MALTHUS AND POPULATION CONCEPTS
A unique and distinctive trend in social thought with important
sociological implications developed in the closing years of the
eighteenth century, namely, Malthusian thought regarding population.
Malthusianism, however, was preceded by the ideas of William Godwin
and Adam Smith. In 1775, Adam Smith had stated that “every species
of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the means of their
subsistence, and no species can ever multiply beyond it.”[XII-1]
Scanty subsistence, however, destroys a large percentage of offspring.
Inasmuch as men, like all other animals, multiply naturally in
proportion to the means of their subsistence, food is always, more
or less, in demand; and food, or the cost of living, regulates
population.[XII-2] City people must depend upon the country for their
subsistence, whereas seaport towns can command food resources from all
parts of the earth.
The population ideas of William Godwin (1756–1836) were the immediate
stimuli which set Malthus at work. In 1793, Godwin’s _Enquiry
Concerning Justice_ was published. Godwin elaborated several radical
social ideas of the French Physiocratic philosophers. He declared
that human misery is caused by coercive institutions. Government,
he asserted, is an evil and should be abolished. He urged also the
abolition of strict marriage relations, although he personally
acquiesced in the custom and in his last days he commended marriage.
He thought that no social group should be larger than a parish, and
that there should be an equal distribution of property. Godwin thus
carried the doctrine of natural rights to the verge of anarchy and
licentiousness. His ideas furnished a basis for the nineteenth century
experiments in communism. But what is more important, Godwin’s ideas
regarding the reconstruction of society stimulated Thomas Malthus,
who developed what is commonly known as the Malthusian doctrine of
population.
In 1798, under an assumed name, Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834)
offered to the world the first carefully collected and elaborated body
of data, dealing with what he called _the_ social problem, namely:
What is the underlying cause of human unhappiness? This study may be
counted, in a sense, the beginning of modern sociological study. Early
in life Malthus showed an interest in social questions. Godwin’s ideas
had centered Malthus’ attention on population. Malthus’ well-known
treatise entitled, _An Essay on the Principle of Population as it
Affects the Future Improvement of Society_, undertook two important
tasks: (1) To investigate the causes that have impeded the progress of
mankind toward happiness, and (2) to examine probabilities of a total
or partial removal of these causes.[XII-3]
Among both plants and animals there is a constant tendency to reproduce
numerically beyond the subsistence level. Wherever there is liberty,
this power of increase blindly asserts itself. Afterwards, a lack of
nourishment and of room represses the superabundant numbers.[XII-4]
It appears, therefore, that the ultimate check to population is lack
of food, due to the fact that population increases faster than food
supply. Nature, in other words, sets a harsher law over the increase
of subsistence than she does over the birth rate. Man fails to take
cognizance of this law and brings untold misery upon himself. The lower
economic classes are the chief victims, and the giants of poverty
and pauperism rule over whole sections of human population. Malthus
considers the question of population the fundamental social problem.
Since population outruns food supply, dire human consequences
naturally follow. Food supply, as a check upon population, operates
harshly; it is but representative of an entire series of rigorous
natural, or positive, checks upon population. In this list there are
unwholesome occupations; forms of severe labor; extreme poverty;
damp and wretched housing conditions; diseases, epidemics, plagues,
poor nursing; intestine commotion, martial law, civil war; wars of
all forms; excesses of all kinds.[XII-5] These positive checks upon
population are the results of two main causes, namely, vice and misery.
As a result of the operation of these factors, population is being
continually cut down and kept near the mere subsistence plane.
Malthus pointed out another check upon population, the preventive.
The fear of falling into poverty causes many young people to postpone
marriage until they can safely marry--economically. This check so
far as voluntary is peculiar to man and, to the extent that it is
not followed by irregular sex gratification, is prudential. The
actual pressure of population upon food supply, or the fear of this
impingement, prevents people from marrying earlier than they do and
from reproducing their kind faster than they would do otherwise. This
pressure, or the fear of it, cuts down the marriage rate in times of
economic depression. But let prosperity come and the marriage rate
leaps upward, especially among the poorer classes.
The positive and preventive checks upon population hold a definite
relation to each other. “In every country where the whole of the
procreative power cannot be called into action, the preventive and the
positive checks must vary inversely as each other.”[XII-6] That is to
say, when positive checks, such as famine and war, slay large numbers
of people, moral restraint is diminished and the population numbers
rapidly increase. When the preventive check expresses itself strongly,
the population is kept down numerically, and positive checks, such as
famine or even war, are defeated.
Malthus attempted to establish three propositions:
(1) The limitation of population by the restriction of the means of
subsistence.
(2) The invariable increase of population whenever the means of
subsistence increase, unless prevented by powerful checks.
(3) The factors which keep population on a level with the means of
subsistence are all resolvable into three: moral restraint, vice, and
misery.[XII-7]
No one can gainsay the importance or the seriousness of the problem of
population. Plato wrestled with it, and urged that procreation when it
goes on too fast or too slow should be regulated by the state--through
a proper distribution of marks of ignominy or of honor. The number of
marriages should be determined by the magistrates.
Aristotle suggested that the ages of marriage for both sexes should be
regulated; he even advocated the regulation of the number of children
for each marriage. Additional children should be aborted.
Malthus, however, was wiser than either Plato or Aristotle, for he
observed that the cause which has the most lasting effect in improving
the condition of the poorer classes is the conduct and prudence of
the individuals themselves.[XII-8] Malthus asserted that it is in the
power of each individual to avoid all the evil consequences to himself
and society which result from the principle of population, “by the
practice of a virtue clearly dictated to him by the light of nature and
expressly enjoined in revealed religion.”[XII-9]
Malthus demonstrated clearly the weakness of liberal poor-laws. Give
more food to the poor, and they will produce more children, and suffer
more misery. Poor-laws increase the numbers of children of the poor,
and hence increase the amount of misery. Both private benevolence and
poor-laws increase the number of marriages and of children.[XII-10]
Education is the solution which Malthus demanded.[XII-11] Educate the
poor to postpone marriage, to keep the birth rate down, and to practice
economic thrift. To a great extent education will secure the operation
of the prudential check upon population. The science of moral and
political philosophy should not be confined within such narrow limits
that it is unable to overcome in practical ways the obstacles to human
happiness which arise from the law of population.[XII-12]
There are factors in the population situation which did not exist
at the time of Malthus, or which he did not see. Today there are
additional preventive checks upon population, for example, the rise
of democracy in the family whereby the wife and mother no longer
is dominated by the husband and father, but has a voice of her own
regarding domestic matters, such as the number of children. Closely
related to this tendency is the feminist movement, or woman’s rights
movement, whereby women are demanding that they not be confined to
the sphere of bearing and rearing children. Increasing intelligence
and foresight has served as a powerful preventive check upon
population. The current emphasis upon luxury is inimical to the birth
rate. A higher economic status almost uniformly cuts down the birth
rate. Within the last score of years the new science of eugenics
has attracted widespread attention. Eugenics stresses quality of
population. It would effect a decrease in the numbers of children
born among the lower classes, among the poorer stocks, and prevent
procreation among the mentally deficient. It would increase the birth
rate among the cultured and the high grade stocks.
Malthus appreciated the dependence of urban population upon rural
districts, but he could not foresee the degree to which cities would
grow in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The relative decrease
of agricultural labor and the proportional increase in non-agricultural
labor has thrown a burden upon the food supply which even Malthus could
not forecast.
On the other hand, Malthus did not realize the extent to which new
countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina would
contribute to the world’s means of subsistence. He could not predict
the way in which invention would be applied in solving agricultural
problems, and how today one man with improved machinery and intensive
methods can produce a hundred ears of corn where one was produced a
century ago. Nevertheless, the “new country” argument against Malthus’
principle of population is ultimately fallacious, for new countries
soon become old, the supply of new countries becomes exhausted, and
there is even a limit to soil productiveness. The very pressure of
population against means of subsistence is, however, a cause of
inventiveness, so that unanticipated increases in food supply may occur
at any time.
Socialism has criticized Malthus severely. Socialism holds that at
a given time the food supply is sufficient to meet human needs but
that it is poorly or unjustly distributed. With just distribution of
the returns from industry, food supply would not impinge strongly on
population. But socialism might greatly endanger the prudential check
on population, and hence result in an increased birth rate; which in
turn would more than balance any release from human misery that a just
distribution of the returns from industry would effect.
Another point which Malthus did not observe is that the increase in
technical skill which comes with vocational education is overcome by
the tendency of the world’s population to overtake the world’s food
productiveness. With increase in population, the price of land rises,
the rent for land increases, the cost of living mounts upward, and the
purchasing power of the dollar, or its equivalent, declines.
Some of the followers of Malthus have advocated birth control as an
artificial means of regulating population. Birth control prevents by
physical means the birth of children. It is a useful weapon against
sexually brutal husbands. It does not provide for self control or moral
control of the sexual impulses. It encourages rather than controls
gratification of the sexual desires. By it a gain is made in protecting
helpless women and in cutting down the birth rate among the lower moral
classes, whether wealthy or poor, but the gain is more than lost by the
opportunity which birth control gives to the irregular gratification of
sexual impulses and by the resultant weakening of moral fibre.
Thomas N. Carver, whose work will be referred to again in subsequent
chapters, has developed an interesting population theory which is
partly Malthusian.[XII-13] The increase in population from both
immigration sources and the birth rate should be cut down, thereby
decreasing the percentage of unskilled labor. Further, persons should
be trained out of the unskilled group into the skilled group and then
into the _entrepreneur_ class. Thus, by greatly decreasing the number
of unskilled laborers and by increasing the number of entrepreneurs,
wages will advance and profits will be increasingly subdivided. The
poor will become well-to-do, and poverty as it is now known will
tend to disappear. This theory underestimates the importance of
psychological motives and of social attitudes under a system where a
marked degree of competition is encouraged.
In conclusion, it may be stated that the principle of population as
given by Malthus is fundamental to an understanding of the problems
of social progress.[XII-14] There is a positive relation between
population and means of subsistence. Positive and preventive checks
upon population are continually at work. Moral restraint and self
control, based on scientifically devised human laws, create a better
moral fibre than birth control. The quality of personality is far more
important than mere numbers of population. The struggle for quality in
personality must be supplemented by justice in industrial and social
processes before the population problem can be solved.