Human population

“ Still, whether we like it or not, the task of speeding up the decrease of the human population becomes increasingly urgent. ”

“ Our hemisphere is more remarkable even for extent of population than for the quantity of land. Here indeed is the chief seat of population, and the principal theatre of human history and human civilization.
The entire population of America, which, as it is for the most part of European extraction, is better known to us than that of many countries more contiguous—the entire population of America at the highest computation of the whole number of inhabitants on the globe, forms but a thirtieth part, and at the lowest computation, not a four-and-twentieth part of the whole. ”

“ DENSE POPULATION.—OVER-POPULATION.
The nation's economy attains its full development wherever the greatest number of human beings simultaneously find the fullest satisfaction of their wants.
A dense population is not only a symptom of the existence of great productive forces carried to a high point of utilization ”

“ If we are not yet too well convinced of the reality of this melancholy picture, let us but look for a moment into the next period of twenty-five years; and we shall see twenty-eight millions of human beings without the means of support; and before the conclusion of the first century, the population would be one hundred and twelve millions, and the food only sufficient for thirty-five millions, leaving seventy-seven millions unprovided for. ”

“ Why then do not its effects appear in a rapid increase of the human species? An intimate view of the state of society in any one country in Europe, which may serve equally for all, will enable us to answer this question, and to say, that a foresight of the difficulties attending the rearing of a family, acts as a preventive check; and the actual distresses of some of the lower classes, by which they are disabled from giving the proper food and attention to their children, act as a positive check, to the natural increase of population. ”

“ In every century the total number of men would have increased sixteen-fold; whereas we know that the total number of human beings increases but slowly, and that the increase of population is very different in different countries. ”

“ The most important limiting condition on the status of human societies is the ratio of the number of their members to the amount of land at their disposal. It is this ratio of population to land which determines what are the possibilities of human development or the limits of what man can attain in civilization and comfort. ”

“ The question of population – of population pressure, of population and human rights – and the links between these related issues and poverty, environment, and development proved to be one of the more difficult concerns with which we had to struggle. ”

“ A population, originally consisting of the most diverse and, for the most part, very demoralized elements, a population that gradually grew to 2,500, he turned into a model colony, in which drunkenness, police, magistrates, lawsuits, poor laws, charity, were unknown. And all this simply by placing the people in conditions worthy of human beings, and especially by carefully bringing up the rising generation. ”

“ Taking the population of the world at any number, a thousand millions, for instance, the human species would increase in the ratio of—1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, etc. and subsistence as—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc. In two centuries and a quarter, the population would be to the means of subsistence as 512 to 10: in three centuries as 4096 to 13, and in two thousand years the difference would be almost incalculable, though the produce in that time would have increased to an immense extent. ”

“ Godwin at the conclusion of the third chapter of his eighth book, speaking of population, says, “There is a principle in human society, by which population is perpetually kept down to the level of the means of subsistence. ”

“ Other circumstances being the same, it may be affirmed that countries are populous, according to the quantity of human food which they produce; and happy according to the liberality with which that food is divided, or the quantity which a day's labour will purchase. Corn countries are more populous than pasture countries ”

“ In this remarkable essay the general principle of population, which Wallace, Hume, and others had very distinctly enunciated before him, though without foreseeing the consequences that might be deduced from it, was clearly expounded; and some of the important conclusions to which it leads in regard to the probable improvement of human society were likewise stated and explained ”

“ In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where pure and simple manners prevailed, and where the means of subsistence were so abundant, that no part of the society could have any fears about providing amply for a family, the power of population being left to exert itself unchecked, the increase of the human species would evidently be much greater than any increase that has been hitherto known. ”

“ In the back settlements, where the sole employment is agriculture, and vicious customs and unwholesome occupations are little known, the population has been found to double itself in fifteen years. Even this extraordinary rate of increase is probably short of the utmost power of population. ”

“ In like manner the increase of the number of human beings—if calculated on the average proportion of births to population, and no hindrances to the natural increase stood in the way—would be such as to double the total in twenty-five years. ”

“ It is in three huge octavos, and wholly on the general laws that regulate the population of the human species—but is throughout most unphilosophical, and the tables, which he has collected with great industry, prove nothing. My objections to the Essay on Population you will find in my sixth letter at large—but do not, my dear sir, suppose that because unconvinced by this essay, I am therefore convinced of the contrary. ”

“ With the genesis and development of a great industrial era in the United States there started a movement of population from farms to established centers of population. The application of the sciences to the problems of filling human wants gave this movement greater impetus. ”

“ The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. ”

“ And, that the superior power of population cannot be checked, without producing misery or vice, the ample portion of these too bitter ingredients in the cup of human life, and the continuance of the physical causes that seem to have produced them, bear too convincing a testimony. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With these extraordinary encouragements to population, and every cause of depopulation, as we have supposed, removed, the numbers would necessarily increase faster than in any society that has ever yet been known. ”

“ With so many facts in his view, to prove the extraordinary rapidity with which population increases, when unchecked; and with such a body of evidence before him, to elucidate, even the manner, by which the general laws of nature repress a redundant population ”

“ There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for a great increase of population, supposing the arts of life to go on improving, and capital to increase. But even if innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages both of co-operation and of social intercourse, has, in all the most populous countries, been attained. A population may be too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. ”

“ If it really be, as he declares, that population tends to increase in a geometrical ratio, while the food-supply increases only in an arithmetical ratio, his conclusion, that population has a constant tendency to run ahead of subsistence, seems inevitable. ”

“ An observing demographer in the first half of the last century thus expressed himself, 'Population does not so much increase because more are born as because fewer die.' Yet the population of nearly every country has increased wonderfully during the past century, and in view of the new conditions of its expansion what a fine commentary upon the advance of modern civilization and the practical efficiency of government this tremendous fact has been! ”

“ Till we know something of the distribution within the country of the various races which formed viiits population, their relative growth and decay, their social organisation, and the extent to which its peculiar features were preserved, and influenced and coloured the future condition of the entire population formed by the amalgamation of its various elements, we know little of its real history. ”

“ For the checks to population appear to have been rather of the positive, than of the preventive kind. When from a prospect of increasing plenty in any country, the weight that represses population is in some degree removed ”

“ IF any reader of these pages thinks, with a recent writer, that "population is a vast and wandering theme," we shall have no quarrel with him. No doubt the problem has a keener interest in such a country as Great Britain or France, where population approaches capacity or is perhaps beyond the permanent limit of resources. ”

“ I had for some time been aware that population and food increased in different ratios, and a vague opinion had been floating in my mind that they could only be kept equal by some species of misery or vice, but the perusal of Dr Price's two volumes of Observations, after that opinion had been conceived, raised it at once to conviction. ”

“ Population, again, and bodily health and vigour, are things which are nowhere treated in such an unintelligent, misleading, exaggerated way as in England. Both are really machinery; yet how many people all around us do we see rest in them and fail to look beyond them! ”

“ CHAPTER VIII THE GROWTH OF POPULATION Mass is a factor in the survival of a social group. Other things being equal, that society will stand the best chance of surviving which has the largest population. Moreover, the larger the mass of a given group the greater can be the industrial and cultural division of labor in that group. Hence, other things being equal, a large population favors the growth not only of a higher type of industry, but also of a higher type of culture or civilization in a given society. ”

“ I am indebted to a worthy and sensible friend, and a friend also of the poor, for the following estimate of what I shall term 'pig population,' and set it in array against the increasing demands of the home population, which goes on at the rate of not quite 11/2 per cent, per annum—nay, little more than 11/4 by the last ten years' census. ”

“ Will not the inhabitants of each area have to specify some limit beyond which it is undesirable that the population of that area should increase? Ways and means, social and individual, lie beyond our present scope. ”

“ The constant effort towards population, which is found to act even in the most vicious societies, increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. ”

“ Such a society might, as it grew older, and its population became more dense, develop, under high competition, great extremes of economic power and social condition, but there is no reason to suppose that the whole middle range would not be filled up by the great mass of the population. ”

“ However desirable it may be to have (and in many respects it is undoubtedly so) the basis of a future population thus presented to us, its advantages are counterbalanced by corresponding difficulties. ”

“ They are considered as very correct, and if such tables were general, they would throw great light on the different ways by which population is repressed and prevented from increasing beyond the means of subsistence in any country. ”

“ The population embraces some fifteen thousand persons, emigrants, or their children, from the United States, with a large native population, held in subjection and already won toward civilization, amounting to more than two hundred thousand. ”

“ The situation of the labourer being then again tolerably comfortable, the restraints to population are in some degree loosened; and the same retrograde and progressive movements with respect to happiness are repeated. ”

“ The more rapidly that wealth accumulates in proportion to population, and, the more vigorously that culture forces its way downward through the community, the greater must be the effect of the prudential and physiological checks to increase of population ”

“ That population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio. ”

“ Our loss of population is not only the most serious problem, but it grows out of the other two. Here we are, a nation of some eight million people. To the south of us is your country, with a population twelve times as great. ”