Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/671

 POPULATION AND WAGES 655

family requires that the wages of labor should be sufificient, not only for the bare support of the parents, but also for the support of their offspring. This excess of wages represents, he says, the portion of the existing capital that is devoted to the produc- tion of workers. As the number of workers increases, a large part of the "available capital" is withdrawn from the production of people ; /. e., labor is more scantily remunerated, the result being that the workingman has no longer the means to continue his multiplication; for, there being now no excess of wages available for the purposes of reproduction, or wages being insuf- ficient for the support of a family, the family, as a matter of fact, is not formed : multiplication is thus arrested, until the broken equilibrium is reestablished, without the necessity of such positive checks as those mentioned by Malthus. The reverse phenomenon, of course, takes place when population is scarce : wages are raised, and the laborer is thus enabled to manufacture more articles, that is, more people, and to produce them faster. Both phenomena, Molinari adds, are more striking in such exceptional cases as commercial crises, during which the people, finding themselves without employment, or receiving low wages, immediately cease to multiply, as is attested by the great and abrupt fall in the marriage-rate ; and in the opposite case of sudden or rapid industrial improvements, which, calling for a greater number of workers, produce a rise of wages, or an increase in the multiplying power of the population, which also manifests itself in the exceptional elevation of the marriage-rate. Furthermore, he argues that, did population constantly press on the means of existence, it would be an absolute impossibility for it to increase ; for in such a case there would be no available capital for the production of men : every man's wages would be what he required for himself alone, and, there being no surplus for the rearing of a family, population would move backward, instead of forward.'

■ Molinari's theory, it will be noticed, is nothing but a more elaborate exposition of the action of the prudential check in extreme cases, to which Malthus himself called attention : " When the demand for labor," he says, " is either stationary or increasing very slowly, people, not seeing any employment open by which they can support a family, or the wages of common labor being inadequate to this purpose, will, of course, be deterred from marrying" {Essay, Bk. Ill, chap, xiv, p. 379).