WAGES 7 



which govern wages can be had. Accordingly, this 

 work will follow Malthus in designating the wages or 

 living of the workman as his ' subsistence.' We shall 

 argue as Malthus did that subsistence is sjmonymous 

 with food, because it is the plenty or scarcity of food 

 that makes the living of a nation good or poor, and it is 

 the limits to food that place a limit to human numbers. 



As Malthus did also, we shall discuss the question 

 of the subsistence of the whole of the nation and not 

 only of that part of it which comprises the wage-earners, 

 but unlike him we shall return thereafter to a particular 

 consideration of how the extent of subsistence of society 

 as a whole affects that of the work-people. 



At the very outset, however, we must distinguish 

 conditions which Malthus lumped together and which 

 gave rise to confusion. A people is indeed dependent 

 upon its resources for food, but those resources are of 

 two kinds : they are either natural or artificial. It 

 was from the people who live on the natural resources 

 of the world that Malthus drew most of his illustrations 

 showing that the share of the subsistence was depressed 

 through too great numbers. It was easy to show this 

 because in such a state the amount of food is fixed 

 (and does not increase by any progression). But the 

 fact that formerly men relied upon the natural stores 

 of food, and that now a few human beings do so, does 

 not assist the consideration of the question but rather 

 hinders it. Civilised men everywhere live upon an 

 artificial supply of food, and the question therefore is 

 not as to the limitations of the natural supply of food 

 but as to the capacity for the increase of artificial food. 

 The line of investigation into the extent of subsistence 

 commences with the fact that men create their own 

 subsistence, and accordingly we shall devote a short 

 space to illustrating this fact. 



Civilised men make their own food. — Hardly anywhere 

 now are there men who reiy upon the spontaneous 



