Principles of Economics: An introductory volume
by Alfred Marshall
1890

 Book IV The Agents of Production Land, Labour, and Capital and Organization Chapter 1 Introductory 1. The agents of production are commonly classed as Land, Labour and Capital. By Land is meant the material and the forces which Nature gives freely for man's aid, in land and water, in air and light and heat. By Labour is meant: the economic work of man, whether with the hand or the head.(1*) By Capital is meant all stored-up provision for the production of material goods, and for the attainment of those benefits which are commonly reckoned as part of income. It is the main stock of wealth regarded as an agent of production rather than as a direct source of gratification. Capital consists in a great part of knowledge and organization: and of this some part is private property and other part is not. Knowledge is our most powerful engine of production; it enables us to subdue Nature and force her to satisfy our wants. Organization aids knowledge; it has many forms, e.g. that of a single business, that of various businesses in the same trade, that of various trades relatively to one another, and that of the State providing security for all and help for many. The distinction between public and private property in knowledge and organization is of great and growing importance: in some respects of more importance than that between public and private property in material things; and partly for that reason it seems best sometimes to reckon Organization apart as a distinct agent of production. It cannot be fully examined till a much later stage in our inquiry; but something has to be said of it in the present Book. In a sense there are only two agents of production, nature and man. Capital and organization are the result of the work of man aided by nature, and directed by his power of forecasting the future and his willingness to make provision for it. If the character and powers of nature and of man be given, the growth of wealth and knowledge and organization follow from them as effect from cause. But on the other hand man is himself largely formed by his surroundings, in which nature plays a great part: and thus from every point of view man is the centre of the problem of production as well as that of consumption; and also of that further problem of the relations between the two, which goes by the twofold name of Distribution and Exchange. The growth of mankind in numbers, in health and strength, in knowledge, ability, and in richness of character is the end of all our studies: but it is an aim to which economics can do no more than contribute some important elements. In its broader aspects therefore the study of this growth belongs to the end, if to any part of a treatise on economics: but does not properly belong even there. Meanwhile we cannot avoid taking account of the direct agency of man in production, and of the conditions which govern his efficiency as a producer. And on the whole it is perhaps the most convenient course, as it certainly is that most in accordance with English tradition, to include some account of the growth of population in numbers and character as a part of the general discussion of production. 2. It is not possible at this stage to do more than indicate very slightly the general relations between demand and supply, between consumption and production. But it may be well, while the discussion of utility and value is fresh in our minds, to take a short glance at the relations between value and the disutility or discommodity that has to be overcome in order to obtain those goods which have value because they are at once desirable and difficult of attainment. All that can be said now must be provisional; and may even seem rather to raise difficulties than to solve them: and there will be an advantage in having before us a map, in however slight and broken outline, of the ground to be covered. While demand is based on the desire to obtain commodities, supply depends mainly on the overcoming of the unwillingness to undergo "discommodities." These fall generally under two heads: -- labour, and the sacrifice involved in putting off consumption. It must suffice here to give a sketch of the part played by ordinary labour in supply. It will be seen hereafter that remarks similar, though not quite the same, might have been made about the work of management and the sacrifice which is involved (sometimes, but not always) in that waiting which is involved in accumulating the means of production. The discommodity of labour may arise from bodily or mental fatigue, or from its being carried on in unhealthy surroundings, or with unwelcome associates, or from its occupying time that is wanted for recreation, or for social or intellectual pursuits. But whatever be the form of the discommodity, its intensity nearly always increases with the severity and the duration of labour. Of course much exertion is undergone for its own sake, as for instance in mountaineering, in playing games and in the pursuit of literature, of art, and of science; and much hard work is done under the influence of a desire to benefit others.(2*) But the chief motive to most labour, in our use of the term, is the desire to obtain some material advantage; which in the present state of the world appears generally in the form of the gain of a certain amount of money. It is true that even when a man is working for hire he often finds pleasure in his work: but he generally gets so far tired before it is done that he is glad when the hour for stopping arrives. Perhaps after he has been out of work for some time, he might, as far as his immediate comfort is concerned, rather work for nothing than not work at all; but he will probably prefer not to spoil his market, any more than a manufacturer would, by offering what he has for sale much below its normal price. On this matter much will need to be said in another volume. In technical phrase this may be called the marginal disutility of labour. For, as with every increase in the amount of a commodity its marginal utility falls; and as with every fall in that desirableness, there is a fall in the price that can be got for the whole of the commodity, and not for the last part only; so the marginal disutility of labour generally increases, with every increase in its amount. The unwillingness of anyone already in an occupation to increase his exertions depends, under ordinary circumstances, on fundamental principles of human nature which economists have to accept as ultimate facts. As Jevons remarks,(3*) there is often some resistance to be overcome before setting to work. Some little painful effort is often involved at starting; but this gradually diminishes to zero, and is succeeded by pleasure; which increases for a while until it attains a certain low maximum. after which it diminishes to zero, and is succeeded by increasing weariness and craving for relaxation and change. In intellectual work, however, the pleasure and excitement, after they have once set in, often go on increasing till progress is stopped of necessity or by prudence. Everyone in health has a certain store of energy on which he can draw, but which can only be replaced by rest; so that if his expenditure exceed his income for long, his health becomes bankrupt; and employers often find that in cases of great need a temporary increase of pay will induce their workmen to do an amount of work which they cannot long keep up, whatever they are paid for it. One reason of this is that the need for relaxation becomes more urgent with every increase in the hours of labour beyond a certain limit. The disagreeableness of additional work increases; partly because, as the time left for rest and other activities diminishes, the agreeableness of additional free time increases. Subject to these and some other qualifications, it is broadly true that the exertions which any set of workers will make, rise or fall with a rise or fall in the remuneration which is offered to them. As the price required to attract purchasers for any given amount of a commodity, was called the demand price for that amount during a year or any other given time; so the price required to call forth the exertion necessary for producing any given amount of a commodity, may be called the supply price for that amount during the same time. And if for the moment we assumed that production depended solely upon the exertions of a certain number of workers, already in existence and trained for their work, we should get a list of supply prices corresponding to the list of demand prices which we have already considered. This list would set forth theoretically in one column of figures various amounts of exertion and therefore of production; and in a parallel column the prices which must be paid to induce the available workers to put forth these amounts of exertion.(4*) But this simple method of treating the supply of work of any kind, and consequently the supply of goods made by that work, assumes that the number of those who are qualified for it is fixed; and that assumption can be made only for short periods of time. The total numbers of the people change under the action of many causes. Of these causes only some are economic; but among them the average earnings of labour take a prominent place; though their influence on the growth of numbers is fitful and irregular. But the distribution of the population between different trades is more subject to the influence of economic causes. In the long run the supply of labour in any trade is adapted more or less closely to the demand for it: thoughtful parents bring up their children to the most advantageous occupations to which they have access; that is to those that offer the best reward, in wages and other advantages, in return for labour that is not too severe in quantity or character, and for skill that is not too hard to be acquired. This adjustment between demand and supply can however never be perfect; fluctuations of demand may make it much greater or much less for a while, even for many years, than would have been just sufficient to induce parents to select for their children that trade rather than some other of the same class. Although therefore the reward to be had for any kind of work at any time does stand in some relation to the difficulty of acquiring the necessary skill combined with the exertion, the disagreeableness, the waste of leisure, etc. involved in the work itself; yet this correspondence is liable to great disturbances. The study of these disturbances is a difficult task; and it will occupy us much in later stages of our work. But the present Book is mainly descriptive and raises few difficult problems. NOTES: 1. Labour is classed as economic when it is "undergone partly or wholly with a view to some good other than the pleasure directly derived from it." See p. 65 and footnote. Such labour with the head as does not tend directly or indirectly to promote material production, as for instance the work of the schoolboy at his tasks, is left out of account, so long as we are confining our attention to production in the ordinary sense of the term. From some points of view, but not from all, the phrase Land, Labour, Capital would be more symmetrical if labour were interpreted to mean the labourers, i.e. mankind. See Walras, ֹconomie Politique Pure, Leחon 17, and Prof. Fisher, Economic Journal, VI, p. 529. 2. We have seen (p. 124) that, if a person makes the whole of his purchases at the price which he would be just willing to pay for his last purchases, he gains a surplus of satisfaction on his earlier purchases; since he gets them for less than he would have paid rather than go without them. So, if the price paid to him for doing any work is an adequate reward for that part which he does most unwillingly; and if, as generally happens, the same payment is given for that part of the work which he does less unwillingly and at less real cost to himself; then from that part he obtains a producer's surplus. Some difficulties connected with this notion are considered in Appendix K. The labourer's unwillingness to sell his labour for less than its normal price resembles the unwillingness of manufacturers to spoil their market by pushing goods for sale at a low price; even though, so far as the particular transaction is concerned, they would rather take the low price than let their works stand idle. 3. Theory of Political Economy, Ch. V. This doctrine has been emphasized and developed in much detail by Austrian and American economists. 4. See above III, iii, section 4. Chapter 2 The Fertility of Land 1. The requisites of production are commonly spoken of as land, labour and capital: those material things which owe their usefulness to human labour being classed under capital, and those which owe nothing to it being classed as land. The distinction is obviously a loose one: for bricks are but pieces of earth slightly worked up; and the soil of old settled countries has for the greater part been worked over many times by man, and owes to him its present form. There is however a scientific principle underlying the distinction. While man has no power of creating matter, he creates utilities by putting things into a useful form;(1*) and the utilities made by him can be increased in supply if there is an increased demand for them: they have a supply price. But there are other utilities over the supply of which he has no control; they are given as a fixed quantity by nature and have therefore no supply price. The term "land" has been extended by economists so as to include the permanent sources of these utilities;(2*) whether they are found in land, as the term is commonly used, or in seas and rivers, in sunshine and rain, in winds and waterfalls. When we have inquired what it is that marks off land from those material things which we regard as products of the land, we shall find that the fundamental attribute of land is its extension. The right to use a piece of land gives command over a certain space -- a certain part of the earth's surface. The area of the earth is fixed: the geometric relations in which any particular part of it stands to other parts are fixed. Man has no control over them; they are wholly unaffected by demand; they have no cost of production, there is no supply price at which they can be produced. The use of a certain area of the earth's surface is a primary condition of anything that man can do; it gives him room for his own actions, with the enjoyment of the heat and the light, the air and the rain which nature assigns to that area; and it determines his distance from, and in a great measure his relations to, other things and other persons. We shall find that it is this property of "land" which, though as yet insufficient prominence has been given to it, is the ultimate cause of the distinction which all writers on economics are compelled to make between land and other things. It is the foundation of much that is most interesting and most difficult in economic science. Some parts of the earth's surface contribute to production chiefly by the services which they render to the navigator: others are of chief value to the miner; others -- though this selection is made by man rather than by nature -- to the builder. But when the productiveness of land is spoken of our first thoughts turn to its agricultural use. 2. To the agriculturist an area of land is the means of supporting a certain amount of vegetable, and perhaps ultimately of animal, life. For this purpose the soil must have certain mechanical and chemical qualities. Mechanically, it must be so far yielding that the fine roots of plants can push their way freely in it; and yet it must be firm enough to give them a good hold. It must not err as some sandy soils do by affording water too free a passage: for then it will often be dry, and the plant food will be washed away almost as soon as it is formed in the soil or put into it. Nor must it err, as stiff clays do, by not allowing the water a fairly free passage. For constant supplies of fresh water, and of the air that it brings with it in its journey through the soil, are essential: they convert into plant food the minerals and gases that otherwise would be useless or even poisonous. The action of fresh air and water and of frosts are nature's tillage of the soil; and even unaided they will in time make almost any part of the earth' s surface fairly fertile if the soil that they form can rest where it is, and is not torn away down-hill by rain and torrents as soon as it is formed. But man gives great aid in this mechanical preparation of the soil. The chief purpose of his tillage is to help nature to enable the soil to hold plant roots gently but firmly, and to enable the air and water to move about freely in it. And farmyard manure subdivides clay soils and makes them lighter and more open; while to sandy soils it gives a much needed firmness of texture, and helps them, mechanically as well as chemically, to hold the materials of plant food which would otherwise be quickly washed out of them. Chemically the soil must have the inorganic elements that the plant wants in a form palatable to it; and in some cases man can make a great change with but little labour. For he can then turn a barren into a very fertile soil by adding a small quantity of just those things that are needed; using in most cases either lime in some of its many forms, or those artificial manures which modern chemical science has provided in great variety: and he is now calling in the aid of bacteria to help him in this work. 3. By all these means the fertility of the soil can be brought under man's control. He can by sufficient labour make almost any land bear large crops. He can prepare the soil mechanically and chemically for whatever crops he intends to grow next. He can adapt his crops to the nature of the soil and to one another; selecting such a rotation that each will leave the land in such a state, and at such a time of year, that it can be worked up easily and without loss of time into a suitable seed bed for the coming crop. He can even permanently alter the nature of the soil by draining it, or by mixing with it other soil that will supplement its deficiencies. Hitherto this has been done only on a small scale; chalk and lime, clay and marl have been but thinly spread over the fields; a completely new soil has seldom been made except in gardens and other favoured spots. But it is possible, and even as some think probable, that at some future time the mechanical agencies used in making railways and other great earthworks may be applied on a large scale to creating a rich soil by mixing two poor soils with opposite faults. All these changes are likely to be carried out more extensively and thoroughly in the future than in the past. But even now the greater part of the soil in cold countries owes much of its character to human action; all that lies just below the surface has in it a large element of capital, the produce of man's past labour. Those free gifts of nature which Ricardo classed as the "inherent" and "indestructible" properties of the soil, have been largely modified; partly impoverished and partly enriched by the work of many generations of men. But it is different with that which is above the surface. Every acre has given to it by nature an annual income of heat and light, of air and moisture; and over these man has but little control. He may indeed alter the climate a little by extensive drainage works or by planting forests, or cutting them down. But, on the whole, the action of the sun and the wind and the rain are an annuity fixed by nature for each plot of land. Ownership of the land gives possession of this annuity: and it also gives the space required for the life and action of vegetables and animals; the value of this space being much affected by its geographical position. We may then continue to use the ordinary distinction between the original or inherent properties, which the land derives from nature, and the artificial properties which it owes to human action; provided we remember that the first include the space-relations of the plot in question, and the annuity that nature has given it of sunlight and air and rain; and that in many cases these are the chief of the inherent properties of the soil. It is chiefly from them that the ownership of agricultural land derives its peculiar significance, and the Theory of Rent its special character. 4. But the question how far the fertility of any soil is due to the original properties given to it by nature, and how far to the changes in it made by man, cannot be fully discussed without taking account of the kind of produce raised from it. Human agency can do much more to promote the growth of some crops than of others. At one end of the scale are forest trees; an oak well planted and with plenty of room has very little to gain from man's aid: there is no way of applying labour to it so as to obtain any considerable return. Nearly the same may be said of the grass on some rich river bottoms which are endowed with a rich soil and good natural drainage; wild animals feeding off this grass without man's care will farm it nearly as well as he does; and much of the richest farm land in England (paying a rent of £6 an acre and upwards) would give to unaided nature almost as great a return as is got from it now. Next comes land which, though not quite so rich, is still kept in permanent pasture; and after this comes arable land on which man does not trust to nature's sowing, but prepares for each crop a seed bed to suit its special wants, sows the seed himself and weeds away the rivals to it. The seeds which he sows are selected for their habit of quickly maturing and fully developing just those parts which are most useful to him; and though the habit of making this selection carefully is only quite modern, and is even now far from general, yet the continued work of thousands of years has given him plants that have but little resemblance to their wild ancestors. Lastly, the kinds of produce which owe most to man's labour and care are the choicer kinds of fruits, flowers and vegetables, and of animals, particularly those which are used for improving their own breeds. For while nature left to herself would select those that are best able to take care of themselves and their offspring, man selects those which will provide him most quickly with the largest supplies of the things he most wants; and many of the choicest products could not hold their own at all without his care. Thus various then are the parts which man plays in aiding nature to raise the different kinds of agricultural produce. In each case he works on till the extra return got by extra capital and labour has so far diminished that it will no longer remunerate him for applying them. Where this limit is soon reached he leaves nature to do nearly all the work; where his share in the production has been great, it is because he has been able to work far without reaching this limit. We are thus brought to consider the law of diminishing return. It is important to note that the return to capital and labour now under discussion is measured by the amount of the produce raised independently of any changes that may meanwhile take place in the exchange value or price of produce; such, for instance, as might occur if a new railway had been made in the neighbourhood, or the population of the county had increased much, while agricultural produce could not be imported easily. Such changes will be of vital importance when we come to draw inferences from the law of diminishing return, and particularly when we discuss the pressure of increasing population on the means of subsistence. But they have no bearing on the law itself, because that has to do not with the value of the produce raised, but only with its amount.(3*) NOTES: 1. See Book II, Chapter iii. 2. In Ricardo's famous phrase "the original and indestructible powers of the soil." Von Th�nen, in a noteworthy discussion of the basis of the theory of rent, and of the positions which Adam Smith and Ricardo took with regard to it, speaks of "Der Boden an sich"; a phrase which unfortunately cannot be translated, but which means the soil as it would be by itself, if not altered by the action of man (Der Isolierte Staat, 1, i, 5). 3. But see the latter part of IV, iii, section 8; also IV, xiii, section 2. Chapter 3 The Fertility of Land, Continued, The Tendency to Diminishing Return 1. The law of or statement of tendency to Diminishing Return may be provisionally worded thus: An increase in the capital and labour applied in the cultivation of land causes in general a less than proportionate increase in the amount of produce raised, unless it happens to coincide with an improvement in the arts of agriculture. We learn from history and by observation that every agriculturist in every age and clime desires to have the use of a good deal of land; and that when he cannot get it freely, he will pay for it, if he has the means. If he thought that he would get as good results by applying all his capital and labour to a very small piece, he would not pay for any but a very small piece. When land that requires no clearing is to be had for nothing, everyone uses just that quantity which he thinks will give his capital and labour the largest return. His cultivation is "extensive," not "intensive." He does not aim at getting many bushels of corn from any one acre, for then he would cultivate only a few acres. His purpose is to get as large a total crop as possible with a given expenditure of seed and labour; and therefore he sows as many acres as he can manage to bring under a light cultivation. Of course he may go too far: he may spread his work over so large an area that he would gain by concentrating his capital and labour on a smaller space; and under these circumstances if he could get command over more capital and labour so as to apply more to each acre, the land would give him an Increasing Return; that is, an extra return larger in proportion than it gives to his present expenditure. But if he has made his calculations rightly, he is using just so much ground as will give him the highest return; and he would lose by concentrating his capital and labour on a smaller area. If he had command over more capital and labour and were to apply more to his present land, he would gain less than he would by taking up more land; he would get a Diminishing Return, that is, an extra return smaller in proportion than he gets for the last applications of capital and labour that he now makes, provided of course that there is meanwhile no perceptible improvement in his agricultural skill. As his sons grow up they will have more capital and labour to apply to land; and in order to avoid obtaining a diminishing return, they will want to cultivate more land. But perhaps by this time all the neighbouring land is already taken up, and in order to get more they must buy it or pay a rent for the use of it, or migrate where they can get it for nothing.(1*) This tendency to a diminishing return was the cause of Abraham's parting from Lot,(2*) and most of the migrations of which history tells. And wherever the right to cultivate land is much in request, we may be sure that the tendency to a diminishing return is in full operation. Were it not for this tendency every farmer could save nearly the whole of his rent by giving up all but a small piece of his land, and bestowing all his capital and labour on that. If all the capital and labour which he would in that case apply to it, gave as good a return in proportion as that which he now applies to it, he would get from that plot as large a produce as he now gets from his whole farm; and he would make a net gain of all his rent save that of the little plot that he retained. It may be conceded that the ambition of farmers often leads them to take more land than they can properly manage: and indeed almost every great authority on agriculture from Arthur Young downwards, has inveighed against this mistake. But when they tell a farmer that he would gain by applying his capital and labour to a smaller area, they do not necessarily mean that he would get a larger gross produce. It is sufficient for their argument that the saving in rent would more than counterbalance any probable diminution of the total returns that he got from the land. If a farmer pays a fourth of his produce as rent, he would gain by concentrating his capital and labour on less land, provided the extra capital and labour applied to each acre gave anything more than three-fourths as good a return in proportion, as he got from his earlier expenditure. Again, it may be granted that much land, even in a country as advanced as England, is so unskilfully cultivated that it could be made to give more than double its present gross produce if twice the present capital and labour were applied to it skilfully. Very likely those are right who maintain that if all English farmers were as able, wise and energetic as the best are, they might profitably apply twice the capital and labour that is now applied. Assuming rent to be one-fourth of the present produce, they might get seven hundredweight of produce for every four that they now get: it is conceivable that with still more improved methods they might get eight hundredweight, or even more. But this does not prove that, as things are, further capital and labour could obtain from land an increasing return. The fact remains that, taking farmers as they are with the skill and energy which they actually have, we find as the result of universal observation that there is not open to them a short road to riches by giving up a great part of their land, by concentrating all their capital and labour on the remainder, and saving for their own pockets the rent of all but that remainder. The reason why they cannot do this is told in the law of diminishing return; that return being measured, as has already been said by its quantity, not its exchange value. We may now state distinctly the limitations which were implied under the words "in general" in our provisional wording of the law. The law is a statement of a tendency which may indeed be held in check for a time by improvements in the arts of production and by the fitful course of the development of the full powers of the soil; but which must ultimately become irresistible if the demand for produce should increase without limit. Our final statement of the tendency may then be divided into two parts, thus: -- Although an improvement in the arts of agriculture may raise the rate of return which land generally affords to any given amount of capital and labour; and although the capital and labour already applied to any piece of land may have been so inadequate for the development of its full powers, that some further expenditure on it even with the existing arts of agriculture would give a more than proportionate return; yet these conditions are rare in an old country: and, except when they are present, the application of increased capital and labour to land will add a less than proportionate amount to the produce raised, unless there be meanwhile an increase in the skill of the individual cultivator. Secondly, whatever may be the future developments of the arts of agriculture, a continued increase in the application of capital and labour to land must ultimately result in a diminution of the extra produce which can be obtained by a given extra amount of capital and labour. 2. Making use of a term suggested by James Mill, we may regard the capital and labour applied to land as consisting of equal successive doses.(3*) As we have seen, the return to the first few doses may perhaps be small and a greater number of doses may get a larger proportionate return; the return to successive doses may even in exceptional cases alternately rise and fall. But our law states that sooner or later (it being always supposed that there is meanwhile no change in the arts of cultivation) a point will be reached after which all further doses will obtain a less proportionate return than the preceding doses. The dose is always a combined dose of labour and capital, whether it is applied by a peasant owner working unaided on his own land, or at the charges of a capitalist farmer who does no manual labour himself. But in the latter case the main body of the outlay presents itself in the form of money; and when discussing the business economy of farming in relation to English conditions, it is often convenient to consider the labour converted at its market value into a money equivalent, and to speak of doses of capital simply, rather than of doses of labour and capital. The dose which only just remunerates the cultivator may be said to be the marginal dose, and the return to it the marginal return. If there happens to be in the neighbourhood land that is cultivated but only just pays its expenses, and so gives no surplus for rent we may suppose this dose applied to it. We can then say that the dose applied to it is applied to land on the margin of cultivation, and this way of speaking has the advantage of simplicity. But it is not necessary for the argument to suppose that there is any such land: what we want to fix our minds on is the return to the marginal dose; whether it happens to be applied to poor land or to rich does not matter; all that is necessary is that it should be the last dose which can profitably be applied to that land.(4*) When we speak of the marginal, or the "last" dose applied to the land, we do not mean the last in time, we mean that dose which is on the margin of profitable expenditure; that is, which is applied so as just to give the ordinary returns to the capital and labour of the cultivator, without affording any surplus. To take a concrete instance, we may suppose a farmer to be thinking of sending the hoers over a field once more; and after a little hesitation he decides that it is worth his while, but only just worth his while to do it. The dose of capital and labour spent on doing it, is then the last dose in our present sense, though there are many doses still to be applied in reaping the crop. Of course the return to this last dose cannot be separated from the others; but we ascribe to it all that part of the produce which we believe would not have been produced if the farmer had decided against the extra hoeing.(5*) Since the return to the dose on the margin of cultivation just remunerates the cultivator, it follows that he will be just remunerated for the whole of his capital and labour by as many times the marginal return as he has applied doses in all. Whatever he gets in excess of this is the surplus produce of the land. This surplus is retained by the cultivator if he owns the land himself.(6*) It is important to note that this description of the nature of surplus produce is not a theory of rent: we shall not be ready for that till a much later stage. All that can be said here, is that this surplus produce may, under certain conditions, become the rent which the owner of the land can exact from the tenant for its use. But, as we shall see hereafter, the full rent of a farm in an old country is made up of three elements: the first being due to the value of the soil as it was made by nature; the second to improvements made in it by man; and the third, which is often the most important of all, to the growth of a dense and rich population, and to facilities of communication by public roads, railroads, etc. It is to be noted also that in an old country it is impossible to discover what was the original state of the land before it was first cultivated. The results of some of man's work are for good and evil fixed in the land, and cannot be distinguished from those of nature's work: the line of division is blurred, and must be drawn more or less arbitrarily. But for most purposes it is best to regard the first difficulties of coping with nature as pretty well conquered before we begin to reckon the farmer's cultivation. Thus the returns that we count as due to the first doses of capital and labour are generally the largest of all, and the tendency of the return to diminish shows itself at once. Having English agriculture chiefly in view, we may fairly take, as Ricardo did, this as the typical case.(7*) 3. Let us next inquire on what depends the rate of diminution or of increase of the returns to successive doses of capital and labour. We have seen that there are great variations in the share of the produce which man may claim as the additional result of his own work over what unaided nature would have produced; and that man's share is much larger with some crops and soils and methods of cultivation than with others. Thus broadly speaking it increases as we pass from forest to pasture land, from pasture to arable, and from plough land to spade land; and this is because the rate of diminution of the return is as a rule greatest in forests, rather less in pasture, still less in arable land, and least of all in spade land. There is no absolute measure of the richness or fertility of land. Even if there be no change in the arts of production, a mere increase in the demand for produce may invert the order in which two adjacent pieces of land rank as regards fertility. The one which gives the smaller produce, when both are uncultivated, or when the cultivation of both is equally slight, may rise above the other and justly rank as the more fertile when both are cultivated with equal thoroughness. In other words, many of those lands which are the least fertile when cultivation is merely extensive, become among the most fertile when cultivation is intensive. For instance, self-drained pasture land may give a return large in proportion to a very slight expenditure of capital and labour, but a rapidly diminishing return to further expenditure: as population increases it may gradually become profitable to break up some of the pasture and introduce a mixed cultivation of roots and grains and grasses; and then the return to further doses of capital and labour may diminish less quickly. Other land makes poor pasture, but will give more or less liberal returns to a great deal of capital and labour applied in tilling and in manuring it; its returns to the early doses are not very high, but they diminish slowly. Again, other land is marshy. It may, as did the fens of east England, produce little but osiers and wild fowl. Or, as is the case in many tropical districts, it may be prolific of vegetation, but so shrouded with malaria that it is difficult for man to live there, and still more to work there. In such cases the returns to capital and labour are at first small, but as drainage progresses, they increase; afterwards perhaps they again fall off.(8*) But when improvements of this kind have once been made, the capital invested in the soil cannot be removed; the early history of the cultivation is not repeated; and the produce due to further applications of capital and labour shows a tendency to diminishing return.(9*) Similar though less conspicuous changes may occur on land already well cultivated. For instance, without being marshy, it may be in need of a little drainage to take off the stagnant water from it, and to enable fresh water and air to stream through it. Or the subsoil may happen to be naturally richer than the soil at the surface: or again, though not itself rich, it may have just those properties in which the surface soil is deficient, and then a thorough system of deep steam-ploughing may permanently change the character of the land. Thus we need not suppose that when the return to extra capital and labour has begun to diminish, it will always continue to do so. Improvements in the arts of production may, it has always been understood, raise generally the return which can be got by any amount of capital and labour; but this is not what is meant here. The point is that, independently of any increase in his knowledge, and using only those methods with which he has long been familiar, a farmer finding extra capital and labour at his command, may sometimes obtain an increasing return even at a late stage in his cultivation.(10*) It has been well said that as the strength of a chain is that of its weakest link, so fertility is limited by that element in which it is most deficient. Those who are in a hurry, will reject a chain which has one or two very weak links, however strong the rest may be: and prefer to it a much slighter chain that has no flaw. But if there is heavy work to be done, and they have time to make repairs, they will set the larger chain in order, and then its strength will exceed that of the other. In this we find the explanation of much that is apparently strange in agricultural history. The first settlers in a new country generally avoid land which does not lend itself to immediate cultivation. They are often repelled by the very luxuriance of natural vegetation, if it happens to be of a kind that they do not want. They do not care to plough land that is at all heavy, however rich it might become if thoroughly worked. They will have nothing to do with water-logged land. They generally select light land which can easily be worked with a double plough, and then they sow their seed broadly, so that the plants when they grow up may have plenty of light and air, and may collect their food from a wide area. When America was first settled, many farming operations that are now done by horse machinery were still done by hand; and though now the farmers have a strong preference for flat prairie land, free from stumps and stones, where their machines can work easily and without risk, they had then no great objection to a hill-side. Their crops were light in proportion to their acreage, but heavy in proportion to the capital and labour expended in raising them. We cannot then call one piece of land more fertile than another until we know something about the skill and enterprise of its cultivators, and the amount of capital and labour at their disposal; and till we know whether the demand for produce is such as to make intensive cultivation profitable with the resources at their disposal. If it is, those lands will be the most fertile which give the highest average returns to a large expenditure of capital and labour; but if not, those will be the most fertile which give the best returns to the first few doses. The term fertility has no meaning except with reference to the special circumstances of a particular time and place. But even when so limited there is some uncertainty as to the usage of the term. Sometimes attention is directed chiefly to the power which land has of giving adequate returns to intensive cultivation and so bearing a large total produce per acre; and sometimes to its power of yielding a large surplus produce or rent, even though its gross produce is not very large: thus in England now rich arable land is very fertile in the former sense, rich meadow in the latter. For many purposes it does not matter which of these senses of the term is understood: in the few cases in which it does matter, an interpretation clause must be supplied in the context.(11*) 4. But further, the order of fertility of different soils is liable to be changed by changes in the methods of cultivation and in the relative values of different crops. Thus when at the end of last century Mr Coke showed how to grow wheat well on light soils by preparing the way with clover, they rose relatively to clay soils; and now though they are still sometimes called from old custom "poor", some of them have a higher value, and are really more fertile, than much of the land that used to be carefully cultivated while they were left in a state of nature. Again, the increasing demand in central Europe for wood to be used as fuel and for building purposes, has raised the value of the pine-covered mountain slopes relatively to almost every other kind of land. But in England this rise has been prevented by the substitution of coal for wood as fuel, and of iron for wood as a material for ship-building, and lastly by England's special facilities for importing wood. Again, the cultivation of rice and jute often gives a very high value to lands that are too much covered with water to bear most other crops. And again, since the repeal of the Corn Laws the prices of meat and dairy produce have risen in England relatively to that of corn. Those arable soils that would grow rich forage crops in rotation with corn, rose relatively to the cold clay soils; and permanent pasture recovered part of that great fall in value relatively to arable land, which had resulted from the growth of population.(12*) Independently of any change in the suitability of the prevailing crops and methods of cultivation for special soils, there is a constant tendency towards equality in the value of different soils. In the absence of any special cause to the contrary, the growth of population and wealth will make the poorer soils gain on the richer. Land that was at one time entirely neglected is made by much labour to raise rich crops; its annual income of light and heat and air, is probably as good as those of richer soils: while its faults can be much lessened by labour.(13*) As there is no absolute standard for fertility, so there is none of good cultivation. The best cultivation in the richest parts of the Channel Islands, for instance, involves a lavish expenditure of capital and labour on each acre: for they are near good markets and have a monopoly of an equable and early climate. If left to nature the land would not be very fertile, for though it has many virtues, it has two weak links (being deficient in phosphoric acid and potash). But, partly by the aid of the abundant seaweed on its shores, these links can be strengthened, and the chain thus becomes exceptionally strong. Intense, or as it is ordinarily called in England "good" cultivation, will thus raise £100 worth of early potatoes from a single acre. But an equal expenditure per acre by the farmer in Western America would ruin him; relatively to his circumstances it would not be good, but bad cultivation. 5. Ricardo' s wording of the law of diminishing return was inexact. It is however probable that the inaccuracy was due not to careless thinking but only to careless writing. In any case he would have been justified in thinking that these conditions were not of great importance in the peculiar circumstances of England at the time at which he wrote, and for the special purposes of the particular practical problems he had in view. Of course he could not anticipate the great series of inventions which were about to open up new sources of supply, and, with the aid of free trade, to revolutionize English agriculture; but the agricultural history of England and other countries might have led him to lay greater stress on the probability of a change.(14*) He stated that the first settlers in a new country invariably chose the richest lands, and that as population increased, poorer and poorer soils were gradually brought under cultivation, speaking carelessly as though there were an absolute standard of fertility. But as we have already seen, where land is free, everyone chooses that which is best adapted for his own purpose, and that which will give him, all things considered, the best return for his capital and labour. He looks out, therefore, for land that can be cultivated at once, and passes by land that has any weak links in the chain of its elements of fertility, however strong it may be in some other links. But besides having to avoid malaria, he must think of his communication with his markets and the base of his resources; and in some cases the need for security against the attacks of enemies and wild beasts outweighs all other considerations. It is therefore not to be expected that the lands which were first chosen, should turn out always to be those which ultimately come to be regarded as the most fertile. Ricardo did not consider this point, and thus laid himself open to attacks by Carey and others, which, though for the greater part based on a misinterpretation of his position, have yet some solid substance in them. The fact that, in new countries, soils which an English farmer would regard as poor, are sometimes cultivated before neighbouring soils which he would regard as rich, is not inconsistent, as some foreign writers have supposed, with the general tenor of Ricardo's doctrines. Its practical importance is in relation to the conditions under which the growth of population tends to cause increased pressure on the means of subsistence: it shifts the centre of interest from the mere amount of the farmer's produce to its exchange value in terms of the things which the industrial population in his neighbourhood will offer for it.(15*) 6. Ricardo, and the economists of his time generally were too hasty in deducing this inference from the law of diminishing return; and they did not allow enough for the increase of strength that comes from organization. But in fact every farmer is aided by the presence of neighbours whether agriculturists or townspeople.(16*) Even if most of them are engaged like himself in agriculture, they gradually supply him with good roads, and other means of communication: they give him a market in which he can buy at reasonable terms what he wants, necessaries, comforts and luxuries for himself and his family, and all the various requisites for his farm work: they surround him with knowledge: medical aid, instruction and amusement are brought to his door; his mind becomes wider, and his efficiency is in many ways increased. And if the neighbouring market town expands into a large industrial centre, his gain is much greater. All his produce is worth more; some things which he used to throw away fetch a good price. He finds new openings in dairy farming and market gardening, and with a larger range of produce he makes use of rotations that keep his land always active without denuding it of any one of the elements that are necessary for its fertility. Further, as we shall see later on, an increase of population tends to develop the organization of trade and industry; and therefore the law of diminishing return does not apply to the total capital and labour spent in a district as sharply as to that on a single farm. Even when cultivation has reached a stage after which each successive dose applied to a field would get a less return than the preceding dose, it may be possible for an increase in the population to cause a more than proportional increase in the means of subsistence. It is true that the evil day is only deferred: but it is deferred. The growth of population, if not checked by other causes, must ultimately be checked by the difficulty of obtaining raw produce; but in spite of the law of diminishing return, the pressure of population on the means of subsistence may be restrained for a long time to come by the opening up of new fields of supply, by the cheapening of railway and steamship communication, and by the growth of organization and knowledge. Against this must be set the growing difficulty of getting fresh air and light, and in some cases fresh water, in densely peopled places. The natural beauties of a place of fashionable resort have a direct money value which cannot be overlooked; but it requires some effort to realize the true value to men, women and children of being able to stroll amid beautiful and varied scenery. 7. As has already been said the land in economic phrase includes rivers and the sea. In river-fisheries, the extra return to additional applications of capital and labour shows a rapid diminution. As to the sea, opinions differ. Its volume is vast, and fish are very prolific; and some think that a practically unlimited supply can be drawn from the sea by man without appreciably affecting the numbers that remain there; or in other words, that the law of diminishing return scarcely applies at all to sea-fisheries: while others think that experience shows a falling-off in the productiveness of those fisheries that have been vigorously worked, especially by steam trawlers. The question is important, for the future population of the world will be appreciably affected as regards both quantity and quality, by the available supply of fish. The produce of mines again, among which may be reckoned quarries and brickfields, is said to conform to the law of diminishing return; but this statement is misleading. It is true that we find continually increasing difficulty in obtaining a further supply of minerals, except in so far as we obtain increased power over nature's stores through improvements in the arts of mining, and through better knowledge of the contents of the earth's crust; and there is no doubt that, other things being equal, the continued application of capital and labour to mines will result in a diminishing rate of yield. But this yield is not a net yield, like the return of which we speak in the law of diminishing return. That return is part of a constantly recurring income, while the produce of mines is merely a giving up of their stored-up treasures. The produce of the field is something other than the soil; for the field, properly cultivated, retains its fertility. But the produce of the mine is part of the mine itself. To put the same thing in another way, the supply of agricultural produce and of fish is a perennial stream; mines are as it were nature' s reservoir. The more nearly a reservoir is exhausted, the greater is the labour of pumping from it; but if one man could pump it out in ten days, ten men could pump it out in one day: and when once empty, it would yield no more. So the mines that are being opened this year might just as easily have been opened many years ago: if the plans had been properly laid in advance, and the requisite specialized capital and skill got ready for the work, ten years' supply of coal might have been raised in one year without any increased difficulty; and when a vein had once given up its treasure, it could produce no more. This difference is illustrated by the fact that the rent of a mine is calculated on a different principle from that of a farm. The farmer contracts to give back the land as rich as he found it: a mining company cannot do this; and while the farmer's rent is reckoned by the year, mining rent consists chiefly of "royalties" which are levied in proportion to the stores that are taken out of nature's storehouse.(17*) On the other hand, services which land renders to man, in giving him space and light and air in which to live and work, do conform strictly to the law of diminishing return. It is advantageous to apply a constantly increasing capital to land that has any special advantages of situation, natural or acquired. Buildings tower up towards the sky; natural light and ventilation are supplemented by artificial means, and the steam lift reduces the disadvantages of the highest floors; and for this expenditure there is a return of extra convenience, but it is a diminishing return. However great the ground rent may be, a limit is at last reached after which it is better to pay more ground rent for a larger area than to go on piling up storey on storey any further; just as the farmer finds that at last a stage is reached at which more intensive cultivation will not pay its expenses, and it is better to pay more rent for extra land, than to face the diminution in the return which he would get by applying more capital and labour to his old land.(18*) From this it results that the theory of ground rents is substantially the same as that of farm rents. This and similar facts will presently enable us to simplify and extend the theory of value as given by Ricardo and Mill. And what is true of building land is true of many other things. If a manufacturer has, say, three planing machines there is a certain amount of work which he can get out of them easily. If he wants to get more work from them he must laboriously economize every minute of their time during the ordinary hours, and perhaps work overtime. Thus after they are once well employed, every successive application of effort to them brings him a diminishing return. At last the net return is so small that he finds it cheaper to buy a fourth machine than to force so much work out of his old machines: just as a farmer who has already cultivated his land highly finds it cheaper to take in more land than to force more produce from his present land. Indeed there are points of view from which the income derived from machinery partakes of the nature of rent: as will be shown in Book V. NOTE ON THE LAW OF DIMINISHING RETURN 8. The elasticity of the notion of diminishing return cannot be fully considered here; for it is but an important detail of that large general problem of the economic distribution of resources in the investment of capital, which is the pivot of the main argument of Book V and indeed of a great part of the whole Volume. But a few words about it seem now to be called for in this place, because much stress has recently been laid on it under the able and suggestive leadership of Professor Carver.(19*) If a manufacturer expends an inappropriately large amount of his resources on machinery, so that a considerable part of it is habitually idle; or on buildings, so that a considerable part of his space is not well filled; or on his office staff, so that he has to employ some of them on work that it is not worth what it costs; then his excessive expenditure in that particular direction will not be as remunerative as his previous expenditure had been: and it may be said to yield him a "diminishing return." But this use of the phrase, though strictly correct is apt to mislead unless used with caution. For when the tendency to a diminishing return from increased labour and capital applied to land is regarded as a special instance of the general tendency to diminishing return from any agent of production, applied in excessive proportion to the other agents, one is apt to take it for granted that the supply of the other factors can be increased. That is to say, one is apt to deny the existence of that condition -- the fixedness of the whole stock of cultivable land in an old country -- which was the main foundation of those great classical discussions of the law of diminishing return, which we have just been considering. Even the individual farmer may not always be able to get an additional ten or fifty acres adjoining his own farm, just when he wants them, save at a prohibitive price. And in that respect land differs from most other agents of production even from the individual point of view. This difference may indeed be regarded as of little account in regard to the individual farmer. But from the social point of view, from the point of view of the following chapters on population it is vital. Let us look into this. In every phase of any branch of production there is some distribution of resources between various expenditures which yields a better result than any other. The abler the man in control of any business, the nearer he will approach to the ideally perfect distribution; just as the abler the primitive housewife in control of a family's stock of wool, the nearer she will approach to an ideal distribution of wool between the different needs of the family.(20*) If his business extends he will extend his uses of each requisite of production in due proportion; but not, as has sometimes been said, proportionately; for instance the proportion of manual work to machine work, which would be appropriate in a small furniture factory would not be appropriate in a large one. If he makes the best possible apportionment of his resources, he gets the greatest (marginal) return from each appliance of production of which his business is capable. If he uses too much of any one he gets a diminishing return from it; because the others are not able to back it up properly. And this diminishing return is analogous to that which a farmer obtains, when he cultivates land so intensively that he obtains a diminishing return from it. If the farmer can get more land at the same rent as he has paid for the old, he will take more land, or else lie open to the imputation of being a bad business man: and this illustrates the fact that land from the point of view of the individual cultivator is simply one form of capital. But when the older economists spoke of the Law of Diminishing Return they were looking at the problems of agriculture not only from the point of view of the individual cultivator but also from that of the nation as a whole. Now if the nation as a whole finds its stock of planing machines or ploughs inappropriately large or inappropriately small, it can redistribute its resources. It can obtain more of that in which it is deficient, while gradually lessening its stock of such things as are superabundant: but it cannot do that in regard to land: it can cultivate its land more intensively, but it cannot get any more. And for that reason the older economists rightly insisted that, from the social point of view, land is not on exactly the same footing as those implements of production which man can increase without limit. No doubt in a new country where there is an abundance of rich land not yet brought under cultivation, this fixedness of the total stock of land is not operative. American economists often speak of the value, or rent, of land as varying with the land's distance from good markets, because even now there is a great deal rather than with its fertility; of rich land in their country which is not fully cultivated. And in like manner they lay but little stress on the fact that the diminishing return to labour and capital in general applied to the land by discreet farmers, in such a country as England, is not exactly on the same footing as the diminishing return to an inappropriate investment of their resources by indiscreet farmers or manufacturers in a disproportionately large number of ploughs or planing machines. It is true that when the tendency to diminishing return is generalized, the return is apt to be expressed in terms of value, and not of quantity. It must however be conceded that the older method of measuring return in terms of quantity often jostled against the difficulty of rightly interpreting a dose of labour and capital without the aid of a money measure: and that, though helpful for a broad preliminary survey, it cannot be carried very far. But even the recourse to money fails us, if we want to bring to a common standard the productiveness of lands in distant times or places; and we must then fall back on rough, and more or less arbitrary modes of measurement, which make no aim at numerical precision, but will yet suffice for the broader purposes of history. We have to take account of the facts that there are great variations in the relative amounts of labour and capital in a dose: and that interest on capital is generally a much less important item in backward than in advanced stages of agriculture, in spite of the fact that the rate of interest is generally much lower in the latter. For most purposes it is probably best to take as a common standard a day's unskilled labour of given efficiency: we thus regard the dose as made up of so much labour of different kinds, and such charges for the use and replacement of capital, as will together make up the value of, say, ten days' such labour. the relative proportions of these elements and their several values in terms of such labour being fixed according to the special circumstances of each problem.(21*) A similar difficulty is found in comparing the returns obtained by labour and capital applied under different circumstances. So long as the crops are of the same kind, the quantity of one return can be measured off against that of another: but, when they are of different kinds, they cannot be compared till they are reduced to a common measure of value. When, for instance, it is said that land would give better returns to the capital and labour expended on it with one crop or rotation of crops than with another, the statement must be understood to hold only on the basis of the prices at the time. In such a case we must take the whole period of rotation together, assuming the land to be in the same condition at the beginning and the end of the rotation; and counting on the one hand all the labour and capital applied during the whole period, and on the other the aggregate returns of all the crops. It must be remembered that the return due to a dose of labour and capital is not here taken to include the value of the capital itself. For instance, if part of the capital on a farm consists of two-year-old oxen, then the returns to a year's labour and capital will include not the full weight of these oxen at the end of the year, but only the addition that has been made to it during the year. Again, when a farmer is said to work with a capital of £10 to the acre, this includes the value of everything that he has on the farm; but the total volume of the doses of labour and capital applied to a farm during, say, a year, does not include the whole value of the fixed capital, such as machinery and horses, but only the value of their use after allowing for interest, depreciation and repairs; though it does include the whole value of the circulating capital, such as seed. The above is the method of measuring capital generally adopted, and it is to be taken for granted if nothing is said to the contrary; but another method is more suitable occasionally. Sometimes it is convenient to speak as though all the capital applied were circulating capital applied at the beginning of the year or during it: and in that case everything that is on the farm at the end of the year is part of the produce. Thus, young cattle are regarded as a sort of raw material which is worked up in the course of time into fat cattle ready for the butcher. The farm implements may even be treated in the same way, their value at the beginning of the year being taken as so much circulating capital applied to the farm, and at the end of the year as so much produce. This plan enables us to avoid a good deal of repetition of conditioning clauses as to depreciation, etc., and to save the use of words in many ways. It is often the best plan for general reasonings of an abstract character, particularly if they are expressed in a mathematical form. The law of diminishing return must have occupied thoughtful men in every densely peopled country. It was first stated clearly by Turgot (OEuvres, ed. Daire I, pp. 420-1), as Prof. Cannan has shown; and its chief applications were developed by Ricardo. NOTES: 1. Increasing return in the earlier stages arises partly from economy of organization, similar to that which gives an advantage to manufacture on a large scale. But it is also partly due to the fact that where land is very slightly cultivated the farmer's crops are apt to be smothered by nature's crop of weeds. The relation between Diminishing and Increasing Return is discussed further in the last chapter of this Book. 2. "The land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together: for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together." Genesis xiii, 6. 3. As to this term see the Note at the end of the Chapter. 4. Ricardo was well aware of this: though he did not emphasize it enough. Those opponents of his doctrine who have supposed that it has no application to places where all the land pays a rent, have mistaken the nature of his argument. 5. An illustration from recorded experiments may help to make clearer the notion of the return to a marginal dose of capital and labour. The Arkansas experimental station (see The Times, 18 Nov. 1889) reported that four plots of an acre each were treated exactly alike except in the matter of ploughing and harrowing, with the following result: -- Plot Cultivation Crop yields bushels per acre 1 Ploughed once 16 2 Ploughed once and harrowed once 18 1/3 3 Ploughed twice and harrowed once 21 2/3 4 Ploughed twice and harrowed twice 23 1/4 This would show that the dose of capital and labour applied in harrowing a second time an acre which had already been ploughed twice gave a return of 1 7/12 bushels. And if the value of these bushels, after allowing for expenses of harvesting, etc. just replaced that dose with profits, then that dose was a marginal one; even though it was not the last in point of time, since those spent on harvesting must needs come later. 6. Let us seek a graphical illustration. {Figure 11} It is to be remembered that graphical illustrations are not proofs. They are merely pictures corresponding very roughly to the main conditions of certain real problems. They obtain clearness of outline, by leaving out of account many considerations which vary from one practical problem to another, and of which the farmer must take full account in his own special case. If on any given field there were expended a capital of £50, a certain amount of produce would be raised from it: a certain amount larger than the former would be raised if there were expended on it a capital of £51. The difference between these two amounts may be regarded as the produce due to the fifty-first pound; and if we suppose the capital to be applied in successive doses of £1 each we may speak of this difference as the produce due to the fifty-first dose. Let the doses be represented in order by successive equal divisions of the line OD. Let there now be drawn from the division of this line representing the fifty-first dose M, a line MP at right angles to OD, in thickness equal to the length of one of the divisions, and such that its length represents the amount of the produce due to the fifty-first dose. Suppose this done for each separate division up to that corresponding to the last dose which it is found profitable to put on the land. Let this last dose be the 110th at D, and DC the corresponding return that only just remunerates the farmer. The extremities of such lines will lie on a curve APC. The gross produce will be represented by the sum of these lines: i.e., since the thickness of each line is equal to the length of the division on which it stands, by the area ODCA. Let CGH be drawn parallel to DO, cutting PM in G; then MG is equal to CD; and since DC just remunerates the farmer for one dose, MG will just remunerate him for another: and so for all the portions of the thick vertical lines cut off between OD and HC. Therefore the sum of these, that is, the area ODCH, represents the share of the produce that is required to remunerate him; while the remainder, AHGCPA, is the surplus produce, which under certain conditions becomes the rent. 7. That is, we may substitute (fig. 11) the dotted line BA' for BA and regard A' BPC as the typical curve for the return to capital and labour applied in English agriculture. No doubt crops of wheat and some other annuals cannot be raised at all without some considerable labour. But natural grasses which sow themselves will yield a good return of rough cattle to scarcely any labour. It has already been noticed (Book iii, ch. iii, 1), the law of diminishing return bears a close analogy to the law of demand. The return which land gives to a dose of capital and labour may be regarded as the price which land offers for that dose. Land's return to capital and labour is, so to speak, her effective demand for them: her return to any dose is her demand price for that dose, and the list of returns that she will give to successive doses may thus be regarded as her demand schedule: but to avoid confusion we shall call it her "Return Schedule." Corresponding to the case of the land in the text is that of a man who may be willing to pay a larger proportionate price for a paper that would cover the whole of the walls of his room than for one that would go only half way; and then his demand schedule would at one stage show an increase and not a diminution of demand price for an increased quantity. But in the aggregate demand of many individuals these unevennesses destroy one another; so that the aggregate demand schedule of a group of people always shows the demand price as falling steadily with every increase in the amount offered. In the same way, by grouping together many pieces of land we might obtain a return schedule that would show a constant diminution for every increase of capital and labour applied. But it is more easy to ascertain, and in some ways more important to take note of, the variations of individual demand in the case of plots of land than in the case of people. And therefore our typical return schedule is not drawn out so as to show as even and uniform a diminution of return as our typical demand schedule does of demand price. 8. This case may be represented by diagrams. If the produce rises in real value in the ratio of OH' to OH (so that the amount required to remunerate the farmer for a dose of capital and labour has fallen from OH to OH'), the surplus produce rises only to AH'C', which is not very much greater than its old amount AHC, fig. 12, representing the first case. The second case is represented in fig. 13, where a similar change in the price of produce makes the new surplus produce AH'C' about three times as large as the old surplus, AHC; and the third in fig. 14. The earliest doses of capital and labour applied to the land give so poor a return, that it would not be worth while to apply them unless it were intended to carry the cultivation further. But later doses give an increasing return which culminates at P, and afterwards diminishes. If the price to be got for produce is so low that an amount OH" is required to remunerate the cultivator for a dose of capital and labour, it will then be only just profitable to cultivate the land. For then cultivation will be carried as far as D"; there will be a deficit on the earlier doses represented by the area H"AE", and a surplus on the later doses represented by the area E" PC": and as these two are about equal, the cultivation of the land so far will only just pay its way. But if the price of produce rises till OH is sufficient to remunerate the cultivator for a dose of capital and labour, the deficit on the earlier doses will sink to HAE, and the surplus on the later doses will rise to EPC. the net surplus (the true rent in case the land is hired out) will be the excess of EPC over HAE. Should the price rise further till OH' is Sufficient to remunerate the cultivator for a dose of capital and labour, this net surplus will rise to the very large amount represented by the excess of E'PC' over H'AE'. 9. In such a case as this the earlier doses are pretty sure to be sunk in the land; and the actual rent paid, if the land is hired out, will then include profits on them in addition to the surplus produce or true rent thus shown. Provision can easily be made in the diagrams for the returns due to the landlord's capital. 10. Of course his return may diminish and then increase and then diminish again; and yet again increase when he is in a position to carry out some further extensive change, as was represented by fig. 11. But more extreme instances, of the kind represented by fig. 15, are not very rare. 11. If the price of produce is such that an amount of it OH (figs. 12, 13, 14) is required to pay the cultivator for one dose of capital and labour, the cultivation will be carried as far as D. and the produce raised, AODC, will be greatest in fig. 12, next greatest in fig. 13, and least in fig. 14. But if the demand for agricultural produce so rises that OH' is enough to repay the cultivator for a dose, the cultivation will be carried as far as D', and the produce raised will be AOD'C', which is greatest in fig. 14, next in fig. 13, and least in fig. 12. The contrast would have been even stronger if we had considered the surplus produce which remains after deducting what is sufficient to repay the cultivator, and which becomes under some conditions the rent of the land. For this is AHC in figs. 12 and 13 in the first case and AH'C' in the second; while in fig. 14 it is in the first case the excess of AODCPA over ODCH, i.e. the excess of PEC over AHE; and in the second case the excess of PE'C' over AH'E'. 12. Rogers (Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 73) calculates that rich meadow had about the same value, estimated in grain, five or six centuries ago as it has now; but that the value of arable land, similarly estimated, has increased about fivefold in the same time. This is partly due to the great importance of hay at a time when roots and other modern kinds of winter food for cattle were unknown. 13. Thus we may compare two pieces of land represented in figs. 16 and 17, with regard to which the law of diminishing return acts in a similar way, so that their produce curves have similar shapes, but the former has a higher fertility than the other for all degrees of intensity of cultivation. The value of the land may generally be represented by its surplus produce or rent, which is in each case represented by AHC when OH is required to repay a dose of capital and labour; and by AH'C' when the growth of numbers and wealth have made OH' sufficient. It is clear that AH'C' in fig. 17 bears a more favourable comparison with AH'C' in fig. 16 than does AHC in fig. 17 with AHC in fig. 16. In the same way, though not to the same extent, the total produce AOD'C' in fig. 17 bears a more favourable comparison with AOD'C' in fig. 16, than does AODC in fig. 17 with AODC in fig. 16. (It is ingeniously argued in Wicksteed's Coordinates of Laws of Distribution, pp. 51-2 that rent may be negative. Of course taxes may absorb rent: but land which will not reward the plough will grow trees or rough grass. See above, pp. 157-8.) Leroy Beaulieu (Rיpartition des Richesses, chap. II) has collected several facts illustrating this tendency of poor lands to rise in value relatively to rich. He quotes the following figures, showing the rental in francs per hectare (2 1/2 acres) of five classes of land in several communes of the Dיpartements de l'Eure et de l'Oise in 1829 and 1852 respectively. Class I. Class II. Class III. Class IV. Class V. A.D. 1829 58 48 34 20 8 A.D. 1852 80 78 60 50 40 14. As Roscher says (Political Economy, Sect. CLV), "In judging Ricardo, it must not be forgotten that it was not his intention to write a text-book on the science of Political Economy, but only to communicate to those versed in it the result of his researches in as brief a manner as possible. Hence he writes so frequently making certain assumptions, and his words are to be extended to other cases only after due consideration, or rather re-written to suit the changed case." 15. Carey claims to have proved that "in every quarter of the world cultivation has commenced on the sides of the hills where the soil was poorest, and where the natural advantages of situation were the least. With the growth of wealth and population, men have been seen descending from the high lands bounding the valley on either side, and coming together at its feet." (Principles of Social Science, chap. IV, 4.) He has even argued that whenever a thickly peopled country is laid waste, "whenever population, wealth, and the power of association decline, it is the rich soil. that is abandoned by men who fly again to the poor ones" (Ib. ch. v, 3); the rich soils being rendered difficult and dangerous by the rapid growth of jungles which harbour wild beasts and banditti, and perhaps by malaria. The experience of more recent settlers in South Africa and elsewhere does not however generally support his conclusions, which are indeed based largely on facts relating to warm countries. But much of the apparent attractiveness of tropical countries is delusive: they would give a very rich return to hard work: but hard work in them is impossible at present, though some change in this respect may be made by the progress of medical and especially bacteriological science. A cool refreshing breeze is as much a necessary of vigorous life as food itself. Land that offers plenty of food but whose climate destroys energy, is not more productive of the raw material of human wellbeing, than land that supplies less food but has an invigorating climate. The late Duke of Argyll described the influence of insecurity and poverty in compelling the cultivation of the hills before that of the valleys of the Highlands was feasible, Scotland as it is and was, II, 74-5. 16. In a new country an important form of this assistance is to enable him to Venture on rich land that he would have otherwise shunned, through fear of enemies or of malaria. 17. As Ricardo says (Principles, chap. II) "The compensation given (by the lessee) for the mine or quarry is paid for the value of the coal or stone which can be removed from them, and has no connection with the original or indestructible Powers of the land." But both he and others seem sometimes to lose sight of these distinctions in discussing the law of diminishing return in its application to wines. Especially is this the case in Ricardo's criticism of Adam Smith's theory of rent (Principles, chap. XXIV). 18. Of course the return to capital spent in building increases for the earlier doses. Even where land can be had for almost nothing, it is cheaper to build houses two stories high than one; and hitherto it has been thought cheapest to build factories about four stories high. But a belief is growing up in America, that where land is not very dear factories should be only two stories high, partly in order to avoid the evil effects of vibration, and of the expensive foundations and walls required to prevent it in a high building, that is, it is found that the return of accommodation diminishes perceptibly after the capital and labour required to raise two stories have been spent on the land. 19. See also the writings of Professors Bullock and Landry. 20. In this he will make large use of what is called below the "substitution" of more for less appropriate means. Discussions bearing directly on this paragraph will be found in III, V, 1-3; IV, VII, 8; and XIII, 2: V, III, 3; IV, 1-4; V, 6-8; VIII, 1-5; X, 3; VI, 1, 7; and II, 5. The tendencies of diminishing utility and of diminishing return have their roots, the one in qualities of human nature, the other in the technical conditions of industry. But the distributions of resources, to which they point, are governed by exactly similar laws. In mathematical phrase, the problems in maxima and minima to which they give rise are expressed by the same general equations; as may be seen by reference to Mathematical Note XIV. 21. The labour-part of the dose is of course current agricultural labour; the capital-part is itself also the product of labour in past times rendered by workers of many kinds and degrees, accompanied by "waiting." Chapter 4 The Growth of Population 1. The production of wealth is but a means to the sustenance of man; to the satisfaction of his wants; and to the development of his activities, physical, mental, and moral. But man himself is the chief means of the production of that wealth of which he is the ultimate aim:(1*) and this and the two following chapters will be given to some study of the supply of labour; i.e. of the growth of population in numbers, in strength, in knowledge, and in character. In the animal and vegetable world the growth of numbers is governed by the tendency of individuals to propagate their species on the one hand, and on the other hand by the struggle for life which thins out the young before they arrive at maturity. In the human race alone the conflict of these two opposing forces is complicated by other influences. On the one hand regard for the future induces many individuals to control their natural impulses; sometimes with the purpose of worthily discharging their duties as parents; sometimes, as for instance at Rome under the Empire, for mean motives. And on the other hand society exercises pressure on the individual by religious, moral and legal sanctions, sometimes with the object of quickening, and sometimes with that of retarding, the growth of population. The study of the growth of population is often spoken of as though it were a modern one. But in a more or less vague form it has occupied the attention of thoughtful men in all ages of the world. To its influence, often unavowed, sometimes not even clearly recognized, we can trace a great part of the rules, customs and ceremonies that have been enjoined in the Eastern and Western world by law-givers, by moralists, and those nameless thinkers, whose far-seeing wisdom has left its impress on national habits. Among vigorous races, and in times of great military conflict, they aimed at increasing the supply of males capable of bearing arms; and in the higher stages of progress they have inculcated a great respect for the sanctity of human life; but in the lower stages, they have encouraged and even compelled the ruthless slaughter of the infirm and the aged, and sometimes of a certain proportion of the female children. In ancient Greece and Rome, with the safety-valve of the power of planting colonies, and in the presence of constant war, an increase in the number of citizens was regarded as a source of public strength; and marriage was encouraged by public opinion, and in many cases even by legislation: though thoughtful men were even then aware that action in the contrary sense might be necessary if the responsibilities of parentage should ever cease to be burdensome.(2*) In later times there may be observed, as Roscher says,(3*) a regular ebb and flow of the opinion that the State should encourage the growth of numbers. It was in full flow in England under the first two Tudors, but in the course of the sixteenth century it slackened and turned; and it began to ebb, when the abolition of the celibacy of the religious orders, and the more settled state of the country had had time to give a perceptible impetus to population; the effective demand for labour having meanwhile been diminished by the increase of sheep runs, and by the collapse of that part of the industrial system which had been organized by the monastic establishments. Later on the growth of population was checked by that rise in the standard of comfort which took effect in the general adoption of wheat as the staple food of Englishmen during the first half of the eighteenth century. At that time there were even fears, which later inquiries showed to be unfounded, that the population was actually diminishing. Petty(4*) had forestalled some of Carey's and Wakefield's arguments as to the advantages of a dense population. Child had argued that "whatever tends to the depopulating of a country tends to the impoverishment of it;" and that "most nations in the civilized parts of the world are more or less rich or poor proportionably to the paucity or plenty of their people, and not to the sterility or fruitfulness of their land."(5*) And by the time that the world-struggle with France had attained its height, when the demands for more and more troops were ever growing, and when manufacturers were wanting more men for their new machinery; the bias of the ruling classes was strongly flowing in favour of an increase of population. So far did this movement of opinion reach that in 1796 Pitt declared that a man who had enriched his country with a number of children had a claim on its assistance. An Act, passed amid the military anxieties of 1806, which granted exemptions from taxes to the fathers of more than two children born in wedlock, was repealed as soon as Napoleon had been safely lodged in St Helena.(6*) 2. But during all this time there had been a growing feeling among those who thought most seriously on social problems, that an inordinate increase of numbers, whether it strengthened the State or not, must necessarily cause great misery: and that the rulers of the State had no right to subordinate individual happiness to the aggrandizement of the State. In France in particular a reaction was caused, as we have seen, by the cynical selfishness with which the Court and its adherents sacrificed the wellbeing of the people for the sake of their own luxury and military glory. If the humane sympathies of the Physiocrats had been able to overcome the frivolity and harshness of the privileged classes of France, the eighteenth century would probably not have ended in tumult and bloodshed, the march of freedom in England would not have been arrested, and the dial of progress would have been more forward than it is by the space of at least a generation. As it was, but little attention was paid to Quesnay's guarded but forcible protest: -- "one should aim less at augmenting the population than at increasing the national income, for the condition of greater comfort which is derived from a good income, is preferable to that in which a population exceeds its income and is ever in urgent need of the means of subsistence."(7*) Adam Smith said but little on the question of population, for indeed he wrote at one of the culminating points of the prosperity of the English working classes; but what he does say is wise and well balanced and modern in tone. Accepting the Physiocratic doctrine as his basis, he corrected it by insisting that the necessaries of life are not a fixed and determined quantity, but have varied much from place to place and time to time; and may vary more.(8*) But he did not work out this hint fully. And there was nothing to lead him to anticipate the second great limitation of the physiocratic doctrine, which has been made prominent in our time by the carriage of wheat from the centre of America to Liverpool for less than what had been the cost of its carriage across England. The eighteenth century wore on to its close and the next century began; year by year the condition of the working classes in England became more gloomy. An astonishing series of bad harvests,(9*) a most exhausting war,(10*) and a change in the methods of industry that dislocated old ties, combined with an injudicious poor law to bring the working classes into the greatest misery they have ever suffered, at all events since the beginning of trustworthy records of English social history.(11*) And to crown all, well-meaning enthusiasts, chiefly under French influence, were proposing communistic schemes which would enable people to throw on society the whole responsibility for rearing their children.(12*) Thus while the recruiting sergeant and the employer of labour were calling for measures tending to increase the growth of population, more far-seeing men began to inquire whether the race could escape degradation if the numbers continued long to increase as they were then doing. Of these inquirers the chief was Malthus, and his Essay on the Principle of Population is the starting-point of all modern speculations on the subject. 3. Malthus' reasoning consists of three parts, which must be kept distinct. The first relates to the supply of labour. By a careful study of facts he proves that every people, of whose history we have a trustworthy record, has been so prolific that the growth of its numbers would have been rapid and continuous if it had not been checked either by a scarcity of the necessaries of life, or some other cause, that is, by disease, by war, by infanticide, or lastly by voluntary restraint. His second position relates to the demand for labour. Like the first it is supported by facts, but by a different set of facts. He shows that up to the time at which he wrote no country (as distinguished from a city, such as Rome or Venice) had been able to obtain an abundant supply of the necessaries of life after its territory had become very thickly peopled. The produce which Nature returns to the work of man is her effective demand for population: and he shows that up to this time a rapid increase in population when already thick had not led to a proportionate increase in this demand.(13*) Thirdly, he draws the conclusion that what had been in the past, was likely to be in the future; and that the growth of population would be checked by poverty or some other cause of suffering unless it were checked by voluntary restraint. He therefore urges people to use this restraint, and, while leading lives of moral purity, to abstain from very early marriages.(14*) His position with regard to the supply of population, with which alone we are directly concerned in this chapter, remains substantially valid. The changes which the course of events has introduced into the doctrine of population relate chiefly to the second and third steps of his reasoning. We have already noticed that the English economists of the earlier half of last century overrated the tendency of an increasing population to press upon the means of subsistence; and it was not Malthus' fault that he could not foresee the great developments of steam transport by land and by sea, which have enabled Englishmen of the present generation to obtain the products of the richest lands of the earth at comparatively small cost. But the fact that he did not foresee these changes makes the second and third steps of his argument antiquated in form; though they are still in a great measure valid in substance. It remains true that unless the checks on the growth of population in force at the end of the nineteenth century are on the whole increased (they are certain to change their form in places that are as yet imperfectly civilized) it will be impossible for the habits of comfort prevailing in Western Europe to spread themselves over the whole world and maintain themselves for many hundred years. But of this more hereafter.(15*) 4. The growth in numbers of a people depends firstly on the Natural Increase, that is, the excess of their births over their deaths; and secondly on migration. The number of births depends chiefly on habits relating to marriage, the early history of which is full of instruction; but we must confine ourselves here to the conditions of marriage in modern civilized countries. The age of marriage varies with the climate. In warm climates where childbearing begins early, it ends early, in colder climates it begins later and ends later;(16*) but in every case the longer marriages are postponed beyond the age that is natural to the country, the smaller is the birth-rate; the age of the wife being of course much more important in this respect than that of the husband.(17*) Given the climate, the average age of marriage depends chiefly on the ease with which young people can establish themselves, and support a family according to the standard of comfort that prevails among their friends and acquaintances; and therefore it is different in different stations of life. In the middle classes a man's income seldom reaches its maximum till he is forty or fifty years old; and the expense of bringing up his children is heavy and lasts for many years. The artisan earns nearly as much at twenty-one as he ever does, unless he rises to a responsible post, but he does not earn much before he is twenty-one: his children are likely to be a considerable expense to him till about the age of fifteen; unless they are sent into a factory, where they may pay their way at a very early age; and lastly the labourer earns nearly full wages at eighteen, while his children begin to pay their own expenses very early. In consequence, the average age at marriage is highest among the middle classes: it is low among the artisans and lower still among the unskilled labourers.(18*) Unskilled labourers, when not so poor as to suffer actual want and not restrained by any external cause, have seldom, if ever, shown a lower power of increase than that of doubling in thirty years; that is, of multiplying a million-fold in six hundred years, a billion-fold in twelve hundred: and hence it might be inferred a priori that their increase has never gone on without restraint for any considerable time. This inference is confirmed by the teaching of all history. Throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, and in some parts of it even up to the present time, unmarried labourers have usually slept in the farmhouse or with their parents; while a married pair have generally required a house for themselves: when a village has as many hands as it can well employ, the number of houses is not increased, and young people have to wait as best they can. There are many parts of Europe even now in which custom exercising the force of law prevents more than one son in each family from marrying; he is generally the eldest, but in some places the youngest: if any other son marries he must leave the village. When great material prosperity and the absence of all extreme poverty are found in old-fashioned corners of the Old World, the explanation generally lies in some such custom as this with all its evils and hardships.(19*) It is true that the severity of this custom may be tempered by the power of migration; but in the Middle Ages the free movement of the people was hindered by stern regulations. The free towns indeed often encouraged immigration from the country: but the rules of the gilds were in some respects almost as cruel to people who tried to escape from their old homes as were those enforced by the feudal lords themselves.(20*) 5. In this respect the position of the hired agricultural labourer has changed very much. The towns are now always open to him and his children; and if he betakes himself to the New World he is likely to succeed better than any other class of emigrants. But on the other hand the gradual rise in the value of land and its growing scarcity is tending to check the increase of population in some districts in which the system of peasant properties prevails, in which there is not much enterprise for opening out new trades or for emigration, and parents feel that the social position of their children will depend on the amount of their land. They incline to limit artificially the size of their families and to treat marriage very much as a business contract, seeking always to marry their sons to heiresses. Francis Galton pointed out that, though the families of English peers are generally large, the habits of marrying the eldest son to an heiress who is presumably not of fertile stock, and sometimes dissuading younger sons from marriage, have led to the extinction of many peerages. Similar habits among French peasants, combined with their preference for small families, keep their numbers almost stationary. On the other hand there seem to be no conditions more favourable to the rapid growth of numbers than those of the agricultural districts of new countries. Land is to be had in abundance, railways and steamships carry away the produce of the land and bring back in exchange implements of advanced types, and many of the comforts and luxuries of life. The "farmer," as the peasant proprietor is called in America, finds therefore that a large family is not a burden, but an assistance to him. He and they live healthy out-of-door lives; there is nothing to check but everything to stimulate the growth of numbers. The natural increase is aided by immigration; and thus, in spite of the fact that some classes of the inhabitants of large cities in America are, it is said, reluctant to have many children, the population has increased sixteen-fold in the last hundred years.(21*) On the whole it seems proved that the birth-rate is generally lower among the well-to-do than among those who make little expensive provision for the future of themselves and their families, and who live an active life: and that fecundity is diminished by luxurious habits of living. Probably it is also diminished by severe mental strain; that is to say, given the natural strength of the parents, their expectation of a large family is diminished by a great increase of mental strain. Of course those who do high mental work, have as a class more than the average of constitutional and nervous strength; and Galton has shown that they are not as a class unprolific. But they commonly marry late. 6. The growth of population in England has a more clearly defined history than that in the United Kingdom, and we shall find some interest in noticing its chief movements. The restraints on the increase of numbers during the Middle Ages were the same in England as elsewhere. In England as elsewhere the religious orders were a refuge to those for whom no establishment in marriage could be provided; and religious celibacy while undoubtedly acting in some measure as an independent check on the growth of population, is in the main to be regarded rather as a method in which the broad natural forces tending to restrain population expressed themselves, than as an addition to them. Infectious and contagious diseases, both endemic and epidemic, were caused by dirty habits of life which were even worse in England than in the South of Europe; and famines by the failures of good harvests and the difficulties of communication; though this evil was less in England than elsewhere. Country life was, as elsewhere, rigid in its habits; young people found it difficult to establish themselves until some other married pair had passed from the scene and made a vacancy in their own parish; for migration to another parish was seldom thought of by an agricultural labourer under ordinary circumstances. Consequently whenever plague or war or famine thinned the population, there were always many waiting to be married, who filled the vacant places; and, being perhaps younger and stronger than the average of newly married couples, had larger families.(22*) There was however some movement even of agricultural labourers towards districts which had been struck more heavily than their neighbours by pestilence, by famine or the sword. Moreover artisans were often more or less on the move, and this was especially the case with those who were engaged in the building trades, and those who worked in metal and wood; though no doubt the "wander years" were chiefly those of youth, and after these were over the wanderer was likely to settle down in the place in which he was born. Again, there seems to have been a good deal of migration on the part of the retainers of the landed gentry, especially of the greater barons who had seats in several parts of the country. And lastly, in spite of the selfish exclusiveness which the gilds developed as years went on, the towns offered in England as elsewhere a refuge to many who could get no good openings for work and for marriage in their own homes. In these various ways some elasticity was introduced into the rigid system of medieval economy; and population was able to avail itself in some measure of the increased demand for labour which came gradually with the growth of knowledge, the establishment of law and order, and the development of oceanic trade.(23*) In the latter half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century the central government exerted itself to hinder the adjustment of the supply of population in different parts of the country to the demand for it by Settlement laws, which made any one chargeable to a parish who had resided there forty days, but ordered that he might be sent home by force at any time within that period.(24*) Landlords and farmers were so eager to prevent people from getting a "settlement" in their parish that they put great difficulties in the way of building cottages, and sometimes even razed them to the ground. In consequence the agricultural population of England was stationary during the hundred years ending with 1760; while the manufactures were not yet sufficiently developed to absorb large numbers. This retardation in the growth of numbers was partly caused by, and partly a cause of, a rise in the standard of living; a chief element of which was an increased use of wheat in the place of inferior grains as the food of the common people.(25*) From 1760 onwards those who could not establish themselves at home found little difficulty in getting employment in the new manufacturing or mining districts, where the demand for workers often kept the local authorities from enforcing the removal clauses of the Settlement Act. To these districts young people resorted freely, and the birthrate in them became exceptionally high; but so did the death-rate also; the net result being a fairly rapid growth of population. At the end of the century, when Malthus wrote, the Poor Law again began to influence the age of marriage; but this time in the direction of making it unduly early. The sufferings of the working classes caused by a series of famines and by the French War made some measure of relief necessary; and the need of large bodies of recruits for the army and navy was an additional inducement to tender-hearted people to be somewhat liberal in their allowances to a large family, with the practical effect of making the father of many children often able to procure more indulgences for himself without working than he could have got by hard work if he had been unmarried or had only a small family. Those who availed themselves most of this bounty were naturally the laziest and meanest of the people, those with least self-respect and enterprise. So although there was in the manufacturing towns a fearful mortality, particularly of infants, the quantity of the people increased fast; but its quality improved little, if at all, till the passing of the New Poor Law in 1834. Since that time the rapid growth of the town population has, as we shall see in the next chapter, tended to increase mortality, but this has been counteracted by the growth of temperance, of medical knowledge, of sanitation and of general cleanliness. Emigration has increased, the age of marriage has been slightly raised and a somewhat less proportion of the whole population are married; but, on the other hand, the ratio of births to a marriage has risen;(26*) with the result that population has been growing very nearly steadily.(27*) Let us examine the course of recent changes a little more closely. 7. Early in this century, when wages were low and wheat was dear, the working classes generally spent more than half their income on bread: and consequently a rise in the price of wheat diminished marriages very much among them: that is, it diminished very much the number of marriages by banns. But it raised the income of many members of the well-to-do classes, and therefore often increased the number of marriages by licence.(28*) Since however these were but a small part of the whole, the net effect was to lower the marriage-rate.(29*) But as time went on, the price of wheat fell and wages rose, till now the working classes spend on the average less than a quarter of their incomes on bread; and in consequence the variations of commercial prosperity have got to exercise a preponderating influence on the marriage-rate.(30*) Since 1873 though the average real income of the population of England has indeed been increasing, its rate of increase has been less than in the preceding years, and meanwhile there has been a continuous fall of prices, and consequently a continuous fall in the money incomes of many classes of society. Now people are governed in their calculations as to whether they can afford to marry or not, more by the money income which they expect to be able to get, than by elaborate calculations of changes in its purchasing power. And therefore the standard of living among the working classes has been rising rapidly, perhaps more rapidly than at any other time in English history; their household expenditure measured in money has remained about stationary, and measured in goods has increased very fast. Meanwhile the price of wheat has also fallen very much, and a marked fall in the marriage-rate for the whole country has often accompanied a marked fall in the price of wheat. The marriage-rate is now reckoned on the basis that each marriage involves two persons and should therefore count for two. The English rate fell from 17.6 per thousand in 1873 to 14.2 in 1886. It rose to 16.5 in 1899; in 1907 it was 15.8, but in 1908 only 14.9.(31*) There is much to be learnt from the history of population in Scotland and in Ireland. In the lowlands of Scotland a high standard of education, the development of mineral resources, and close contact with their richer English neighbours have combined to afford a great increase of average income to a rapidly increasing population. On the other hand, the inordinate growth of population in Ireland before the potato-famine in 1847, and its steady diminution since that time, will remain for ever landmarks in economic history. Comparing the habits of different nations(32*) we find that in the Teutonic countries of Central and Northern Europe, the age of marriage is kept late, partly in consequence of the early years of manhood being spent in the army; but that it has been very early in Russia; where, at all events under the old rיgime, the family group insisted on the son's bringing a wife to help in the work of the household as early as possible, even if he had to leave her for a time and go to earn his living elsewhere. In the United Kingdom and America there is no compulsory service, and men marry early. In France, contrary to general opinion, early marriages on the part of men are not rare; while on the part of women they are more common than in any country for which we have statistics, except the Slavonic countries, where they are much the highest. The marriage-rate, the birth-rate and the death-rate are diminishing in almost every country. But the general mortality is high where the birth-rate is high. For instance, both are high in Slavonic countries, and both are low in the North of Europe. The death-rates are low in Australasia, and the "natural" increase there is fairly high, though the birth-rate is low and falling very fast. In fact its fall in the various States ranged from 23 to 30 per cent in the period 1881-1901.(33*) NOTES: 1. See IV, i, section 1. 2. Thus Aristotle (Politics, II, 6) objects to Plato's scheme for equalizing property and abolishing poverty on the ground that it would be unworkable unless the State exercised a firm control over the growth of numbers. And as Jowett points out, Plato himself was aware of this (see Laws, v, 740: also Aristotle, Politics, VII, 16). The opinion, formerly held that the population of Greece declined from the seventh century B.C., and that of Rome from the third, has recently been called in question, see "Die Bevצlkerung des Altertums" by Edouard Meyer in the Handwצrterbuch der Staatswissenschaften. 3. Political Economy, section 254. 4. He argues that Holland is richer than it appears to be relatively to France, because its people have access to many advantages that cannot be had by those who live on poorer land, and are therefore more scattered. "rich land is better than coarse land of the same rent." Political Arithmetick, ch. 1. 5. Discourses on Trade, ch. X. Harris, Essay on Coins, pp. 32-3, argues to a similar effect, and proposes to "encourage matrimony among the lower classes by giving some privileges to those who have children," etc. 6. "Let us," said Pitt, "make relief, in cases where there are a large number of children, a matter of right and an honour, instead of a ground for opprobrium and contempt. This will make a large family a blessing and not a curse, and this will draw a proper line of distinction between those who are able to provide for themselves by labour, and those who after having enriched their country with a number of children have a claim on its assistance for their support." Of course he desired "to discourage relief where it was not wanted." Napoleon the First had offered to take under his own charge one member of any family which contained seven male children; and Louis XIV his predecessor in the slaughter of men, had exempted from public taxes all those who married before the age of 20 or had more than ten legitimate children. A comparison of the rapid increase in the population of Germany with that of France was a chief motive of the order of the French Chamber in 1885 that education and board should be provided at the public expense for every seventh child in necessitous families: and in 1913 a law was passed giving bounties under certain conditions to parents of large families. The British Budget Bill of 1909 allowed a small abatement of income tax for fathers of families. 7. The Physiocratic doctrine with regard to the tendency of population to increase up to the margin of subsistence may be given in Turgot's words: -- the employer "since he always has his choice of a great number of working men, will choose that one who will work most cheaply. Thus then the workers are compelled by mutual competition to lower their price; and with regard to every kind of labour the result is bound to be reached and it is reached as a matter of fact -- that the wages of the worker are limited to that which is necessary to procure his subsistence." (Sur la formation et la distribution des richesses, VI) Similarly Sir James Steuart says (Inquiry, Bk. 1, ch. III), "The generative faculty resembles a spring loaded with a weight, which always exerts itself in proportion to the diminution of resistance: when food has remained some time without augmentation or diminution, generation will carry numbers as high as possible; if then food comes to be diminished the spring is overpowered; the force of it becomes less than nothing, inhabitants will diminish at least in proportion to the overcharge. If, on the other hand, food be increased, the spring which stood at 0, will begin to exert itself in proportion as the resistance diminishes; people will begin to be better fed; they will multiply, and in proportion as they increase in numbers the food will become scarce again." Sir James Steuart was much under the influence of the Physiocrats, and was indeed in some respects imbued with Continental rather than English notions of government: and his artificial schemes for regulating population seem very far off from us now. See his Inquiry, Bk. I, ch. XII, "Of the great advantage of combining a well-digested Theory and a perfect Knowledge of Facts with the Practical Part of Government in order to make a People multiply." 8. See Wealth of Nations, Bk. I, ch. VIII, and Bk. V, ch. II. See also supra, Bk. II, ch. III. 9. The average price of wheat in the decade 1771-80 in which Adam Smith wrote was 34s. 7d.; in 1781-90 it was 37s. 1d.; in 1791-1800 it was 63s. 6d.; in 1801-10 it was 83s. 11d.; and in 1811-20 it was 87s. 6d. 10. Early in the last century the Imperial taxes for the greater part war taxes amounted to one-fifth of the whole income of the country; whereas now they are not much more than a twentieth, and even of this a great part is spent on education and other benefits which Government did not then afford. 11. See below section 7 and above Bk. I, ch. III, section 5. 12. Especially Godwin in his Inquiry concerning Political Justice (1792). It is interesting to compare Malthus' criticism of this Essay (Bk. III, ch. II) with Aristotle's comments on Plato's Republic (see especially Politics, II, 6). 13. But many of his critics suppose him to have stated his position much less unreservedly than he did; they have forgotten such passages as this: -- "From a review of the state of society in former periods compared with the present I should certainly say that the evils resulting from the principle of population have rather diminished than increased, even under the disadvantage of an almost total ignorance of their real cause. And if we can indulge the hope that this ignorance will be gradually dissipated, it does not seem unreasonable to hope that they will be still further diminished. The increase of absolute population, which will of course take place, will evidently tend but little to weaken this expectation, as everything depends on the relative proportions between population and food, and not on the absolute number of the people. In the former part of this work it appeared that the countries which possessed the fewest people often suffered the most from the effects of the principle of population." Essay, Bk. IV, ch. XII. 14. In the first edition of his essay, 1798, Malthus gave his argument without any detailed statement of facts, though from the first he regarded it as needing to be treated in direct connection with a study of facts; as is shown by his having told Pryme (who afterwards became the first Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge) "that his theory was first suggested to his mind in an argumentative conversation which he had with his father on the state of some other countries" (Pryme's Recollections, p. 66). American experience showed that population if unchecked would double at least once in twenty-five years. He argued that a doubled population might, even in a country as thickly peopled as England was with its seven million inhabitants, conceivably though not probably double the subsistence raised from the English soil: but that labour doubled again would not suffice to double the produce again. "Let us then take this for our rule, though certainly far beyond the truth; and allow that the whole produce of the island might be increased every twenty five years [that is with every doubling of the population] by a quantity of subsistence equal to that which it at present produces"; or in other words, in an arithmetical progression. His desire to make himself clearly understood made him, as Wagner says in his excellent introduction to the study of Population (Grundlegung, Ed. 3, p. 453), "put too sharp a point on his doctrine, and formulate it too absolutely." Thus he got into the habit of speaking of production as capable of increasing in an arithmetical ratio: and many writers think that he attached importance to the phrase itself: whereas it was really only a short way of stating the utmost that he thought any reasonable person could ask him to concede. What he meant, stated in modern language, was that the tendency to diminishing return, which is assumed throughout his argument, would begin to operate sharply after the produce of the island had been doubled. Doubled labour might give doubled produce: but quadrupled labour would hardly treble it: octupled labour would not quadruple it. In the second edition, 1803, he based himself on so wide and careful a statement of facts as to claim a place among the founders of historical economics; he softened and explained away many of the "sharp points" of his old doctrine, though he did not abandon (as was implied in the earlier editions of this work) the use of the phrase "arithmetical ratio." In particular he took a less despondent view of the future of the human race; and dwelt on the hope that moral restraint might hold population in check, and that "vice and misery," the old check, might thus be kept in abeyance. Francis Place, who was not blind to his many faults, wrote in 1822 an apology for him, excellent in tone and judgment. Good accounts of his work are given in Bonar's Malthus and his Work, Cannan's Production and Distribution, 1776-1848, and Nicholson's Political Economy, Bk. 1, ch. XII. 15. Taking the present population of the world at one and a half thousand millions; and assuming that its present rate of increase (about 8 per 1000 annually, see Ravenstein's paper before the British Association in 1890) will continue, we find that in less than two hundred years it will amount to six thousand millions; or at the rate of about 200 to the square mile of fairly fertile land (Ravenstein reckons 28 million square miles of fairly fertile land, and 14 millions of poor grass lands. The first estimate is thought by many to be too high: but, allowing for this, if the less fertile land be reckoned in for what it is worth, the result will be about thirty million square miles as assumed above). Meanwhile there will probably be great improvements in the arts of agriculture; and, if so, the pressure of population on the means of subsistence may be held in check for about two hundred years, but not longer. 16. Of course the length of a generation has itself some influence on the growth of population. If it is 25 years in one place and 20 in another; and if in each place population doubles once in two generations during a thousand years, the increase will be a million-fold in the first place, but thirty million-fold in the second. 17. Dr Ogle (Statistical Journal, Vol. 53) calculates that if the average age of marriage of women in England were postponed five years, the number of children to a marriage, which is now 4.2 would fall to 3.1. Korצsi, basing himself on the facts of the relatively warm climate of Buda Pest, finds 18-20 the most prolific age for women, 24-26 that for men. But he concludes that a slight postponement of weddings beyond these ages is advisable mainly on the ground that the vitality of the children of women under 20 is generally small. See Proceedings of Congress of Hygiene and Demography, London 1892, and Statistical Journal, Vol 57. 18. The term marriage in the text must be taken in a wide sense so as to include not only legal marriages, but all those informal unions which are sufficiently permanent in character to involve for several years at least the practical responsibilities of married life. They are often contracted at an early age, and not unfrequently lead up to legal marriages after the lapse of some years. For this reason the average age at marriage in the broad sense of the term, with which alone we are here concerned, is below the average age at legal marriage. The allowance to be made on this head for the whole of the working classes is probably considerable; but it is very much greater in the case of unskilled labourers than of any other class. The following statistics must be interpreted in the light of this remark, and of the fact that all English industrial statistics are vitiated by the want of sufficient care in the classification of the working classes in our official returns. The Registrar-General's forty-ninth Annual Report states that in certain selected districts the returns of marriages for 1884-5 were examined with the following results; the number after each occupation being the average age of bachelors in it at marriage, and the following number, in brackets, being the average age of spinsters who married men of that occupation: -- Miners 24.06 (22.46); Textile hands 24.38 (23.43); Shoemakers, Tailors 24.92 (24.31); Artisans 25.35 (23.70); Labourers 15.56 (23.66); Commercial Clerks 16.15 (24.43); Shopkeepers, Shopmen 26.67 (24.22); Farmers and sons 29.23 (26.91); Professional and Independent Class 31.22 (26.40). Dr Ogle, in the paper already referred to, shows that the marriage-rate is greatest generally in those parts of England in which the percentage of those women between 15 and 25 years of age who are industrially occupied is the greatest. This is no doubt due, as he suggests, partly to the willingness of men to have their money incomes supplemented by those of their wives; but it may be partly due also to an excess of women of a marriageable age in those districts. 19. Thus a visit to the valley Jachenau in the Bavarian Alps about 1880 found this custom still in full force. Aided by a great recent rise in the value of their woods, with regard to which they had pursued a farseeing policy, the inhabitants lived prosperously in large houses, the younger brothers and sisters acting as servants in their old homes or elsewhere. They were of a different race from the workpeople in the neighbouring valleys, who lived poor and hard lives, but seemed to think that the Jachenau purchased its material prosperity at too great a cost. 20. See e.g. Rogers, Six Centuries, pp. 106-7. 21. The extreme prudence of peasant proprietors under stationary conditions was noticed by Malthus; see his account of Switzerland (Essay, Bk. II, ch. v). Adam Smith remarked that poor Highland women frequently had twenty children of whom not more than two reached maturity (Wealth of Nations, Bk. 1, ch. VIII); and the notion that want stimulated fertility was insisted on by Doubleday, True Law of Population. See also Sadler, Law of Population. Herbert Spencer seemed to think it probable that the progress of civilization will of itself hold the growth of population completely in check. But Malthus' remark, that the reproductive power is less in barbarous than in civilized races, has been extended by Darwin to the animal and vegetable kingdom generally. Mr Charles Booth (Statistical Journal, 1893) has divided London into 27 districts (chiefly Registration districts); and arranged them in order of poverty, of overcrowding, of high birth-rate and of high death-rate. He finds that the four orders are generally the same. The excess of birth rate over death-rate is lowest in the very rich and the very poor districts. The birth-rate in England and Wales is nominally diminishing at about an equal rate in both town and country. But the continuous migration of young persons from rural to industrial areas has considerably depleted the ranks of young married women in the rural districts; and, when allowance is made for this fact, we find that the percentage of births to women of childbearing ages is much higher in them than in the towns: as is shown in the following table published by the Registrar-General in 1907. Mean Annual Birth Rates in Urban and Rural Areas Urban: 20 large towns, with an aggregate population of 9,742,404 persons at the date of the Census of 1901. Period Calculated on the total population Rate per 1000 Compared with rate in 1870-72 taken as 100 1870-72 36.7 100.0 1880-82 35.7 97.3 1890-92 32.0 87.2 1900-02 28.8 81.2 Calculated on the female population, aged 15-45 years Rate per 1000 Compared with rate in 1870-72 taken as 100 1870-72 143.1 100.0 1880-82 140.6 98.3 1890-92 124.6 87.1 1900-02 111.4 77.8 Rural: 112 entirely rural registration districts, with an aggregate population of 1,330,319 persons at the date of the Census of 1901. Calculated on the total population Rate per 1000 Compared with rate in 1870-72 taken as 100 1870-72 31.6 100.0 1880-82 30.3 95.6 1890-92 27.8 88.0 1900-02 26.0 83.3 Calculated on the female population, aged 15-45 years Rate per 1000 Compared with rate in 1870-72 taken as 100 1870-72 158.9 100.0 1880-82 153.5 96.6 1890-92 135.6 85.3 1900-02 120.7 76.0 The movements of the population of France have been studied with exceptional care: and the great work on the subject by Levasseur, La Population Franחaise, is a mine of valuable information as regards other nations besides France. Montesquieu, reasoning perhaps rather a priori, accused the law of primogeniture which ruled in his time in France of reducing the number of children in a family: and le Play brought the same charge against the law of compulsory division. Levasseur (l.c. Vol. iii, pp. 171-7) calls attention to the contrast; and remark that Malthus' expectations of the effect of the Civil Code on population were in harmony with Montesquieu's rather than le Play's diagnosis. But in fact the birthrate varies much from one part of France to another. It is generally lower where a large part of the population owns land than where it does not. If however the Departments of France be arranged in groups in ascending order of the property left at death (valeurs successorales par tךte d'habitant), the corresponding birth-rate descends almost uniformly, being 23 per hundred married women between 15 and 50 years for the ten Departments in which the property left is 48-57 fr.; and 13.2 for the Seine, where it is 412 fr. And in Paris itself the arrondissements inhabited by the well-to-do show a smaller percentage of families with more than two children than the poorer arrondissements show. There is much interest in the careful analysis which Levasseur gives of the connection between economic conditions and birth-rate; his general conclusion being that it is not direct but indirect, through the mutual influence of the two on manners and the habit of life (moeurs). He appears to hold that, however much the decline in the numbers of the French relatively to surrounding nations may be regretted from the political and military points of view, there is much good mixed with the evil in its influences on material comfort and even social progress. 22. Thus we are told that after the Black Death of 1349 most marriages were very fertile (Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, Vol. 1, p. 301). 23. There is no certain knowledge to be had as to the density of population in England before the eighteenth century. but the following estimates, reproduced from Steffen (Geschichte der englischen Lohn-arbeiter, 1, pp. 463 ff.), are probably the best as yet available. Domesday Book suggests that in 1086 the population of England was between two, and two-and-a-half millions. Just before the Black Death (1348) it may have been between three-and-a-half, and four-and-a-half millions; and just afterwards two-and-a-half millions. It began to recover quickly; but made slow progress between 1400 and 1550: it increased rather fast in the next hundred years, and reached five-and-a half millions in 1700. If we are to trust Harrison (Description of England, Bk. II, ch. XVI), the muster of men able for service in 1574 amounted to 1,172,674. The Black Death was England's only very great calamity. She was not, like the rest of Europe, liable to devastating wars, such as the Thirty Years' War, which destroyed more than half the population of Germany, a loss which it required a full century to recover. (See R�melin's instructive article on Bevצlkerungslehre in Schצnberg's Handbuch.) 24. Adam Smith is justly indignant at this. (See Wealth of Nations, Bk. I, ch. X, Part II, and Book IV, ch. II.) The Act recites (14 Charles II, c. 12, A.D. 1662) that " by reason of some defects in the law, poor people are not restrained from going from one parish to another, and thereby do endeavour to settle themselves in those parishes where there is the best stock, the largest wastes or commons to build cottages, and the most woods for them to burn and destroy: etc." and it is therefore ordered " that upon complaint made... within forty days after any such person or persons coming, so as to settle as aforesaid, in any tenement under the yearly value of ten pounds... it shall be lawful for any two justices of the Peace... to remove and convey such person or persons to such parish where he or they were last legally settled." Several Acts purporting to soften its harshness had been passed before Adam Smith's time; but they had been ineffective. In 1795 however it was ordered that no one should be removed until he became actually chargeable. 25. Some interesting remarks on this subject are made by Eden, History of the Poor, I, pp. 560-4. 26. But this increase in the figures shown is partly due to improved registration of births. (Farr, Vital Statistics, p. 97.) 27. The following tables show the growth of the population of England and Wales from the beginning of the eighteenth century. The figures before 1801 are computed from the registers of births and deaths, and the poll and hearth tax returns: those since 1801 from Census returns. It will be noticed that the numbers increased nearly as much in the twenty years following 1760 as in the preceding sixty years. The pressure of the great war and the high price of corn is shown in the slow growth between 1790 and 1801; and the effects of indiscriminate poor law allowances, in spite of greater pressure, is shown by the rapid increase in the next ten years, and the still greater increase when that pressure was removed in the decade ending 1821. The third column shows the percentage which the increase during the preceding decade was of the population at the beginning of that decade. Year Population Increase 000s omitted per cent 1700 5,475 1710 5,240 -4.9 1720 5,565 6.2 1730 5,796 4.1 1740 6,064 4.6 1750 6,467 6.6 1760 6,736 4.1 1770 7,428 10.3 1780 7,953 7.1 1790 8,675 9.1 1801 8,892 2.5 1811 10,164 14.3 1821 12,000 18.1 1831 13,897 15.8 1841 15,909 14.5 1851 17,928 12.7 1861 20,066 11.9 1871 22,712 13.2 1881 25,974 14.4 1891 29,022 11.7 1901 32,527 11.7 The great growth of emigration during recent years makes it important to correct the figures for the last three decades so as to show the "natural increase," viz. that due to the excess of births over deaths. The net emigration from the United Kingdom during the decades 1871-81 and 1881-91 was 1,480,000, and 1,747,000 respectively. 28. See Farr's 17th Annual Report for 1854 as Registrar-General, or the abstract of it in Vital Statistics (pp. 72-5). 29. For instance, representing the price of wheat in shillings and the number of marriages in England and Wales in thousands, we have for 1801 wheat at 119 and marriages at 67, for 1803 wheat at 59 and marriages at 94; for 1805 the numbers are 90 and 80, for 1807 they are 75 and 84, for 1812 they are 126 and 82, for 1815 they are 66 and 100, for 1917 they are 97 and 88, for 1822 they are 45 and 99. 30. Since 1820 the average price of wheat has seldom exceeded 60s. and never 75s.: and the successive inflations of commerce which culminated and broke in 1826, 1836-9, 1848, 1856, 1866 and 1873 exercised an influence on the marriage rate about equal with changes in the price of corn. When the two causes act together the effects are very striking: thus between 1829 and 1834, there was a recovery of prosperity accompanied by a steady fall in the price of wheat and marriages rose from a hundred and four to a hundred and twenty-one thousand. The marriage-rate rose again rapidly between 1842 and 1845 when the price of wheat was a little lower than in the preceding years, and the business of the country was reviving; and again under similar circumstances between 1847 and 1853 and between 1862 and 1865. A comparison of the marriage-rate with the harvests in Sweden for the years 1749 to 1883 is given by Sir Rawson Rawson in the Statistical Journal for December 1885. The harvest does not declare itself till part of the year's tale of marriages is made up; and further the inequalities of harvests are to some extent compensated for by the storage of grain; and therefore the individual harvest figures do not correspond closely with the marriage-rate. But when several good or bad harvests come together, the effect in increasing or diminishing the marriage-rate is very clearly marked. 31. Statistics of exports are among the most convenient indications of the fluctuations of commercial credit and industrial activity: and in the article already quoted, Ogle has shown a correspondence between the marriage-rate and the exports per head. Compare diagrams in Vol. II, p. 12 of Levasseur's La Population Franחaise; and with regard to Massachusetts by Willcox in the Political Science Quarterly, Vol. VIII, pp. 76-82. Ogle's inquiries have been extended and corrected in a paper read by R. H. Hooker before the Manchester Statistical Society, in January 1898; who points out that if the marriage-rate fluctuates, the birth-rate during an ascending phase of the marriage-rate is apt to correspond to the marriage-rate not for that phase, but for the preceding phase when the marriage-rate was declining: and vice versג. "Hence the ratio of births to marriages declines when the marriage-rate is rising and rises when the marriage-rate falls. A curve representing the ratio of births to marriages will move inversely to the marriage-rate." He points out that the decline in the ratio of births to marriages is not great, and is accounted for by the rapid decline of illegitimate births. The ratio of legitimate births to marriages is not declining perceptibly. 32. The following statements are based chiefly on statistics arranged by the late Signor Bodio, by M. Levasseur, La Population Franחaise, and by the English Registrar-General in his Report for 1907. 33. Much instructive and suggestive matter connected with the subject of this chapter is contained in the Statistical Memoranda and Charts relating to Public Health and Social Conditions published by the Local Government Board in 1909 [Cd. 4671].