358 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Of course the check to population resulting from the desire for social 

 betterment is a purely voluntary one, yet it is a good example of a 

 social law that men under certain conditions will choose to refrain from 

 having large families. 



In applying this law it must be borne in mind that conditions vary 

 greatly with different individuals and with different countries. If a 

 man is able to raise his standard of living without great exertion, as is 

 usually the case in a new country, no check to population may be ex- 

 pected. Or, if a man by exceptional abilities is able to maintain a high 

 standard of living with comparative ease, he will not be influenced by 

 the same considerations as the average man. If, on the one hand, men 

 who easily raise their standard of living propagate freely, those who are 

 unable to change their social position at all also propagate freely. In 

 a caste system of society, or in an absolute despotism like that of Eussia, 

 the lower classes propagate blindly because they see no possibility of 

 rising. No 'social capillarity' exists for them. In other words popu- 

 lation is not held in check by a social law, but by a physical one. It is 

 limited by the means of subsistence, according to the Malthusian law. 

 Even among the lower classes of a great industrial center the same prin- 

 ciple acts. Unskilled laborers attain the maximum wage at an early 

 age and increased efforts on their part affect their social condition so 

 little that they do not feel the social check and therefore propagate 

 recklessly from hopelessness. A man in the lowest social class has no 

 social position to lose, and only the best equipped can improve their 

 condition sufficiently to feel the social restriction on population. To ad- 

 vise the laboring classes to limit their numbers in order to improve their 

 condition, as the old economists did, is putting the cart before the 

 horse. When the economic condition of the lowest industrial class 

 improves enough to give its members some hope, they will begin to 

 limit their numbers voluntarily in order further to improve their con- 

 dition. 



If, then, the class that rises easily in the social scale and the class 

 which does not rise at all propagate freely the social check applies to 

 that large class which rises, though only with great effort. It would 

 appear then that in a pure democracy where increased reward always 

 followed increased effort, the population would regulate itself auto- 

 matically, because increased population would increase competition and 

 that would bring about the social check. Its application to some of 

 our large cities will be readily understood by those who are acquainted 

 with the social conditions existins: in them. Their enormous increase 

 of population has increased competition to such an extent that only 

 the best equipped — as compared with other members of the same class, 

 not with inferior classes — can easily maintain the standard of living 



