Population-Policy

Chapter III.

SECTION CCLIII.

DENSE POPULATION.—OVER-POPULATION.

The nation's economy attains its full development wherever the greatest number of human beings simultaneously find the fullest satisfaction of their wants.

A dense population is not only a symptom of the existence of great productive forces carried to a high point of utilization; but is itself a productive force, and of the utmost importance as a spur and as an auxiliary to the utilization of all other forces. The new is always attractive, by reason of its newness; but at the same time, we hold to the old too precisely because of its age: and the force of inertia would always turn the scales in favor of the latter. This inertia, both physical and mental is so general, that perhaps the majority of mankind would continue forever satisfied with their traditional field of occupation and with their traditional circle of food, were it not that an impulse as powerful and universal as the sexual and that of the love of children compelled them to extend the limits of both. That man might subdue the whole earth it was necessary that the Creator should make the tendency of man to multiply his kind more powerful than the original production-tendency of his earliest home. The unknown far-away deters as much as it attracts. It is easy to see how the division and combination of labor become uniformly easier as population increases in density. Think only of large cities as compared with the country. "Under-populated" countries, which might easily support a large number of human beings, and which, notwithstanding have for a long period of time had only few inhabitants, are on this account abodes of poverty, regions where education and progress are unknown. While, therefore, it cannot be questioned that a nation under otherwise equal circumstances is more powerful and flourishing in proportion as its population embraces a large number of vigorous, well-to-do, educated and happy human beings, the last mentioned attributes should not be left out of consideration.

The possibility of over-population is contested by a great many theorizers (§ 243); and, indeed, the complaints on this score are in most cases only a baseless pretext of the inertia which feels the pressure of the population without being helped and spurred thereby to an increase of the means of subsistence. This inertia itself, especially when it governs a whole nation, is a fact which cannot be ignored. Over-population, as I use the term, exists whenever the disproportion between the population and the means of subsistence operates in such away that the average portion of the latter which falls to the share of each is oppressively small, whether the effect produced thereby manifests itself in a surprisingly large mortality, or in the limitation of marriages and of the procreation of children carried to the point of hardship. Over-population of this kind is, as a rule, curable by extending the limits of the field of food, either as a result of the advance of civilization at home, or by emigration.

That the whole earth should be incurably over-peopled is an exceedingly remote contingency. But where, within a smaller circle, by reason of the great stupidity or weakness of mankind, or by the too great power of circumstances, over-population cannot act as a spur to new activity, it is indeed one of the most serious and most dangerous political diseases. The immoderate competition of workmen involves the majority of the nation in misery, not only materially but also morally; one of the most dangerous temptations, for the rich to a contempt for human kind, for the poor to envy, dishonesty and prostitution. In every suffocating crowd, the animal part of man is wont to obtain the victory over the intellectual. Precisely the simplest, most universal and most necessary relations are most radically and disastrously affected by the difficulty or impossibility of contracting marriage, and the sore solicitude for the future of one's children.

In 1700-1800. 1800-1825. 1824-1846.

by by by

France, 1 41 16 132

Naples, 15 18 1 49|

Piedmont, 16 18 150

Lombardy, 19 40 1 80|

England and Wales, 16 42 136

Scotland, 13 16 134

Ireland, 17 80 1 77|

Holland, 13 14 1 95|

Belgium, 15 44 136

Prussia, 17 17 168

Hanover, 16 12 132

Württemberg, 17 12 156

Bohemia, 16 27 1 73|

In the seven
most densely
populated counties. In the seven
counties of
average
population. In the five
most sparsely
populated
counties.

Inhabitants per geographical sq. mile, 4,904 2,229 1,061

One man with £60 income in every 034 inhabitants 037 477

One man with £200 income in every 193 inhabitants 199 472

Aggregate of all incomes over £200 per square mile, £25,118 £12,676 £2,441

In Rhenish Hessen, 100 100.

In Starkenburg, 65 64.

In Upper Hessen, 64 59.

SECTION CCLIV.

THE IDEAL OF POPULATION.

Hence it was not an erroneous policy that most governments have sought to promote the increase of population in undeveloped nations. So far as the influence of the acts of government can reach, such a course must tend to the earlier maturity of a people's economy. Much more questionable are positive provisions by government intended to hinder the further increase of population in a country already supposed to be fully peopled; if for no other reason, because even the deepest, most varied and extensive knowledge can scarcely ever predict with certainty that no further extension of the field of food is possible under the spur of momentary over-population; and also because questions of population reach so far into the life and tenderest feelings of the individual that a government which has regard for the personal freedom of its subjects, instead of promoting or hindering marriage, emigration etc. by police regulations, cannot but limit itself to a statistical knowledge and legislative regulation of these relations.

Whether the population of a country increase in a well-to-do or proletarian manner; whether, therefore, the state should rejoice or lament over such increase, may generally be inferred with some certainty from the other conditions of the country's economy, especially from the height of the rate of wages and from the consumption of the nation (§ 230). Thus, for instance, the population of England, between 1815 and 1847, increased 47 per cent.; but during the same period the value of its exports increased 63 per cent.; the tonnage of its merchant marine, 55 per cent.; the amount yielded by the tax on legacies, and therefore moveable property, by 93 per cent.; the value of immoveable property by 78 per cent. Wherever in agriculture the ancient system of triennial rotation (Dreifelder-system = three-field system) has been exchanged for the so-called English system, not only is a greater number of men supported, but, as a rule, each is more abundantly provided for. The construction of new houses is an especially good symptom, because a habitation is a want which governs many others, and which, at the same time, may be much curtailed in case of need. Only, there should be no thoughtless building speculations, the existence or absence of which may readily be inferred from the ratio between the rent of houses and the rate of interest usual in the country. In England and Wales there was, in 1801, one house to every 5.7 inhabitants; in 1821, to every 5.8; in 1841, to every 5.4; in 1861, to every 5.39; in 1871, to every 5.35.

The taking of the census at regular intervals in accordance with the principles of modern science, and with the apparatus of modern art, is one of the chief means to enable us to form a correct judgment of the health of the national life and of the goodness of the state.

SECTION CCLV.

MEANS OF PROMOTING POPULATION.

The following are the principal means which have been used to artificially promote the increase of population:

A. Making marriage and the procreation of children obligatory by direct command. Among almost all medieval nations so strong is the family feeling, that it seems to men to be a sacred duty to keep their family from becoming extinct. Where a person is not in a condition physically to fulfill this duty, the law supplies a means of accomplishing it by juridical substitution at least. Most national religions operate in the same direction, as well as the influence of political law-givers, who fully share in the contempt for willful old bachelors and sterile women, which runs through the national feeling of all medieval times. In addition to this, there are the positive rewards offered for large families of children. Even Colbert, in 1666, decreed that whoever married before his 20th year should be exempt from taxation until his 25th; that anyone who had 10 legitimate children living, not priests, should be exempt from taxation for all time; that a nobleman having 10 children living should receive a pension of 1,000 livres, and one having 12, 2,000 livres. Persons not belonging to the nobility were to receive one-half of this, and to be released from all municipal burthens. Such premiums are, indeed, entirely superfluous. No nobleman would desire 12 children simply to obtain a pension of 2,000 livres! Colbert himself abandoned this system of premiums shortly before his death.

In the case of morally degenerated nations, in which an aversion to the married state had gained ground, efforts have sometimes been made to work against it by means of new premiums. Thus, especially in Rome, since the times of Cæsar and Augustus, although with poor success. It little becomes one who is himself a great adulterer to preach the sixth commandment.

SECTION CCLVI.

IMMIGRATION.

B. Calling for immigrants. This is a means all the more in favor, inasmuch as it provides the country not only with new-born children, but with mature men, who frequently, when they come from thickly peopled and highly civilized countries, promote the industries of the country of their adoption, and become the teachers of a higher civilization. I need only mention the inhabitants of the Low Countries, who in the twelfth century settled as agriculturists in Northern Germany, and in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries in England, as artisans; the German miners and inhabitants of cities, who, during the middle ages, colonized Hungary, Transylvania and Poland, and the French Huguenots, who fled to the Independent Protestant countries. Nearly all the remarkable Russian princes since Ivan III. have endeavored in this way to induce Germans to settle in Russia, and, for the same reason, Peter the Great refused to give up his Swedish prisoners of war. The great Prussian rulers have cultivated the policy of immigration on an extensive scale, and thus maintained the original character of their parent provinces as the colonial land of the German people.

Such immigrants have been generally accorded a release from taxation and from military duty for a number of years; a proper measure since the state thereby only surrendered an advantage temporarily which it otherwise would not have possessed at all. Where the land of the state receiving the immigrants was still almost valueless, it has frequently been made over in parcels to well-to-do colonists without consideration. Assistance exceeding these limits is a very questionable boon. It should not be forgotten that the influx of men who bring no capital whatever with them, and who are not good workmen, is of no advantage. Nor are they always the best elements of a people who emigrate. They are very frequently men who, through their own fault, did not prosper at home, and who come to the new country, with all their old faults. This is, of course not true of those who emigrate from their attachment to some great principle; for instance, it is not true of those who emigrate in search of freedom of conscience. These may become, provided they are in harmony with their new environment, a support and ornament to their adopted country. But there is always danger that they may not be able to adapt themselves to their new economic relations, and that thus they may in consequence succumb to the pressure of circumstances.

Oriental despotisms have frequently endeavored to assure themselves the possession of newly conquered countries by transporting its most vigorous inhabitants in whole masses to a distant part of their old empire. Thus, the Jews were carried into Assyria and Babylon; the Eretrians into Persia; the inhabitants of Caffa by Mohammed II.; the Armenians by Abbas the Great. The Russians, too, undertook a similar transportation of people under the Ivans.

C. The prohibition of emigration, which, in the case of serfs, vassals and state-villeins, it seems natural enough, was very usual in periods of absolute monarchical power. Thus, for instance, Frederick William I. forbade the emigration of Prussian peasants under penalty of death. Whoever captured an emigrant received a reward of two hundred thalers. The public opinion of modern times is very decidedly opposed to this compulsion, which would make the state a prison. "A really excessive population would still find an exit to escape, namely, through the gates of death." (J. B. Say.) The statesman, on the other hand, who opposes the withdrawal of political or ecclesiastical malcontents should take care, lest he act like the physician who prevents the discharge of diseased matter from the sick body, and causes it to take its seat in some vital organ. Hence, even where emigration is considered detrimental to the country, no governmental condition should be attached to it, except that the person desiring to emigrate should give timely notice of his intention, and receive his passport only after it has been shown that he has discharged all his military duties, paid his taxes and his debts.

The severe penalties imposed in Athens on emigration, after the defeat at Chæronea, when general discouragement threatened the state with total dissolution, belong to an entirely different mode of thought.

SECTION CCLVII.

SANITARY POLICE.

D. Hygienic measures and the improvement of the sanitary police of a country are of the utmost importance, not only to increase the number of inhabitants, but also to produce the conditions of population described in § 246.

E. It is the indispensable condition precedent of all the measures which we have examined, if they would attain their end, that the means of subsistence of the people should be increased or at least more equally divided among them. Where this has been done the increase of population will, as a rule, take care of itself; where it has not, the artificially increased procreation of children can only produce new victims for the angel of death. A merely more equable distribution can, however, improve the condition of the people only in exceedingly rare cases. (§ 204). As a rule, the diseases which it is attempted to thus cure grow worse, or they at least increase in extent. (§ 80, ff., 250.) It is quite different, of course, when the more equable distribution coincides with an absolute growth of the nation's economy. We shall see, later, that, for instance, the freedom of land alienation and of industrial pursuits, when not accompanied by an important advance in the corresponding branches of economy may do more harm than good; but that under favorable circumstances a multitude of dormant forces are thereby awakened, and that then the national-economical dividend may be increased much more than the divisor. (§ 239. Roscher, Nationalökonomik des Ackerbaues, § 99, 139 ff.)

SECTION CCLVIII.

MEANS OF LIMITING THE INCREASE OF POPULATION.

A. The means which consists in rendering marriage less easy by legislation is surrounded with peculiar difficulties in densely populated countries, which are always highly civilized. The state would have here to swim against the stream, and it would be generally a much less difficult task to enlarge the field of food. If there remained from a former period any inducements held out to promote marriage, it is self evident that they should now be discontinued. A voluntary bachelor must now no longer be considered as a man who permits one more woman to become an old maid, but as one who facilitates marriage to another couple. On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that, for men, generally, marriage is not only an occasion of increased outlay, but also an incentive to increased activity and greater economy. Many states have endeavored to condition the founding of a family by requiring evidence that the father has a prospect of being able to support one. Distinguished theorizers accede to this condition, inasmuch as they deny the right of over-population. But, unfortunately, it is impossible, except in a few extreme cases, to assert or deny a prospect of being able to support a family. How easily is the most remunerative power of labor destroyed by physical or mental disease. Scarcely less subject to change is the so-called certain opportunity of acquisition afforded by a profession or a trade, when it is not guarantied by the possession of considerable capital or of landed property, or by some legal privilege. The amount of property required by many laws is so small that it alone would suffice to support the family only for a few years. And yet it has been generally provided that the proof of such a property gave one an unconditional right to establish a domicile and to marry. It is only where this is wanting that special consent is required. But who shall exercise this right of consent? The parish, perhaps, because on it the impoverished family would fall as a burthen. But it is to be feared that the course of procedure here would be too severe. Local narrow-heartedness might refuse the right of domicile to skillful and industrious candidates, who are in the best situation to maintain a family, but whose competition the older members of the parish might dread. Hence, in most countries, the parish is treated as a party, on whose protest against the marriage the state itself decides If the state authorities were to give the immediate decisions in such cases, we might expect, in ordinary times, a liberality which would frustrate the object of the law; but sometimes, also, considerable chicanery on grounds of so-called higher police.

Where there still exist classes and corporations with real independence, the members of which still attach a real value to the body, the matter takes care of itself. The journeyman, for instance, voluntarily retards his marriage until he has become a master workman, and once he has attained that degree, he "works the golden mine of his trade." But wherever a numerous proletariat exists, the individuals of which have no better future to expect, whatever their present sacrifices and self-denial, and who know nothing of class-wants or class-honor, prohibitions of marriage are severely felt, and are far from being well enforced. The rule which excites least opposition is the fixing of a normal age for marriage, under which males should not be allowed to undertake its engagements. Of all privileges those attaching to age are viewed with least aversion. Something similar is effected in most countries to-day by military conscription, which, on this account, in young countries, has a very restrictive effect on the increase of population. The best means against thoughtless marriages certainly consists in increasing the measure of individual wants (§ 163); assuming, of course, that the added wants are proper and worthy. There is always the consideration that all limitation of marriage, even voluntary self-limitation, by decreasing or postponing marriage, may prove disastrous to morals. It should, however, not be forgotten that there are other sins besides impurity, and that complete poverty constitutes one of the worst of temptations. Especially is it not the angel guardian of chastity.

In England and France, all governmental hinderances to marriage have long since ceased, and in Prussia, at least all general police hinderances; and we can by no means say that the consequences have been evil. On the other hand, no favorable results as to their influence on pauperism can be shown statistically from the restrictive laws of Württemberg. Rather do statistics point here to the unfavorable probable result of an increase of illegitimate births. According to the law of the North German Confederation of 1868, the contract of marriage, except in the case of soldiers, officials, clergymen and teachers, is so free, so far as police influence is concerned, that even actual poverty is no impediment.

SECTION CCLIX.

EFFECTS OF EMIGRATION.

B. It is sufficiently evident that emigration from an over-populated country may be attended with good consequences, especially when it takes place in organized bodies. There is little danger that one who knows how to work and pray will go to the bad in a young agricultural colony. In a wilderness which has not yet been cleared, the greater number of proletarian vices spontaneously disappear. There is here no opportunity for jealousy or theft; little for intemperance, the gaming table, licentiousness or quarrelsomeness. Here labor is a necessity, and the rewards of industry and saving soon take a palpable shape. As the emigrant, in such a situation, can scarcely help marrying, children far from being a burthen, soon become companions to their parents in their solitude and, later, helpmates in business. The colonist belonging to the lower middle class is most certain of improving his condition. It may, indeed, require many and toilsome years before he can feel comfortable himself; but his children who would probably have led a proletarian life in the mother country may calculate with certainty on future well-being. The father's small capital which the outlay for education alone would have exhausted at home, here becomes the seed of a number of prosperous households. It is otherwise with the mass of the people who remain at home. (Compare § 241.) It is a matter of much more difficulty than is generally supposed by those who have not made a study of the matter, that the yearly emigration from countries like Germany should counterbalance the excess of births over deaths. It is not to be supposed that men who are really useless at home should be of any service in the colonies. How violently have not English colonies opposed the advent of settlers from the poorhouses of the mother country. The classes which are readiest to emigrate: idlers, fickle characters, fathers of families with altogether too many children, artisans who by a revolution in industry have lost the means of making a livelihood, are precisely those who find it most difficult to obtain employment on the other side of the water. Most colonies refuse to receive persons over forty years of age at their own expense. But a young man intellectually and physically able to work, can always make his way even in the old world; only the weaker succumb under the pressure of over-population. Lastly, it should be considered what an amount of capital is required for purposes of emigration and settlement. If emigrants, on the average, take more capital with them than is estimated to be the per capita amount of capital possessed by those remaining at home, the consequence would be that, as a result of this very successful emigration, the ratio of consumers to the amount of capital in the country would become more and more unfavorable. The emigrating portion of the country might experience the advantage of this, but the great mass of the population remaining at home would become poorer in capital and in vigorous men, and richer in the comparatively needy. The comfortless contrast between colossal wealth and beggarly want could only be thereby increased, since it is almost exclusively the lower middle class who emigrate to agricultural colonies. The over-rich, as a rule, will not, and proletarians can not, go thither.

18in Persons.

1847, 258,000

1848, 248,000

1849, 299,000

1850, 280,000

1852, (maxim.) 368,000

1853, 329,000

1855, 176,000

1857, 212,000

1858-60, (average) 96,000

1862, 121,000

1863, 223,000

1865, 181,000

1867, 105,161

1870, 202,511

1871, 174,930

18in At least.

1844, 43,000

1845, 67,000

1846, 94,000

1847, 109,000

1848, 81,000

1849, 89,000

1850, 82,000

1851, 112,000

1852, 162,000

1853, 156,000

1854, (maxim.) 250,000

1855. 81,000

1856. 98,000

1857, 115,000

1858-61, (average) 4,620

1866 137,000

1867, 151,000

By Hamburg and Bremen alone—

1867-71, (average) 33,355 & 48,296

1872, 57,621 & 66,919

1873, 51,432 & 48,608

1874, 24,093 & 17,913

SECTION CCLX.

COLONIST EMIGRATION.

All these dangers disappear when the portion of the nation which has emigrated continues economically connected with the body of the nation remaining at home. (Colonizing emigration.) Here emigration not only provides "elbow room" in the mother country, but there arises at the same time an increased demand for manufactured articles, an increased supply of raw material, by means of which an absolute growth of population is made possible. England has hitherto enjoyed these advantages to the fullest extent, Germany scarcely at all. German emigrants to Russia, America, Australia, or Algiers, were, together with all they have and are, for the most part lost to their fatherland. They become the customers and suppliers of foreign countries, and frequently enough the competitors and even enemies of Germany.

It might be very different if the stream of German emigration was directed towards German colonies for instance, as happened in later medieval times, towards the fertile but thinly populated parts of Hungary, towards the provinces of Austria and Prussia; perhaps, as List wished, towards those parts of Turkey which, God willing, shall yet constitute the inheritance of the German people. Thus, through the instrumentality of emigration, might a new Germany arise, which would directly or indirectly and necessarily ally itself to the old, politically, and at the same time constitute the surest bulwark against the danger from Slavic power.

Politico-economically, this country might be utilized by Germany as the United States uses the Mississippi valley and the Far West, especially as concerns the exclusiveness of the use. It is true, that emigrants could be invited to these quarters in good conscience only when the soil had been prepared for them. They should find there, on their arrival, complete legal security, especially for the landed property to be acquired by them; likewise, at least, full personal, religious, and also commercial freedom.

It may be asked, whether there are places in the other quarters of the world adapted to German colonization in the higher sense of the word. These should of course be countries adapted to agriculture as practiced by the Germans, with an easily accessible coast and provided in the interior with navigable streams. Here the Germans should be able not only to live together in large numbers, but the rest of the population should be inferior to them in political training and in national feeling. Otherwise, there would in time be danger of their losing the German character and feeling. The difficulty of establishing German colonies in the southern temperate parts of Chili and Brazil would be aggravated by the very same causes which prevented the creation of a German navy for centuries; and they would almost certainly have to calculate on the jealousy of all other colonial powers and of the United States. We should not forget that from Raleigh's time to the present, almost every speculation having for its object the founding of a colony, whether originating with individual capitalists or with joint-stock companies, has been, considered from a mercantile point of view, a failure. The fruits of new colonization are generally reaped in the succeeding generation; and such delay is scarcely in harmony with the ideas of our own times. Almost every settlement has had its critical period when the settlers almost despaired. This produced less harm in the 17th century; for they were for the most part compelled to persevere. In our day, they would probably disband and go in search of an easier life in colonies already existing. And yet, Germany must make haste if it would not soon see the last appropriate locality occupied by other and more resolute nations.

The British Empire. France. Germany without
Austria.

1840-41, $51,000,000 $24,000,000 $2,450,000

1849-50, 85,000,000 27,600,000 8,780,000

1859-60, 138,600,000 43,200,000 18,500,000

SECTION CCLXI.

STATE AID TO EMIGRANTS.

The inquiry, What can the state reasonably do for emigration, must, of course, receive a very different answer according as there is question of merely negative (§ 259) or colonizing emigration (§ 262). To give the latter a proper impulse requires so great an outlay of capital and labor that it can be made only by the state; and in Germany, on a large scale, only by a union of several states. We must not here deceive ourselves. Emigrants will go uniformly where they have the nearest prospect of a comfortable future. Whether in emigrating they shall continue their connection with their old home, or whether their children shall be completely denationalized is a matter with which very few emigrants concern themselves; and considering the amount of education they generally possess, this need excite no surprise. Hence, if Germany would unite its departing children in a colony permanently German, and therefore new, it would be necessary for it to offer them, at its own expense, at least the same advantages which they would find in older and fully established colonies. He who would reap should not endeavor to evade the sacrifice incident to the sowing. Even great sacrifices in this direction would certainly be richly rewarded if properly made. Probably the outlay would never be directly returned to the national treasury; but there is all the more reason, on this account, that there should be an indirect return by the increase of duties and other indirect taxes.

On the other hand, the costly assistance of the state in the case of merely negative emigration would, as a rule, be folly. Who would compel the children of the great national family, who necessarily or voluntarily remain faithful to the paternal roof, to pay tribute to those who turn their backs on the old home for ever? The wealthy especially who remain in the country have to put up with the disadvantage of paying higher wages for labor.

Simple humanity requires that the state should not be blind to the movement of emigration, nor abandon it to all the risks of improvident liberty. Hence it should endeavor to remove the ignorance prevailing on questions of emigration. It should require personal and other guaranties that emigration agents are not simply dealers in men, and that the contracts made with ship-owners by emigrants are really performed. It should exercise a strict superintendence over the mode of transportation of emigrants, and see to it that its consuls accredited to America, etc. assist them by word and deed. The legislation of Bremen is a model in this respect, and has contributed largely to make that port a principal outlet for German emigration. The provisions of the laws of October 1, 1832, of July 14, 1854, of July 9, 1866, etc., embrace among others the following: Only a citizen of Bremen, of good repute, and who has given security to the amount of five thousand thalers, shall be entitled to receive and contract with emigrants for passage; to each passenger shall be allotted a space of at least twelve square feet of surface and six feet high; provision shall be made for the longest possible time of passage; for instance, for thirteen weeks for a voyage northerly from the equator. At the same time, the ship-owner is required to give security that in case of accident to the vessel, disabling it in such a way as to unfit it to continue the journey, he shall return the fare of all passengers saved, and pay them an additional sum of from twenty to forty thalers, according to the length of the passage, to cover the cost of salvage, to support themselves for the time being, and enable them to continue their journey. The entire matter is controlled by a rigid system of ship-investigation, and is under the superintendence of a board of officers, made up of senators and members of the chamber of commerce. Among English provisions particularly worthy of imitation is that which requires the government agents in Canada, etc. to furnish information gratis to emigrants. But to keep their clients from the practice of idling about, so ruinous to themselves, the agents refuse aid to all emigrants who, without sufficient reason, remain over eight days in the harbor.

In 1854. In 1867.

number of emigrants.

Through Bremen, 76,875 73,971

Through Hamburg, 50,819 42,845

(Of these directly only 32,310) (38,170)

Through Havre, 95,849 22,753

Through Antwerp, 25,843 12,086

Through other ports, 2,500

SECTION CCLXII.

EMIGRATION AND PAUPERISM.

As a very rare exception, an emigration suddenly undertaken, well directed and on a very large scale, may be made to constitute the efficient means preparatory to the abolition of pauperism. Where, for instance, by reason of the subdivision of the land into extremely small parcels, farming on a diminutive scale has come to preponderate; where the popular home-industries have been reduced to a miserable condition by the immoderate competition of great foreign manufacturers and machinery, the hopelessness of the situation consists principally in this: that every improvement made must be preceded by a concentration of the forces of labor, and their combination with the powers of capital; which for the moment renders a great number of those who have been laborers hitherto entirely superfluous. That is, to raise the level of the whole public economy and provide a decent livelihood for 10,000 men, it would be necessary to condemn another 10,000 to death from starvation! Most political doctors recoil at the thought of this transition-crisis. They content themselves with palliatives which, in the end, cost much and afford no help. The simplest remedy here would evidently be to cause those workmen who have become superfluous to emigrate at the expense of the state. Next, the necessary economic reforms should be carried out at home and the return of the evil prevented by rigid legislation. The more sudden this emigration is, the nearer it comes to taking place, so to speak, all at once, the less possible it is that the increase of population should keep even pace with it. The condition of the proletarians who remained at home could not fail to have a favorable influence in this respect; for nothing leads men so much into contracting reckless marriages as the total absence of any prospect of amelioration of their condition in the future.

SECTION CCLXII (a).

TEMPORARY EMIGRATION.

Besides definitive emigration, temporary emigration deserves special consideration. If the wages of labor are much lower in one locality than in another which is easily accessible, the workmen of the former place resolve much more readily on periodical migrations thither than on permanent settlements in the place. It is especially the difficult work of harvesting, where farmers are pressed for time, and that of house-building, which are undertaken by these birds of passage; and mountainous regions, with their limited agriculture, their late crops and their longing look into the far-off which is found united with a deep-rooted attachment to home, are the places whence they come. When their home is distinguished in certain branches of labor, they are wont to carry these with them abroad, and in such case their sojourn away from home is generally longer. The shorter and the more vagabond-like their migration, the less apt is it to be an economic blessing to the wanderers themselves. There must necessarily result, as a consequence, a species of equalization between the rates of wages in the country receiving and the country furnishing them. This may be a great national misfortune for the latter, inasmuch as its working class may thus be forced to a lower standard of life, and all their providence and self-control in the founding of a family be made fruitless by the arrival of less capable foreigners. The hatred existing among the members of a higher class for parvenus from a lower corresponds in this respect to the mutual hatred of two countries for the natives of the other, (v. Mangoldt.) Considered from the point of view of the country furnishing these migratory classes, temporary emigration has this advantage over definitive emigration, that the persons leaving the country always maintain their economic connection with their home. The most striking example of this is afforded by those merchants, ship-owners, etc. who are, so to speak, pioneers in foreign markets for Switzerland and Bremen. Only there is always danger of a crisis when the usual flow is suddenly checked.

SECTION CCLXIII.

CONCLUSION.

That the economy of no nation can continue to grow ad infinitum is, in general, as easy to believe as it is difficult to point out with a specification of particulars what are the limits which cannot be exceeded. This would be possible first in the case of agriculture. Here there are points beyond which every man practically versed in the art can see, that an increase of the gross product must be attended by an absolute decrease in the net product. But even supposing that a people had reached this point in their entire agriculture, they might still carry on industries, commerce, perform personal services for other nations, and obtain remuneration therefor in the means of subsistence and manufactured articles. If our nation has once entered on this path, it is evident that every improvement of its industry, every advance made by foreign countries in the production of raw material, manufactures and the consumption of services must result in a growth of our economy. David Hume was of opinion that industrial preponderance was in a necessary and continual state of transition from one country to another. A very highly developed state of industry made a country rich in money but enhanced the price of the means of subsistence, and the rate of wages; until finally it became impossible for it to compete in the markets of the world with cheaper countries, and industry, in consequence, emigrated to these. But it is easy to see how all such limits are extended by the modern improvements in transportation, and the consequent facilitation of importation; and how much the remedy mentioned in § 198 has gained in importance by the modern advances made in machinery and the preponderance in so many respects of machine over hand labor.

But here it is necessary to distinguish between the "applied" and only practical political economy, and "pure political economy." (§ 217.) A development thus continued would be attended with great difficulty even if the whole world constituted one great empire. We need only mention Austria, where some provinces have remained in a very backward, almost medieval condition, while others have for a long time manifested the symptoms of over-population. How much more in different states. An uncivilized nation will frequently not care to increase its consumption of our manufactures, if to do so it becomes necessary to carry on its agriculture more industriously. Another nation that has already tasted of the fruit of the tree of economic knowledge may not be satisfied with the mere production of raw material forever. In time it may want to carry on commerce and industry itself, and hence consider the breaking of its commercial course with us as a species of emancipation from us. And, further, how if other highly cultivated nations should compete with us in the markets of countries which produce merely raw material? if such rivals should wage war in which each party should harm his adversary for the mere love of doing harm, and not unfrequently in opposition to its own economic interests? I know of no period the development of which has not been attended by such disturbances, and hence they cannot be said to be entirely unnatural.

And even at home and among highly civilized nations, there are wont to be many obstacles to advancement on this road of progress. Every great economic change is connected as cause and effect, with a variety of political, social and other reformations which are never accomplished without great hardship and hesitation. Where the division of labor has been developed to any extent, the formerly existing circumstances which must be surrendered for the sake of progress are generally synonymous with the interests of some class. This class opposes the improvement, and a struggle becomes necessary to carry it out. But under certain circumstances, a long delay in effecting a necessary reform may paralyse or poison the minds of the people to such an extent that they may afterwards have neither the will nor the power to successfully advance. This is the most important exception to the rule laid down in § 24. The happier the ethnographic and social composition of a people, the better the national spirit, the more skillful the form of its constitution, the less frequently will it happen. All this is true especially of over-population and the plethora of capital which so easily injure the morality of a people. New inventions also, by means of which the limits of the possibility of production may be incalculably extended can be expected only from nations where there is no intellectual decline.

SECTION CCLXIV.

THE DECLINE OF NATIONS.

That, after a whole nation has reached the zenith of its prosperity, it is subject to old age and to decline, and cannot avoid them, is in general, a proposition susceptible neither of proof nor refutation. This uncertainty is practically very useful, for were it otherwise, mediocre statesmen might become either discouraged or indifferent. However, we should not assume, as so many do, without proof, the earthly immortality of nations, provided only they observe a proper diet; nor call the science of the physiology or medicine of nations a chimera, simply because it confesses that it knows of no preventive against such old age. It has doubtless been the fate of many nations to die, that is, not precisely to be destroyed—just as in the physical world, not a particle of matter is lost—but to see their former national personality disappear, and themselves continue to exist only as component parts of some other nation. This phenomenon, indeed, finds its analogon in every thing that is human, but seems to contradict a law of nature which very widely prevails, viz.: that it is easier to advance in a certain direction in proportion to the distance gone over in it already.

The problem of decline, however, is solved by the enervating influence of possession and power, an influence which only a select few among men can escape. And yet to every external advance there must be a corresponding advance of the interior man, else there is a fall great in proportion to the height before attained. The greater number take their ease once they have attained the object of their ambition. I need only cite the example of the posterity of those men who have grown rich by unusual exertion. Success itself generates vanity and a feeling of false security, the latter especially, inasmuch as that is expected from the whole community, from the state for instance, from others generally, which should be the fruits of one's own vigilance and one's own endeavors. It should not be forgotten that the nation is made up of individuals.

In addition to this there is the striving after the new for the sake of novelty; a striving promotive of progress in itself, and without which the full development of the forces of civilization would probably not be possible. But if the genius of no nation is possessed of infinite capacities, it must happen, at last, that, in case the best has been attained, and the demand for novelty continues, men will go over to that which is worse. Even very great competition has here a dangerous influence, since it raises the great mass of the incompetent to the dignity of judges, and endeavors to seduce them by illicit means; in the arts, for instance, sensuousness is made to take the place of the feeling of the beautiful.

There is, further the process of undeceiving, inseparable from the prosecution of any ideal purpose. Such ideals have always very much of human weakness in them. The great crowd of ordinary men follow, as a rule, their material interests. Only occasionally do they rise to the height of ideal things; and here we discover the brightest points in history. Later there comes uniformly a period of disenchantment and of exhaustion after the debauch is over. When all the ideals accessible to the nation have been destroyed or outlived, nothing can be done to awaken the masses from their slumber, or induce them to shake off their inactivity.

As a rule, the influences which have accelerated a nation's progress and brought it to the apogee of its social existence end in precipitating its ruin by their further action. Every direction which humanity takes has almost always something of evil in it, is limited in its very nature, and cannot stand its extremest consequences. All earthly existence bears in itself, from the first, the germs of its decay.

However, to calm the feeling of human liberty, we may boldly assert that there never was a nation remarkable for its religiousness and morality which declined so long as it preserved these highest of all goods; but then no nation outlived their possession.

SECTION CCLXV.

CONCLUSION.

All the separate nations which have lived side by side, or followed one another, are embraced under the general name, humanity. Who would deny the existence of a point, viewed from which humanity might be seen to constitute one great whole; all the variations and differences in its life only one great plan, one wonderful sovereign decree of the divine will, grandly and wonderfully executed by God? Or who is so bold as to say that he stands on this point himself? Theologians should be the last to do it, since even the apostle Paul calls God's ways inscrutable. So long as we do not even know whether we live in one of the first or one of the last decades of humanity, every system of universal history in which each nation and period is made to take its place in due subordination to its superiors, can be only a castle in the air; and it is a matter of indifference whether the basis of the system is philosophical, socialistic, or natural-philosophical.

The usual error into which the builders of such history fall, is that they consider the peculiarities of certain stages of civilization, which may be shown to exist among all nations in the corresponding period of their history as the national peculiarity of the single people with whose history they are, for the time being, concerned. They deduce wonderful consequences, from the premises they laid down, but which our increasing acquaintance with other nations immediately shows to be unfounded.

There is, however, a number of facts really peculiar to a people which make up the national character, and which may give to an observer endowed with an imaginative mind, an inkling to the special vocation in the economy of providence of a particular people. That a positive system can be constructed from the material of such facts, I do not, indeed, think. But they are at least a safeguard against false systems, against the improper application of analogies, against the idle, fatalistic exaggeration of the maxim: "nothing new under the sun!" It had almost become the fashion to compare our present with the period of decline of the Greek and Roman republics. Frightful parallel, in which the greatest and most undoubted differences were frequently overlooked for smaller and certainly questionable similarities. Is not the abolition of slavery, which has been accomplished among all the most important nations of the present, something new and of great import from a moral and economic point of view? Can the national wealth, which depends on labor and frugality, be in any way compared with that which was based on plunder? And so, no one can calculate the benefits which may be reaped by posterity from the mere continuation of the scientific and especially natural-philosophical results obtained by former generations. The discovery of the whole earth soon to be completed, and its probable consequence, the civilization of all nations of any importance, must remove the danger to which all the civilized nations of antiquity eventually succumbed, namely, destruction by entirely barbarous hordes. Nor should the significance of the state-system of Europe, which might be extended soon enough into a state-system embracing the world, be under-estimated. Macedonia would not so readily have subjugated the Hellenes and the Persians if the great powers of the west, Rome and Carthage, had intervened at the right time. And there, too, is Christianity, whose means of grace are at hand for every one at all times, for his complete moral regeneration.

In one word, the usual argument with which the "man of experience" meets the man of inventive genius, that there never was anything of the like seen before, may suffice in thousands and thousands of cases; but it affords no strict proof. It is the province of genius to compel rules to extend their limits. But science should never forget that self-denial is necessary to the discovery of truth.