THE EVOLUTION OF HIGH WAGES. 749 



plete may rightly be questioned even by the unscientific mind. Have 

 its advocates taken cognizance of the human will and of the reason 

 of mankind acting under its direction as the prime factors in the pro- 

 duction and distribution of the material subjects — food, shelter, and 

 clothing — on which material existence depends? If it may be rightly 

 held that such a tendency as that which Malthus thought he had 

 proved had any real foundation, it would have been disclosed during 

 the nineteenth century. It has not been. There has not been a 

 single decade in the nineteenth century in which the means of sub- 

 sistence have not gained rapidly on the population of the globe. The 

 tendency throughout the century has been to abate the dangers and 

 evils of famine, to distribute an increasing abundance of food over 

 wider and wider areas at a lessened cost, to mitigate the horrors of 

 war, and to develop sanitary science. If the theory of Malthus is well 

 grounded, then it follows that the whole of the so-called progress de- 

 veloped in the nineteenth century has been worse than useless. It 

 has been merely increasing the numbers who must ultimately be 

 subjected to the horrors of war, pestilence, and famine, in order that 

 mankind may survive upon the face of the earth. This tendency to 

 increase of relative product has been accompanied by an enormous 

 increase in the capital of the world — that is to say, in the products of 

 labor saved for future reproductive service — and this vast relative in- 

 crease of capital has tended to a great reduction in the normal rate of 

 interest earned in its safe use. The improvements in sanitary science 

 have also led to a very considerable prolongation in the lives of the 

 intelligent. It is probable that the great life-insurance companies 

 have only been saved from the disaster which might have en- 

 sued from the rapid reduction of the safe rates of interest on their 

 investments by this fact that life has been prolonged considerably 

 beyond any of the life tables which are made use of in computing 

 the annual premiums. These gains have not been made by means of 

 the frequent wars of the century, but in spite of them. The effect 

 of war has been to devastate sections of important countries, and to 

 diminish production more than it lessened population. The effect of 

 the conscription of the strongest and healthiest of the men has led 

 to their destruction in great numbers, and to the survival only of the 

 less capable and less fit to reproduce the species. There has even 

 been a distinct deterioration in the size, weight, and physical ener- 

 gies of the population even of great countries like France; yet in 

 spite of these evil influences the population of continental Europe 

 has steadily increased. The application of science and invention 

 has enabled the debt and army ridden countries of Europe — Erance, 

 Germany, Austria, Italy, and Russia — to improve their general con- 

 ditions, and, although these evil influences have kept the great mass 



