October 13, 1923] 



NATURE 



549 



just experienced. During 1922 this percentage has 

 averaged fifteen ; but it averaged over eleven in 1879 

 and over ten- in 1886. These figures are not on an 

 identical basis, and are therefore not absolutely com- 

 parable. Taken for one year only, they understate 

 the relatively greater seriousness of our recent experi- 

 ence, since the unemployment percentage was high 

 through a large part of 192 1 as well as in 1922, and still 

 continues high. But the difference is one of degree 

 rather than of kind. The peril of inferring over- 

 population from unemployment is conclusively shown. 



The experience of 1879 was up to then unparalleled ; 

 probably it was as much worse than anything previously 

 recorded as the experience of 1922 appears worse than 

 that of 1879. The experience of 1879, however, the 

 record year of unemployment, heralded, not over- 

 population and the downfall of British industry, but 

 a period of expansion and prosperity which reached, 

 if it did not pass, all previous records. " Real wages," 

 which had risen thirty per cent, in the twenty years to 

 1880, rose even more rapidly in the next twenty years 

 to 1900. Any one who in 1879, looking at the half or 

 three-quarter million unemployed, had argued that the 

 existing population of the United Kingdom (then about 

 thirty-four millions) was all that the country could 

 support without lowering its standards, would have 

 been lamentably discredited at once. Ten years later 

 he would have found a population nearly three millions 

 more, enjoying a real income per head that was a fifth 

 greater, with the unemployment percentage reduced 

 to two. Ten years later still the population had grown 

 further in size and in prosperity ; those trades had 

 grown most rapidly in which there had been and con- 

 tinued to be the largest percentages of unemployment. 



The problems of unemployment and of over-popula- 

 tion are distinct ; they are two problems, not one. 

 Severe unemployment has occurred in the past without 

 over-population, as a function of the organisation and 

 methods of industry, not of its size. On the other 

 hand, it is very doubtful if excessive growth of popula- 

 tion has ever shown itself or would naturally show 

 itself by causing unemployment. A more probable 

 effect would be pressure to work more than before in 

 order to obtain the same comforts : a fall of real wages 

 per hour, by increase either of hours or of prices. 



The same dependence of unemployment on the 

 organisation and methods of industry, rather than on 

 its size, appears if we look, not backwards in time, but 

 round us in space. It has been pointed out by Prof. 

 Cannan that one of the few groups of economists who 

 from our post-War sufferings can at least obtain the 

 high intellectual satisfaction of saying " I told you so," 

 is that which maintains that changes in the purchasing 

 power of money are the most potent causes of the 

 fluctuations in prosperity known as cycles of trade or 

 booms and depressions. " In the pre-War period 

 booms and depressions swept over the whole western 

 world at once and left their causes obscure. In 1922 

 we have been treated to a sharp contrast between two 

 groups of countries, one group having boom and full 

 employment, the other depression and unemployment, 

 the difference being quite clearly due to the first group 

 having continued the process of currency inflation, the 

 other group having dropped it." To bring this 

 generalisation down to particular examples, we see 



NO. 2815, VOL. I 12] 



in Central Europe a nation which assuredly should 

 be suffering from over-population if any nation is ; 

 Germany, defeated in war, has been compressed within 

 narrower limits, has lost its shipping and foreign 

 investments, its outlets for emigration and trade, and 

 now by high birth-rates is repairing with exceptional 

 speed the human losses of the War. Germany may 

 or may not be suffering from over-population. She 

 certainly has not suffered from unemployment ; she 

 has had a boom stimulated by inflation of the currency. 

 We see on the other hand Britain, victorious in war, 

 with expanded territories and the world open to her, 

 pursuing a different, no doubt a better, currency policy, 

 and experiencing unexampled unemployment. To argue 

 uncritically from unemployment to over-population is 

 to ignore the elements of both problems. 



In regard to Europe as a whole we find no ground 

 for Malthusian pessimism, no shadow of over-popula- 

 tion before the War. Still less do we find them if we 

 widen our view to embrace the world of white men. 

 The fears expressed by Mr. Keynes in his book 

 " Economic Consequences of Peace " seem not merely 

 unnecessary but baseless ; his specific statements are 

 inconsistent with facts. Europe on the eve of war 

 was not threatened with a falling standard of life 

 because Nature's response to further increase in popu- 

 lation was diminishing. It was not diminishing ; it 

 was increasing. Europe on the eve of war was not 

 threatened with hunger by a rising real cost of corn ; 

 the real cost of corn was not rising ; it was falling. 



For Europe and its races the underlying influences 

 in economics were probably still favourable when the 

 War began. But the war damage was great, and we 

 are not in sight of its end. Man for his present troubles 

 has to accuse neither the niggardliness of Nature nor 

 his own instinct of reproduction, but other instincts 

 as primitive and, in excess, as fatal to Utopian dreams. 

 He has to find the remedy elsewhere than in birth 

 control. 



Let me add one word of warning before I finish. 

 Such examination as I have been able to make of 

 economic tendencies before the War yields no ground 

 for alarm as to the immediate future of mankind, no 

 justification for Malthusian panic. It has seemed 

 important to emphasise this, so that false diagnosis 

 should not lead to wrong remedies for the world's 

 sickness to-day. But the last thing I wish is to over- 

 emphasise points of disagreement with Mr. Keynes. 

 The limits of disagreement are really narrow. The 

 phrases that I have criticised are not essential to Mr. 

 Keynes's main argument as to the consequences of 

 the War and the peace. Whether Mr. Keynes is 

 right or, as I think, too pessimistic as to economic 

 tendencies before the War, he will, I am sure, be 

 regarded as right in directing attention again to the im- 

 portance of the problem of population. Nothing that 

 I have said above discredits the fundamental principle 

 of Malthus, reinforced as it can be by the teachings 

 of modem science. The idea that mankind, while 

 reducing indefinitely the risks to human life, can, 

 without disaster, continue to exercise to the full a 

 power of reproduction adapted to the perils of savage 

 or pre-human days, can control death by art and leave 



