748 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ever enjoyed commerce free from restrictions before, there is a full 

 and complete justification of tlie axiom of Frederic Bastiat: " In pro- 

 portion to the increase of capital, the absolute share (of a given 

 product) falling to capital is augmented, but the relative share is 

 diminished ; on the other hand, the share falling to labor is increased 

 both aljsolutely and relatively." We witness decade by decade in- 

 creased production, lessened prices, higher wages, lessened cost of 

 labor. 



In addressing this association I may therefore venture to deal with 

 deeper principles than those which govern the mere compilation of 

 statistics. 



It is but a year over a century since Malthus published his 

 treatise upon population, in which he formulated what he believed 

 to be a rule — namely, a tendency of population to increase in a 

 geometrical ratio, while, as he believed, the means of subsistence 

 could only increase in an arithmetical ratio. On this alleged tend- 

 ency of population to Outgrow the means of subsistence he based a 

 rule which has since been called a survival of the fittest. He regarded 

 the destructive influences of war, pestilence, and famine as necessary 

 elements in limiting population to the possibility of subsistence. 

 This theory of Malthus later became joined to a theory of a lessened 

 production of food on given areas of land in ratio to the work done 

 upon it, which I believe originated with Ricardo. These two pes- 

 simistic conceptions rightly brought upon political economy the name 

 of the dismal science. Subsequently, and in recent years, both Dar- 

 win and Wallace have stated that they derived the theory of a natural 

 selection or a survival of the fittest from the treatise of Malthus, 

 which gave to each of them a direction in their study of natural 

 forces which led in the end to their great work in establishing the 

 principle of evolution. It would be presumptuous on the part of any 

 member of one of the unlearned professions to pass judgment upon 

 this theory in its application to animal life viewed wholly on the 

 physical side. Yet, while we must admit that the experience of a 

 century does not suffice either to prove or to disprove any such far- 

 reaching proposition as that of Malthus, we may rightly ask if it is 

 not true that if there were a tendency of population to outgrow the 

 means of subsistence, that tendency could not fail to have disclosed 

 itself even within the short period of a hundred years. The fact that 

 there has been no such tendency has an important bearing on the 

 right definition of survival of the fittest. 



All hypotheses must in the end be tested by the logic of facts 

 and by the common sense of the community regarded as a whole. 'So 

 theory survives which is not true and complete in all its bearings. 

 Whether or not the theory of evolution as it is now stated is com- 



