It is one of the corollaries of the Malthusian theory of population that a steady, regular emigration from a country has no power to check the rate of increase of population in that country. This opinion has been accepted by many leading students of social subjects from Malthus’ day down to the present. In fact, the general idea was expressed as early as 1790 by an anonymous writer in that quaint old magazine, the American Museum. He says: “When a country is so much crowded with people that the price of the means of subsistence is beyond the ratio of their industry, marriages are restrained: but when emigration to a certain degree takes place, the balance between the means of subsistence and industry is restored, and population thereby revived. Of the truth of this principle there are many proofs in the old counties of all the American states. Population has constantly been advanced in them by the migration of their inhabitants to new or distant settlements.”[[367]] John Stuart Mill believed that a steady emigration was powerless to cure the ills of overpopulation.[[368]] Roscher and Jannasch maintain that not only will emigration not decrease population, but may actually make the increase of population greater than it would otherwise be.[[369]] Réné Gonnard, the French writer, says that the fact of emigration gives a stimulus to the birth rate, and cites Adam Smith, Malthus, Garnier, Roscher, and De Molinari in support of the view.[[370]] Robert Hunter also expresses his adherence to this opinion.[[371]]
With the laws of population in mind we can easily understand how this condition may result—in fact, how it must result theoretically. Every society, in the course of its development, reaches a balance between the means of subsistence and the desire for reproduction. This balance is represented by the standard of living. In a society where the desire for reproduction greatly overbalances the desire for comforts and luxuries, the standard of living will be low, and the rate of increase of population high. In a society where the appetite for material welfare is strong, the opposite conditions will prevail. Changing conditions present the possibility of change either in the rate of reproduction or in the standard of living. As we have already observed, the former is the more flexible of the two. Particularly in static societies, such as exist in European countries, where social positions have become thoroughly stratified, any gradual amelioration in circumstances is much more likely to result in an increased rate of population growth than in an improved standard of living.
Emigration, by temporarily relieving congestion to a certain extent, offers a chance of betterment. But in general, if the emigration is moderate, this chance is seized by the reproductive power rather than by the standard of living. The rate of increase of population rises until the drain of emigration is offset, while the standard of living remains unaltered, and the total population continues virtually the same. The very fact of emigration gives a sense of hopefulness to the people, and the knowledge that there is an ever ready outlet for redundant inhabitants causes the population of the country to multiply more rapidly than it otherwise would. This is the result which must reasonably be expected to follow all regular and gradual emigration movements.
On the other hand, while the withdrawal of a more or less uniform number of inhabitants, year by year, has no power to reduce population, and may actually tend to increase it, the opposite result may be achieved where there is such a sudden and extensive removal of people from a country, that those who remain feel a definite and profound lightening of pressure. This must be sufficiently immediate and widespread to produce a sudden and significant rise in wages or fall in prices. In such a case it may occur that, before the forces of population have had time to fill the breach, the people may have become accustomed to a somewhat higher standard of living, which thereafter they may be able and inclined to maintain.
The peculiar sex distribution of modern emigration probably has the effect of increasing the possibility of reducing the population in the countries of source, out of proportion to the actual number of emigrants, just as it lessens the likelihood of increasing population in the country of destination.
Such is the theoretic argument as regards the effect of emigration upon the population of a country. It may be summed up in the words of John Stuart Mill, “When the object is to raise the permanent condition of a people, small means do not merely produce small effects, they produce no effects at all.”
There is no lack of authoritative opinions to support this view. In addition to those already cited, the following may be noted. Douglas, Earl of Selkirk, in his pamphlet on “Emigration” dated 1806, expresses his belief that emigration does not reduce population, and cites the Isle of Skye as a case in point. The population of this island in 1772 was about 12,000. Between this date and 1791, 4000 people emigrated, and at least 8000 more moved in a more gradual and less conspicuous way to the Low Country of Scotland. Yet the population more than kept even.[[372]]
Mr. Whelpley says, “There is no hope of an exhaustion of supply, for the most prolific races are now contributing their millions, and yet increasing the population of their own countries. There is no hope of an improvement in quality, for the best come first and the dregs follow.”[[373]] Professor Mayo-Smith says, “Emigration does not threaten to depopulate the countries of Europe. Had there been no emigration during this century (the nineteenth) it is not probable that the population of Europe would have been any greater than it is. The probabilities are all the other way.”[[374]]
Professor Taussig, while not stating this opinion in so many words, appears to adhere to it when he says that without emigration Sweden and Italy would have had—not a larger population—but either a higher death rate or a lower birth rate.[[375]]
If we seek for a statistical demonstration of the foregoing argument we are confronted with the same impossibility of securing it which has become so familiar in the course of this work. These matters do not adjust themselves with clocklike regularity, but operate over long periods, and are complicated by innumerable other factors. Even though two phenomena are shown to operate harmoniously, it is not always possible to prove which is cause and which effect. The declining birth rate has been a common phenomenon in almost all European countries during the last forty years, and particularly during the last twenty years of the nineteenth century.[[376]] An opponent of the view we are considering could point to this fact as a contradiction of the claim, while one on the opposite side could assert that the decline would have been equally rapid and perhaps more so without any emigration at all. Neither could prove his case. Even if it could be demonstrated that the countries which experience the largest emigration also manifest the highest rate of increase in population, it might be easily maintained that it was the extreme growth of population that accounted for the large emigration, rather than the reverse. About all that can be shown is that a large emigration and a high rate of increase of population may go together. Examples of this state of affairs are numerous.[[377]]