So very trivial being the evils to be apprehended from the principle of population amongst the coöperating communities, even under the most unfavorable circumstances in which they can be placed; what, if any, are the evils to be apprehended from this principle when the circumstances are more favorable and admit of an increase of population more or less rapid?

What effects as to happiness would arise from the principle of population amongst coöperating communities in an advancing state of society, under the shield of equal security, or under representative systems approaching to equal security, limited only by the want of knowledge amongst the general society adopting such representative systems?

If in general society, such a state of things renders, even amongst individual competitors, the exercise of prudence as to marriage almost superfluous, how much more will it relieve particular individuals from the anxious cares of numerous children, where no increase of exertion or privation of comfort will press upon the parents of many children more than on those of a few! excepting always the additional pain of the first two years of the children's existence. Why should a father and mother be punished in diminished comforts for having large families? To prevent premature marriages? It can have no such effect. The average number of children is all that is or ought to be calculated upon; exceptions cannot form the general rule. Peculiar fecundity, altogether out of the power of calculation, generally occasions large families. The occupation of almost all the bloom and vigor of life of the mother, and the numerous casualties as to health attendant on a constant succession of children, are surely inconveniences enough to limit the desire to a moderate number without superadding comparative penury in the midst of general prosperity. If the society be advancing, and there be room for increased numbers without diminishing actual comforts to the general mass of productive laborers, why should they whom chance (causes which they could not calculate or control) has made most instrumental to this increase be more inconvenienced by it than the necessity of the case (physical or unavoidable moral causes) requires? The parents, particularly the mother, should

be assisted and relieved under such circumstances; their means should be increased, not diminished. Under individual competition such evils are perhaps unavoidable. No remedy, except in the way of insurance, and that very partial and wasteful, could be applied: while under mutual coöperation the evil is completely remedied by an insurance exempt from waste, the joint efforts of all providing for the whole of the children in whatever numbers born to particular individuals. From the greater part of the troubles and anxieties of excessive numbers of children parents are relieved; while all means of endearment by unrestricted communication are kept open to them.

Thus, as affects population, are the greatest benefits of early marriages secured by coöperation to all who think proper to contract them, while the evils arising occasionally from them are, by an invisible and unerring system of insurance, reduced to their lowest level, to those bars which nature has imposed. The great advantage of these coöperating communities over the same number of individuals acting by competition, particularly as regards population, is that the whole subject is always plainly before the eyes of the whole community; all gambling individual speculation is precluded; imprudence is rendered so palpable, and public opinion so strong, that there is a moral impossibility of the occurrence of imprudence: while all factitious love of wealth being removed, wherever a preponderance of happiness can be gained to all by early marriages and increasing numbers, beyond the evils of diminished comforts for all, there and there only will such marriages take place.

9. THE ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE OF WOMEN AS A

CHECK TO POPULATION 1

Before the eyes of both [Malthus and Godwin] there was growing up a power unobserved by either, but predestined to solve their problem. Commerce could never cheapen itself out of existence while population, varying with cheapness of food, kept up

1 By C. L. James. From Anarchism and Malthus, pp. 28-30. Mother Earth Publishing Co., New York, 1910.

.the struggle for existence: nor, though commerce which cannot do that teaches solidarity, could it prevent recurrence of those crises when the "eyeless I howls in darkness." But the increase of the prudential check on population has always kept up with, or rather it has gone before and been the source of, economic progress. Its increase has depended on that of hope, this on increase of liberty, increase of liberty on those "accidents" by which Providence has from time to time interfered to give men intent on enslaving each other and themselves another call to reflection. If, then, there be a tendency in the bourgeois system. which brings liberty and hope to women; from that we may really hope revolutionary changes. For the female is the less amorous sex. The last proposition, which certainly does sound like a stock assertion, may have been unknown to both Malthus and Godwin. But no reader of Darwin can help knowing that it has been demonstrated by exhaustive application to every animal species and been found the clue to progress through heredity. Women have never chosen to breed food for gunpowder. They have submitted to do so only because they could not help themselves. Now there is in the bourgeois system a tendency, which by bringing liberty and hope to women, promises far more energetic restraint on propagation than the world has ever known,— a tendency which capitalists view with indifference; reactionaries and socialists, not infrequently with alarm; judicious friends of humanity, with unmixed satisfaction. The wages paid directly to women in the factories first afforded to proletarian women, unprotected by settlements or other contrivances of the rich, a means to live which was not easily taken from them. True to the maxim that it is not misery but hope which works improvement, they, who till now had been well enough content not to own themselves, became refractory the moment they had something to lose. The entire modern movement for the property rights of married women, equality of pay with men for all working women, opening of all the trades to women, political equality of the sexes, easy divorce, began with employment of women as breadwinners, which came in as a necessity of the bourgeois situation.

The Malthusian theory is the fatal objection to every form of. socialism, even if called anarchism, which encourages man to think that he can enslave woman and escape the most righteous retribution of being a slave himself. It is the strongest possible argument for that kind of socialism or anarchism which proposes, through complete emancipation of women, to abolish the fundamental tyranny from whence all others spring.

10. HOW SECURE THE EXERCISE OF MORAL RESTRAINT UNDER SOCIALISM?1

It is a very superficial observation which has sometimes been made, that it is a contradiction to lay great stress upon the efficacy of moral restraint in an improved and improving state of society, according to the present structure of it, and yet to suppose that it would not act with sufficient force in a system of equality, which almost always presupposes a great diffusion of information and a great improvement of the human mind. Those who have made this observation do not see that the encouragement and motive to moral restraint are at once destroyed in a system of equality and community of goods.

Let us suppose that in a system of equality, in spite of the best exertions to procure more food, the population is pressing hard against the limits of subsistence, and all are becoming very poor. It is evidently necessary under these circumstances, in order to prevent the society from starving, that the rate at which the population increases should be retarded. But who are the persons that are to exercise the restraint thus called for, and either to marry late or not at all? It does not seem to be a necessary consequence of a system of equality that all the human passions should be at once extinguished by it; but if not, those who might wish to marry would feel it hard that they should be among the number forced to restrain their inclinations. As all would be equal and in similar circumstances, there would be no reason whatever why one individual should think himself obliged

1 By T. R. Malthus. From An Essay on the Principle of Population, 9th edition, pp. 285-286. London, 1888.

to practice the duty of restraint more than another. The thing however must be done, with any hope of avoiding universal misery; and in a state of equality the necessary restraint could only be effected by some general law. But how is this law to be supported, and how are the violations of it to be punished? Is the man who marries early to be pointed at with the finger of scorn? is he to be whipped at the cart's tail? is he to be confined for years in a prison? is he to have his children exposed? Are not all direct punishments for an offense of this kind shocking and unnatural to the last degree? And yet if it be absolutely necessary in order to prevent the most overwhelming wretchedness, that there should be some restraint on the tendency to early marriages, when the resources of the country are only sufficient to support a slow rate of increase, can the most fertile imagination conceive one at once so natural, so just, so consonant to the laws of God and to the best laws framed by the most enlightened men, as that each individual should be responsible for the maintenance of his own children; that is, that he should be subjected to the natural inconveniences and difficulties arising from the indulgence of his inclinations and to no other whatever?

That this natural check to early marriages arising from a view of the difficulty attending the support of a large family operates very widely throughout all classes of society in every civilized state, and may be expected to be still more effective as the lower classes of people continue to improve in knowledge and prudence, cannot admit of the slightest doubt. But the operation of this natural check depends exclusively upon the existence of the laws of property and succession; and in a state of equality and community of property could only be replaced by some artificial regulation of a very different stamp, and a much more unnatural character. Of this Mr. Owen is fully sensible, and has in consequence taxed his ingenuity to the utmost to invent some mode by which the difficulties arising from the progress of population could be got rid of in the state of society to which he looks forward. His absolute inability to suggest any mode of accomplishing this object that is not unnatural,