[248-1] J. Möser did not even dream of this. Patr. Phant., I, 15.
[248-2] Rossi, Cours d'Economie politique, I, 371, estimates the cost of bringing up a child to its 16th year at a minimum of 1,000 francs. Hence, a country with 1,000,000 births annually, in which only 50 per cent. reach that age, would lose 500,000,000 francs per annum. However, over one-third of the children in question die in the first years of childhood, and the rest do not reach on an average their 16th year, but die between the age of 7 and 8: Bernouilli, Populationistik, 259. Engel estimates Saxony's "man-capital" at 4 times the value of all the land in the country, and at 10 times the value of all movable property. (Sächs., Statist. Zeitschr., 1855, No. 9. Preuss. Statist. Zeitschr., 1861, 324.) One of the chief advocates of the view that there is an investment of capital in every child is Chadwick in the opening address delivered by him before an English learned society at Cambridge: Statist. Journal, Dec., 1862. Lancashire alone pays a penalty per annum for preventable deaths of £4,000,000, for the funeral and medical expenses; to say nothing of the capital lost (506).
[248-3] Bernouilli, Populationistik, 51 ff. Quetelet, Recherches statist. sur le Royaume des Pays-Bas, 1827, 1, 9, and Du Système social, 1848, 176 ff., specially called attention to the important differences in this relation, between the productive and unproductive years of life. Thus it should not be forgotten, when reading of the greater mortality of the poor quarters of Paris, that strangers who are for the most part in the vigorous years of life, live there least of all.
[248-4] In Russia, it seems that only 36 per cent. of all those born outlive their 20th year; in England, 55 per cent. (Porter, Progress, ch. I, 29.) The Russian peasants are said to have from 10 to 12 children, only about one-third of whom grow to maturity, (v. Haxthausen, I, 128.) In the United States, the population was in 1820 divided into two nearly equal parts as to age, the 16th year of age forming the dividing point; in England the same was the case, only the dividing point was 20 years of age. (Tucker, Progress of the United States, 16, 63.)
[248-5] There were in
| Years. |
From 0 to 15 years of age. | From 16
to 50 years of age. | Over 50 years of age. | |
| Per 1,000 of the pop. | Per 1,000 of the pop. | Per 1,000 of the pop. | ||
| Belgium, | 1846 | 323 | 509 | 168 |
| Prussia, | 1849 | 370 | 504 | 126 |
| Great Britain, | 1851 | 354 | 504 | 142 |
| Holland, | 1849 | 333 | 509 | 158 |
| Saxony, | 1840 | 339 | 505 | 156 |
| Sweden, | 1850 | 328 | 511 | 161 |
In Great Britain, the census of 1851 gave 596,030 persons over 70 years of age; 9,847, over 90; 2,038, over 95; 319, over 100 years of age. (Athen., 12 Aug., 1854.) In France, in 1851, there were 1,319,960 persons seventy years of age and over. In the United States the population of—
| Per English squaremile. | Relative number of childrenunder ten years. | |||
| 1800 | 1840 | 1800 | 1840 | |
| per cent. | per cent. | |||
| New England, | 19.2 | 34.8 | 63.5 | 51.1 |
| The Middle States, | 15.3 | 43.6 | 70.7 | 55.7 |
| The Southern States, | 18.9 | 15.9 | 73.0 | 67.8 |
| The Southwestern States, | 11.3 | 13.7 | 77.6 | 75.5 |
| The Northwestern States, | 12.3 | 25.5 | 84.9 | 73.8 |
In the whole Union, in 1830, the age classes up to 20 years embraced 56.12 per cent. of the population; in 1840, 54.62 per cent; in 1850, 51.85 per cent. Compare Horn, Bevölk. Studien, I, 126; Wappäus, A. Bevölk. Stat., II, 44, 125 ff., 88; Tucker, Progress of the United States, 105.
[248-6] As Wappäus says that in America an equal number of adults must work for at least a third larger number of children than in Europe: "a much more unfavorable situation, so far as production-force is concerned." (A. Bevölk. St., II, 44.)