Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/670

 654 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

portion of the population devoted to that particular industry will, generally speaking, depend on the wages paid ; and as these wages (I refer, of course, to the low trades and professions, where chil- dren usually follow the occupations of their parents) are low, the means of existence they represent are also low, and the supply is kept within the demand by premature mortality. There is thus established an equilibrium between the number of men produced and the number of men required. But, with the con- stant division of labor, and the creation of new industries, the equilibrium is continually broken in favor of the working classes ; for it usually happens that a new industry, especially if it requires a higher kind of labor, will be obliged, in order to establish itself, to pay higher wages than are already paid by the existing industries ; the result of the competition being a general rise of wages ; and the new wages again determine a new rate of mortality, necessarily lower than the preceding, and the equilibrium is established on a higher level. As a matter of fact, events do not take place with all this distinctness and by successive leaps, but through very small changes and in a rhythmic manner. The law, however, although its operations may not always be clearly discernible, I believe to be as here stated.

It seems to me, then, that some economists and demogra- phists have misinterpreted the facts when they have maintained that population has a " virtual and organic tendency" to keep within the means of existence. In this respect the views of M. de Molinari are worthy of close consideration, as many writers have drawn very liberally from his works, and his explanation of the law of population has been accepted as a death-blow to the "terrible" theories of Malthus. He contends' that, from an economic point of view, men are like machines, whose market price depends upon the relation between supply and demand, and the production of which requires a certain amount of labor and capital ; or, in more common language, that the rearing of a

'See his Cours d'/conomie politique, 2"' €A., t. I, 15"= et 16= le9ons. It is not to be supposed, however, that the "virtual tendency" argument is of contemporaneous origin. It was advanced by Weyland against Malthus, and discussed by the latter in the Appendix to his Essay (pp. 513-17).