The Problem of Population 1 1

§ 5. Some forces making for change. With many of these changes there is nothing that makes for permanent prog ress. There is a maximum and a minimum of prosperity, but the pendulum has a limited swing. There is in a rhythmi cally dynamic society far more of risk and uncertainty, of need and opportunity for judgment, of range for enterprise and alert management, than in a purely static state. None of these forces and influences change with perfect regularity, and even when the general average is pretty even from one cycle to the other, there is an element of the unpredictable any year about the total movement as well as about the details.

Only a few of the influences that bring about rhythmic changes are mentioned here. Political forces are constantly changing and bring economic results. In the past it has been almost proverbial that in each generation a nation must have a war, having had just time enough to recover from the last one. A vacillating policy of taxation, of foreign trade and tariff duties, and of economic legislation keeps business in a constant process of adjustment.

The discovery and production of the precious metals, gold and silver, follows always a somewhat irregular cycle. There result changes in the supply of money and in the scale of prices. The treatment of these particular questions is re served for a later volume, but some other dynamic changes will be here considered.

§ 6.

Population-change as a dynamic force. Every kind of dynamic change involves a shift in the ratio of the various factors of production in the community. On one side of this ratio is always the human factor ; and the most general and far reaching of all dynamic problems is presented by changes in population. The effects of the saving and conservation of material goods, of waste, luxury, and destruction, of multi plying tools and machines and of improving them in quality by invention, all are relative to the number of people in that economy. If the number of people increases in exactly the same ratio as the area of land (having like qualities) that is brought into use, as the number of tools and machines, and as the whole economic equipment, it is as if no change took place. But if any one of these factors moves faster or slower than any one of the other, or if other changes occur of a moral, political, or educational nature affecting the capacity, efficiency, and habits of choice of men, then the static equilib rium is disturbed. A new normal equilibrium is involved in every new setting of the population in its economic environ ment. Some of these changes may involve little more than

a substitution of one material agent for another, such as elec tricity for steam, or cement for lumber; some of these changes affect the relative positions of various individuals without altering much the general or average level of income; but all of them involve more or less a shift in the general level of welfare, the most important economic change in the eyes of the social student.

We shall therefore take up first the problem of popula tion, and ask what are the effects of a change in the number of people in and of itself, other things remaining equal. Then we shall consider what are the effects of changes in the objective factors, the area of land, its fertility, the discovery, use, and using up of natural resources, and the invention and increase of machinery. Finally we shall consider the sub jective factor, human nature, in its use, saving, and accumu lation of wealth.

§ 7. The Malthneian doctrine. The subject of popula tion was brought into prominence in economic discussion by the writings of Malthus? Before that some thoughtful com ments had been made here and there, but it had been gener ally assumed that the larger the population the better for the country. Malthus, an interested student of contemporary projects of social improvement, was struck by the significance of some facts of observation and of history, and arrived quickly at the conclusion that the excessive growth of population is the cause of much of the misery and poverty in the world.

2 An essay on the principle of population, as it affects the future improvement of society, by Robert Thomas Malthus, London, 1798. Second edition, 1803.

He believed also that this excessive increase would be sure to occur in a state of communism, and would alone be sufficient to wreck the ideal societies which the reformers of that period of the French Revolution were fond of picturing.

This was the general idea, but in some respects the thought was hazy and there is even yet room for discussion as to just what the Malthusian "principle of population" is. Some think it is expressed in the proportion of the opposing ratios; population has a tendency to increase in a geometrical ratio, and food in an arithmetical ratio. Thus, says Malthus, while food increases 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc., population increases 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc. This was the thought of Malthus: that popu lation was always "pressing upon" the means of subsistence, and keeping large numbers on the verge of want.