BOOK I

PROBLEMS OF POPULATION

CHAPTER I

THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY

The theory of Malthus, 18.- The fundamental principles, 20.- The checks to population, 26. — Moral restraint, 44. The effects of moral restraint, 51. — Improvement of the condition of the poor through moral restraint, 59. Objections considered, 65. The responsibility of government, 69. — Rational expectations of the future improvement of society, 72.

[A population theory is a body of reasoned thought, based so far as the state of knowledge permits, upon known facts, with regard to the motives and causes which, in the absence of conscious individual direction or social control, govern the perpetuation and the increase of the human species. Such a theory may give primary emphasis to biological, to economic, to psychic, or to social forces, but it will not be a theory which approaches the truth nearly unless it recognizes and tries to give due weight to all these factors. A population theory, moreover, will be a mere academic exercise unless it attempts to show the ethical implications and results of the outworking of unguided natural forces and tendencies, and offers some practical suggestion for Xobviating undesirable and detrimental results, either through encouraging in the individual an intelligent and informed sense of social responsibility, or through the development of a more or less authoritative social control over population growth. When the need to regulate population—either to stimulate or to retard growth - becomes consciously recognized by a people or by their leaders, the measures adopted or recommended for the accomplishment of this practical end constitute a population policy.

Every policy rests upon some sort of thecy, low vor crude, superficial, or traditional.

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Population policies, inrooted in the traditions amores of all peoples, based upon the early, primitive needs of the tribal group, for numerical strength, for warriors, miles to carry on the religious rites, are seemingly as old as custo elf. The biblical admonition to be fruitful and replenish the certh is an ethical injunction, a population policy, the counterpart of which is to be found in nearly every religion, primitive or historical. The constant decimation occasioned by wars and criptions, the greed of conquest, the desire for cheap labor, — all join with religious tradition to develop and perpetuate a policy based upon the idea that the wealth and welfare of a group or a nation depend primarily upon its large size and the rapidity of its growth in numbers. Through primitive times, through the checkered history of Greece and Rome, through the Protestant Reformation, and through the economic and political doctrines of the Mercantilists and Cameralists, this idea has been handed down to the end of the eighteenth century, and is even the prevalent idea to-day. Some few writers before Malthus had pointed out the danger of population increase in view of the limited possibilities of food supply, but they made little or no impression because social and economic conditions were not ripe for the force of their views to be felt. Moreover, Malthus was the first to go at the question in a thorough and scientific manner.

He published his "Essay on the Principle of Population," anonymously, in 1798. It was an outgrowth of much discussion between Malthus and his father over the communistic and nerfectionist speculations of William Godwin and Conde: of whom, the one in England, the other in France, were. for human perfectibility. Godwin, especially, had in. wild speculations as to the happiness, the goodness, d the earthly immortality of man, if only government a d property, and with them their baneful influence, could ished. We might suppose that Malthus, then a young pure, would have been in sympathy with these dreams of peace 20 plenty, but he was also a student of the then new

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political economy, and he saw at once that the communists had failed to understand or to take account of the relations between population and subsistence. The first edition of the Essay was accordingly essentially a polemic against socialism. His ideas were stated in all the hard and rigid form of cold, deductive logic. Population always "presses upon" subsistence; war, famine, misery, and vice are therefore inevitable, in the future as in the past, and socialist dreamings of abolishing poverty are mere moonshine) It is true that prudential restraint and standards of living receive some attention in the first edition, but Malthus does not expect much from them.1 Prudential restraint itself, he thinks, leads to extramarital vice, and he holds out no particular hope that the standards of living of the working classes can be raised in such a way that the excessive birth rate will be reduced. His book met with a storm of opposition, especially from the clergy, as well as commendation from the orthodox political economists. Malthus held his peace for five years, and in 1803 published the second edition of the Essay, very much revised and enlarged. He had in the meantime gathered a large mass of data from various countries, and he had changed his views with regard to the efficacy of the prudential check, now holding that it need not involve vice, and that the condition of the laboring classes could be improved by preaching moral restraint to them, and in that way only. Malthus has always been accused, chiefly by those who have not read his work, of pessimism and of heartlessness toward the working classes. That this is an entirely unfair interpretation of his position will be apparent to any reader of his chapter on "the only effectual mode of improving the condition of the poor."]

1 On Malthus's distinction between prudential and moral checks, see footnote, p. 29.

1. STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT; RATIOS OF THE INCREASE OF POPULATION AND FOOD; CHECKS TO POPULATION1

In an inquiry concerning the improvement of society, the mode of conducting the subject which naturally presents itself is—

1. To investigate the causes that have hitherto impeded the progress of mankind towards happiness; and

2. To examine the probability of the total or partial removal of these causes in future.

To enter fully into this question, and to enumerate all the causes that have hitherto influenced human improvement, would be much beyond the power of an individual. The principal object of the present essay is to examine the effects of one great cause intimately united with the very nature of man; which, though it has been constantly and powerfully operating since the commencement of society, has been little noticed by the writers who have treated this subject. The facts which establish the existence of this cause have, indeed, been repeatedly stated and acknowledged; but its natural and necessary effects have been almost totally overlooked; though probably among these effects may be reckoned a very considerable portion of that vice and misery, and of that unequal distribution of the bounties of nature, which it has been the unceasing object of the enlightened philanthropist in all ages to correct.

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The cause to which I allude is the constant tendency in all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it. It is observed by Dr. Franklin that there is n prolific nature of plants or animals but what is crowding and interfering with each other's means Were the face of the earth, he says, vacant of might be gradually sowed and overspread with on for instance, with fennel and were it empty of ot it might in a few ages be replenished from one for instance, with Englishmen.2

1 By T. R. Malthus. From An Essay on the Principle of I, tion, pp. 1-13. London, 1888.

2 Franklin's Miscell., p. 9.

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This is incontrovertibly true. Throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms Nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand; but has been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear them. The germs of existence contained in this earth, if they could freely develop themselves, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious, all-pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. 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.

In plants and irrational animals, the view of the subject is simple. They are all impelled by a powerful instinct to the increase of their species, and this instinct is interrupted by no doubts about providing for their offspring. Wherever, therefore, there is liberty, the power of increase is exerted, and the superabundant effects are repressed afterwards by want of room and nourishment.

The effects of this check on man are more complicated. Impelled to the increase of his species by an equally powerful instinct, reason interrupts his career, and asks him whether he may not bring beings into the world for whom he cannot provide the means of support. If he attend this natural suggestion, the restriction too frequently produces vice. If he hear it not, the human race will be constantly endeavoring to increase beyond the means of subsistence. But as, by that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, population can never actually increase beyond the lowest nourishment capable of supporting it, a strong check on population, from the difficulty of acquiring food, must be constantly in operation. This difficulty must fall somewhere, and must necessarily be severely felt in some or other of the various forms of misery, or the fear of misery, by a large portion of mankind.

That population has this constant tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence, and that it is kept to its necessary level by these causes, will sufficiently appear from a review of the different states of society in which man has existed. But,