Let us see, then, how the general adoption of the New-Malthusian principle of early marriage and limited families would affect the welfare of individuals and of the nation at large.
The knowledge of prudential checks immensely increases the possibility of happiness for every man and woman whose means are “limited.” Marriage ceases to be a hazardous enterprise, which may bring in its train liabilities terribly out of proportion to the power of meeting them. The husband is relieved from anxiety lest his children may increase whilst his ability to provide suitably for them remains a fixed, or even diminishing, quantity. The wife need no longer dread the burden of continual child-bearing and the incessant servitude of domestic drudgery. How much of the drunkenness that exists amongst the working-class is due to the discomfort of a crowded and cheerless home! The husband, wearied with his day’s toil, returns to his narrow lodgings to find his wife, harassed and soured by the petty cares of a large family, sharp in temper and tongue. The tender romance of courtship is dispelled by the never-ending round of household slavery, with the constant need of “making both ends meet,” of contriving that every sixpence shall do the work of a shilling. And over all there hangs the haunting fear that sickness or loss of employment may disable the bread-winner, and that the wolf of hunger, ever waiting outside, may show his fangs within the door. Little cause is there for wonder that in many cases the sweetheart of happier days becomes a shrew and slattern, or that the toil-worn husband flies to the ruinous joys of the tap-room in a vain attempt to escape from the vexations that surround him in his “home.”
And what of the children? They are at once the innocent cause and the helpless victims of the misery that encompasses them. The wage that would amply provide for two or three is inadequate for the proper support of seven or eight, and their little frames suffer from insufficient nourishment. The overburdened mother cannot bestow upon so large a flock the loving care and attention that children need for their proper physical and mental development. Thus they grow up (if haply they survive), enfeebled in mind and constitution, transmitting to the next generation their own defects in an aggravated form.
It is amongst the very poorest of our fellow-creatures that we see the horrors of over-population in their most heartrending aspect. In the squalid courts and alleys of our great cities the dismal stream of child-life is constantly at high-water mark. The parents, ignorant and hopeless, callous by reason of their daily contact with misery, “increase and multiply” instinctively, as do the beasts of the field. Amongst the poor the birth-rate is (broadly speaking) double as high as that of the richer classes. A few years ago the birth-rate in wealthy Kensington was 20 per 1,000; in the poor district of Bethnal Green it was 40 per 1,000. This deplorable state of things is not peculiar to Great Britain: it prevails, with slight variations as to details, in all so-called civilised countries.
But the birth-rate tells only one-half of the piteous tale: it is the death-rate which completes the measure of human suffering caused by the insensate increase of population. In the course of his address to the Association of Sanitary Inspectors in 1888, Sir Edwin Chadwick stated that amongst the gentry and professional persons the deaths of children under five years of age in Brighton formed 8·93 per cent. of the total deaths, while among the wage-earning class they formed 45·44 per cent. He also said that in Brighton the mean (or average) age at death for wage-earners is 28·8 years; for the rich it is 63 years. Dr. Playfair has shown that 18 per cent. of the children of the upper class, 36 per cent. of those of the tradesman class, and 55 per cent. of those of the workmen die before they reach the age of five years.
Here we see the painful positive or natural checks to population at work in our very midst. Death stands with his sword and ruthlessly strikes out the redundant lives. What pen can picture the frightful suffering indicated by the figures given above? The mother’s pangs of child-birth: her protracted agony of grief as she watches the ravages of disease upon the weakly frame of her ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-tended babe: the last dread scene when death releases from its misery the child that should never have been called into existence! This squalid tragedy is enacted a thousand times; and the upshot of it all is five hundred little coffins hastily thrust into the earth.
And what of those that survive? Here and there one may rise above his fellows in the struggle for existence; but the vast majority of those who pass through the valley of the shadow of death emerge into a laborious and joyless existence. Of the males a section will drift into pauperism or crime; many of the females will be driven by want to the shameful traffic of prostitution. The honest and industrious are doomed to a life of incessant toil and privation; and with their numerous offspring will begin another cycle of the obscure tragedy.
In this way, the nation ever renews within itself the elements of its own weakness and despair. The question of the unemployed is ultimately a question of over-population; and wages are reduced by the competition, one against another, of desperate men seeking bread for their wives and families. Trade Unions and other forms of combination may partially and temporarily improve the condition of a section of the workers; but in the long run every advance in comfort is overtaken and swallowed up by the increase of population stimulated by prosperity.
Thus, unless the teachings of New-Malthusianism be generally acted upon, poverty will remain a permanent feature of society; and, as we have already said, the element of poverty is a constant menace to the community at large. The strength of a chain is that of its weakest link. The wealth, luxury, and refinement of society exist upon a frail tenure if the desperation of the poorest class is suffered to pass a certain limit. History has shown us the civilisation of centuries extinguished by hordes of barbarians, driven by hunger from their sterile lands. In Paris, during times of revolutionary excitement, the Faubourg St. Antoine pours forth its thousands of gaunt and tattered spectres to make war upon society.
Prudence in the matter of population, then, is seen to be the only way of conserving the most valuable and progressive elements in human society. In this, as in other countries, the apostles of the new teaching have been confronted by the prejudices handed down from previous generations; and in the succeeding chapter we shall trace the history of the Malthusian movement in England and abroad.