It is but rarely that improvements in the condition of the laboring-classes do anything more than give a temporary margin, speedily filled up by an increase of their numbers. Unless, either by their general improvement in intellectual and moral culture, or at least by raising their habitual standard of comfortable living, they can be taught to make a better use of favorable circumstances, nothing permanent can be done for them; the most promising schemes end only in having a more numerous but not a happier people. There is no doubt that (the standard) is gradually, though slowly, rising in the more advanced countries of Western Europe.[125] Subsistence and employment in England have never increased more rapidly than in the last forty years, but every census since 1821 showed a smaller proportional increase of population than that of the period preceding; and the produce of French agriculture and industry is increasing in a progressive ratio, while the population exhibits, in every quinquennial census, a smaller proportion of births to the population.
This brings forward the near connection between land-tenures and population. France is pre-eminently a country of small holdings, and it is undoubtedly true that the system has checked the thoughtless increase of numbers. On his few hectares, the French peasant sees in the size of his farm and the amount of its produce the limit of subsistence for himself and his family; as in no other way does he see beforehand the results of any lack of food from his lack of prudence.[126] From 1790 to 1815 the average yearly increase of population was 120,000; from 1815 to 1846, the golden age of French agriculture, 200,000; from 1846 to 1856, when agriculture was not prosperous, 60,000; from 1856 to 1880 the increase has been not more than 36,000 yearly. In France the question shapes itself to the peasant proprietor, How many can be subsisted by the amount of produce, not on an unlimited area of land in other parts of the world, but on this particular property of a small size? While in England there are ten births to six deaths, in France there are about ten births to every nine deaths.[127] In no country has the doctrine of Malthus been more attacked than in France, and yet in no other country has there been a more marked obedience to its principles in actual practice. Since the French are practically not at all an emigrating people, population has strictly adapted itself to subsistence. For the relative increase of population in France and the United States, see also the movement of lines indicating the increase of population in chart No. III (p. 114).
Chapter VIII. Of The Law Of The Increase Of Capital.
§ 1. Means for Saving in the Surplus above Necessaries.
The requisites of production being labor, capital, and land, it has been seen from the preceding chapter that the impediments to the increase of production do not arise from the first of these elements. But production has other requisites, and, of these, the one which we shall next consider is Capital. There can not be more people in any country, or in the world, than can be supported from the produce of past labor until that of present labor comes in (although it is not to be supposed that capital consists wholly of food). We have next, therefore, to inquire into the conditions of the increase of capitaclass="underline" the causes by which the rapidity of its increase is determined, and the necessary limitations of that increase.
Since all capital is the product of saving, that is, of abstinence from present consumption for the sake of a future good, the increase of capital must depend upon two things—the amount of the fund from which saving can be made, and the strength of the dispositions which prompt to it.
(1.) The fund from which saving can be made is the surplus of the produce of labor, after supplying the necessaries of life to all concerned in the production (including those employed in replacing the materials, and keeping the fixed capital in repair). More than this surplus can not be saved under any circumstances. As much as this, though it never is saved, always might be. This surplus is the fund from which the enjoyments, as distinguished from the necessaries of the producers, are provided; it is the fund from which all are subsisted who are not themselves engaged in production, and from which all additions are made to capital. The capital of the employer forms the revenue of the laborers, and, if this exceeds the necessaries of life, it gives them a surplus which they may either expend in enjoyments or save.
It is evident that the whole unproductive consumption of the laborer can be saved. When it is considered how enormous a sum is spent by the working-classes in drink alone (and also in the great reserves of the Trades-Unions collected for purposes of strikes), it is indisputable that the laborers have the margin from which savings can be made, and by which they themselves may become capitalists. The great accumulations in the savings-banks by small depositors in the United States also show somewhat how much is actually saved. In 1882-1883 there were 2,876,438 persons who had deposited in the savings-banks of the United States $1,024,856,787, with an average to each depositor of $356.29. The unproductive consumption, however, of all classes—not merely that of the working-men—is the possible fund which may be saved. That being the amount which can be saved, how much will be saved depends on the strength of the desire to save.
The greater the produce of labor after supporting the laborers, the more there is which can be saved. The same thing also partly contributes to determine how much will be saved. A part of the motive to saving consists in the prospect of deriving an income from savings; in the fact that capital, employed in production, is capable of not only reproducing itself but yielding an increase. The greater the profit that can be made from capital, the stronger is the motive to its accumulation.
§ 2. Motive for Saving in the Surplus above Necessaries.
But the disposition to save does not wholly depend on the external inducement to it; on the amount of profit to be made from savings. With the same pecuniary inducement, the inclination is very different, in different persons, and in different communities.
(2.) All accumulation involves the sacrifice of a present, for the sake of a future good.
This is the fundamental motive underlying the effective desire of accumulation, and is far more important than any other. It is, in short, the test of civilization. In order to induce the laboring-classes to improve their condition and save capital, it is absolutely necessary to excite in them (by education or religion) a belief in a future gain greater than the present sacrifice. It is, to be sure, the whole problem of creating character, and belongs to sociology and ethics rather than to political economy.
In weighing the future against the present, the uncertainty of all things future is a leading element; and that uncertainty is of very different degrees. “All circumstances,” therefore, “increasing the probability of the provision we make for futurity being enjoyed by ourselves or others, tend” justly and reasonably “to give strength to the effective desire of accumulation. Thus a healthy climate or occupation, by increasing the probability of life, has a tendency to add to this desire. When engaged in safe occupations and living in healthy countries, men are much more apt to be frugal, than in unhealthy or hazardous occupations and in climates pernicious to human life. Sailors and soldiers are prodigals. In the West Indies, New Orleans, the East Indies, the expenditure of the inhabitants is profuse. The same people, coming to reside in the healthy parts of Europe, and not getting into the vortex of extravagant fashion, live economically. War and pestilence have always waste and luxury among the other evils that follow in their train. For similar reasons, whatever gives security to the affairs of the community is favorable to the strength of this principle. In this respect the general prevalence of law and order and the prospect of the continuance of peace and tranquillity have considerable influence.”[128]
125
This is fully confirmed by the inaugural address of Mr. Giffen as President of the London Statistical Society, November 20, 1883, infra, book iv, chap. v, § 1. (See the London “Statistical Journal,” 1883.)
128
This and the subsequent quotations are taken by Mr. Mill from Rae's “New Principles of Political Economy.”