VOLITIONAL DOCTRINE OF POPULATION 1. Volitional control; beginning and development. § 2. Volitional control and private property. § S. Class differences in volitional control.
4. The standard of life. § 5. The quality of population. § 6. Decrease of the successful elements. § 7. The menace to progress. I 8. The net resultant of population. § 9. Volitional control decentralized. I 10. Conclusion on Malthusianiam.
§ 1. Volitional control; beginning and development. The action of mankind with relation to population gradually changes from merely instinctive to volitional control. By volitional control is meant any purposeful act of mankind by which the effects of the biologic factors determining the birth and survival of children are weakened. This may be done directly or indirectly in a great variety of ways, by indi vidual men or women or by social customs, beliefs, and insti tutions which individuals share and which influence their actions. One of the crudest, earliest, and most general methods is the destruction of offspring before or after birth. The student of savage races finds in the methods applied to prevent the birth of children an almost inconceivable brutality. In fanticide was practised in ancient times among the most advanced peoples, as, for example, in Sparta and Rome, where not only deformed and weak children, but unwelcome ones, were destroyed. The practice is permitted even to-day by public opinion among some classes in the densely populated districts of the world. It is one of the dark spots on our own civilization.
In all savage tribes marriage is surrounded by ceremony and in many by economic obstacles. Usually the young man 414 is unable to marry until he has become skilled in all the arts and learned in all the traditions of the tribe, and has proved his prowess in the hunt and in battle. It is the merit system with a qualifying examination for matrimony. Even then the young man must have enough pelf to buy a wife from her family, or (in exogamy) must steal her from a neighboring tribe or clan (not being allowed to marry within the clan). In modern days every artificial taste and sentiment that en courages bachelorhood or spinsterhood is an element in voli tional control. Postponement of marriage (as recommended by Malthus) beyond the natural mating time, is one of the chief methods of volitional control. It is rare that the motive for postponing or altogether avoiding marriage is di rectly and immediately the wish to escape parenthood ; now it is religious zeal (monasticism and celibacy of the priest hood) ; again it is disappointed sentiment; here it is conflict ing duty (education, family ties) ; and there it is the individ ual's selfish wish to retain an undivided income for his own enjoyment. By countless strands of motive in the form of
sentiments, social institutions, and interests the primitive im pulses of humanity are firmly bound; and in varying degrees, in different classes, the enormous possibilities of reproduc tion are controlled by human volition.
§ 2. Volitional control and private property. Along with enmity for other tribes is found in many early societies an approximation to tribal communism. A condition of com munism means that all enjoy together when food and wealth are abundant, and all starve together when food becomes scarce. In truly communistic conditions, if population in creases all must sink together into want. Private property alters the nature of the struggle for subsistence and of the motives for limiting population. Society divides into a num ber of partially independent classes or family groups, each holding its share of wealth apart, not in common with the tribe. The pressure of increasing numbers upon resources is confined by individual industry and by private property to special por tions of the population. A society with private property is like a ship divided into a number of water-tight compart ments. The worst effects of famine, the growing want of food due to growth of numbers, the increased disease and starvation, are confined to the propertyless members. Both the rewards of industry and the penalties of idleness, incom petence, and improvidence are made more definite and cal culable. This affects volitional control of population in two ways : it strengthens the motives for the production of wealth and for abstinence by individuals and in family groups; it gives a motive for the limitation of the number in the family, the consumers of the wealth. A smaller family with larger resources means a wider margin between numbers and mis ery, and less "pressure of population upon subsistence." 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 limits either of the birth rate or of increase of population are no longer attained in the well-to-do classes; and at length every class down to the most improvident becomes in some measure affected by these motives.