Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/244

Rh 216 COM MUNIS M restraint, independence, and foresight. In the first class may be placed war, pestilence, famine, and all the diseases incident to insufficient food and overcrowding. In the second class may be placed prudential restraints on marriage and on the number of births to each marriage, and emigration. Every circumstance which weakens the efficiency of the checks on population comprised in the second class necessarily adds to the force of the checks which we have placed in the first class. In other words, any circumstance which relaxes the force of the prudential checks on population tends to produce the miseries of famine, scarcity, and &quot; starvation diseases.&quot; What would be the effect of communism on the population question 1 Would it strengthen or weaken the motives which promote a prudential limitation of numbers ? Nearly all com munists, whether theoretical or practical, have faced in one way or another the population question. The solutions they have offered differ widely. Let us first see what the greatest of theoretical communists have had to say on the subject. Uoutrol of Plato seems to have thought the matter an easy one, marriages and says that the guardians of his state must control the and births, number of births. In Utopia the ag3 at which men and i women were allowed to marry was fixed by the state, and all irregularities in defiance of this rule were to be severely punished. The population was also to be kept within certain limits by means of migration, emigration, or colonization. But the theoretical communists of modern times have hardly found words strong enough to express their detestation of the principle that any limitation is desirable to the possible number of births. The writings of Malthus are spoken of as &quot; an outrage on household life.&quot; His language, it is said, &quot; brutalized the purest feelings of domesticity.&quot; M. Louis Blanc inveighs against the doctrines of political economists, and protests that they are blaspheming God when they say that the pros perity of the poor would be promoted by a limitation of the population. Why are you not logical ? he cries. If you were you would recommend that the children of the poor should be put to death ! And in another place he speaks of &quot; cette Economic politique sans entrailles dont Ricardo a si complaisament pose&quot; les premisses, et dont Malthus a tire&quot; avec tant de sang-froid 1 horrible con clusion. Cette dconomie politique portait en elle meme tin vice qui devait la rendre fatale a 1 Angleterre et au monde&quot; (U Organisation du Travail, p. 71). Practical communists have not, however, met the population question in the spirit indicated by these quotations. Several of the most successful realizations of communistic life have maintained the strictest celibacy among their members. The Essenes, who practised community of goods before the Christian era, were a sect composed entirely of men, who lived in seclusion from the world and were in many impor tant respects the prototypes of Christian hermits or monks. Two of the most important communistic societies of the United States have also made celibacy an essential feature of their system. The &quot; Economies &quot;and &quot;the Shakers,&quot; the societies to which reference is made, have existed since 1805 and 1792 respectively. They are strictly celibate, their numbers being recruited by converts from the outside world and to a slight extent by the adoption of pauper children and orphans from neighbouring towns. Other communistic societies maintain the authority of the heads of the society to limit the number of marriages. The Spartan Government, which in many important respects was communistic, exercised the most a bsolute control over the increase of population. Among the Moravians marriage is not permitted to take place without the consent of the heads of the society, who furnish the newly married couples with a suitable marriage portion. The Separatists, an American community of German origin, established in 1817, favour celibacy although they do not enforce it. No marriage can take place without the consent of the trustees of the society ; and they further discourage marriage by entering among the articles of their religion a declaration of their belief that celibacy is more in accordance with the divine will than marriage. The Amana community also, a German society in the United States, which dates its origin from early in the last century, discourages marriage among its members. No man is allowed to marry before he is twenty-four years of age. Mr Nordhoff relates that the reason for this rule was explained to him by one of the elders of the Amana Society in these words, &quot; They &quot; (the young men) &quot; have few cares in life, and would marry too early for their own good food and lodging being secured them if there were not a rule upon the subject.&quot; The religious tone of the community is also set against marriage. &quot; In the Amana Church there are three classes, orders, or grades, the highest consisting of those members who have manifested in their lives the greatest spirituality and piety. Now if the newly-married couple should have belonged for years to this highest class, their wedding would put them down into the lowest, or the children s order, for a year or two until they had won their slow way back by deepen ing piety &quot; (Nordhoff s Communistic Societies of the United States, pp. 36-7). Even the Perfectionists, whose extra ordinary system of &quot; complex marriage &quot; has been already referred to, take many precautions against a superabundant population. The number of births is controlled by the heads of the society. The founder of the community writes as follows : &quot; Previous to about two and a half years ago, we refrained from the usual rate of child-bearing, for several reasons financial and otherwise.&quot; Even when the number of births was increased it was stated that they were purposely kept within such limits that &quot;judicious moral and spiritual care, with the advantage of a liberal education,&quot; could be guaranteed to every child (Nordhoff, p. 276). The practical answer made by communists to the population question, even in so wealthy a country as America, in which unoccupied fertile land can be easily and cheaply obtained, is that a strict limitation of num bers is absolutely essential to their social and industrial well-being. As a matter of fact the population of nearly all the American communistic societies has not increased at all, but has greatly declined during the last fifty years. The number of Shakers, for instance, in 1823 was 3800; their number in 1874- was 2415. The Icarians, the only American community which makes marriage compulsory, have declined in twenty-five years from 1500 to 65. It would, however, be rash to conclude from these facts that the general adoption of communism would tend to strengthen the prudential checks on population. We have seen that modern communists, when freed from the trammels of actual experience of the daily working of the system they advocate, have vigorously denounced the theory and practice of Malthusianism. The American communities C have declined in numbers partly in consequence of the n adoption in two of them of celibacy as a religious principle. { It is also impossible to avoid the conclusion that their numbers have fallen off partly in consequence of the unattractive conditions of communistic life. The young members of these societies not unfrequently leave them when they arrive at manhood and womanhood. The routine and absence of spontaneity of a communistic life is a weight to young and active minds that is not counter balanced by security from want, or what has been called a bread-and-butter prosperity. The numbers of marriages and of births have been controlled in other of these societies in virtue of the absolute despotism which is vested in their