Grey River Argus FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1927. THE FEAR OF POPULATION.

Grey River Argus, 2 September 1927, Page 4

Grey River Argus FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1927. THE FEAR OF POPULATION.

If there ever were a vivid test of the liter hopelessness begotten by modern capitalism, it is the basic thesis of the conference at which, to-day’s cables state, some two hundred “Government officials, statesmen, scientists and economists’’ are present at Geneva in order to organise for international study of what is called “one of the most fundamental problems facing mankind, seeing that the size of the earth and its capacity to support human beings are limited, while populations are continually growing and creating social, economic and political situations threatening most profoundly to alter and possibly wreck the present civilisation.” An American professor is also reported as declaring that at the present rate of increase, there will be five thousand million people on earth in the year 2027, which will reach the limit of the earth’s capacity to maintain, and his remedy is an international union to “establish a just peace between peoples, grounded on basic instincts of nutrition and reproduction.” It is surely strange that, instead of before, it should be after, a war of which the effect on the world’s present population is a reduction of fully fifty millions, or nearly a thirtieth of the total, there should be this scare over a difficulty which is attributed to posterity. Yet it is but an illustration of the way in which history reneats itself. At the very rise of modern capitalism exactly the same scare was manufactured by a man upon whom the plutocrats of his day lavished laudations, Parson Malthus, who, to sunnort the doctrine of emnloverdom—and incidentally of Adam Smith—that wa"'e are drawn from capital, instead of capital being drawn from la hour, formulated his notorious theorem that population tends to increase faster than the means oi subsistence. It is conceded that unless Adam Smith had laid the foundation —the theory that the reward of labour depends solely on two things: namely “the magnitude of the national fund out of which all labour is paid, and the number of labourers among whom the fund is to be divided—Malthus could never have postulated his doctrine that the natural tendency of population is to double itself at least every twenty-five years thus increasing in a geometrical ratio; while the subsistence that call be obtained from land “under circumstances the most favourable to human industry could not nossibly be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio, or by an addition everv twenty-five years of a quantity equal to what it at present produces.” The Geneva Conference will first of all ignore the physical fact that no more people can exist than can find subsist ence! Malthus called for a moral check upon increase, and declared that otherwise nature would im- ( pose a “positive cheek” in the

form of vice or misery. This theory really throws the responsibility for poverty and starvation upon Providence, and exculpates the monopolists of the means of subsistence. A contemporary yesterdav printed a diatribe against socialism from the nen of the “Gloomy Dean,” who charges it as a sin of that doctrine that its unholders oppose the limitation of population by artificial and other agencies, and do not swallow the dictum of the well-to-do that the poor should make themselves scarce by means of emigration. There is thus obvious in the counsels of modern capitalism a direct set against the natural increase of population. For one thing, it is doubtless feared that the growing preponderance of the working class spells a social transformation . in which it will no longer be possible for a parasitic minority to infest the backs of the toiling majority. Dean Inge quarrels with the term “proletariat,” but he knows well it can be aptly defined as the

wage-earning class, who spin but do not own, who are robbed at the point of production, who do not make wars but fight them, and who, in short, are the characteristic units of modern ‘ ‘ civilised society, but are compelled to function only as ciphers to those whose pockets bulge with the surplus production of every nation. The prevalence of poverty does certainly seem to corroborate the Malthusian and the wages theory which this Geneva stunt is endeavouring again to propagate throughout the world. It is argued that unemployment is due to the absence of a sufficient wage fund. Yet butter, clothing, wool and other necessaries have been stored away in huge aggregations, and kept from the. people for years past, even until thev rotted, rather than that the people should enjoy them at a price lower than the possessors stipulated. The very refusal to sell has appeared to show no money was available for wages, whilst on the strength of the demand for high prices land values were kept high and land itself kept from producing. The triumph of the theory that nature is hostile to the natural growth of the human family was and is due to the fact that it has menaced no vested right and antagonised no powerfid interest, but is eminent! ■ soothing and even reassuring to the classes who, wielding the power of wealth, have till lately very largelv dominated the thought of humanity. These theories parry' the demand for social amelioration, and give Dives the philosophy by which he can shut out from his feasts the image of hungry Lazarus fainting at his door. Dean Inge interprets the population and wage theories in a way such that wealth may with a good conscience button up its pocket when poverty asks an alms, and the rich Christian maybend on Sunday in a richly upholstered pew to implore the good gifts of the Almighty without feeling any responsibilit- 1 ’ for the

squalor outside ms eatnearan door! Yet there is no warrant by analogy or experience for assuming population increases faster than subsistence. The obvious truth is that in the classes where wealth and like amenities are evenly distributed, population does not increase nearly as quickie as among the poor who are occupied wholly with. the battle for sustenance, either in new .or in old countries. History indeed proves that in any given state of civilisation, a greater number of people can be collectively better provided for than a smaller number. The communities which in, our own era have advanced most quickly in population have at the same time advanced most quickly in weath—as in England, Germany and America. It is the same as between the greater and less populous of the United States. Look at the marvellous increase in the productivity of labour conferred bv invention and the advance of mechanical arts! Where labour is thte most efficient, the wealth average is greatest, and where labour is best paid, it is the most efficient. . Those countries where nature is most prolific are not the richest- —such as Mexico or Brazil or parts of Africa. Yet real wealth can only be accumulated to a slight degree, and labour is as essential for its preservation as for its production. The increase of population has everywhere increased the average wealth. It is the very/ truth that want is greatest where productive power is greatest and the actual wealth production is largest that not only disproves the basic assumption of the copulation conference at Geneva, but points the accusing finger at modern, capitalism. It is not any relative decrease of productive power on the part of increasing population that explains the want and hardship so widely evident to-day as to coerce capitalism into staging this stunt at Geneva. There is enough and to spare on earth for all. The root evil lies in the unfair methods of distributing the means of subsistence and the bare existence . now decreed for the majority is not the decree of God or of nature, but of man. If these scientists and politicians at Geneva want to study the question properbthey should begin with the system of monopoly, instead of with the condition of poverty. The law that decrees to one only an existence and to another all the surplus wealth available is of human, origin. In fine, it is not the victims who should go upon the operating table, but the v ictimisers.