1. Changes in population are resultants of many forces: those favoring a high birth-rate and low death-rate, and those limiting births or survival. Whether the population on the whole shall grow, stand still, or diminish, depends upon the relative strength of contending forces making for life or death. But this control may lose its cruder aspect and may be waged in the realm of motive. More and more it is volition that controls in human society the growth of population; less and less it is the objective limit of the food-supply. Dire need resulting in ill-health and even in starvation, is still acting in some portions of society, but less today than ever before. The growth of population in this stage is not "fatalistic," as there is no inevitable tendency to increase or to decrease. It depends on the interaction of a number of forces, clearly distinguishable, by which population actually is kept far within the limits of food resources. Volitional control is not by a central and unified despotism determining human action, but it is by motives of the most complex sort, diffused throughout society and acting upon every member of it. \

The many motives controlling population.

2. The desire to maintain and raise the standard of life is the most effective motive limiting population in our society. The phrase "standard of life" expresses the complex thought of that measure of necessities, comforts, and luxuries considered by any individual to be indispensable for himself and his children; that measure which he will make great sacrifices to secure. This standard differs from land to land, and from time to time. In the Asiatic countries it is so low that it touches in large classes the minimum of subsistence. Despite adverse influences and the uninterrupted series of famines, the population of India in the last century under English rule increased from two hundred millions to three hundred millions. Such a population "lets out all the slack" of income, and never takes up any. The great public works of irrigation, forestry, and transportation, and the development of industry under English rule, gave an opportunity for a higher standard of living; but it was used instead to permit the existence of a greater number of men in the same old misery. These facts have a bearing upon the question of Oriental immigration to America. The emigration of millions of Chinese from their native land would leave no void in their numbers. Peopling their own land constantly down to their own standard of living, they have the power, if they are tempted hither in great numbers, to people this continent also to the same density.

The stan- dard of life in Atlatic countries.

The American standard.

The American standard of living, while it differs in different classes, is on the whole the highest found anywhere in the world. The increasing appeal to individual selfishness in the last twenty-five years, the greater ease of travel and taste for it, the multiplied and costly pleasures and pastimes, make children a greater and greater burden. The abnormal conditions of city life increase the sacrifice required to support children, and take away a large part of the value of their services in the home. In the greater cities are whole areas larger than the city of Ithaca where children are not admitted to the apartment houses, where no one who has a child can rent rooms. Despite the increasing incomes of the masses of the population, the number of childless homes is increasing, and while the standard of comfort grows, the size of the average family dwindles.

The decreasing death-rate.

3. Great improvements in medical and in sanitary science are decreasing the death-rate and thus partly neutralizing the effects of a lower birth-rate. The death-rate in a community is a fairly good index of its general welfare. The death of a large proportion of the children before they arrive at maturity indicates poverty or ignorance. The death-rate in the Middle Ages, especially in cities, was tremendously high, but during the last hundred years has steadily decreased. The race of man which, ever since the beginnings of volitional control, probably has had a smaller death-rate relative to the total number of individuals coming into existence than has any other species of living creatures, has today a far lower rate than ever before. Even in the most miserable industrial population where one half the children die before they are five years old, the death-rate is much less than among the young of the lion or the eagle.

4. Volitional control is acting with the greatest force in the more capable classes and thus threatens to reduce the quality of the population. The quality of population is of more import than its quantity, alike in its economic, its social, and its ethical results. The productive force of a population is not measured merely by numbers. " Who" make up the popu-lation at any moment is no more a matter of indifference than " how many." One new-born child represents a negative addi-tion to society, unintelligent, incapable, foredoomed to become . a burden; another, with energy, thrift, inventive genius, comes to enrich and uplift his fellow-men. Quality counts for much.

The quality of population counts.

The average number ot children reaching maturity in the families of the American colonists was six; the average number today in families of American descent is about two. Since many of these do not live to maturity, and of those who do survive many do not marry, the stock does not maintain itself in numbers. Much larger families are found among the poor whites of the mountains, the foreign population, the negroes, and, in general, in the lower ranks of labor. Forces are at work to sterilize or reduce in number the more intelligent elements of the population. The "new woman" movement, tempting into "careers," takes away from family life many of the women most worthy to become the mothers of succeeding generations, Self-interest is at war with the social interest. The individual asks, "Am I bound to sacrifice my comfort and happiness to the general good?" If this continues, the result must be a steady decline in the proportion of the population born of the successful strains of stock, and a steady increase of the descendants of the mediocre and duller-witted elements.

Change in the American birthrate.

Rate of increase in the nineteenth century.

5. Population increased at an unprecedented rate throughout Christendom in the nineteenth century, but the pace is now slackening. The nineteenth century saw a great increase in the food-supplies available for Europe. The resources of the American continent were hardly touched until the great Western movement of population began and new agencies of transportation brought American fields thousands of miles nearer to European markets. The improvement of machinery and of other economic equipment in Europe likewise aided to increase production rapidly. Population followed, though not with equal step. Europe had a population of 200,000,000 in 1800, nearly 400,000,000 in 1900. The increase in England was from 12 to 18 per cent, each decade; it had 8,000,000 in 1800 and 30,000,000 in 1900. The United States had 5,000,000 at the beginning of the century and 75,-000,000 at the close, an increase of over 30 per cent, each decade. Recently there has been a notable decline in the rate of increase in all the countries of Europe. France is already at the stationary stage, and England probably will have reached it by the middle of the century. The rate of increase by decades has fallen in America from thirty-three to twenty-four since the Civil War. Though the movement of the population is still upward, large classes are stationary or declining in numbers.

Conclusion.

Population should increase more slowly than wealth and resources if progress is to go on. It has done so in the past century, and there is no probability of a too rapid increase in Christendom in the near future. A stationary or declining population, while not desirable, is not an impossibility. But this does not destroy the significance of the fact that there is inherent in humanity a great potential power of increase, the realization of which would be disastrous, the control of which is an important and ever-present condition of the social welfare.

Questions On Chapter 21. The Supply Of Labor

1. Has the principle of the survival of the fittest any influence on the population of America?

2. What limits the number of wild rabbits? Of tame pigeons? Do the same influences act in the case of men?

3. What other influences affect population?

4. What relation is there between population and mountains, temperature and water-supply?

5. It has been said that the supply of labor is fixed by biologic laws. Is it therefore not subject to economic influences?

6. What application do you think the principle of diminishing returns has to the question of population?

7. What is meant by the standard of life?

Note

The subject of population generally is discussed under the name of "The Malthusian Doctrine" and much space is given to it in the texts. So much useless controversy has been occasioned by the ambiguities of Malthus's argument that it seemed best not to introduce this difficulty into the text. The subject is discussed with broadest view by A. T. Hadley, Economics, Secs. 47-60. The writer attempted to make a judicial study of Malthus and his work in Versuch einer Bevdlherungslehre, Jena, 1894, and sought to put the discussion on higher ground in an article in the Yale Review, August, 1898, "The Essay of Malthus, a Centennial Review."