Principles of Political Economy / Abridged with Critical, Bibliographical, and Explanatory Notes, and a Sketch of the History of Political Economy

by John Stuart Mill

(2.) All accumulation involves the sacrifice of a present, for the sake of a future good.

This is the fundamental motive underlying the effective desire of accumulation, and is far more important than any other. It is, in short, the test of civilization. In order to induce the laboring-classes to improve their condition and save capital, it is absolutely necessary to excite in them (by education or religion) a belief in a future gain greater than the present sacrifice. It is, to be sure, the whole problem of creating character, and belongs to sociology and ethics rather than to political economy.

In weighing the future against the present, the uncertainty of all things future is a leading element; and that uncertainty is of very different degrees. “All circumstances,” therefore, “increasing the probability of the provision we make for futurity being enjoyed by ourselves or others, tend” justly and reasonably “to give strength to the effective desire of accumulation. Thus a healthy climate or occupation, by increasing the probability of life, has a tendency to add to this desire. When engaged in safe occupations and living in healthy countries, men are much more apt to be frugal, than in unhealthy or hazardous occupations and in climates pernicious to human life. Sailors and soldiers are prodigals. In the West Indies, New Orleans, the East Indies, the expenditure of the inhabitants is profuse. The same people, coming to reside in the healthy parts of Europe, and not getting into the vortex of extravagant fashion, live economically. War and pestilence have always waste and luxury among the other evils that follow in their train. For similar reasons, whatever gives security to the affairs of the community is favorable to the strength of this principle. In this respect the general prevalence of law and [pg 123] order and the prospect of the continuance of peace and tranquillity have considerable influence.”[128]

It is asserted that the prevalence of homicide in certain parts of the United States has had a vital influence in retarding the material growth of those sections. The Southern States have received but a very small fraction (from ten to thirteen per cent) of foreign immigration. “A country where law and order prevail to perfection may find its material prosperity checked by a deadly and fatal climate; or, on the other hand, a people may destroy all the advantages accruing from matchless natural resources and climate by persistent disregard of life and property. A rather startling confirmation of this economic truth is afforded by the fact that homicide has been as destructive of life in the South as yellow fever. Although there have been forty thousand deaths from yellow fever since the war, the deaths from homicide, for the same period, have been even greater.”[129] The influence of the old slave régime, and its still existing influences, in checking foreign immigration into the South can be seen by the colored chart, No. VIII, showing the relative density of foreign-born inhabitants in the several parts of the United States. The deeper color shows the greater foreign-born population.

The more perfect the security, the greater will be the effective strength of the desire of accumulation. Where property is less safe, or the vicissitudes ruinous to fortunes are more frequent and severe, fewer persons will save at all, and, of those who do, many will require the inducement of a higher rate of profit on capital to make them prefer a doubtful future to the temptation of present enjoyment.

In the circumstances, for example, of a hunting tribe, “man may be said to be necessarily improvident, and regardless of futurity, because, in this state, the future presents nothing which can be with certainty either foreseen or governed.... Besides a want of the motives exciting to provide for the needs of futurity through means of the abilities of the present, there is a want of the habits of perception [pg 124] and action, leading to a constant connection in the mind of those distant points, and of the series of events serving to unite them. Even, therefore, if motives be awakened capable of producing the exertion necessary to effect this connection, there remains the task of training the mind to think and act so as to establish it.”

§ 3. Examples of Deficiency in the Strength of this Desire.

For instance: “Upon the banks of the St. Lawrence there are several little Indian villages. The cleared land is rarely, I may almost say never, cultivated, nor are any inroads made in the forest for such a purpose. The soil is, nevertheless, fertile, and, were it not, manure lies in heaps by their houses. Were every family to inclose half an acre of ground, till it, and plant it in potatoes and maize, it would yield a sufficiency to support them one half the year. They suffer, too, every now and then, extreme want, insomuch that, joined to occasional intemperance, it is rapidly reducing their numbers. This, to us, so strange apathy proceeds not, in any great degree, from repugnance to labor; on the contrary, they apply very diligently to it when its reward is immediate. It is evidently not the necessary labor that is the obstacle to more extended culture, but the distant return from that labor. I am assured, indeed, that among some of the more remote tribes, the labor thus expended much exceeds that given by the whites. On the Indian, succeeding years are too distant to make sufficient impression; though, to obtain what labor may bring about in the course of a few months, he toils even more assiduously than the white man.”

This view of things is confirmed by the experience of the Jesuits, in their interesting efforts to civilize the Indians of Paraguay. The real difficulty was the improvidence of the people; their inability to think for the future; and the necessity accordingly of the most unremitting and minute superintendence on the part of their instructors. “Thus at first, if these gave up to them the care of the oxen with which they plowed, their indolent thoughtlessness would probably leave them at evening still yoked to the implement. Worse than this, instances occurred where they cut them up [pg 125] for supper, thinking, when reprehended, that they sufficiently excused themselves by saying they were hungry.”