IX GOVERNMENT 42'J 



of the wage earners. It is their 



one anotj^rjvvhjchjQiakesJiis,trengtli. 



Over-population has two sources : one internal 

 by generation, one external by immigration. 

 Theoretically, the elimination of Want is possible 

 by the arrest of both, in such a manner as to 

 restrict the population of any area to the number 

 capable of being fed by the agricultural produce 

 of that area ; the manufacturing and professional 

 population being kept down to a number equal to 

 the difference between the necessary agricultural 

 and the total permissible population. A polity 

 of this kind might be self-supporting, and there 

 need be no poverty in it, except such as arose from 

 moral delinquencies or unavoidable calamities. 



This is, substantially, the plan of the " Closed 

 Industrial State " * set forth by Fichte ; and, so 

 far as I can see, there is no other social arrange- 

 ment by which Want can be permanently elimi- 

 nated. For if either unrestricted generation or 

 unrestricted immigration is permitted ; or if any 

 considerable proportion of the industrial popula- 

 tion is allowed to depend for its food upon foreign 

 sources, pauperism becomes imminent in the 

 first case, by the competition of the native and 

 the imported workers with one another ; in 

 the second case, by the competition in the market 

 of foreign industries of the same nature. 



I offer no opinion whether Fichte's Utopia is 

 1 Der geschlossenc Handclsstaat, 1800. 



