Birth control I rule out of discussion, and though I am of opinion that it might well be made compulsory amongst politicians, my solution demands not a restriction, but a vast increase in the birth rate.
The invention of the locomotive and steamship upset all birth rate calculations.[[2]] During the last century it has been reckoned that twenty-eight million people left Europe by sea, four millions during the first half and twenty-four millions during the second, the period of railway and steamship development. Out of these twenty-eight million emigrants, twenty-two millions went to the United States, the population of which was five and a quarter millions in the year 1800, seventy-six millions in 1900, and is about one hundred and ten millions to-day, and quite possibly, before the present century is out, this figure will be doubled.
[2]. In 1750, before the industrial revolution set in, the population of the United Kingdom was 6,517,000.
In the United Kingdom we see, if not so great, as startling an increase, considering the smallness of the country. In 1801, the population numbered about sixteen millions, and to-day, excluding Ireland, it numbers about forty-four millions, which is probably four or five millions more than the industry of the country can economically support, as unemployment and the low standard of living, not only now but before the war, testify to.
Let us remember always what has created the great civilizations of the past, empires and kingdoms, prosperous lands and great cities. It is movement and the means of movement. First man placed a bundle on his wife’s head and gave her a kick, then he tamed the ox and beat it with a stick, thus civilization became possible. At length, he invented the wheel and the sail, and, by means of these inventions, mankind crept out of primeval darkness into the dawn of history. In 1809 Fulton invented the steamship, and in 1814 George Stephenson built his first locomotive. It is, as I have already said, these inventions which have created not only such immense cities as modern London and New York, but which have shifted millions of men, women and children from one part of the globe to the other. Why did they shift them, this is the question? Because the steamship and the railway enabled them to tap sources of wealth which did not exist in their own countries; for without prospects of wealth there would be little or no movement.
To-day, we possess an Empire of over fourteen million square miles in area, of which three-quarters is sparsely inhabited. In Canada we find nine million two hundred thousand people; in Australia five million eight hundred thousand; in South Africa eight millions, and in New Zealand only one million two hundred thousand; yet New Zealand is as big as the British Isles.
Without considering our immense Colonial possessions, the potential wealth of the Dominions alone should eventually be sufficient to support certainly one if not two hundred millions of Englishmen. On the one hand we have room for at least a hundred millions, and on the other we have a surplus of some five millions. The redistribution of this surplus should not prove an insuperable problem, and even if it cost us twenty pounds a head to arrive at a solution, it would be cheap when compared to spending forty-six millions a year on doles and poor rates, which, far from solving the problem of unemployment, only accentuate it.[[3]]
[3]. “Schemes to the value of approximately £466,000,000 undertaken in connection with the relief of unemployment have, or are being assisted by the Exchequer.”—Whitaker’s Almanack.
In former times, the danger inherent in immigrations was the hostility of the tribes in occupation of the new lands—the problem was a military one. To-day, the difficulty is not military, but financial. To-day, it is no longer bows and arrows which restrict immigration, but money. To-day, it is not profitable to tackle a land owner with a rifle, and nearly all land worth owning is owned; instead the settler must buy the land, or be sufficiently skilled to dispose of his labour at a profit.
Our present-day unemployed have no money and little skill. To send such people to the Dominions is no true solution of the unemployment problem, for it only shifts the unemployed from one place to another, and this does not solve the problem. In 1914, Germany attempted to gain the French Colonies, not because she wanted to shift to them the vagrants of Berlin and Hamburg; but, because the possession of these Colonies would have enabled thousands of well-to-do Germans, the small capitalists and skilled workers of the middle classes, to enrich themselves without loss of nationality. Incidentally, as these people emigrated, room would be made in Germany for the under-dog. Competition would have decreased with a decrease in not the unemployed, but in the employed population. Wages would have increased in proportion and, by degrees, the greater percentage of the under-dogs, through increased wealth, would have raised themselves into the middle class as small capitalists.