“A hundred years ago, one person in every family of five or six
must have been absolutely needed to spin and weave by hand the
fabrics required for the scanty clothing of the people; now one
person in two hundred or two hundred and fifty only need work in
the factory to produce the cotton and woolen fabrics of the most
amply clothed nation of the world.”(112)
To these considerations must be added, that, even if improvements did for
a time decrease the aggregate produce and the circulating capital of the
community, they would not the less tend in the long run to augment both.
This tendency of improvements in production to cause increased
accumulation, and thereby ultimately to increase the gross produce, even
if temporarily diminishing it, will assume a still more decided character
if it should appear that there are assignable limits both to the
accumulation of capital and to the increase of production from the land,
which limits once attained, all further increase of produce must stop; but
that improvements in production, whatever may be their other effects, tend
to throw one or both of these limits farther off. Now, these are truths
which will appear in the clearest light in a subsequent stage of our
investigation. It will be seen that the quantity of capital which will, or
even which can, be accumulated in any country, and the amount of gross
produce which will, or even which can, be raised, bear a proportion to the
state of the arts of production there existing; and that every
improvement, even if for the time it diminish the circulating capital and
the gross produce, ultimately makes room for a larger amount of both than
could possibly have existed otherwise. It is this which is the conclusive
answer to the objections against machinery; and the proof thence arising
of the ultimate benefit to laborers of mechanical inventions, even in the
existing state of society, will hereafter be seen to be conclusive.(113)
Chapter VI. Of Causes Affecting The Efficiency Of Production.
§ 1. General Causes of Superior Productiveness.
The most evident cause of superior productiveness is what are called
natural advantages. These are various. Fertility of soil is one of the
principal. The influence of climate [is another advantage, and] consists
in lessening the physical requirements of the producers.
In spinning very fine cotton thread, England’s natural climate
gives in some parts of the country such advantages in proper
moisture and electric conditions that the operation can be carried
on out-of-doors; while in the United States it is generally
necessary to create an artificial atmosphere. In ordinary spinning
in our country more is accomplished when the wind is in one
quarter than in another. The dry northwest wind in New England
reduces the amount of product, while the dry northeast wind in
England has a similar effect, and it is said has practically
driven the cotton-spinners from Manchester to Oldham, where the
climate is more equably moist. The full reasons for these facts
are not yet ascertained.
Experts in the woolen industry, also, explain that the quality and
fiber of wool depend upon the soil and climate where the sheep are
pastured. When Ohio sheep are transferred to Texas, in a few years
their wool loses the distinctive quality it formerly possessed,
and takes on a new character belonging to the breeds of Texas. The
wool produced by one set of climatic conditions is quite different
from that of another set, and is used by the manufacturers for
different purposes.
In hot regions, mankind can exist in comfort with less perfect housing,
less clothing; fuel, that absolute necessary of life in cold climates,
they can almost dispense with, except for industrial uses. They also
require less aliment. Among natural advantages, besides soil and climate,
must be mentioned abundance of mineral productions, in convenient
situations, and capable of being worked with moderate labor. Such are the
coal-fields of Great Britain, which do so much to compensate its
inhabitants for the disadvantages of climate; and the scarcely inferior
resource possessed by this country and the United States, in a copious
supply of an easily reduced iron-ore, at no great depth below the earth’s
surface, and in close proximity to coal-deposits available for working it.
But perhaps a greater advantage than all these is a maritime situation,
especially when accompanied with good natural harbors; and, next to it,
great navigable rivers. These advantages consist indeed wholly in saving
of cost of carriage. But few, who have not considered the subject, have
any adequate notion how great an extent of economical advantage this
comprises.
As the second of the [general] causes of superior productiveness, we may
rank the greater energy of labor. By this is not to be understood
occasional, but regular and habitual energy. The third element which
determines the productiveness of the labor of a community is the skill and
knowledge therein existing, whether it be the skill and knowledge of the
laborers themselves or of those who direct their labor. That the
productiveness of the labor of a people is limited by their knowledge of
the arts of life is self-evident, and that any progress in those arts, any
improved application of the objects or powers of nature to industrial
uses, enables the same quantity and intensity of labor to raise a greater
produce. One principal department of these improvements consists in the
invention and use of tools and machinery.(114)
The deficiency of practical good sense, which renders the majority of the
laboring-class such bad calculators—which makes, for instance, their
domestic economy so improvident, lax, and irregular—must disqualify them
for any but a low grade of intelligent labor, and render their industry
far less productive than with equal energy it otherwise might be. The
moral qualities of the laborers are fully as important to the efficiency
and worth of their labor as the intellectual. Independently of the effects
of intemperance upon their bodily and mental faculties, and of flighty,
unsteady habits upon the energy and continuity of their work (points so
easily understood as not to require being insisted upon), it is well
worthy of meditation how much of the aggregate effect of their labor
depends on their trustworthiness.
Among the secondary causes which determine the productiveness of
productive agents, the most important is Security. By security I mean the
completeness of the protection which society affords to its members.
§ 2. Combination and Division of Labor Increase Productiveness.
In the enumeration of the circumstances which promote the productiveness
of labor, we have left one untouched, which is co-operation, or the
combined action of numbers. Of this great aid to production, a single
department, known by the name of Division of Labor, has engaged a large
share of the attention of political economists; most deservedly, indeed,
but to the exclusion of other cases and exemplifications of the same
comprehensive law. In the lifting of heavy weights, for example, in the
felling of trees, in the sawing of timber, in the gathering of much hay or
corn during a short period of fine weather, in draining a large extent of
land during the short season when such a work may be properly conducted,
in the pulling of ropes on board ship, in the rowing of large boats, in
some mining operations, in the erection of a scaffolding for building, and
in the breaking of stones for the repair of a road, so that the whole of
the road shall always be kept in good order: in all these simple
operations, and thousands more, it is absolutely necessary that many
persons should work together, at the same time, in the same place, and in
the same way. [But] in the present state of society, the breeding and
feeding of sheep is the occupation of one set of people; dressing the wool
to prepare it for the spinner is that of another; spinning it into thread,
of a third; weaving the thread into broadcloth, of a fourth; dyeing the
cloth, of a fifth; making it into a coat, of a sixth; without counting the
multitude of carriers, merchants, factors, and retailers put in
requisition at the successive stages of this progress.
Without some separation of employments, very few things would be produced
at all. Suppose a set of persons, or a number of families, all employed
precisely in the same manner; each family settled on a piece of its own
land, on which it grows by its labor the food required for its own
sustenance, and, as there are no persons to buy any surplus produce where
all are producers, each family has to produce within itself whatever other
articles it consumes. In such circumstances, if the soil was tolerably
fertile, and population did not tread too closely on the heels of
subsistence, there would be, no doubt, some kind of domestic manufactures;
clothing for the family might, perhaps, be spun and woven within it, by
the labor, probably, of the women (a first step in the separation of
employments); and a dwelling of some sort would be erected and kept in
repair by their united labor. But beyond simple food (precarious, too,
from the variations of the seasons), coarse clothing, and very imperfect
lodging, it would be scarcely possible that the family should produce
anything more.
Suppose that a company of artificers, provided with tools, and with food
sufficient to maintain them for a year, arrive in the country and
establish themselves in the midst of the population. These new settlers
occupy themselves in producing articles of use or ornament adapted to the
taste of a simple people; and before their food is exhausted they have
produced these in considerable quantity, and are ready to exchange them
for more food. The economical position of the landed population is now
most materially altered. They have an opportunity given them of acquiring
comforts and luxuries. Things which, while they depended solely upon their
own labor, they never could have obtained, because they could not have
produced, are now accessible to them if they can succeed in producing an
additional quantity of food and necessaries. They are thus incited to
increase the productiveness of their industry. The new settlers constitute
what is called a _market_ for surplus agricultural produce; and their
arrival has enriched the settlement, not only by the manufactured articles
which they produce, but by the food which would not have been produced
unless they had been there to consume it.
There is no inconsistency between this doctrine and the proposition we
before maintained,(115) that a market for commodities does not constitute
employment for labor. The labor of the agriculturists was already provided
with employment; they are not indebted to the demand of the new-comers for
being able to maintain themselves. What that demand does for them is to
call their labor into increased vigor and efficiency; to stimulate them,
by new motives, to new exertions.
From these considerations it appears that a country will seldom have a
productive agriculture unless it has a large town population, or, the only
available substitute, a large export trade in agricultural produce to
supply a population elsewhere. I use the phrase “town population” for
shortness, to imply a population non-agricultural.
It is found that the productive power of labor is increased by carrying
the separation further and further; by breaking down more and more every
process of industry into parts, so that each laborer shall confine himself
to an ever smaller number of simple operations. And thus, in time, arise
those remarkable cases of what is called the division of labor, with which
all readers on subjects of this nature are familiar. Adam Smith’s
illustration from pin-making, though so well known, is so much to the
point that I will venture once more to transcribe it: “The business of
making a pin is divided into about eighteen distinct operations. One man
draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points
it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head
requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar
business; to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to
put them into the paper.... I have seen a small manufactory where ten men
only were employed, and where some of them, consequently, performed two or
three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore
but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could,
when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins
in a day. There are in a pound upward of four thousand pins of a middling
size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upward of
forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth
part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four
thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought
separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated
to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made
twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day.”
§ 3. Advantages of Division of Labor.
The causes of the increased efficiency given to labor by the division of
employments are some of them too familiar to require specification; but it
is worth while to attempt a complete enumeration of them. By Adam Smith
they are reduced to three: “First, the increase of dexterity in every
particular workman; secondly, the saving of the time which is commonly
lost in passing from one species of work to another; and, lastly, the
invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge
labor, and enable one man to do the work of many.”
(1.) Of these, the increase of dexterity of the individual workman is the
most obvious and universal. It does not follow that because a thing has
been done oftener it will be done better. That depends on the intelligence
of the workman, and on the degree in which his mind works along with his
hands. But it will be done more easily. This is as true of mental
operations as of bodily. Even a child, after much practice, sums up a
column of figures with a rapidity which resembles intuition. The act of
speaking any language, of reading fluently, of playing music at sight, are
cases as remarkable as they are familiar. Among bodily acts, dancing,
gymnastic exercises, ease and brilliancy of execution on a musical
instrument, are examples of the rapidity and facility acquired by
repetition. In simpler manual operations the effect is, of course, still
sooner produced.
(2.) The second advantage enumerated by Adam Smith as arising from the
division of labor is one on which I can not help thinking that more stress
is laid by him and others than it deserves. To do full justice to his
opinion, I will quote his own exposition of it: “It is impossible to pass
very quickly from one kind of work to another, that is carried on in a
different place, and with quite different tools. A country weaver, who
cultivates a small farm, must lose a good deal of time in passing from his
loom to the field, and from the field to his loom. When the two trades can
be carried on in the same workhouse, the loss of time is no doubt much
less. It is even in this case, however, very considerable. A man commonly
saunters a little in turning his hand from one sort of employment to
another.” I am very far from implying that these considerations are of no
weight; but I think there are counter-considerations which are overlooked.
If one kind of muscular or mental labor is different from another, for
that very reason it is to some extent a rest from that other; and if the
greatest vigor is not at once obtained in the second occupation, neither
could the first have been indefinitely prolonged without some relaxation
of energy. It is a matter of common experience that a change of occupation
will often afford relief where complete repose would otherwise be
necessary, and that a person can work many more hours without fatigue at a
succession of occupations, than if confined during the whole time to
one.(116) Different occupations employ different muscles, or different
energies of the mind, some of which rest and are refreshed while others
work. Bodily labor itself rests from mental, and conversely. The variety
itself has an invigorating effect on what, for want of a more
philosophical appellation, we must term the animal spirits—so important to
the efficiency of all work not mechanical, and not unimportant even to
that.
(3.) The third advantage attributed by Adam Smith to the division of labor
is, to a certain extent, real. Inventions tending to save labor in a
particular operation are more likely to occur to any one in proportion as
his thoughts are intensely directed to that occupation, and continually
employed upon it.
This also can not be wholly true. “The founder of the cotton
manufacture was a barber. The inventor of the power-loom was a
clergyman. A farmer devised the application of the
screw-propeller. A fancy-goods shopkeeper is one of the most
enterprising experimentalists in agriculture. The most remarkable
architectural design of our day has been furnished by a gardener.
The first person who supplied London with water was a goldsmith.
The first extensive maker of English roads was a blind man, bred
to no trade. The father of English inland navigation was a duke,
and his engineer was a millwright. The first great builder of iron
bridges was a stone-mason, and the greatest railway engineer
commenced his life as a colliery engineer.”(117)
(4.) The greatest advantage (next to the dexterity of the workmen) derived
from the minute division of labor which takes place in modern
manufacturing industry, is one not mentioned by Adam Smith, but to which
attention has been drawn by Mr. Babbage: the more economical distribution
of labor by classing the work-people according to their capacity.
Different parts of the same series of operations require unequal degrees
of skill and bodily strength; and those who have skill enough for the most
difficult, or strength enough for the hardest parts of the labor, are made
much more useful by being employed solely in them; the operations which
everybody is capable of being left to those who are fit for no others.
The division of labor, as all writers on the subject have remarked, is
limited by the extent of the market. If, by the separation of pin-making
into ten distinct employments, forty-eight thousand pins can be made in a
day, this separation will only be advisable if the number of accessible
consumers is such as to require, every day, something like forty-eight
thousand pins. If there is only a demand for twenty-four thousand, the
division of labor can only be advantageously carried to the extent which
will every day produce that smaller number. The increase of the general
riches of the world, when accompanied with freedom of commercial
intercourse, improvements in navigation, and inland communication by
roads, canals, or railways, tends to give increased productiveness to the
labor of every nation in particular, by enabling each locality to supply
with its special products so much larger a market that a great extension
of the division of labor in their production is an ordinary consequence.
The division of labor is also limited, in many cases, by the nature of the
employment. Agriculture, for example, is not susceptible of so great a
division of occupations as many branches of manufactures, because its
different operations can not possibly be simultaneous.
(5.) “In the examples given above the advantage obtained was
derived from the mere fact of the separation of employments,
altogether independently of the mode in which the separated
employments were distributed among the _persons_ carrying them on,
as well as of the _places_ in which they were conducted. But a
further gain arises when the employments are of a kind which, in
order to their effective performance, call for special capacities
in the workman, or special natural resources in the scene of
operation. There would be a manifest waste of special power in
compelling to a mere mechanical or routine pursuit a man who is
fitted to excel in a professional career; and similarly, if a
branch of industry were established on some site which offered
greater facilities to an industry of another sort, a waste,
analogous in character, would be incurred. In a word, while a
great number of the occupations in which men engage are such as,
with proper preparation for them, might equally well be carried on
by any of those engaged in them, or in any of the localities in
which they are respectively established, there are others which
demand for their effective performance special personal
qualifications and special local conditions; and the general
effectiveness of productive industry will, other things being
equal, be proportioned to the completeness with which the
adaptation is accomplished between occupation on the one hand and
individuals and localities on the other.”(118)
§ 4. Production on a Large and Production on a Small Scale.
Whenever it is essential to the greatest efficiency of labor that many
laborers should combine, the scale of the enterprise must be such as to
bring many laborers together, and the capital must be large enough to
maintain them. Still more needful is this when the nature of the
employment allows, and the extent of the possible market encourages, a
considerable division of labor. The larger the enterprise the further the
division of labor may be carried. This is one of the principal causes of
large manufactories. Every increase of business would enable the whole to
be carried on with a proportionally smaller amount of labor.
As a general rule, the expenses of a business do not increase by any means
proportionally to the quantity of business. Let us take as an example a
set of operations which we are accustomed to see carried on by one great
establishment, that of the Post-Office. Suppose that the business, let us
say only of the letter-post, instead of being centralized in a single
concern, were divided among five or six competing companies. Each of these
would be obliged to maintain almost as large an establishment as is now
sufficient for the whole. Since each must arrange for receiving and
delivering letters in all parts of the town, each must send
letter-carriers into every street, and almost every alley, and this, too,
as many times in the day as is now done by the Post-Office, if the service
is to be as well performed. Each must have an office for receiving letters
in every neighborhood, with all subsidiary arrangements for collecting the
letters from the different offices and redistributing them. To this must
be added the much greater number of superior officers who would be
required to check and control the subordinates, implying not only a
greater cost in salaries for such responsible officers, but the necessity,
perhaps, of being satisfied in many instances with an inferior standard of
qualification, and so failing in the object.
Whether or not the advantages obtained by operating on a large scale
preponderate in any particular case over the more watchful attention and
greater regard to minor gains and losses usually found in small
establishments, can be ascertained, in a state of free competition, by an
unfailing test. Wherever there are large and small establishments in the
same business, that one of the two which in existing circumstances carries
on the production at greatest advantage will be able to undersell the
other. The power of permanently underselling can only, generally speaking,
be derived from increased effectiveness of labor; and this, when obtained
by a more extended division of employment, or by a classification tending
to a better economy of skill, always implies a greater produce from the
same labor, and not merely the same produce from less labor; it increases
not the surplus only, but the gross produce of industry. If an increased
quantity of the particular article is not required, and part of the
laborers in consequence lose their employment, the capital which
maintained and employed them is also set at liberty, and the general
produce of the country is increased by some other application of their
labor.
A considerable part of the saving of labor effected by substituting the
large system of production for the small, is the saving in the labor of
the capitalists themselves. If a hundred producers with small capitals
carry on separately the same business, the superintendence of each concern
will probably require the whole attention of the person conducting it,
sufficiently, at least, to hinder his time or thoughts from being
disposable for anything else; while a single manufacturer possessing a
capital equal to the sum of theirs, with ten or a dozen clerks, could
conduct the whole of their amount of business, and have leisure, too, for
other occupations.
Production on a large scale is greatly promoted by the practice of forming
a large capital by the combination of many small contributions; or, in
other words, by the formation of stock companies. The advantages of the
principle are important, [since] (1) many undertakings require an amount
of capital beyond the means of the richest individual or private
partnership. [Of course] the Government can alone be looked to for any of
those works for which a great combination of means is requisite, because
it can obtain those means by compulsory taxation, and is already
accustomed to the conduct of large operations. For reasons, however, which
are tolerably well known, government agency for the conduct of industrial
operations is generally one of the least eligible of resources when any
other is available. Of [the advantages referred to above] one of the most
important is (2) that which relates to the intellectual and active
qualifications of the directing head. The stimulus of individual interest
is some security for exertion, but exertion is of little avail if the
intelligence exerted is of an inferior order, which it must necessarily be
in the majority of concerns carried on by the persons chiefly interested
in them. Where the concern is large, and can afford a remuneration
sufficient to attract a class of candidates superior to the common
average, it is possible to select for the general management, and for all
the skilled employments of a subordinate kind, persons of a degree of
acquirement and cultivated intelligence which more than compensates for
their inferior interest in the result. It must be further remarked that it
is not a necessary consequence of joint-stock management that the persons
employed, whether in superior or in subordinate offices, should be paid
wholly by fixed salaries. In the case of the managers of joint-stock
companies, and of the superintending and controlling officers in many
private establishments, it is a common enough practice to connect their
pecuniary interest with the interest of their employers, by giving them
part of their remuneration in the form of a percentage on the profits.
The possibility of substituting the large system of production for the
small depends, of course, in the first place, on the extent of the market.
The large system can only be advantageous when a large amount of business
is to be done: it implies, therefore, either a populous and flourishing
community, or a great opening for exportation.
In the countries in which there are the largest markets, the widest
diffusion of commercial confidence and enterprise, the greatest annual
increase of capital, and the greatest number of large capitals owned by
individuals, there is a tendency to substitute more and more, in one
branch of industry after another, large establishments for small ones.
These are almost always able to undersell the smaller tradesmen, partly,
it is understood, by means of division of labor, and the economy
occasioned by limiting the employment of skilled agency to cases where
skill is required; and partly, no doubt, by the saving of labor arising
from the great scale of the transactions; as it costs no more time, and
not much more exertion of mind, to make a large purchase, for example,
than a small one, and very much less than to make a number of small ones.
With a view merely to production, and to the greatest efficiency of labor,
this change is wholly beneficial.
A single large company very often, instead of being a monopoly, is
generally better than two large companies; for there is little
likelihood of competition and lower prices when the competitors
are so few as to be able to agree not to compete. As Mr. Mill says
in regard to parallel railroads: “No one can desire to see the
enormous waste of capital and land (not to speak of increased
nuisance) involved in the construction of a second railway to
connect the same places already united by an existing one; while
the two would not do the work better than it could be done by one,
and after a short time would probably be amalgamated.” The actual
tendency of charges to diminish on the railways, before the matter
of parallel railways was suggested is clearly seen by reference to
Chart V (p. 137).
Chapter VII. Of The Law Of The Increase Of Labor.
§ 1. The Law of the Increase of Production Depends on those of Three
Elements—Labor. Capital, and Land.
Production is not a fixed but an increasing thing. When not kept back by
bad institutions, or a low state of the arts of life, the produce of
industry has usually tended to increase; stimulated not only by the desire
of the producers to augment their means of consumption, but by the
increasing number of the consumers.
We have seen that the essential requisites of production are three—labor,
capital, and natural agents; the term capital including all external and
physical requisites which are products of labor, the term natural agents
all those which are not. The increase of production, therefore, depends on
the properties of these elements. It is a result of the increase either of
the elements themselves, or of their productiveness. We proceed to
consider the three elements successively, with reference to this effect;
or, in other words, the law of the increase of production, viewed in
respect of its dependence, first on Labor, secondly on Capital, and lastly
on Land.
§ 2. The Law of Population.
The increase of labor is the increase of mankind; of population. The power
of multiplication inherent in all organic life may be regarded as
infinite. There are many species of vegetables of which a single plant
will produce in one year the germs of a thousand; if only two come to
maturity, in fourteen years the two will have multiplied to sixteen
thousand and more. It is but a moderate case of fecundity in animals to be
capable of quadrupling their numbers in a single year; if they only do as
much in half a century, ten thousand will have swelled within two
centuries to upward to two millions and a half. The capacity of increase
is necessarily in a geometrical progression: the numerical ratio alone is
different.
To this property of organized beings, the human species forms no
exception. Its power of increase is indefinite, and the actual
multiplication would be extraordinarily rapid, if the power were exercised
to the utmost. It never is exercised to the utmost, and yet, in the most
favorable circumstances known to exist, which are those of a fertile
region colonized from an industrious and civilized community, population
has continued, for several generations, independently of fresh
immigration, to double itself in not much more than twenty years.
Years. Population. Food.
25 11 mills x
25 22 mills 2x
25 44 mills 3x
25 88 mills 4x
25 176 mills 5x
By this table it will be seen that if population can double itself
in twenty-five years, and if food can only be increased by as much
as _x_ (the subsistence of eleven millions) by additional
application of another equal quantity of labor on the same land in
each period, then at the end of one hundred years there would be
the disproportion of one hundred and seventy-six millions of
people, with subsistence for only fifty-five millions. Of course,
this is prevented either by checking population to the amount of
the subsistence; by sending off the surplus population; or by
bringing in food from new lands.
In the United States to 1860 population has doubled itself about
every twenty years, while in France there is practically no
increase of population. It is stated that the white population of
the United States between 1790 and 1840 increased 400.4 per cent,
deducting immigration. The extraordinary advance of population
with us, where subsistence is easily attainable, is to be seen in
the chart on the next page (No. III), which shows the striking
rapidity of increase in the United States when compared with the
older countries of Europe. The steady demand for land can be seen
by the gradual westward movement of the center of population, as
seen in chart No. IV (p. 116), and by the rapid settlement of the
distant parts of our country, as shown by the two charts
(frontispieces), which represent to the eye by heavier colors the
areas of the more densely settled districts in 1830 and in 1880.
[Illustration.]
Chart III: Population of European Countries, XIXth Century.
§ 3. By what Checks the Increase of Population is Practically Limited.
The obstacle to a just understanding of the subject arises from too
confused a notion of the causes which, at most times and places, keep the
actual increase of mankind so far behind the capacity.
The conduct of human creatures is more or less influenced by foresight of
consequences, and by some impulses superior to mere animal instincts; and
they do not, therefore, propagate like swine, but are capable, though in
very unequal degrees, of being withheld by prudence, or by the social
affections, from giving existence to beings born only to misery and
premature death.
Malthus found an explanation of the anomaly that in the Swiss
villages, with the longest average duration of life, there were
the fewest births, by noting that no one married until a
cow-herd’s cottage became vacant, and precisely because the
tenants lived so long were the new-comers long kept out of a
place.
In proportion as mankind rise above the condition of the beast, population
is restrained by the fear of want, rather than by want itself. Even where
there is no question of starvation, many are similarly acted upon by the
apprehension of losing what have come to be regarded as the decencies of
their situation in life. Among the middle classes, in many individual
instances, there is an additional restraint exercised from the desire of
doing more than maintaining their circumstances—of improving them; but
such a desire is rarely found, or rarely has that effect, in the
laboring-classes. If they can bring up a family as they were themselves
brought up, even the prudent among them are usually satisfied. Too often
they do not think even of that, but rely on fortune, or on the resources
to be found in legal or voluntary charity.
[Illustration.]
Chart IV: Westward Movement of Center of Population.
This, in effect, is the well-known Malthusian doctrine. The
thorough reader will also consult the original “Essay” of Malthus.
Mr. Bowen(119) and other writers oppose it, saying it has “no
relation to the times in which we live, or to any which are near
at hand.” He thinks the productive power of the whole world
prevents the necessity of considering the pressure of population
upon subsistence as an actuality now or in the future. This,
however, does not deny the existence of Malthus’s principles, but
opposes them only on the methods of their action. Mr.
Rickards(120) holds that man’s food—as, e.g., wheat—has the power
to increase geometrically faster than man; but he omits to
consider that for the growth of this food land is demanded; that
land is not capable of such geometrical increase; and that without
it the food can not be grown. Of course, any extension of the land
area, as happened when England abolished the corn laws and drew
her food from our prairies, removes the previous pressure of
population on subsistence. No believer in the Malthusian doctrine
is so absurd as to hold that the growth of population actually
exceeds subsistence, but that there is a “constant _tendency_ in
all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for
it,” no one can possibly doubt. This is not inconsistent with the
fact that subsistence has at any time increased faster than
population. It is as if a block of wood on the floor were acted on
by two opposing forces, one tending to move it forward, one
backward: if it moves backward, that does not prove the absence of
any force working to move it forward, but only that the other
force is the stronger of the two, and that the final motion is the
resultant of the two forces. It is only near-sighted
generalization to say that since the block moves forward, there is
therefore no opposing force to its advance.(121) Mr. Doubleday
maintains that, as people become better fed, they become
unprolific. Mr. Mill’s answer, referring to the large families of
the English peerage, is unfortunate.(122) In Sweden the increase
of the peasantry is six times that of the middle classes, and
fourteen times that of the nobility. The diminishing fertility of
New England families gives a truer explanation, when it is seen
that with the progress in material wealth later marriages are the
rule. When New-Englanders emigrate to the Western States, where
labor is in demand and where it is less burdensome to have large
families, there is no question as to their fertility.(123)
(1.) In a very backward state of society, like that of Europe in the
middle ages, and many parts of Asia at present, population is kept down by
actual starvation. The starvation does not take place in ordinary years,
but in seasons of scarcity, which in those states of society are much more
frequent and more extreme than Europe is now accustomed to. (2.) In a more
improved state, few, even among the poorest of the people, are limited to
actual necessaries, and to a bare sufficiency of those: and the increase
is kept within bounds, not by excess of deaths, but by limitation of
births.(124) The limitation is brought about in various ways. In some
countries, it is the result of prudent or conscientious self-restraint.
There is a condition to which the laboring-people are habituated; they
perceive that, by having too numerous families, they must sink below that
condition, or fail to transmit it to their children; and this they do not
choose to submit to.
There are other cases in which the prudence and forethought, which perhaps
might not be exercised by the people themselves, are exercised by the
state for their benefit; marriage not being permitted until the
contracting parties can show that they have the prospect of a comfortable
support. There are places, again, in which the restraining cause seems to
be not so much individual prudence, as some general and perhaps even
accidental habit of the country. In the rural districts of England, during
the last century, the growth of population was very effectually repressed
by the difficulty of obtaining a cottage to live in. It was the custom for
unmarried laborers to lodge and board with their employers; it was the
custom for married laborers to have a cottage: and the rule of the English
poor-laws, by which a parish was charged with the support of its
unemployed poor, rendered land-owners averse to promote marriage. About
the end of the century, the great demand for men in war and manufactures
made it be thought a patriotic thing to encourage population: and about
the same time the growing inclination of farmers to live like rich people,
favored as it was by a long period of high prices, made them desirous of
keeping inferiors at a greater distance, and, pecuniary motives arising
from abuses of the poor-laws being superadded, they gradually drove their
laborers into cottages, which the landowners now no longer refused
permission to build.
It is but rarely that improvements in the condition of the
laboring-classes do anything more than give a temporary margin, speedily
filled up by an increase of their numbers. Unless, either by their general
improvement in intellectual and moral culture, or at least by raising
their habitual standard of comfortable living, they can be taught to make
a better use of favorable circumstances, nothing permanent can be done for
them; the most promising schemes end only in having a more numerous but
not a happier people. There is no doubt that [the standard] is gradually,
though slowly, rising in the more advanced countries of Western
Europe.(125) Subsistence and employment in England have never increased
more rapidly than in the last forty years, but every census since 1821
showed a smaller proportional increase of population than that of the
period preceding; and the produce of French agriculture and industry is
increasing in a progressive ratio, while the population exhibits, in every
quinquennial census, a smaller proportion of births to the population.
This brings forward the near connection between land-tenures and
population. France is pre-eminently a country of small holdings,
and it is undoubtedly true that the system has checked the
thoughtless increase of numbers. On his few hectares, the French
peasant sees in the size of his farm and the amount of its produce
the limit of subsistence for himself and his family; as in no
other way does he see beforehand the results of any lack of food
from his lack of prudence.(126) From 1790 to 1815 the average
yearly increase of population was 120,000; from 1815 to 1846, the
golden age of French agriculture, 200,000; from 1846 to 1856, when
agriculture was not prosperous, 60,000; from 1856 to 1880 the
increase has been not more than 36,000 yearly. In France the
question shapes itself to the peasant proprietor, How many can be
subsisted by the amount of produce, not on an unlimited area of
land in other parts of the world, but on this particular property
of a small size? While in England there are ten births to six
deaths, in France there are about ten births to every nine
deaths.(127) In no country has the doctrine of Malthus been more
attacked than in France, and yet in no other country has there
been a more marked obedience to its principles in actual practice.
Since the French are practically not at all an emigrating people,
population has strictly adapted itself to subsistence. For the
relative increase of population in France and the United States,
see also the movement of lines indicating the increase of
population in chart No. III (p. 114).
Chapter VIII. Of The Law Of The Increase Of Capital.
§ 1. Means for Saving in the Surplus above Necessaries.
The requisites of production being labor, capital, and land, it has been
seen from the preceding chapter that the impediments to the increase of
production do not arise from the first of these elements. But production
has other requisites, and, of these, the one which we shall next consider
is Capital. There can not be more people in any country, or in the world,
than can be supported from the produce of past labor until that of present
labor comes in [although it is not to be supposed that capital consists
wholly of food]. We have next, therefore, to inquire into the conditions
of the increase of capital: the causes by which the rapidity of its
increase is determined, and the necessary limitations of that increase.
Since all capital is the product of saving, that is, of abstinence from
present consumption for the sake of a future good, the increase of capital
must depend upon two things—the amount of the fund from which saving can
be made, and the strength of the dispositions which prompt to it.
(1.) The fund from which saving can be made is the surplus of the produce
of labor, after supplying the necessaries of life to all concerned in the
production (including those employed in replacing the materials, and
keeping the fixed capital in repair). More than this surplus can not be
saved under any circumstances. As much as this, though it never is saved,
always might be. This surplus is the fund from which the enjoyments, as
distinguished from the necessaries of the producers, are provided; it is
the fund from which all are subsisted who are not themselves engaged in
production, and from which all additions are made to capital. The capital
of the employer forms the revenue of the laborers, and, if this exceeds
the necessaries of life, it gives them a surplus which they may either
expend in enjoyments or save.
It is evident that the whole unproductive consumption of the
laborer can be saved. When it is considered how enormous a sum is
spent by the working-classes in drink alone (and also in the great
reserves of the Trades-Unions collected for purposes of strikes),
it is indisputable that the laborers have the margin from which
savings can be made, and by which they themselves may become
capitalists. The great accumulations in the savings-banks by small
depositors in the United States also show somewhat how much is
actually saved. In 1882-1883 there were 2,876,438 persons who had
deposited in the savings-banks of the United States
$1,024,856,787, with an average to each depositor of $356.29. The
unproductive consumption, however, of all classes—not merely that
of the working-men—is the possible fund which may be saved. That
being the amount which _can_ be saved, how much _will_ be saved
depends on the strength of the desire to save.
The greater the produce of labor after supporting the laborers, the more
there is which _can_ be saved. The same thing also partly contributes to
determine how much _will_ be saved. A part of the motive to saving
consists in the prospect of deriving an income from savings; in the fact
that capital, employed in production, is capable of not only reproducing
itself but yielding an increase. The greater the profit that can be made
from capital, the stronger is the motive to its accumulation.
§ 2. Motive for Saving in the Surplus above Necessaries. |
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