Principles of Political Economy

To this property of organized beings, the human species forms no exception. Its power of increase is indefinite, and the actual multiplication would be extraordinarily rapid, if the power were exercised to the utmost. It never is exercised to the utmost, and yet, in the most favorable circumstances known to exist, which are those of a fertile region colonized from an industrious and civilized community, population has continued, for several generations, independently of fresh immigration, to double itself in not much more than twenty years. Years. Population. Food. 25 11 mills x 25 22 mills 2x 25 44 mills 3x 25 88 mills 4x 25 176 mills 5x By this table it will be seen that if population can double itself in twenty-five years, and if food can only be increased by as much as _x_ (the subsistence of eleven millions) by additional application of another equal quantity of labor on the same land in each period, then at the end of one hundred years there would be the disproportion of one hundred and seventy-six millions of people, with subsistence for only fifty-five millions. Of course, this is prevented either by checking population to the amount of the subsistence; by sending off the surplus population; or by bringing in food from new lands. In the United States to 1860 population has doubled itself about every twenty years, while in France there is practically no increase of population. It is stated that the white population of the United States between 1790 and 1840 increased 400.4 per cent, deducting immigration. The extraordinary advance of population with us, where subsistence is easily attainable, is to be seen in the chart on the next page (No. III), which shows the striking rapidity of increase in the United States when compared with the older countries of Europe. The steady demand for land can be seen by the gradual westward movement of the center of population, as seen in chart No. IV (p. 116), and by the rapid settlement of the distant parts of our country, as shown by the two charts (frontispieces), which represent to the eye by heavier colors the areas of the more densely settled districts in 1830 and in 1880. [Illustration.] Chart III: Population of European Countries, XIXth Century. § 3. By what Checks the Increase of Population is Practically Limited. The obstacle to a just understanding of the subject arises from too confused a notion of the causes which, at most times and places, keep the actual increase of mankind so far behind the capacity. The conduct of human creatures is more or less influenced by foresight of consequences, and by some impulses superior to mere animal instincts; and they do not, therefore, propagate like swine, but are capable, though in very unequal degrees, of being withheld by prudence, or by the social affections, from giving existence to beings born only to misery and premature death. Malthus found an explanation of the anomaly that in the Swiss villages, with the longest average duration of life, there were the fewest births, by noting that no one married until a cow-herd’s cottage became vacant, and precisely because the tenants lived so long were the new-comers long kept out of a place. In proportion as mankind rise above the condition of the beast, population is restrained by the fear of want, rather than by want itself. Even where there is no question of starvation, many are similarly acted upon by the apprehension of losing what have come to be regarded as the decencies of their situation in life. Among the middle classes, in many individual instances, there is an additional restraint exercised from the desire of doing more than maintaining their circumstances—of improving them; but such a desire is rarely found, or rarely has that effect, in the laboring-classes. If they can bring up a family as they were themselves brought up, even the prudent among them are usually satisfied. Too often they do not think even of that, but rely on fortune, or on the resources to be found in legal or voluntary charity. [Illustration.] Chart IV: Westward Movement of Center of Population. This, in effect, is the well-known Malthusian doctrine. The thorough reader will also consult the original “Essay” of Malthus. Mr. Bowen(119) and other writers oppose it, saying it has “no relation to the times in which we live, or to any which are near at hand.” He thinks the productive power of the whole world prevents the necessity of considering the pressure of population upon subsistence as an actuality now or in the future. This, however, does not deny the existence of Malthus’s principles, but opposes them only on the methods of their action. Mr. Rickards(120) holds that man’s food—as, e.g., wheat—has the power to increase geometrically faster than man; but he omits to consider that for the growth of this food land is demanded; that land is not capable of such geometrical increase; and that without it the food can not be grown. Of course, any extension of the land area, as happened when England abolished the corn laws and drew her food from our prairies, removes the previous pressure of population on subsistence. No believer in the Malthusian doctrine is so absurd as to hold that the growth of population actually exceeds subsistence, but that there is a “constant _tendency_ in all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it,” no one can possibly doubt. This is not inconsistent with the fact that subsistence has at any time increased faster than population. It is as if a block of wood on the floor were acted on by two opposing forces, one tending to move it forward, one backward: if it moves backward, that does not prove the absence of any force working to move it forward, but only that the other force is the stronger of the two, and that the final motion is the resultant of the two forces. It is only near-sighted generalization to say that since the block moves forward, there is therefore no opposing force to its advance.(121) Mr. Doubleday maintains that, as people become better fed, they become unprolific. Mr. Mill’s answer, referring to the large families of the English peerage, is unfortunate.(122) In Sweden the increase of the peasantry is six times that of the middle classes, and fourteen times that of the nobility. The diminishing fertility of New England families gives a truer explanation, when it is seen that with the progress in material wealth later marriages are the rule. When New-Englanders emigrate to the Western States, where labor is in demand and where it is less burdensome to have large families, there is no question as to their fertility.(123) (1.) In a very backward state of society, like that of Europe in the middle ages, and many parts of Asia at present, population is kept down by actual starvation. The starvation does not take place in ordinary years, but in seasons of scarcity, which in those states of society are much more frequent and more extreme than Europe is now accustomed to. (2.) In a more improved state, few, even among the poorest of the people, are limited to actual necessaries, and to a bare sufficiency of those: and the increase is kept within bounds, not by excess of deaths, but by limitation of births.(124) The limitation is brought about in various ways. In some countries, it is the result of prudent or conscientious self-restraint. There is a condition to which the laboring-people are habituated; they perceive that, by having too numerous families, they must sink below that condition, or fail to transmit it to their children; and this they do not choose to submit to. There are other cases in which the prudence and forethought, which perhaps might not be exercised by the people themselves, are exercised by the state for their benefit; marriage not being permitted until the contracting parties can show that they have the prospect of a comfortable support. There are places, again, in which the restraining cause seems to be not so much individual prudence, as some general and perhaps even accidental habit of the country. In the rural districts of England, during the last century, the growth of population was very effectually repressed by the difficulty of obtaining a cottage to live in. It was the custom for unmarried laborers to lodge and board with their employers; it was the custom for married laborers to have a cottage: and the rule of the English poor-laws, by which a parish was charged with the support of its unemployed poor, rendered land-owners averse to promote marriage. About the end of the century, the great demand for men in war and manufactures made it be thought a patriotic thing to encourage population: and about the same time the growing inclination of farmers to live like rich people, favored as it was by a long period of high prices, made them desirous of keeping inferiors at a greater distance, and, pecuniary motives arising from abuses of the poor-laws being superadded, they gradually drove their laborers into cottages, which the landowners now no longer refused permission to build. It is but rarely that improvements in the condition of the laboring-classes do anything more than give a temporary margin, speedily filled up by an increase of their numbers. 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 favorable circumstances, nothing permanent can be done for them; the most promising schemes end only in having a more numerous but not a happier people. There is no doubt that [the standard] is gradually, though slowly, rising in the more advanced countries of Western Europe.(125) Subsistence and employment in England 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. This brings forward the near connection between land-tenures and population. France is pre-eminently a country of small holdings, and it is undoubtedly true that the system has checked the thoughtless increase of numbers. On his few hectares, the French peasant sees in the size of his farm and the amount of its produce the limit of subsistence for himself and his family; as in no other way does he see beforehand the results of any lack of food from his lack of prudence.(126) From 1790 to 1815 the average yearly increase of population was 120,000; from 1815 to 1846, the golden age of French agriculture, 200,000; from 1846 to 1856, when agriculture was not prosperous, 60,000; from 1856 to 1880 the increase has been not more than 36,000 yearly. In France the question shapes itself to the peasant proprietor, How many can be subsisted by the amount of produce, not on an unlimited area of land in other parts of the world, but on this particular property of a small size? While in England there are ten births to six deaths, in France there are about ten births to every nine deaths.(127) In no country has the doctrine of Malthus been more attacked than in France, and yet in no other country has there been a more marked obedience to its principles in actual practice. Since the French are practically not at all an emigrating people, population has strictly adapted itself to subsistence. For the relative increase of population in France and the United States, see also the movement of lines indicating the increase of population in chart No. III (p. 114). Chapter VIII. Of The Law Of The Increase Of Capital. § 1. Means for Saving in the Surplus above Necessaries. The requisites of production being labor, capital, and land, it has been seen from the preceding chapter that the impediments to the increase of production do not arise from the first of these elements. But production has other requisites, and, of these, the one which we shall next consider is Capital. There can not be more people in any country, or in the world, than can be supported from the produce of past labor until that of present labor comes in [although it is not to be supposed that capital consists wholly of food]. We have next, therefore, to inquire into the conditions of the increase of capital: the causes by which the rapidity of its increase is determined, and the necessary limitations of that increase. Since all capital is the product of saving, that is, of abstinence from present consumption for the sake of a future good, the increase of capital must depend upon two things—the amount of the fund from which saving can be made, and the strength of the dispositions which prompt to it. (1.) The fund from which saving can be made is the surplus of the produce of labor, after supplying the necessaries of life to all concerned in the production (including those employed in replacing the materials, and keeping the fixed capital in repair). More than this surplus can not be saved under any circumstances. As much as this, though it never is saved, always might be. This surplus is the fund from which the enjoyments, as distinguished from the necessaries of the producers, are provided; it is the fund from which all are subsisted who are not themselves engaged in production, and from which all additions are made to capital. The capital of the employer forms the revenue of the laborers, and, if this exceeds the necessaries of life, it gives them a surplus which they may either expend in enjoyments or save. It is evident that the whole unproductive consumption of the laborer can be saved. When it is considered how enormous a sum is spent by the working-classes in drink alone (and also in the great reserves of the Trades-Unions collected for purposes of strikes), it is indisputable that the laborers have the margin from which savings can be made, and by which they themselves may become capitalists. The great accumulations in the savings-banks by small depositors in the United States also show somewhat how much is actually saved. In 1882-1883 there were 2,876,438 persons who had deposited in the savings-banks of the United States $1,024,856,787, with an average to each depositor of $356.29. The unproductive consumption, however, of all classes—not merely that of the working-men—is the possible fund which may be saved. That being the amount which _can_ be saved, how much _will_ be saved depends on the strength of the desire to save. The greater the produce of labor after supporting the laborers, the more there is which _can_ be saved. The same thing also partly contributes to determine how much _will_ be saved. A part of the motive to saving consists in the prospect of deriving an income from savings; in the fact that capital, employed in production, is capable of not only reproducing itself but yielding an increase. The greater the profit that can be made from capital, the stronger is the motive to its accumulation. § 2. Motive for Saving in the Surplus above Necessaries. But the disposition to save does not wholly depend on the external inducement to it; on the amount of profit to be made from savings. With the same pecuniary inducement, the inclination is very different, in different persons, and in different communities. (2.) All accumulation involves the sacrifice of a present, for the sake of a future good. This is the fundamental motive underlying the effective desire of accumulation, and is far more important than any other. It is, in short, the test of civilization. In order to induce the laboring-classes to improve their condition and save capital, it is absolutely necessary to excite in them (by education or religion) a belief in a future gain greater than the present sacrifice. It is, to be sure, the whole problem of creating character, and belongs to sociology and ethics rather than to political economy. In weighing the future against the present, the uncertainty of all things future is a leading element; and that uncertainty is of very different degrees. “All circumstances,” therefore, “increasing the probability of the provision we make for futurity being enjoyed by ourselves or others, tend” justly and reasonably “to give strength to the effective desire of accumulation. Thus a healthy climate or occupation, by increasing the probability of life, has a tendency to add to this desire. When engaged in safe occupations and living in healthy countries, men are much more apt to be frugal, than in unhealthy or hazardous occupations and in climates pernicious to human life. Sailors and soldiers are prodigals. In the West Indies, New Orleans, the East Indies, the expenditure of the inhabitants is profuse. The same people, coming to reside in the healthy parts of Europe, and not getting into the vortex of extravagant fashion, live economically. War and pestilence have always waste and luxury among the other evils that follow in their train. For similar reasons, whatever gives security to the affairs of the community is favorable to the strength of this principle. In this respect the general prevalence of law and order and the prospect of the continuance of peace and tranquillity have considerable influence.”(128) It is asserted that the prevalence of homicide in certain parts of the United States has had a vital influence in retarding the material growth of those sections. The Southern States have received but a very small fraction (from ten to thirteen per cent) of foreign immigration. “A country where law and order prevail to perfection may find its material prosperity checked by a deadly and fatal climate; or, on the other hand, a people may destroy all the advantages accruing from matchless natural resources and climate by persistent disregard of life and property. A rather startling confirmation of this economic truth is afforded by the fact that homicide has been as destructive of life in the South as yellow fever. Although there have been forty thousand deaths from yellow fever since the war, the deaths from homicide, for the same period, have been even greater.”(129) The influence of the old slave _régime_, and its still existing influences, in checking foreign immigration into the South can be seen by the colored chart, No. VIII, showing the relative density of foreign-born inhabitants in the several parts of the United States. The deeper color shows the greater foreign-born population. The more perfect the security, the greater will be the effective strength of the desire of accumulation. Where property is less safe, or the vicissitudes ruinous to fortunes are more frequent and severe, fewer persons will save at all, and, of those who do, many will require the inducement of a higher rate of profit on capital to make them prefer a doubtful future to the temptation of present enjoyment. In the circumstances, for example, of a hunting tribe, “man may be said to be necessarily improvident, and regardless of futurity, because, in this state, the future presents nothing which can be with certainty either foreseen or governed.... Besides a want of the motives exciting to provide for the needs of futurity through means of the abilities of the present, there is a want of the habits of perception and action, leading to a constant connection in the mind of those distant points, and of the series of events serving to unite them. Even, therefore, if motives be awakened capable of producing the exertion necessary to effect this connection, there remains the task of training the mind to think and act so as to establish it.” § 3. Examples of Deficiency in the Strength of this Desire. For instance: “Upon the banks of the St. Lawrence there are several little Indian villages. The cleared land is rarely, I may almost say never, cultivated, nor are any inroads made in the forest for such a purpose. The soil is, nevertheless, fertile, and, were it not, manure lies in heaps by their houses. Were every family to inclose half an acre of ground, till it, and plant it in potatoes and maize, it would yield a sufficiency to support them one half the year. They suffer, too, every now and then, extreme want, insomuch that, joined to occasional intemperance, it is rapidly reducing their numbers. This, to us, so strange apathy proceeds not, in any great degree, from repugnance to labor; on the contrary, they apply very diligently to it when its reward is immediate. It is evidently not the necessary labor that is the obstacle to more extended culture, but the distant return from that labor. I am assured, indeed, that among some of the more remote tribes, the labor thus expended much exceeds that given by the whites. On the Indian, succeeding years are too distant to make sufficient impression; though, to obtain what labor may bring about in the course of a few months, he toils even more assiduously than the white man.”