Floating population

“ As nobody knows anybody in the large cities, what is called the floating population have everything their own way, each one for himself. Business wrongs that would not be tolerated for an instant in a smaller community are perpetrated with entire impunity in the large cities. ”

“ The water population is quite complete in itself, and does not depend upon those who dwell upon the land for any assistance whatever. There are not only floating houses, but floating restaurants, floating theatres, and even floating jails. ”

“ Where there are few people, and a great quantity of fertile land, the power of the earth to afford a yearly increase of food may be compared to a great reservoir of water, supplied by a moderate stream. The faster population increases, the more help will be got to draw off the water, and consequently an increasing quantity will be taken every year. ”

“ Malthus's survey of different countries showed how various are the 'checks' by which population is limited in various countries. We take a glance at all nations through all epochs of history. In the South Sea we find a delicious climate and a fertile soil, where population is mainly limited by vice, infanticide, and war; and where, in spite of these influences, the population multiplies at intervals till it is killed off by famine. ”

“ And thus the reduction in the farming population continues.
This phenomenon can be found in every farming village in the country. The people who flowed into the city on the crest of the rapid economic growth tidal wave are now, 30 years later, finding that the time has come to take in their parents, whether they like it or not. This problem will grow rapidly more serious within the next 10 years or so. ”

“ According to our hypothesis, the inland sea of cultivation has now spread into the wilderness so far that at its margin the return to a man’s labor for a year is only £500. But as there is always a flood-tide in that sea, caused by the incessant increase of population, the margin will not stop there ”

“ The one is that all immigrants coming to our shores are net additions, hastening by so much the growth in density of population; the other opinion, the displacement theory, is that immigration has the effect of checking the natural increase of the native stock so much that it does not materially change the total population, or actually causes it to be less than it would have been had no immigration occurred. ”

“ While emigration draws off the surplus population, there tend to develop in islands, as also in barren highlands where population early reaches the point of saturation, various devices to restrict natural increase. The evils of congestion are foreseen and guarded against. Abbé Raynal, writing of islanders in general, remarked as far back as 1795, "It is among these people that we trace the origin of that multitude of singular institutions which retards the progress of population. ”

“ The feeble animals can only draw a plough which merely scratches the surface of the ground. Furthermore, as the population increases the land is divided into smaller and smaller holdings. The struggle against the advancing tide of adversity cannot be maintained. Inch by inch the tide rolls up, pushing the border-landers closer and closer upon the black rocks of famine, to escape which they at length plunge into the sea amongst the submerged millions, who, weary and bitter and despairing, or with blind submission to the iron hand of fate, have grown hopelessly and miserably indifferent. ”

“ It is in no sense surprising, or an evidence of imperfect distribution, that the foreign-born should be massed in the cities when nine-tenths of them arrive there, and the native population massed in the country districts when three-fourths of them arrive there.” [147] Artificial distribution would not relieve [Pg 228] the pressure as long as the character and amount of immigration continue—it can only be relieved by creating greater economic inducements in the country. ”

“ Under these conditions the island could support a population of 1,000 people without being overpopulated. If, however, the numbers in each family increased to 20 the population would press on the soil, and the island, with 2,000 inhabitants, would be an example of overpopulation, and of poverty due to overpopulation. ”

“ In general, however, any piecemeal or marginal location of a people justifies the question as to whether it results from encroachment, dismemberment, and consequently national or racial decline. This inference as a rule strikes the truth. The abundance of such ethnic islands and reefs—some scarcely distinguishable above the flood of the surrounding population—is due to the fact that when the area of distribution of any life form, whether racial or merely animal, is for any cause reduced, it does not merely contract but breaks up into detached fragments. ”

“ What good purpose, divine or human, could be served by keeping an increasing population in a land that cannot produce enough to keep the life in one-half of its people? Nothing but misery, and degradation, and oppression here; happiness, advancement, riches, and freedom on the other side of the water. Is there more than one conclusion?
In spite of all the emigration that has taken place from this country, no one has, we daresay, any real dread of depopulation; the population is increasing over all the land every year, not excepting the Highlands. ”

“ But you may perhaps be solicitous to ask, what becomes of that exuberancy of population which must arise from so much temperance, from healthiness of climate, and from early marriage? You may justly conclude that their native island and town can contain but a limited number. Emigration is both natural and easy to a maritime people, and that is the very reason why they are always populous, problematical as it may appear. ”

“ When advancing civilization has eliminated the need for this form of protection, water-dwellers may survive or reappear in old and relatively over-populated countries, as we find them universally on the rivers of China and less often in Farther India. Here they present the phenomenon of human life overflowing from the land to the streams of the country; because these, as highways of commerce, afford a means of livelihood, even apart from the food supply in their fish, and offer an unclaimed bit of the earth's surface for a floating home. ”

“ The law of the geometrical rate of the increase of population which causes it always to press hard on the means of subsistence, would ensure the migration in various directions of offshoots from the society first formed abandoning the area where they had multiplied. ”

“ It is, nevertheless, true that while immigration peoples our slums, it also keeps them from stagnation. The working of the strong instinct to better themselves, that brought the crowds here, forces layer after layer of this population up to make room for the new crowds coming in at the bottom, and thus a circulation is kept up that does more than any sanitary law to render the slums harmless. Even the useless sediment is kept from rotting by being constantly stirred. ”

“ And at the conclusion of the first century, the population would be a hundred and seventy-six millions, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of fifty-five millions; leaving a population of a hundred and twenty-one millions totally unprovided for.
‘Taking the whole earth instead of this island, emigration would of course be excluded: and supposing the present population equal to a thousand millions, the human species would increase as the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and subsistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. ”

“ Principle 16 Demographic policies which are without prejudice to basic human rights and which are deemed appropriate by Governments concerned should be applied in those regions where the rate of population growth or excessive population concentrations are likely to have adverse effects on the environment of the human environment and impede development. ”

“ It is a fact, that, as we count our increasing millions, we are apt to lose sight of—nevertheless it is a fact—that in what we know of the world’s history decadence of population is as common as increase. Whether the aggregate population of the earth is now greater than at any previous epoch is a speculation which can deal only with guesses. ”

“ When to this natural tendency we add the influence of the vast tracts of virgin, or cheaply cultivated soil, brought into active competition with English agriculture by the railways and steamships which link us with distant lands in America, Australia, and Asia, we have a fully adequate explanation of the main force of the tide in the movement of population. ”

“ Granting the advantages of going from a land that is over-populated to some fertile region as yet lying waste, allowing what cannot be denied that material progress and personal freedom result from these movements of population, yet the risk to individuals is just in proportion to the worldly attraction. It is certain that in many regions to which the stream of migration is flowing the conditions of life are better and the natural environment purer than they are in the heart of large European cities. ”

“ As common sense has not yet universally refuted these absurd opinions, let truth assure the reader, that the United States of America, on the seaboard from Maine to the Floridas, is so saturated with population, that many families, for economy, have quitted the soil inherited from their ancestors, and have emigrated to the more Western settlements, distant 1000 miles or more, there is, therefore, no room or temptation for an emigrant to settle there. ”

“ But all these causes of increase are now growing in activity at a rate which must inevitably diminish. Our population cannot increase beyond a certain extent, because the extent of the country will suffice for but a certain number of inhabitants. If emigration do not prevent increase beyond that number, other causes will, or else a much more serious evil than the exhaustion of all our coal stores awaits the country. Again, the requirements of inland communication will before long be so far met that no such rapid extension as is now in progress will be called for. ”

“ But though every one recommends that a remedy should be diligently sought for, few appear to believe that such a remedy will ever be found, and the calculations of our statesmen and reformers proceed upon the assumption that not only will the tide of population never actually turn from the large cities countryward, but that it will continue to flow in its present direction at a scarcely diminished rate for a long time to come. ”

“ Or, grant that the coming of the whites, the change of habits, and the introduction of new maladies and vices, fully explain the depopulation, why is that depopulation not universal? The population of Tahiti, after a period of alarming decrease, has again become stationary. I hear of a similar result among some Maori tribes; in many of the Paumotus a slight increase is to be observed; and the Samoans are to-day as healthy and at least as fruitful as before the change. ”

“ The population is part seafaring, part agricultural, and in reference to education as well off as such people generally are. In this quiet corner lurk many remnants of faded creeds, and ancient usages which have vanished from districts more subject to mutation with the circumstances which gave rise to them, as the side eddies of a stream retain those sticks and straws which the current would have swept off to the ocean. ”

“ If, said he, that population decreases, it can be only from ill treatment. If it is increasing, there is no need for a trade which involves a frightful loss of life both on sea and in the process of “seasoning” the human freitage in the West Indies. ”

“ Thus the war, which was the greatest depopulator since the epidemic of the Middle Ages, caused “only a momentary hesitation in the steady onward march of population growth.” If we take any given land area of fixed limits, there must necessarily be an upper limit to the number of people it can support, but this limit will be approached asymtotically and the most rapid rise will be midway between the upper and lower limit, namely, at that point where half the possible resources of subsistence have been drawn upon and utilized. ”

“ It seems strange that so vast a population should live on the river, within pistol shot of the land, and yet that the greater number of them, from their birth to their death, have never known what it is to put a foot on the shore. ”

“ Had this rate of growth continued for another hundred years the planet's fertile acres would have been fully occupied by jostling crowds with standing-room only signs in the more desirable living spaces. Japan, the United States, several countries of West Europe and China have launched campaigns to reduce net population increase to one percent per year or less. ”

“ Herein lies the great difference between migration in empty or sparsely inhabited regions, such as predominated when the world was young, and in the densely populated countries of our era. As the earth grew old and humanity multiplied, peoples themselves became the greatest barriers to any massive migrations, till in certain countries of Europe and Asia the historical movement has been reduced to a continual pressure, resulting in compression of population here, repression there. ”

“ Statistically speaking cities are centers of population, but biologically or eugenically speaking they are centers of depopulation. They are like sink-holes or siguanas, as the Indians of Guatemala call the places where the streams of their country drop into subterranean channels and disappear. It never happens that cities [Pg 357] develop large populations that go out and occupy the surrounding country. The movement of population is always toward the city. The currents of humanity pass into the urban siguanas and are gone. ”

“ When we say that a country is overpopulated we speak in relative terms, inasmuch as the overpopulation of a country does not depend upon the density of the population alone, but also upon the ability of that country to produce a sufficient amount of foodstuffs to maintain its population. ”