To-day, however, the Oriental is discovering "comfort." And, high or low, he likes it very well. All the myriad things which make our lives easier and more agreeable—lamps, electric light, sewing-machines, clocks, whisky, umbrellas, sanitary plumbing, and a thousand others: all these things, which to us are more or less matters of course, are to the Oriental so many delightful discoveries, of irresistible appeal. He wants them, and he gets them in ever-increasing quantities. But this produces some rather serious complications. His private economy is more or less thrown out of gear. This opening of a whole vista of new wants means a portentous rise in his standard of living. And where is he going to find the money to pay for it? If he be poor, he has to skimp on his bare necessities. If he be rich, he hates to forgo his traditional luxuries. The upshot is a universal growth of extravagance. And, in this connection, it is well to bear in mind that the peoples of the Near and Middle East, taken as a whole, have never been really thrifty. Poor the masses may have been, and thus obliged to live frugally, but they have always proved themselves "good spenders" when opportunity offers. The way in which a Turkish peasant or a Hindu ryot will squander his savings and run into debt over festivals, marriages, funerals, and other social events is astounding to Western observers.[257] Now add to all this the fact that in the Orient, as in the rest of the world, the cost of the basic necessaries of life—food, clothing, fuel, and shelter, has risen greatly during the past two decades, and we can realize the gravity of the problem which higher Oriental living-standards involves.[258]
Certain it is that the struggle for existence is growing keener and that the pressure of poverty is getting more severe. With the basic necessaries rising in price, and with many things considered necessities which were considered luxuries or entirely unheard of a generation ago, the Oriental peasant or town working-man is finding it harder and harder to make both ends meet. As one writer well phrases it: "These altered economic conditions have not as yet brought the ability to meet them. The cost of living has increased faster than the resources of the people."[259]
One of the main (though not sufficiently recognized) causes of the economic-social crisis through which the Orient is to-day passing is over-population. The quick breeding tendencies of Oriental peoples have always been proverbial, and have been due not merely to strong sexual appetites but also to economic reasons like the harsh exploitation of women and children, and perhaps even more to religious doctrines enjoining early marriage and the begetting of numerous sons. As a result, Oriental populations have always pressed close upon the limits of subsistence. In the past, however, this pressure was automatically lightened by factors like war, misgovernment, pestilence, and famine, which swept off such multitudes of people that, despite high birth-rates, populations remained at substantially a fixed level. But here, as in every other phase of Eastern life, Western influences have radically altered the situation. The extension of European political control over Eastern lands has meant the putting down of internal strife, the diminution of governmental abuses, the decrease of disease, and the lessening of the blight of famine. In other words, those "natural" checks which previously kept down the population have been diminished or abolished, and in response to the life-saving activities of the West, the enormous death-rate which in the past has kept Oriental populations from excessive multiplication is falling to proportions comparable with the low death-rate of Western nations. But to lower the Orient's prodigious birth-rate is quite another matter. As a matter of fact, that birth-rate keeps up with undiminished vigour, and the consequence has been a portentous increase of population in nearly every portion of the Orient under Western political control. In fact, even those Oriental countries which have maintained their independence have more or less adopted Western life-conserving methods, and have experienced in greater or less degree an accelerated increase of population.
The phenomena of over-population are best seen in India. Most of India has been under British control for the greater part of a century. Even a century ago, India was densely populated, yet in the intervening hundred years the population has increased between two and three fold.[260] Of course, factors like improved agriculture, irrigation, railways, and the introduction of modern industry enable India to support a much larger population than it could have done at the time of the British Conquest. Nevertheless, the evidence is clear that excessive multiplication has taken place. Nearly all qualified students of the problem concur on this point. Forty years ago the Duke of Argyll stated: "Where there is no store, no accumulation, no wealth; where the people live from hand to mouth from season to season on a low diet; and where, nevertheless, they breed and multiply at such a rate; there we can at least see that this power and force of multiplication is no evidence even of safety, far less of comfort." Towards the close of the last century, Sir William Hunter termed population India's "fundamental problem," and continued: "The result of civilized rule in India has been to produce a strain on the food-producing powers of the country such as it had never before to bear. It has become a truism of Indian statistics that the removal of the old cruel checks on population in an Asiatic country is by no means an unmixed blessing to an Asiatic people."[261] Lord Cromer remarks of India's poverty: "Not only cannot it be remedied by mere philanthropy, but it is absolutely certain—cruel and paradoxical though it may appear to say so—that philanthropy enhances the evil. In the days of Akhbar or Shah Jehan, cholera, famine, and internal strife kept down the population. Only the fittest survived. Now internal strife is forbidden, and philanthropy steps in and says that no single life shall be sacrificed if science and Western energy or skill can save it. Hence the growth of a highly congested population, vast numbers of whom are living on a bare margin of subsistence. The fact that one of the greatest difficulties of governing the teeming masses of the East is caused by good and humane government should be recognized. It is too often ignored."[262]
William Archer well states the matter when, in answer to the query why improved external conditions have not brought India prosperity, he says: "The reason, in my view, is simple: namely, that the benefit of good government is, in part at any rate, nullified, when the people take advantage of it, not to save and raise their standard of living, but to breed to the very margin of subsistence. Henry George used to point out that every mouth that came into the world brought two hands along with it; but though the physiological fact is undeniable, the economic deduction suggested will not hold good except in conditions that permit of the profitable employment of the two hands.... If mouths increase in a greater ratio than food, the tendency must be towards greater poverty."[263]
It is one of the most unfortunate aspects of the situation that very few Oriental thinkers yet realize that over-population is a prime cause of Oriental poverty. Almost without exception they lay the blame to political factors, especially to Western political control. In fact, the only case that I know of where an Eastern thinker has boldly faced the problem and has courageously advocated birth-control is in the book published five years ago by P. K. Wattal, a native official of the Indian Finance Department, entitled, The Population Problem of India.[264] This pioneer volume is written with such ability and is of such apparent significance as an indication of the awakening of Orientals to a more rational attitude, that it merits special attention.
Mr. Wattal begins his book by a plea to his fellow-countrymen to look at the problem rationally and without prejudice. "This essay," he says, "should not be constituted into an attack on the spiritual civilization of our country, or even indirectly into a glorification of the materialism of the West. The object in view is that we should take a somewhat more matter-of-fact view of the main problem of life, viz., how to live in this world. We are a poor people; the fact is indisputable. Our poverty is, perhaps, due to a great many causes. But I put it to every one of us whether he has not at some of the most momentous periods of his life been handicapped by having to support a large family, and whether this encumbrance has not seriously affected the chances of advancement warranted by early promise and exceptional endowment. This question should be viewed by itself. It is a physical fact, and has nothing to do with political environment or religious obligation. If we have suffered from the consequences of that mistake, is it not a duty that we owe to ourselves and to our progeny that its evil effects shall be mitigated as far as possible? There is no greater curse than poverty—I say this with due respect to our spiritualism. It is not in a spirit of reproach that restraint in married life is urged in these pages. It is solely from a vivid realization of the hardships caused by large families and a profound sympathy with the difficulties under which large numbers of respectable persons struggle through life in this country that I have made bold to speak in plain terms what comes to every young man, but which he does not care to give utterance to in a manner that would prevent the recurrence of the evil."[265]
After this appeal to reason in his readers, Mr. Wattal develops his thesis. The first prime cause of over-population in India, he asserts, is early marriage. Contrary to Western lands, where population is kept down by prudential marriages and by birth-control, "for the Hindus marriage is a sacrament which must be performed, regardless of the fitness of the parties to bear the responsibilities of a mated existence. A Hindu male must marry and beget children—sons, if you please—to perform his funeral rites lest his spirit wander uneasily in the waste places of the earth. The very name of son, 'putra,' means one who saves his father's soul from the hell called Puta. A Hindu maiden unmarried at puberty is a source of social obloquy to her family and of damnation to her ancestors. Among the Mohammedans, who are not handicapped by such penalties, the married state is equally common, partly owing to Hindu example and partly to the general conditions of primitive society, where a wife is almost a necessity both as a domestic drudge and as a helpmate in field work."[266] The worst of the matter is that, despite the efforts of social reformers child-marriage seems to be increasing. The census of 1911 showed that during the decade 1901-10 the numbers of married females per 1000 of ages 0-5 years rose from 13 to 14; of ages 5-10 from 102 to 105; of 10-15 from 423 to 430, and of 15-20 from 770 to 800. In other words, in the year 1911, out of every 1000 Indian girls, over one-tenth were married before they were 10 years old, nearly one-half before they were 15, and four-fifths before they were 20.[267]
The result of all this is a tremendous birth-rate, but this is "no matter for congratulation. We have heard so often of our high death-rate and the means for combating it, but can it be seriously believed that with a birth-rate of 30 per 1000 it is possible to go on as we are doing with the death-rate brought down to the level of England or Scotland? Is there room enough in the country for the population to increase so fast as 20 per 1000 every year? We are paying the inevitable penalty of bringing into this world more persons than can be properly cared for, and therefore if we wish fewer deaths to occur in this country the births must be reduced to the level of the countries where the death-rate is low. It is, therefore, our high birth-rate that is the social danger; the high death-rate, however regrettable, is merely an incident of our high birth-rate."[268]
Mr. Wattal then describes the cruel items in India's death-rate; the tremendous female mortality, due largely to too early childbirth, and the equally terrible infant mortality, nearly 50 per cent. of infant deaths being due to premature birth or debility at birth. These are the inevitable penalties of early and universal marriage. For, in India, "everybody marries, fit or unfit, and is a parent at the earliest possible age permitted by nature." This process is highly disgenic; it is plainly lowering the quality and sapping the vigour of the race. It is the lower elements of the population, the negroid aboriginal tribes and the Pariahs or Outcastes, who are gaining the fastest. Also the vitality of the whole population seems to be lowering. The census figures show that the number of elderly persons is decreasing, and that the average statistical expectation of life is falling. "The coming generation is severely handicapped at start in life. And the chances of living to a good old age are considerably smaller than they were, say thirty or forty years ago. Have we ever paused to consider what it means to us in the life of the nation as a whole? It means that the people who alone by weight of experience and wisdom are fitted for the posts of command in the various public activities of the country are snatched away by death; and that the guidance and leadership which belongs to age and mature judgment in the countries of the West fall in India to younger and consequently to less trustworthy persons."[269]