Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/672

 656 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

There may be some truth in this theory ; but it neither accounts for all the facts nor can be considered a refutation of Malthusianism. Leaving aside the unwarranted assumption that the prudential check is by itself sufficiently strong to prevent overmultiplication, it must be noticed that, while the theory is a partial explanation of how equilibrium between supply and demand is established, or »r-established when it has been broken by accidental causes, the principal thing to be explained — how that equilibrium is maititaitied — does not seem to have received enough attention. I have already referred to the process by which wages are continually raised through a division of labor, which forms in the industrial world a sort of hierarchy by which the various standards of living and the social stations of men are regulated. He who has been accustomed to do a special kind of work will consider the manner of living he can command with the wages paid in that department of labor as his normal way of living, and the commodities he can procure he will con- sider indispensable necessaries of life. On such wages he will base all his calculations, among which the support of a wife and children is never left out of consideration ; for, no matter what his condition, his standard of living is always of such nature as to include a family among the expenses to be met by his wages, how small soever these may be. But if, by an accidental crisis, his earnings are diminished, he considers that they are no longer enough to supply what, to him, are necessaries of life \ and if this diminution of wages is only temporary, he will abstain from marrying ; will, that is, delay his marriage. This accounts for those falls in the marriage-rate to which M. de Molinari refers, while the corresponding rises are in great part due to the occur- rence of delayed marriages. Here we have only a particular case of that general tendency to equilibrium of bodies moving within a certain amplitude of oscillation — what the French call the law of compensation, and is also known as the law of rhyth- mic motion. But the obvious fact is ignored that equilibrium, or approximate equilibrium, once reestablished, is only main- tained through the agency of premature death. M. de Moli- nari seems to take it for granted that the available capital for the