The Principles of Economics Part 18

1. _The supply of labor means here not the number of workers available in any one industry, but the number available in the whole field of industry._ The individual employer thinks of the supply of labor as consisting of the men seeking employment in his special industry. In this view it is the demand by the employers that apportions the workers among the various occupations. The social view of the supply of labor, however, looks at the whole field. The demand for labor is then seen to be represented not by human employers, but by resources and agents presenting opportunities and demanding labor to employ them. The rich acre, the tool, the machine, all material wealth needing the human touch to give it a higher utility, represent a demand for labor in this broad sense. The thought of a supply of labor is therefore relative to that of the demand embodied in resources. A million men are a great or a small supply of labor according as they occupy a little island or a large continent, according as they are equipped with a small or a large supply of agents.

[Sidenote: Population in relation to resources]

2. _"Supply of labor," as an economic problem, presents a large and complex case of diminishing returns._ The population of different countries and of different sections of a country is seen to bear a general relation to their resources. An unintelligent race with little wealth and poor machinery is doomed to remain few in numbers. Mountains, districts poorly watered, the frozen regions of the North, are spa.r.s.ely populated because natural resources are lacking. If food production alone is thought of there are apparent exceptions to this statement, but there are no absolute contradictions of it. A favored harbor may make possible a flourishing commerce on a rocky coast; an unfertile soil may support a large population when great deposits of coal or iron insure by exchange great food-supplies. Productivity must be measured under modern conditions by the purchasing power that is possible in the environment.

The connection of wealth and resources with the extent of the population is in itself a recognition of diminishing returns, of an objective limit to the number of men that can occupy a certain area and employ a given stock of agents.

[Sidenote: Equilibrium between numbers of animals of different species]

3. _Each species of the lower animals is seen to have a relatively fixed habitat limited by its food-supply and by its enemies._ The rocks tell a story of a slow and steady change that has gone on in the earth and in the species of animals that inhabit it. History records some rapid changes due to convulsions of nature or to interference by man with the natural conditions. But the usual condition is an equilibrium of numbers, long maintained, though each species appears to have in itself a capacity for unlimited increase. Why this contradiction? The limit set by the food-supply is seen in a simple case when herbivorous animals are placed on an island from which they cannot escape, and where there are no dogs, wolves, weasels, or foxes. Substantially this experiment was unintentionally tried on an enormous scale with the rabbit in Australia.

This peculiar and long-isolated continent contained none of the rabbit's ancient enemies. The rabbits became a pest, devastated great areas, were hunted, trapped, poisoned, and great numbers of them died of starvation outside the fences erected to stop their advance. In the imaginary island they would increase up to the point where starvation would bring about an equilibrium between the number of animals and the food supply.

The destruction of one kind of animal by another limits numbers in another way. The number of lions is limited by the number of their prey in the region where they roam. The number of deer, therefore, is limited in two ways, by the amount of their food and by the number of lions which catch the deer. The more numerous the lions, the fewer the deer; the fewer the deer, the greater the supply of vegetable food; as the pressure increases on one side, it decreases on the other, until an equilibrium is reached.

[Sidenote: The surplus of life germs]

Throughout nature each species of animal keeps its customary place, changing little despite its efforts to increase and to crowd into the habitat of other species. Even the slow-breeding elephant, with a period of gestation of three years, and producing one calf at a birth, would cover the entire earth and leave no standing-room in a few centuries if every calf born could live to full age. The myriads of frogs born every spring, the swarms of insects, the countless plants, are struggling to find a foothold on the crowded earth. Of the vastly greater number of seeds and embryos, only one in a mult.i.tude ever comes or could come to maturity. Here are the undisputed facts on which rests a biologic "doctrine of population," so to speak, for the vegetable and lower animal world. Because of the limited powers of the soil, no form of life, animal or vegetable, can continue to increase even for a single generation, without meeting enormous forces of opposition, which destroy great numbers and set a limit to the increase of the species.

[Sidenote: These facts related to the doctrine of population]

4. _A doctrine of human population is a reasoned explanation of the causes determining the number of people in the world._ Man in his economic life is constantly struggling with the problem of the scarcity of goods. If in any given environment men continue long to increase, they must, like the lower animals, meet limits in the capacities of the resources they use. The supply of labor force which is thus brought to be combined with the material agents must meet with diminishing returns unless these agents also continue to increase at a like rate. The relation of population to resources thus presents probably the most fundamental problem in the realm of economics. It is a problem of great complexity, bristling with difficulties, and incapable of exact mathematical treatment; but it is capable of rational study. There is a great difference between a purely fatalistic view of this question and the view that is to be reached by a consideration of the motives, causes, and physical influences at work; It is possible to find some principles in the chaos of prejudices and contradictions that the subject presents. The fruit of a century of discussion of the economic, social, and biologic factors involved, is a rational, if not a final, doctrine of population.

-- II. POPULATION IN HUMAN SOCIETY

[Sidenote: The biologic stage of human population]

1. _In the earlier stages of human history, population is limited mainly by biologic factors._ The biologic stage continues so long as there are no artificial restraints put on the birth-rate, and no deliberate destruction of offspring for the purposes of limiting the size of the family. There the limits are all objective; they are found in scantiness of the food-supply, or in destruction by enemies, animal or human. Each species has an average or normal birth-rate, great or small. Just why this varies, why the rabbit produces a score of young in a year, and the elephant but one in three years, is a question capable of a rational answer, but it is one for the natural scientist rather than for the economist. Each species is impelled by instinct to realize this birth-rate, to bring into existence as many young as possible.

No human society known to us is so primitive that it has not pa.s.sed this stage, but many societies have risen but little above it. In most savage tribes, where starvation, disease, and war are constantly at work, the difficult task is to maintain the population. Few of those born arrive at maturity. The custom of the adoption of captives from hostile tribes is widespread, because the efficiency and even the survival of the tribe depends upon keeping up its number of warriors.

[Sidenote: War among primitive societies]

2. _War for the possession of limited resources is the first rude social remedy for an excess of population._ War is the normal condition of most primitive tribes. Its cause usually appears to be standing feuds and ancient enmities, but the deeper and abiding cause is the struggle for hunting-grounds, for pasturage, for natural resources. The rude industry and economy of hunting, fishing, or pastoral peoples, or of those in the earlier stages of agriculture, requires a large area for a small population. Distant excursions and frequent forays, when food fails, develop rival claims to favored districts, and war is the only settlement. Fighting under these conditions is an activity of such economic importance that much of the energy of the tribe must be strenuously given to it. The ceaseless loss of life in savage wars is almost incredible to modern minds. The invasion of the Roman Empire by the Teutonic tribes, the later successive inundations of medieval Europe by the fierce pastoral tribes from central Asia, are more recent and familiar examples of the economic and political effects of the increase of population and of the outgrowing of resources by barbarian peoples.

When the custom arises of capturing enemies and reducing them to slavery instead of killing them, forces are set into operation to reorganize society and to create new checks on the growth of population.

[Sidenote: Crude beginnings of volitional control]

3. _Volitional control of population begins by the destruction of offspring before or after birth._ The population problem ceases to be simply biologic, and takes on its sociological aspect, when the awakening intelligence of man first grasps the mystery of birth, and when the first attempts are made in any way to regulate family relations or to interfere with the growth of numbers. The student of primitive peoples finds in the methods applied to prevent the birth of children an almost inconceivable brutality. The same methods to a large degree persist in savage communities to-day. Infanticide was generally practiced in ancient times among peoples of advanced civilization, as, for example, in Sparta and Rome, where not only deformed and weak children, but unwelcome ones, commonly were destroyed. The practice, if not legalized, is at least permitted even to-day by public opinion in great portions of India, China, and other densely populated districts of the world. It is one of the dark spots on our own civilization.

[Sidenote: Private property limits population]

[Sidenote: The problem a psychic one]

4. _The pressure of increase of numbers on resources is confined by individual industry and by private property to special portions of the population._ A condition of communism, where all the members of the tribe or family share equally, means that all enjoy together when food and wealth are abundant, and all starve together when it becomes scarce.

Along with a fierce enmity for other tribes, is found in many early societies a close approximation to tribal communism. Private property alters the nature of the struggle for subsistence and of the motives for limiting population. Society divides into a number of partially independent cla.s.ses or family groups, each holding its share of wealth apart, not in common with the tribe. A society with private property is like a ship divided into a number of water-tight compartments. In communistic conditions if population increases, all sink together into want. The self-interest of those having private property keeps them from dividing their property, and starvation is confined to the propertyless members. This acts in two ways: it increases the motive for the production of wealth; it gives a motive for the limitation of the consumers of the wealth. A smaller family with larger resources means a wider margin between numbers and misery. This converts the problem of population from a material one of a balance of food and physical needs, to a psychic one of a balance of motives in the minds of men. When this stage is reached, the extreme objective limit of the birth-rate or of increase of population is no longer attained in the well-to-do cla.s.ses, although it may still continue to be in the less provident.

[Sidenote: Social cla.s.ses differ in volitional control]

5. _Volitional control is effective in very different degrees in different families and industrial cla.s.ses._ The possession of property is both a sign of forethought and an incentive to it. Concern for the welfare of children is one of the most powerful motives, especially after social distinctions become marked. It may become abnormally strong, leading parents to sacrifice their own welfare or their own lives foolishly for their children, as is done often in the acc.u.mulation of property. Among the cla.s.ses with property the provision for the children depends not only upon the amount of wealth, but upon the number among whom it is to be divided. It is simple division: wealth the dividend, number of children the divisor.

Among the poorer cla.s.ses very different motives operate. After the first few years the parents' income is increased by the earnings of the children, both on the farm and in the factory districts if the laws do not prohibit child labor. Moreover, when the children are grown, their wages will depend on the general labor market, not upon the number of their brothers and sisters. So, according as the family income is from rents or from wages, the motives of the parents differ.

[Sidenote: Motives in volitional control]

Postponement of marriage must be cla.s.sed as a mode of volitional control of population. The average age of marriage, both of men and women, is higher in the cla.s.ses of greater wealth and ambition than in the poorer cla.s.ses. The contrast in this regard between civilized and savage peoples is likewise noteworthy. The failure to marry, from whatever cause, is, in the social view of the question, volitional control. It is rare that the motive is directly and immediately the wish to avoid parenthood; now it is religious zeal, again it is disappointed sentiment; here it is conflicting duty, and there it is the individual selfish wish to retain an undivided income for one's own enjoyment. By countless strands of motive in the form of sentiments, social inst.i.tutions, and interests, the primitive impulses of humanity are firmly bound; and in varying degrees, in different cla.s.ses, the enormous possibilities of reproduction are controlled by human volition.

-- III. CURRENT ASPECT OF THE POPULATION PROBLEM

[Sidenote: The many motives controlling population]

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 to-day 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.

[Sidenote: The standard of life in Asiatic countries]

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 cla.s.ses 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.

[Sidenote: The American standard]

The American standard of living, while it differs in different cla.s.ses, 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 ma.s.ses of the population, the number of childless homes is increasing, and while the standard of comfort grows, the size of the average family dwindles.

[Sidenote: 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 to-day 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.

[Sidenote: The quality of population counts]

4. _Volitional control is acting with the greatest force in the more capable cla.s.ses and thus threatens to reduce the quality of the population._ The quality of population is of more import than its quant.i.ty, 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 population at any moment is no more a matter of indifference than "how many." One new-born child represents a negative addition 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.

[Sidenote: Change in the American birth-rate]

The average number of children reaching maturity in the families of the American colonists was six; the average number to-day 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 rate 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.

[Sidenote: 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 cla.s.ses are stationary or declining in numbers.

[Sidenote: 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.

CHAPTER 22