Page:Instead of a Book, Tucker.djvu/483

Rh it might benefit "a few individuals; "and between these admissions there is a vast and vital difference.

Concerning the rights of the individual and the majority, neither Mr. Kelly nor Mr. Walker would say that "what was required to augment the 'public good' was to jealously preserve the rights and liberties of "a few individuals at the expense of others. So, in the matter of population, Mr. Kelly does not say that the public welfare is to be enhanced by reducing the size of a few families and thus making the individuals belonging to them comfortable at the expense of others. But Mr. Walker virtually does say so, and precisely there is his mistake. Thus Mr. Walker's own analogy convicts him of his error.

If he can be made to really see that under the present system small families must benefit at the expense of others if at all, I think he will be obliged in honesty to abandon his position that Malthusianism is good political economy. Will he excuse me, then, if I try to make this plain in a rather simple way?

I will suppose A, B, C, etc., to and including Y, to be day laborers, each having five children and each employed at wages barely sufficient to sustain such life as they are willing to endure rather than resort to forcible revolution and expropriation. Z is out of employment. He has four children, and sees the possibility of a fifth. Suddenly a happy thought strikes him. "As long as I have only four children, I can get work, for I can afford to work for less than Y with his five children. I will become a Malthusian,—no, a Neo-Malthusian,—and apply the preventive check." Counting the few dollars and cents still left in his pocket, he finds that he can keep his family in bread for two days longer and still have enough left to buy a copy of Dr. Foote's "Radical Remedy in Social Science" and a syringe of the most improved pattern. He makes these prudential purchases, and presents them to his good wife. Mrs. Z's eyes fairly dance with delight at the new vistas of joy that open before her, and I, for one, am sincerely glad for her. That night witnesses a renewal of the Zs' honeymoon. The next day, buoyant and hopeful, Z presents himself at the office of Mr. Gradgrind, Y's employer. "Y," says he, "works for you at a dollar and seventy-five cents a day; I will do the same work at a dollar and a half." "You're the very man I'm after," says Gradgrind, rubbing his hands; "come to work to-morrow." When Y puts on his coat to go home, he is handed his envelope containing his pay and his discharge.

Y, who has never been out of work long enough to read