46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



hindrance does not overbalance the added help. If we ignore social 

 hindrances to individual well-being, we shall come out just where the 

 mechanical inventor does who ignores friction. 



These hindrances arise in various ways. The very existence of our 

 fellow-beings, if in too large numbers, is a hindrance. We may de- 

 nounce Malthus as much as we like, but we can not deny the awful 

 consequences of world-crowding. Doubtless it has goaded on inventive 

 genius, and thus promoted mutual helpfulness ; but, like most social 

 causes which work remote good, it has worked also immediate evil, 

 and the bones of its pallid victims lie buried in the earth by countless 

 millions. Many writers have been troubled about the matter, and es- 

 pecially about the future it seems to promise. Others have succeeded 

 in convincing themselves that there is no danger, and that the denser 

 the population the happier the individual. The truth which they dis- 

 tort into this error is that the evil effects of world-crowding have been 

 partially offset, in some places more than offset, by new discoveries 

 which cheapened production. It was not always so, and may not 

 always be so. Certainly there are no more new continents to discover. 

 How many new substances, or new powers and uses of old ones, are 

 yet to discover, can not be guessed. But meantime world-crowding, 

 the natural increase of the human species, is going on, and is constantly 

 thrusting human beings into one another's way. We might as well 

 face this truth as deny it, if we are going to study science. Our 

 shrinking from a truth because it is disagreeable, unfortunately does 

 not make it a whit less true. Up to a certain point, and it is a mov- 

 able point, increase of population is beneficial. There is a certain den- 

 sity of population which is more desirable than any other than any 

 greater or any less. This movable point of most desirable density of 

 population is moved constantly upward by the inventors who crowd 

 the Patent-Office, by the projectors of great enterprises, and by the 

 skillful organizers of industry ; as well as by the statesmen who simplify 

 and perfect the government, and the religious, moral, and economic 

 teachers who facilitate adjustment of the relations of crowding and 

 jostling human beings. As the bounds are thus extended, population 

 grows and fills them sometimes not quite, but alas ! sometimes it 

 quite outgrows them. Before any other explanation of the wretched 

 condition of a community is offered, this one of population should be 

 fully considered. 



The grave question which each one asks himself as he gazes upon 

 his own offspring, and wonders what will be the condition of their 

 offspring some generations removed, is, Will this world-crowding re- 

 lieve itself by checking reproduction as well as by stimulating mutual 

 helpfulness ; or will the time come, and how soon, when the only pos- 

 sible object of economic study w T ill be to postpone the universal 

 poverty and starvation of the human race, rather than, as now, to 

 constantly better its condition ? If a satisfactory answer to this ques- 



