[258-18] The obstacles formerly placed in many countries in the way of the marriage of Jews of allowing only the first-born to marry, and this only when a vacancy occurred in the number of families by death (Austria), was not based on a solicitude about population, but on religio-national intolerance, in part also on commercial police grounds.
[258-19] Fisher, Gesch. des deutschen Handels (1785 ff.), still considers war as a remedy for over-population, but M. Wirth, Grundzüge der N. Oek., rightly remarks that war destroys not so much children, women and the infirm as the most productive of the male population, and immense amounts of capital.
EFFECTS OF EMIGRATION.
B. It is sufficiently evident that emigration from an over-populated country[259-1] may be attended with good consequences, especially when it takes place in organized bodies.[259-2] There is little danger that one who knows how to work and pray will go to the bad in a young agricultural colony. In a wilderness which has not yet been cleared, the greater number of proletarian vices spontaneously disappear. There is here no opportunity for jealousy or theft; little for intemperance, the gaming table, licentiousness or quarrelsomeness. Here labor is a necessity, and the rewards of industry and saving soon take a palpable shape. As the emigrant, in such a situation, can scarcely help marrying, children far from being a burthen, soon become companions to their parents in their solitude and, later, helpmates in business. The colonist belonging to the lower middle class is most certain of improving his condition. It may, indeed, require many and toilsome years before he can feel comfortable himself; but his children who would probably have led a proletarian life in the mother country may calculate with certainty on future well-being. The father's small capital which the outlay for education alone would have exhausted at home, here becomes the seed of a number of prosperous households.[259-3] It is otherwise with the mass of the people who remain at home. (Compare § 241.)[259-4] It is a matter of much more difficulty than is generally supposed by those who have not made a study of the matter, that the yearly emigration from countries like Germany should counterbalance the excess of births over deaths.[259-5] It is not to be supposed that men who are really useless at home should be of any service in the colonies. How violently have not English colonies opposed the advent of settlers from the poorhouses of the mother country. The classes which are readiest to emigrate: idlers, fickle characters, fathers of families with altogether too many children, artisans who by a revolution in industry have lost the means of making a livelihood, are precisely those who find it most difficult to obtain employment on the other side of the water.[259-6] Most colonies refuse to receive persons over forty years of age at their own expense. But a young man intellectually and physically able to work, can always make his way even in the old world; only the weaker succumb under the pressure of over-population. Lastly, it should be considered what an amount of capital is required for purposes of emigration and settlement. If emigrants, on the average, take more capital with them than is estimated to be the per capita amount of capital possessed by those remaining at home,[259-7] the consequence would be that, as a result of this very successful emigration, the ratio of consumers to the amount of capital in the country would become more and more unfavorable. The emigrating portion of the country might experience the advantage of this, but the great mass of the population remaining at home would become poorer in capital and in vigorous men,[259-8] and richer in the comparatively needy. The comfortless contrast between colossal wealth and beggarly want could only be thereby increased, since it is almost exclusively the lower middle class who emigrate to agricultural colonies. The over-rich, as a rule, will not, and proletarians can not, go thither.[259-9] [259-10]
[259-1] Compare R. Mohl, in the Tübinger Zeitschrift für Staatswissenschaft, 1847, 320 ff.; Roscher, Nationalökonomische Ansichten über die Deutsche Auswanderung in the Deutschen Viertejahrsschrift, 1848, No. 43, 96 ff., the same author's Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung, 2 Aufl., 1856, 342 ff.; J. Fröbel, Die Deutsche Auswanderung und ihre Kulturhistorische Bedeutung, 1858.
[259-2] Unfortunately, emigration in groups has recently become very rare, whereas, during the middle ages, it took place preponderantly, first in armies and then in communities.
[259-3] According to parliamentary investigations, the Irish laborer in Australia, Canada, etc., improves in a few years to such an extent that he can scarcely be distinguished from the Anglo-Saxon. He becomes industrious, self-reliant etc. (Edinb. Rev., 1950, 25.) In North America, however, the Irish seldom become really well off, or occupy a position of consequence in society. (Görtz, Reise, 88.)
[259-4] E. G. Wakefield, in other respects so intelligent a writer on the theory of colonization, is of opinion that every nation might, by giving a proper direction to emigration, establish such a density of population as it desired. Thus, for instance, if there were 10,000 marriages contracted every year in a country, and it was provided that each of these 10,000 couples should be sent to some colony immediately after marriage, the whole mother country would become extinct in from 60 to 70 years. This extreme is of course not desired by any one; but the way to be followed in order to attain a desirable limit is hereby pointed out. That emigration has in so few instances checked the advance of population, Wakefield accounts for by the fact that the means furnished to emigration have to a certain extent been wasted, and that old men, children, etc., who either had no influence on population as yet, or could have no more in future, constituted a large proportion of those who left the country. (England and America.)
Evidently an important consideration is here omitted, viz.: that there is no such a thing as a normal year of marriages, etc. If, for instance, all males were to wait until their 30th year, and all females until their 20th, to enter the married state, and that the government were to send all competent persons as soon as they had reached this age to America, what would be the consequence? Numberless situations affording the means of supporting a family would be vacant, and a number of young men of 29 and of young women of 19 would be induced to marry, etc. The number of children to a marriage in England in 1838-44 was 4.13; 1845-49, 3.96; 1850-54, 3.26; 1855-59, 4.15. (Journal des. Econ., Oct., 1861.)