PROGRESS AND POVERTY. -jzy 



ence. How this and the wage-fund theory mutually support each 

 other is evident. " According to the current doctrine of wages," says 

 Mr. George, " wages fall as increase in the number of laborers necessi- 

 tates a more minute division of capital ; according to the Malthusian 

 theory, poverty appears as increase in population necessitates the more 

 minute division of subsistence. It requires but the identification of 

 capital with subsistence and number of laborers with population to 

 make the two propositions as identical formally as they are substantial- 

 ly." Mr. George does not deny that the capacity of the earth to sup- 

 port life is limited, and that there are, therefore, bounds to the popu- 

 lation that can exist, but he does deny that there is any tendency of 

 population to outrun subsistence, or that there has ever been any his- 

 toric instance of a people unable to continue from such a cause. 



In support of this view Mr. George reviews the condition of China^ 

 India, and Ireland, to find that in none of them population has yet 

 pressed upon the means of subsistence so as to decrease the relative 

 production of food, or to increase poverty, vice, misery, and crime. 

 The lower animals, indeed, may press against the limits of subsistence. 

 They can only take such food as can be found. With man the case is 

 widely different. By breeding he can take advantage of the greater 

 rate of reproduction of the lower animals and of the reproductive 

 rate of plants. His powers of producing food may be indefinitely ex- 

 panded, while his rate of reproduction is in the course of civilization 

 not increasing. Historically the doctrine is not found to be true, and 

 it is not consonant with many of the facts of observation. The es- 

 sence of the doctrine of Malthus is, that the power of producing 

 wealth does not keep pace with population — that in a dense population 

 the power of producing wealth is proportionately less than in a sparse 

 one. It may be objected that " the power of producing wealth " should 

 read "the power of producing food." But, so long as the ichole earth 

 can supply enough food for the whole of its inhabitants, the power 

 of producing wealth in any community is equivalent to the power of 

 producing food, because, in consequence of a multitude of exchanges, 

 wealth commands food. That a dense population produces less wealth 

 per member than a sparse one is glaringly at variance with the facts. 

 It is in the very densest population that this power increases enormously 

 in proportion to the number of people. It is to effect this result that 

 all the labor-saving machines exist and all the appliances of exchange 

 have been called into being. 



The Malthusian doctrine of population and the wage-fund theory 

 of the relations of labor and capital being disproved, the ground is 

 cleared for a consideration of what their true relations are. 



As befoi-e stated, all wealth produced must be divided between 

 three things — land, labor, and capital. The shares of these factors in 

 production must stand in soroe relation with each other, such that two 

 of them being given the other is determined, or that, one being givenj 



