Chapter XII Malthus and Population Concepts

A unique and distinctive trend in social thought with important sociological implications developed in the closing years of the eighteenth century, namely, Malthusian thought regarding population. Malthusianism, however, was preceded by the ideas of William Godwin and Adam Smith. In 1775, Adam Smith had stated that “every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the means of their subsistence, and no species can ever multiply beyond it.”XII-1 Scanty subsistence, however, destroys a large percentage of offspring. Inasmuch as men, like all other animals, multiply naturally in proportion to the means of their subsistence, food is always, more or less, in demand; and food, or the cost of living, regulates population.XII-2 City people must depend upon the country for their subsistence, whereas seaport towns can command food resources from all parts of the earth.

The population ideas of William Godwin (1756–1836) were the immediate stimuli which set Malthus at work. In 1793, Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Justice was published. Godwin elaborated several radical social ideas of the French Physiocratic philosophers. He declared that human misery is caused by coercive institutions. Government, he asserted, is an evil and should be abolished. He urged also the abolition of strict marriage relations, although he personally acquiesced in the custom and in his last days he commended marriage. He thought that no social group should be larger than a parish, and that there should be an equal distribution of property. Godwin thus carried the doctrine of natural rights to the verge of anarchy and licentiousness. His ideas furnished a basis for the nineteenth century experiments in communism. But what is more important, Godwin’s ideas regarding the reconstruction of society stimulated Thomas Malthus, who developed what is commonly known as the Malthusian doctrine of population.

In 1798, under an assumed name, Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) offered to the world the first carefully collected and elaborated body of data, dealing with what he called the social problem, namely: What is the underlying cause of human unhappiness? This study may be counted, in a sense, the beginning of modern sociological study. Early in life Malthus showed an interest in social questions. Godwin’s ideas had centered Malthus’ attention on population. Malthus’ well-known treatise entitled, An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, undertook two important tasks: (1) To investigate the causes that have impeded the progress of mankind toward happiness, and (2) to examine probabilities of a total or partial removal of these causes.XII-3

Among both plants and animals there is a constant tendency to reproduce numerically beyond the subsistence level. Wherever there is liberty, this power of increase blindly asserts itself. Afterwards, a lack of nourishment and of room represses the superabundant numbers.XII-4 It appears, therefore, that the ultimate check to population is lack of food, due to the fact that population increases faster than food supply. Nature, in other words, sets a harsher law over the increase of subsistence than she does over the birth rate. Man fails to take cognizance of this law and brings untold misery upon himself. The lower economic classes are the chief victims, and the giants of poverty and pauperism rule over whole sections of human population. Malthus considers the question of population the fundamental social problem.

Since population outruns food supply, dire human consequences naturally follow. Food supply, as a check upon population, operates harshly; it is but representative of an entire series of rigorous natural, or positive, checks upon population. In this list there are unwholesome occupations; forms of severe labor; extreme poverty; damp and wretched housing conditions; diseases, epidemics, plagues, poor nursing; intestine commotion, martial law, civil war; wars of all forms; excesses of all kinds.XII-5 These positive checks upon population are the results of two main causes, namely, vice and misery. As a result of the operation of these factors, population is being continually cut down and kept near the mere subsistence plane.

Malthus pointed out another check upon population, the preventive. The fear of falling into poverty causes many young people to postpone marriage until they can safely marry—economically. This check so far as voluntary is peculiar to man and, to the extent that it is not followed by irregular sex gratification, is prudential. The actual pressure of population upon food supply, or the fear of this impingement, prevents people from marrying earlier than they do and from reproducing their kind faster than they would do otherwise. This pressure, or the fear of it, cuts down the marriage rate in times of economic depression. But let prosperity come and the marriage rate leaps upward, especially among the poorer classes.

The positive and preventive checks upon population hold a definite relation to each other. “In every country where the whole of the procreative power cannot be called into action, the preventive and the positive checks must vary inversely as each other.”XII-6 That is to say, when positive checks, such as famine and war, slay large numbers of people, moral restraint is diminished and the population numbers rapidly increase. When the preventive check expresses itself strongly, the population is kept down numerically, and positive checks, such as famine or even war, are defeated.

Malthus attempted to establish three propositions:

(1) The limitation of population by the restriction of the means of subsistence.

(2) The invariable increase of population whenever the means of subsistence increase, unless prevented by powerful checks.

(3) The factors which keep population on a level with the means of subsistence are all resolvable into three: moral restraint, vice, and misery.XII-7

No one can gainsay the importance or the seriousness of the problem of population. Plato wrestled with it, and urged that procreation when it goes on too fast or too slow should be regulated by the state—through a proper distribution of marks of ignominy or of honor. The number of marriages should be determined by the magistrates.

Aristotle suggested that the ages of marriage for both sexes should be regulated; he even advocated the regulation of the number of children for each marriage. Additional children should be aborted.

Malthus, however, was wiser than either Plato or Aristotle, for he observed that the cause which has the most lasting effect in improving the condition of the poorer classes is the conduct and prudence of the individuals themselves.XII-8 Malthus asserted that it is in the power of each individual to avoid all the evil consequences to himself and society which result from the principle of population, “by the practice of a virtue clearly dictated to him by the light of nature and expressly enjoined in revealed religion.”XII-9

Malthus demonstrated clearly the weakness of liberal poor-laws. Give more food to the poor, and they will produce more children, and suffer more misery. Poor-laws increase the numbers of children of the poor, and hence increase the amount of misery. Both private benevolence and poor-laws increase the number of marriages and of children.XII-10

Education is the solution which Malthus demanded.XII-11 Educate the poor to postpone marriage, to keep the birth rate down, and to practice economic thrift. To a great extent education will secure the operation of the prudential check upon population. The science of moral and political philosophy should not be confined within such narrow limits that it is unable to overcome in practical ways the obstacles to human happiness which arise from the law of population.XII-12

There are factors in the population situation which did not exist at the time of Malthus, or which he did not see. Today there are additional preventive checks upon population, for example, the rise of democracy in the family whereby the wife and mother no longer is dominated by the husband and father, but has a voice of her own regarding domestic matters, such as the number of children. Closely related to this tendency is the feminist movement, or woman’s rights movement, whereby women are demanding that they not be confined to the sphere of bearing and rearing children. Increasing intelligence and foresight has served as a powerful preventive check upon population. The current emphasis upon luxury is inimical to the birth rate. A higher economic status almost uniformly cuts down the birth rate. Within the last score of years the new science of eugenics has attracted widespread attention. Eugenics stresses quality of population. It would effect a decrease in the numbers of children born among the lower classes, among the poorer stocks, and prevent procreation among the mentally deficient. It would increase the birth rate among the cultured and the high grade stocks.

Malthus appreciated the dependence of urban population upon rural districts, but he could not foresee the degree to which cities would grow in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The relative decrease of agricultural labor and the proportional increase in non-agricultural labor has thrown a burden upon the food supply which even Malthus could not forecast.

On the other hand, Malthus did not realize the extent to which new countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina would contribute to the world’s means of subsistence. He could not predict the way in which invention would be applied in solving agricultural problems, and how today one man with improved machinery and intensive methods can produce a hundred ears of corn where one was produced a century ago. Nevertheless, the “new country” argument against Malthus’ principle of population is ultimately fallacious, for new countries soon become old, the supply of new countries becomes exhausted, and there is even a limit to soil productiveness. The very pressure of population against means of subsistence is, however, a cause of inventiveness, so that unanticipated increases in food supply may occur at any time.

Socialism has criticized Malthus severely. Socialism holds that at a given time the food supply is sufficient to meet human needs but that it is poorly or unjustly distributed. With just distribution of the returns from industry, food supply would not impinge strongly on population. But socialism might greatly endanger the prudential check on population, and hence result in an increased birth rate; which in turn would more than balance any release from human misery that a just distribution of the returns from industry would effect.

Another point which Malthus did not observe is that the increase in technical skill which comes with vocational education is overcome by the tendency of the world’s population to overtake the world’s food productiveness. With increase in population, the price of land rises, the rent for land increases, the cost of living mounts upward, and the purchasing power of the dollar, or its equivalent, declines.

Some of the followers of Malthus have advocated birth control as an artificial means of regulating population. Birth control prevents by physical means the birth of children. It is a useful weapon against sexually brutal husbands. It does not provide for self control or moral control of the sexual impulses. It encourages rather than controls gratification of the sexual desires. By it a gain is made in protecting helpless women and in cutting down the birth rate among the lower moral classes, whether wealthy or poor, but the gain is more than lost by the opportunity which birth control gives to the irregular gratification of sexual impulses and by the resultant weakening of moral fibre.

Thomas N. Carver, whose work will be referred to again in subsequent chapters, has developed an interesting population theory which is partly Malthusian.XII-13 The increase in population from both immigration sources and the birth rate should be cut down, thereby decreasing the percentage of unskilled labor. Further, persons should be trained out of the unskilled group into the skilled group and then into the entrepreneur class. Thus, by greatly decreasing the number of unskilled laborers and by increasing the number of entrepreneurs, wages will advance and profits will be increasingly subdivided. The poor will become well-to-do, and poverty as it is now known will tend to disappear. This theory underestimates the importance of psychological motives and of social attitudes under a system where a marked degree of competition is encouraged.

In conclusion, it may be stated that the principle of population as given by Malthus is fundamental to an understanding of the problems of social progress.XII-14 There is a positive relation between population and means of subsistence. Positive and preventive checks upon population are continually at work. Moral restraint and self control, based on scientifically devised human laws, create a better moral fibre than birth control. The quality of personality is far more important than mere numbers of population. The struggle for quality in personality must be supplemented by justice in industrial and social processes before the population problem can be solved.