In 1801 the population of England and Wales was 8,892,536, or let us say about nine millions. Eighty years later it had risen to about twenty-six millions! The increase showed an accelerated rate according to the census returns. Whereas in the ten years between 1841 and 1851 the percentage of increase was 12·65, in those from 1861 to 1871 it was 13·19, and between 1871 and 1881 it was 14·34. In the United Kingdom in 1900 there has been an increase of 18 per cent. since 1880.
Now Malthus had pointed out that with conditions of life comparatively favourable, and an increase of food supply comparatively easy, population was found to double itself in twenty-five years or less. Our numbers during these eighty years had been, roughly speaking, trebled! and the increase took place under conditions not favourable but unfavourable to the bulk of the nation. Manufacturing industries had enabled us to purchase food from abroad, and consequently a larger number of children survived. Food, however, cannot always be forthcoming in greater and greater abundance from countries that need more and more of their own food supply, and which, by manufacturing for themselves, are gradually reducing their demand for our manufactured commodities.
Notwithstanding this patent fact, there are social reformers to-day who persist in ignoring the population difficulty, and there are thinkers who, basing their views on Herbert Spencer’s dictum that “man’s fertility will be checked by his individuation,” pass it over lightly. Generally speaking, however, the public conscience is now aroused, and enlightened men and women are tolerably well alive to the fundamental nature and the grave importance of the population question.
“In some parts of the United States of America,” says an able writer, “population has actually doubled itself, apart from immigration, in twenty-five years; and this in the face of the ordinary retarding influences. If such a rate of increase upon the present population of the whole globe were to prevail for only 250 years, there would be left but one square yard of standing room for each individual.”
Again: “If we grant that a scientific treatment of crops would enable food supplies to keep pace with population, and for this purpose supposing that all the land in the planet Jupiter were available for a market garden, it would not ultimately be want of food but want of room that would put a stop to the increase of the multitude.” But further, the above author—a mathematician—examines what the potentiality of increase represents on the supposition that each individual merely died the natural death of old age. “Under such favourable conditions as the absence of war, famine and disease, the race might treble its numbers in thirty years. To show the significance of the numerical law, let us imagine it to operate undisturbed 3,000 years upon the progeny of a single pair. The number of human beings finally existing would be expressed by twice the 100th power of 3. An easy computation will show that if these people were packed together, allowing six cubic feet of space for each person, they would fill up the whole solar system in every direction, and extend beyond it to a distance 430 times that of the planet Neptune. In fact, a solid sphere of human beings would be formed having a diameter of 2,400,000,000,000 miles. Such considerations lead us to realize the absolute inevitableness of Nature’s checks upon reproduction.” (Social Evolution and the Evolution of Socialism, by George Shoobridge Carr, M.A., Cantab.)
Turning now from scientific speculation to recognized authority in practical politics, let me quote from a paper read at the Registrar-General’s office on March 18, 1890, by Dr. William Ogle, Superintendent of Statistics: “The population of England and Wales is, as we all know, growing in a most formidable manner, and though persons may differ in their estimates of the time when that growth will have reached its permissible limits, no one can doubt that, if the present rate of increase be maintained, the date of that event cannot possibly be very remote.”
Premising that the rate of increase is not due to the birth-rate only, but also to a fall in the death-rate, and that voluntary philanthropy and State interference influence the latter, we pass to the consideration of conditions that affect the marriage-rate—consequently the birth-rate—in the artisan and labouring classes, composing the bulk of the nation. The Registrar-General, in his report for the year 1876, wrote as follows: “The state of trade and national industry is strikingly exhibited in the fluctuations of the marriage-rate of the last nine years.... The period of commercial distress, which began about the middle of 1866 and continued during five years ... influenced the marriage-rates of these years, which were 17·5, 16·5, 16·1, 15·9, 16·1 and 16·7 (in the 1,000) respectively. In 1872 and 1873 the working classes became excited under the rapid advance of wages and the diminution of the hours of labour, and the marriage-rates rose to 17·5 and 17·6 respectively.” In his report for 1881 the Registrar-General again accentuated this important point: “The marriage-rate reflects with much accuracy the condition of public welfare.” And further on: “The birth-rate was at its maximum in 1876, and fell uninterruptedly from that date year by year in natural accordance with the corresponding decline in the marriage-rate.” These years represented another period of commercial depression. We have here then incontrovertible proof of the national tendency. The mass of our people increase their numbers so soon as they are more comfortable, and the marriage-rate for each year may be called the pulse or indicator of the nation’s economic well-being. Its fluctuations coincide with the upward and downward movements of commercial activity.
In this connexion we have also to note that the most rapid growth of our population is taking place in the great industrial centres, the mining, manufacturing and trading districts; and the type that there prevails is necessarily affecting the British race.
By the Parliamentary return of marriages, births and deaths registered in England and Wales in the year 1881, it appeared that in different districts the percentages of marriages varied considerably. It was greater in the mining, manufacturing and trading districts than in the farming districts, and much higher in London than in the provinces. In the district comprising Hertford, Buckingham, Oxford, Bedford, Cambridge, the rate equalled twelve persons per annum for each thousand of the population. In London it was eighteen persons for each thousand, and in the divisions which comprise Yorkshire and Lancashire the rate was sixteen and seventeen persons to each thousand. As regards births, the proportions stated were somewhat similar. In London there were thirty-five births to one thousand of the population, whilst in the southeastern division there were only thirty-one; but the rate rose again to thirty-five and thirty-six in the great manufacturing districts of the Midlands and the North.
Dr. Ogle’s examination of statistics on the subject shows that this state of things has continued, in its main features, up to the present day. “Men marry,” he says, “in greater numbers when trade is brisk. The fluctuations in the marriage-rate follow the fluctuations in the amount of industrial employment.” “The rates vary very greatly in the different registration counties.” “In London the rate is invariably high. Almost all the counties in which the marriage-rate is high are counties in which the population is also high of women engaged in industrial occupations, and therefore presumably in receipt of independent wages, while all the counties in which the marriage-rate is very low are also counties in which but a very small population of the women are industrially occupied.” The general drift of the figures leads to the conclusion that early marriage is most common where there is the largest amount of employment for women.