38 WAGES AND EMPIRE 



Knowledge certainly is ever improving the process 

 and rendering it capable of yielding more food to an 

 equal outlay of labour, but the maximum of which the 

 system is susceptible is attainable only on a portion of 

 the earth — roughly the eighth part of the dry surface. 

 When food-making is carried on at such places men's 

 living is determined by the state of science and increases 

 with its extension. But when subsistence is gleaned 

 from other portions of the earth this extent of living 

 is detracted from by the refractory nature of the 

 medium to which the agricultural method is applied. 

 Labour which should be devoted to the conversion of 

 food is spent not on this operation, but in fashioning 

 aright the medium. Hence the subsistence of many 

 nations is not regulated by the volume of the world's 

 science (though they may and many of them do employ 

 it to the full), but by the shortage of their land, the 

 medium through which the art of food-making to-day 

 works. 



The remedy for land shortage. — For some of the 

 populations of the world such a state of things seems 

 inevitable, for as long as they propagate at their 

 present rates it is useless to place at their disposition 

 fresh portions of the earth's surface. The alleviations 

 which they might thereby gain would be dissipated 

 in a short time by a congestion of population again on 

 the new tracts of land, and until their characteristics 

 undergo a change it is futile to contemplate an 

 improvement of their condition by placing at their 

 disposition more land. We shall therefore leave out 

 of consideration the contemplation of an improvement 

 in the lot of such people. 



The characteristics of the European peoples are, 

 however, quite different ; they do not exhibit either 

 the same capacity for increase or the same recklessness 

 in giving it rein as do the Asiatics and Africans ; it 

 is even possible to contemplate a regulation of their 



