A Paper read at the National Liberal Club, on 21st October, 1890, BY CHARLES R. DRYSDALE, M.D. ^xict (Bm f LONDON ; G. STANDRING, 7 & 9 FINSBURY STREET, E.C. R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTOER STREET, E.C. 1891. TUB CAUSE OF poyeety; I trust that it may not be considered very pedantic on my ■part, if I explain what I understand by the terms Caiise and Poverty. By poverty I mean a condition of life wherein there is permanently or temporarily a difliculty felt by the poor person to obtain that amount of food, shelter, and clothing necessary to maintain health in any given climate. 'The word Caivse I mean to define merely as it is used in ordinary parlance. Thus, we speak of the moon being the cause of the tides; because, although we are aware that the sun and indeed all other members of the solar system must, according to the theory of universal gravitation, effect some¬ thing towards the production of the tides, we yet see that the moon is by far the most important of all these. In the €ame way, I at once acknowledge that there are many accidental causes of poverty, such as idleness, drink, bad laws, disease, and a host of other similar accidents; but I contend that all of these causes are so small, in comparison with the paramount cause of poverty in an industrious •country like this, that we are entitled, without more ex¬ aggeration than is allowable under the circumstances, to attribute the phenomenon of low wages and poverty almost •entirely to over-population, or over-rapid multiplication of the human race. I am sensible that this allegation of mine will meet with strenuous opposition from those who consider that poverty is due to mal-distribution, and not to under¬ production ; which is naturally the contention of those persons who are not thoroughly acquainted with the tlieory of population, as held by the scientific economists of Europe ; but I cannot help thinking, that even a few minutes of calm consideration of the evidences which prove the law may show to the most optimistic of modern enthusiasts, that, unless they admit that over-population is the main cause of low wages, they will ever remain barren revolutionists, instead of really beneficent reformers, as they desire to be considered. * A paper read at the National Liberal Club, on October 21,1890 ; J. H. Lew, Esq., in the chair ( 4 ) Before the celebrated essay on Population was published by Malthus in 1798, there had been many writers, both in antiquity, and indeed not long before Malthus himself, who had shown that over-population was the most fruitful cause of disease, sedition, and poverty. Adam Smith had shown that, whilst it took 500 years in the middle ages for an European nation to double its population, owing to the scanty accession of food supplies in that continent; popu¬ lation in the new colonies of the United States before his day had often been doubled in less than 25 years, owing to- the plentiful supply of food obtainable from the untouched or virgin soils of a new country. Hume, in common with most of the writers in the last century, failed to understand the real reason why poverty exists in the midst of highly civilised peoples; and considered that idleness, or the love of ease, was the original sin of the race, which would always lead to poverty. The contention of Malthus, that there is a tendency in population to increase more rapidly than the necessaries of existence can be increased, is now admitted by all those who have grasped the simple law of nature which he was the first thoroughly to explain. It is now as clearly made out as the law of gravitation of Newton, or that of chemical equivalents of Dalton. If, said Malthus, we examine the nature of plants and animals, we remark, at once, how great a provision exists in Nature for the reproduction of each species, and how scanty a provision for the bringing of all germs to maturity. The seeds of fennel or of dandelion are produced in myriads, and the whole earth would soon become- covered with any species of plant, if all the seeds it produces, could find room to germinate. It is the same with animals. In the case of fish, the ova of the cod or the herring are so numerous, that if they could all come to maturity, the shallower seas would soon swarm with these fish. When we leave the less developed species and come to the mam¬ malia, we again meet with the enormous power of increase by reproduction in such animals as the rabbit or the domestic -cat, A few years ago, some pairs of rabbits were conveyed to Australia and New Zealand, and from these there liave: arisen such hosts of that species of mammal, that in many places the fields are reported to resemble the floor of a. kitchen, swarming with beetles ; so thickly do these rodents- swarm on them. Coming to larger mammals, we hear it stated that a flock of sheep can double its numbers, if pas¬ ture bo sulliciont in quantity, in 2J years; and that cattle- (5 ) i an incessant pressure of mouths on food supplies, and heuco the mortality of the poorer classes is vastly higher than thao of their richer neighbors. The rich or easy classes in Eng¬ land have at present an average age at death of actually 57 yett's, according to Dr. Ogle; whereas Dr. B. W. Richardson and Sir E. Chadwick some years ago found that the average a.ge at death of the artizan class in Lambeth did not exceed 30 years. The earlier death of the poor has been, indeed, ascertained since the commencement of this century, when Dr. Villerm6, in 1817, found that there was one death in 15 persons in the twelfth arrondissement, the poorest quarter of Paris, against one in 65 in the rich quarter of the Champ.s Elys6es in that city. And the Annuaire Statistiqiie de la ■ Ville de Paris shows in its pages that there are three times as many children in the families of the poor in Paris as iu those of the rich. The inhabitants of the rich quarters of London (Ken¬ sington, Hanover Square, Hampstead, and St. James) produced, in 1886, 7,779 cliildren collectively; whilst a i nearly equal population in the poor quarters (Shoreditch, j Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, and St. George-in-the-East) produced 13,700, or had a birthrate of 38‘3per 1000 against 21-8 in the rich quarters. And the death rates of tliose ! poor districts in London was 24-4 per 1000 against 16 per | 1000 in the rich ones. Everywhere we find in Europe ti.at | rapid birth rates and early death are connected in our largo cities, whose slums are the graves of the children and of ) their half starved parents. Thus, iu Dublin, Dr. Grimshaw, f Registrar General of Ireland, has shown recently that, in 1886, the death rate of the well-to-do people of the city was 13-4, against 33-7 per 1000 among the wage-earuing class. ( 8 -) And, what proves the extreme evils caused by high birth rates to the poor of this country, he showed that, among the rich classes in Dublin, there were only 5 children under the age of five in a hundred of population ; whilst among the poor there were 15 per cent, of that class under the age of five years. At Paris, in 1886, there were 990 children under five years of age in La Villette, a poor quarter, in 10,000 inhabitants ; but only 397 in the Champs Elyses. The birth rate in Europe varies greatly from c ountry to country. Thus, in semi-civilised Eussia (Leinenhorg, cited by Lagneau in his pamphlet, 1890), the birth rate is actually as high as 48-8 per 1000. In Prussia, from 187'2 to 1881, it was 41-2, and in England, from 1871 to 1880, it was 35-5, and 32-9 from 1881 to 1888; whilst in France, from 1831 to 1888, the figures have fallen from 24-8 per 1000 to 23-09 in 1888. Indeed, were it not for the illegitimate births in France (75,000) there would, in 1888, have been a surplus of deaths over births in France, and any increase in popu¬ lation would have been from immigration. M. Lagneau sent me, a month ago, his excellent series of statistics as¬ sembled in his pamphlet, UAccroissement de la Poimlalinti de la FraJice; and in it I find the reasons stated for this slow multiplication of the modern French. In page 17 he saj-s : “ Without in any -w’ay being aware of the precepts of the celebrated Malthus, our populations are more and more led, less in order to avoid poverty than by a desire to increase their comforts, to apply, if not moral restraint, at any rate prudential restraint. If, too often, our compatriots are very late in marrying, without at the same time practising abstinence, as this economist recommended, more and more, when they do marry, they limit the number of their children, in order to be able to supply without stint not only their real wants, but also their factitious or artificial wants. Thus, in defiance of the English professor, it is not the poor populations of France, or those who have most to dread misery, who show themselves as the unconscious pupils of Malthusianism, which is still warmly defended by M. Drysdale and some other economists or demogtaphs; it is our rich populations, and those which are physiologically fruitful, as those of Normandy and the valley <5 thift Garonne, who are more and more limiting their birth rate. Whilst for the whole of France, in 1888, there were 23-1 births for 1000 inhabitants; in the departments of Eure, Aisne, -^Tarn-et-Garonne, Lot-et-Garonne, and Gers, the birth rate in 1888 was respectively 17-6, 17-1, 15-8, 14-8, ( 9 ) *iid 14.” Some of our Land Reformers will probably agree with M. Lagueau in attributing very great influence to the ■equal partition of property in France, in causing a lowered Inrth rate. He speaks as follows (p. 18): “ The substitution of the law of equal distribution of patrimonial property in place of the law of primogeniture, by causing the breaking up of large estates, has apparently had a restrictive influence upon the birth rate; each proprietor of a piece of laud fearing to have to divide it among several heirs. This is well observed in the case of certain proprietors of vineyards in France, as those on the river Marne. The little piece of land which suffices for the needs of a laborious proprietor could hot suffice for those of several heirs.” “ Such pro¬ prietors have often only one child.” It seems, in general, to be a degree of modest comfort which suggests to the French peasant this care for the happiness of his heirs. Religion has not so much to do with the matter, it appears, as many have supposed. Thus M. Lagneau states that religious belief is as extensively spread in the departments of the South of France as in Normandy, where birth-rates are so small, being only about 14 or 15 per 1000 inhabitants, as compared with 29-8 in the Pas de Calais. And he adds that the Bretons with a high birth rate are pious ; but not more so than the Normans, who have such a very low birth rate. The standard of comfort or love of luxuries in the parents •seems to be the cause of the limitation of the size of the family. The pauper is proverbially prolific, since he lets Other people give his children all the food they get. A few months ago a piece of statistics from New York showed that in ten years 300 families of the richer classes in the Fifth Avenue had produced only 91 children, against 660 produced by 300 families in the poor quarter of Cherry Hill. Lagneau found, in France, in 1872, that whilst 100 families •of farmers were composed of 363 persons, 100 families of manufacturers and merchants had 298 and 273, and 100 families of men devoting themselves to the liberal professions had only 174 children. In the same way I found in Paris, in 1879, that 100 famous medical men had merely had 170 ohildren, whilst among the patients of the Metropolitan Free Hospital in Whitechapel, 100 married women over the age of 45 had produced 720 children. The reasoning of those who have such small families in France is as follows : The means of existence and the greater ■care which can be bestowed on an only child, or on one ( 10 ) having few brothers and sisters, are far greater than they are in the case of large families. Thus, in France, between 1867 and 1876, when 3 children to a marriage was the average family, Gers, which had only 2-11 from 1877 to 1886, only lost 11-8 per cent, of the children in the first year of life, whereas in Fiuisterre, where there were 4 children to a marriage, 15.6 per cent, died in the first year of hfe. Thia fact is well seen in Liverpool, Manchester, and Berlin, where the high birth rate in the slums is often followed by death rates of 30, 40, or 45 per cent, of the children under the age of one year. The consequences of the small families, which have all along during this century become fashionable among all classes, is that comfort and wages among the wox-king classes have been greatly augmented in France. Writing as far back as 1846, M. Lavergne says that Arthur Young had estimated in last century that the wages of country laborers were 9gd. a day, and that they had risen to Is. 3d. In another place he mentions (“ Rural Econ. of France," 1879) that the average daily wages of a French laborer had risen, since the commencement of the Revolution, in the ratio of 19 to 30 ; while, owing to more constant employment, the total earnings had increased in a still greater ratio, not short of double. M. de Lavergne’s esti¬ mate of the average amount of a day’s wages was grounded on a careful comparison, in this and all other economical points of view, of all the different provinces of France. This, then, is the advantage that prudent France has reaped from lowering her birth rate from 24*9 per 1000 in 1881 to 23 09 in 1888; and, were it not that there has been such a large immigration of less prudent Belgians, Italians, Spaniards, and Germans of late years into France, which resulted in there being 1,115,214 foreigners in that country in 1886, France wouiu doubtless be neaidy free from severe poverty, save among the most backward portion of its popu¬ lation, such as exists in Brittany and Savoy. As it is,, many parts of the country districts of France are models of modest comfort and rux*al happiness; and should an early future bring England and France to federate, and thus put. an end to the constant dread of war, which has so long served as an excuse for over population and so many other- evils of civilisation, France would doubtless soon be imitated in her most praiseworthy parental forethought by all European nations deserving the appellation of civilised. England and Germany, indeed, have within the last few years given manifest tokens that thyy will ere long adopt ( 11 ) customs of their neighbor, for, in 1876, the birth-rate of S '"?'T ^ fell to 30-6 in 1888, and, m Berlin, the birth-rate in 1880 was no Ie