WAGES 9 



subsist where before were wilds maintaining a scanty 

 population upon the natural produce, animal and 

 vegetable. Australia with its four million inhabi- 

 tants of well nourished food-makers is now under- 

 peopled, while before, with half a million of human 

 beings relying upon what nutriment they could find, it 

 was filled to its capacity. In India and China hundreds 

 of millions of the species, by causing almost every yard 

 of land to produce food, live in territories which in a 

 state of nature would not yield food enough for one 

 in a hundred of their present inhabitants. Lastly 

 Africa, for long in the north and latterly in the south, 

 has yielded to the sway of the food-makers, who live in 

 millions where before the non-food-makers in thousands 

 suffered a dearth. 



In short a world that originally was over-filled with 

 twenty million of the species, driven interminably to 

 war with each other to secure a part of the scanty 

 subsistence with which nature provided them, now 

 supports two thousand million of better-fed inhabitants. 

 Their subsistence is brought about and caused to be 

 by their own exertions ; and men now are themselves 

 the makers of their food. 



The manner of the manufacture of food. — If men 

 make their own food we must next inquire into the 

 manner in which they carry out this deed. Prima 

 facie, if the human race makes its own sustenance it 

 ought to be able to make just as much as it requires of 

 this commodity as in the case of other manufactured 

 commodities, and such a condition as population out- 

 running subsistence ought to be unknown ; with more 

 hands it ought to be possible to make more food. We 

 know, however, that this is not the case, and if we 

 inquire into the process of the manufacture of food 

 we shall see why we are limited both as to the amount 

 that the individual can manufacture and as to the total 

 amount that any people can make for itself. 



