intercourse —
has been found to prevail. One of these checks to
population, that of infanticide, probably had an eugenic
influence, for it would naturally be the weakly children
who were first sacrificed ; and the natural check of
privation may have had a similar tendency to select
the least fit for destruction. The progress of civilization
has enabled man to exercise a constantly increasing
control over nature, and to wring a larger and larger
supply of food from the earth, but never, probably,
until the middle of the nineteenth century, has human
subsistence been brought within measurable distance
of the reproductive power of the race. At that period,
the rapid development of immense natural resources
in North America, rendered possible by the no less
rapid development in Europe, and especially in Great
Britain, of coal and iron and the manufactures dependent
upon them, gave to the white races of Western Europe
the extraordinary experience of a supply of things for
human consumption increasing even more rapidly than
the population could do with an almost unrestricted
birth-rate. Increasing returns to every dose of capital
170 POPULATION
and labour applied either to agriculture in the New
World or to manufacturing in the Old were, for a time,
obtained. The standard of living rose ; the cost of
living continued to fall, and man's conquest over
nature seemed wellmgh complete. Then, it was that,
in spite of the warning voices of Mill and Jevons, the
progress of the human race towards material and
spiritual perfection was generally in Western Europe
believed to be continuous and inevitable. Malthus,
with his Principle of Population, and Ricardo, with his
Law of Diminishing Returns, were discredited.
§ 2. A Forecast by Malthas. There is a curious passage
in Malthus's Essay which might have given the optimists
cause for thought. It has not been quoted in the
earlier chapters of this handbook, and the reader who
has grasped the situation sketched therein will appre-
ciate the significance of this forecast :
" In the wildness of speculation," wrote Malthus, " it has
been suggested (of course more in jest than in earnest) that
Europe ought to grow its corn in America, and devote
itself solely to manufactures and commerce, as the best*
sort of division of the labour of the globe. But even on the
extravagant supposition that the natural course of things
might lead to such a division of labour for a time, and that
by such means Europe could raise a population greater
than its lands could possibly support, the consequences
ought justly to be dreaded. It is an unquestionable truth
that it must answer to every territorial state, in its natural
progress to wealth, to manufacture for itself, unless the
countries from which it had purchased its manufactures
possess some advantages peculiar to them besides capital
and skill. But when upon this principle America began to
withdraw its corn from Europe and the agricultural exertions.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 171
of Europe were inadequate to make up the deficiency, it
would certainly be felt that the temporary advantages of a
greater degree of wealth and population (supposing them to
have been really attained) had been very dearly purchased
by a long period of retrograde movements and misery."1
The division of labour between America and Europe
was, of course, at no time so complete as in this " ex-
travagant supposition." Before the war, Russia was
responsible for a quarter of the world's export of wheat ;
France was self-supporting ; Germany grew nearly
80 per cent of her own food and drew considerable
supplies from her south-eastern neighbours. Neverthe-
less, the picture is near enough to the truth, especially
as far as Great Britain is concerned, to be disquieting.
Europe has certainly attained " a greater degree of
wealth and population " through such a division of
labour with America than she would otherwise have
achieved ; America has begun " to withdraw its corn
from Europe," and it still remains to be seen whether
" a long period of retrograde movements and misery "
will be averted.
§ 3. The World's Resources. A survey of the world's
resources is to some extent reassuring. An immense
increase in the food supply through the intensive
cultivation of vast areas in Canada, South America and
Siberia is to be anticipated. Raw cotton may in time
be rescued in America from its arch enemy the boll
weevil, and other sources of supply may be developed.
Wool gives no immediate cause for anxiety. Coal and
iron still exist in large quantities both in America and
» Pasai/, Book III, Cbap. XII.
172 POPULATION
Europe ; oil ia an unknown quantity ; water-power
awaits development, and electrical power offers great
economies in the use of fuel. The chief cause for
anxiety lies in the changing ratio of exchange between
the manufactures of Europe and the raw products of
other countries. Therein lies the danger of a decline
in the standard of life available for the masses of workers
congregated in the industrial centres. Europe has
suffered a catastrophic collapse through the war, and
the danger is that the unseen and little heeded pressure
of population upon natural resources may retard, or
even prohibit, the recovery of pre-war prosperity.
§ 4. The Way Out. There are two ways in which man-
kind can meet the situation which threatens to arise.
One is by increasing the productivity of labour ; the
other by restricting the birth-rate. Both measures
appear to be necessary if the world is to be a tolerable
place in the years to come. Both are unfortunately
impeded by the failure of nations and classes to co-
operate fully with one another for the common good.
The international division of labour has enabled the
present vast population to come into existence, but it is
now being obstructed by measures dictated by national
jealousies, while statesmen strive to increase still
further the number of their citizens to serve the ends of
war. Meanwhile, the classes within each state materially
reduce the product of industry by quarrelling over its
distribution ; and the most tragic element in the
position is that as the population becomes larger and
the productivity of labour is reduced, the nations and
classes have more real cause for strife.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 173
In spite of the efforts of statesmen, however, the
birth-rate is declining in all the countries of Western
civilization, and there are reasons for thinking that the
decline is mainly due to the deliberate limitation by
married people of the size of their families. This fact
gives rise to the hope that man may in time assume
the conscious control of one of the greatest forces by
which the richness or poverty, the happiness or misery,
of his life on the earth is determined— the power of
population. It is also held by some people to justify
the further hope that, when the science of genetics
reaches an advanced stage of development, some
rational method of selecting the parents of future
generations may be introduced. Positive eugenics is,
however, a dream for the distant future ; to some of us
it is not even a pleasant dream ; for the present the
only practicable project advocated by responsible
geneticists is the enforced celibacy of a small minority of
the population who are demonstrably unfit for parent-
hood.
§ 5. Possible Scientific Developments. Having con-
cluded this brief restatement of the population problem,
as the present writer sees it, it may be well to anticipate
two general criticisms. One such criticism is that no
account has been taken of the possibility that science
may show the way by which a sudden leap forward can
be taken in the control of nature and the means of
subsistence immeasurably increased. Professor Soddy,
for instance, bids us, in eloquent and inspiring
language, to look confidently for such a develop-
ment.
174 POPULATION
" Until the twentieth century had entered its opening
decade," he writes, " a thoughtful observer of the social
consequences of science would have seen in the revolution
cause for profound uneasiness. Here was no stable or
enduring development, but rather the accelerating progress
of the spendthrift to destruction, so soon as the inheritance
had been squandered and the inevitable day of reckoning
arrived. When coal and oil were exhausted, and the daily
modicum of sunlight represented once again, as of yore, the
whole precarious means of livelihood of the world, the new
inanimate servant of science, like the slaves of the ancients,
would prove a dangerous helpmate, and the mushroom
civilization it had engendered would dissolve like the
historic empires of the past, this time submerging the
world.
"... No one had guessed the original source of the
stream of energy which rejuvenates the universe, nor that
it has its rise, not in the unfathomable immensities of
space, but in the individual atoms of matter all round. In
so far as it is dominated by the supply of available energy,
the limits of the possible expansion and development of
the race in the future have been virtually abolished by this
discovery of the immanence of the physical sources of life
and motion in the universe.
" Painfully and with infinite slowness man has crawled
to the elevation from which he can envisage his eventful
past as a whole from one standpoint, as that of a struggle,
still largely internecine rather than co-operative, for a
miserably inadequate allowance of energy. He looks back
across the gulf of time from the day of the nameless and
forgotten savage, who first discovered the art of kindling
a fire, to himself, his logical descendant, master of a world
largely nourished by the energy of fuel, and humming with
the music of inanimate machinery. . . . The main stream
(of energy) sweeps past his doors, and the great gulf that
yawns between him and the consummation of his emancipa-
tion looks small enough compared with the gulf that yawns
behind.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 175
"... The energy is there, but the knowledge of how to
liberate it at will and apply it to useful ends is not — not yet.
" The problem will be solved when we have learned how
to transmute one kind of element into another at will, and
not before. It may well take science many years, possibly
even centuries, to learn how to do this, but already the
quarry is in full view and, by numerous routes, investigators
are starting off in hot pursuit. We need only recall the past
history of the progress of science to be assured that, whether
it takes years or centuries, artificial transmutation and the
rendering available of a supply of energy as much beyond
that of fuel as the latter is beyond brute energy will be
eventually effected.
" It is unlikely, but not impossible, that such a discovery
might bp made almost at once. . . ,"1
It has seemed worth while to quote at some length
from Professor Soddy, because he admirably expresses
a view which is widely held by others who cannot claim
to share his scientific eminence. It will be seen that the
Professor takes an extreme view of the precarious
nature of the sources of energy upon which the in-
dustrial life of the world is at present based. In his
opinion, however, all cause for anxiety on this score
has been removed by the discovery of radium, which
has revealed the fact that an inexhaustible supply of
energy can be released from the atom by the trans-
mutation of elements. Professor Soddy's almost
religious faith that science will in time find out how to
liberate this energy, at will, seems to a layman to be
based on rather slender foundations.
Pure scepticism, however, could not be held to justify
us in ignoring the possibility of a scientific development
1 Science and Life, by Frederick Soddy, M.A., F.R.S., pp. 13, 14,
15, 35 and 36.
176 POPULATION
which would revolutionize the situation ; for, even if
Professor Soddy's forecast were proved to be unsound,
there are other conceivable discoveries, such as those
of synthetic chemistry, which ought to be examined.
The solid ground for leaving all such speculations out
of account is that they are all necessarily concerned
with a vague future. The pessimist who anticipates a
catastrophe to the human race five hundred years or
one thousand years hence, must take into account these
possibilities of science ; but the foregoing chapters
have been devoted to a consideration of immediate
problems. Again and again it has been pointed out
that the issue is not whether population will in course of
time outrun the means of subsistence ; not whether
the coal-fields of Great Britain will eventually be ex-
hausted ; but whether the silent pressure of excessive
numbers on the food supply is now being felt in the
form of unemployment, rising prices and encroachments
upon the standard of life in the industrial centres.
To the patient scientist the difference between a few
years and a few centuries is almost trivial ; to the
economist, time is all important. The factors dis-
cussed in this handbook may, if they are not modified,
destroy Western civilization in a few years ; it may be
that they have already undermined its foundations.
Perhaps the scientist can and will transform the situa-
tion. It is the business of economics to point out how
and where the situation is at present menacing, and to
call upon science for prompt assistance.
§ 6. The Value of Discussion. Another general
criticism, which may be anticipated, is that it is useless
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 177
to point out evils in human society unless appropriate
remedies such as can be embodied in Acts of Parlia-
ment, or some equally concrete form, are at the same
time indicated. Jevons evidently had an uneasy sense
of his vulnerability to this form of criticism when he
wrote his alarming dissertation on The Coal Question.
Feeling an imperative need for some concrete proposal
" towards compensating posterity for our present lavish
use of cheap coal," he found it in " the reduction or
paying off of the National Debt." There is something
both pathetic and humorous in the reflection that
when Jevons made this "bold" suggestion, in 1864,
the Debt amounted to £819,677,852. It is now about
£8,000,000,000 !
Generally speaking, population problems cannot be
solved by the method of legislative enactment. Arising,
as they do, through changes in the productivity of
labour, on the one side, and changes in the number
of human beings on the other, they lie at the root of
some of the most pressing difficulties of social life. It is
true that both productivity and fecundity may be pro-
foundly modified by the laws and customs of human
society ; but the influence of laws and customs on these
fundamental matters has hitherto been indirect and
largely unrecognized. He would be a bold man who
would suggest, for instance, the passing of a law for the
limitation of the size of families !
The population problem which Malthus, Ricardo
and John Stuart Mill first revealed to thoughtful
people in this country remains unsolved ; and it may
indeed be expected to grow more acute unless its
importance is widely recognized and its implications
178 POPULATION
are allowed to modify the habits of modern civilization
as they appear to have modified those of primitive
society. Man, " noble in reason," can only control
the forces which determine the conditions of his life
by understanding what they are and how they work.
In the words of Huxley : " There is no alleviation to
the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought
and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as
it is when the garment of make-believe with which pious
hands have hidden its uglier features has been stripped
off."
4. »*
HB Wright, Harold
851 Population.
W7
cop. 6
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