Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/773

Rh may rightly be questioned even by the unscientific mind. Have its advocates taken cognizance of the human will and of the reason of mankind acting under its direction as the prime factors in the production and distribution of the material subjects—food, shelter, and clothing—on which material existence depends? If it may be rightly held that such a tendency as that which Malthus thought he had proved had any real foundation, it would have been disclosed during the nineteenth century. It has not been. There has not been a single decade in the nineteenth century in which the means of subsistence have not gained rapidly on the population of the globe. The tendency throughout the century has been to abate the dangers and evils of famine, to distribute an increasing abundance of food over wider and wider areas at a lessened cost, to mitigate the horrors of war, and to develop sanitary science. If the theory of Malthus is well grounded, then it follows that the whole of the so-called progress developed in the nineteenth century has been worse than useless. It has been merely increasing the numbers who must ultimately be subjected to the horrors of war, pestilence, and famine, in order that mankind may survive upon the face of the earth. This tendency to increase of relative product has been accompanied by an enormous increase in the capital of the world—that is to say, in the products of labor saved for future reproductive service—and this vast relative increase of capital has tended to a great reduction in the normal rate of interest earned in its safe use. The improvements in sanitary science have also led to a very considerable prolongation in the lives of the intelligent. It is probable that the great life-insurance companies have only been saved from the disaster which might have ensued from the rapid reduction of the safe rates of interest on their investments by this fact that life has been prolonged considerably beyond any of the life tables which are made use of in computing the annual premiums. These gains have not been made by means of the frequent wars of the century, but in spite of them. The effect of war has been to devastate sections of important countries, and to diminish production more than it lessened population. The effect of the conscription of the strongest and healthiest of the men has led to their destruction in great numbers, and to the survival only of the less capable and less fit to reproduce the species. There has even been a distinct deterioration in the size, weight, and physical energies of the population even of great countries like France; yet in spite of these evil influences the population of continental Europe has steadily increased. The application of science and invention has enabled the debt and army ridden countries of Europe—France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Russia—to improve their general conditions, and, although these evil influences have kept the great mass