Reduce the population of Britain to one million and the workers would be in no better case than they are now. Increase the population to sixty millions and the workers will be no worse off—at least so far as wages are concerned.
I will give you the reason for this in a few words, using an illustration which used to serve me for the same purpose in one of my lectures.
No one will deny that all wealth—whether food, tools, clothing, furniture, machines, arms, or houses—comes from the land.
For we feed our cattle and poultry on the land, and get from the land corn, malt, hops, iron, timber, and every other thing we use, except fish and a few sea-drugs; and we could not get fish without nets and boats, nor make nets and boats without fibre and wood and metals.
Stand a decanter and a tumbler on a bare table. Call the table Britain, call the decanter a landlord, and call the tumbler a labourer.
Now no man can produce wealth without land. If, then, Lord de Canter owns all the land, and Tommy Tumbler owns none, how is Tommy Tumbler to get his living?
He will have to work for Lord de Canter, and he will have to take the wage his lordship offers him.
Now you cannot say that Britain is over-populated with only two men, nor that it is suffering from a superfluity of labour when there is only one labourer. And yet you observe that with only two men in the country one is rich and the other poor.
How, then, will a reduction of the population prevent poverty?