Population growth

“ For example, population growth may be viewed as a threat in countries where excessive government controls eliminate incentives for farmers and other workers to produce, where housing and health care facilities do not keep pace, or where precious natural resources are used without regard to future needs. Demographic change can also become problematic when a nation fails to anticipate or to respond to such trends as massive urban migration. However, because people are producers as well as consumers, population growth can also be a sign and a source of strength. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But if the growth of human power over nature is suspended or slackened, and population does not slacken its increase; if, with only the existing command over natural agencies, those agencies are called upon for an increased produce; this greater produce will not be afforded to the increased population, without either demanding on the average a greater effort from each, or on the average reducing each to a smaller ration out of the aggregate produce.
As a matter of fact, at some periods the progress of population has been the more rapid of the two, at others that of improvement. ”

“ In some other countries, and particularly in France, the improvement of agriculture gains ground still more decidedly upon population, because though [pg 485] agriculture, except in a few provinces, advances slowly, population advances still more slowly, and even with increasing slowness, its growth being kept down, not by poverty, which is diminishing, but by prudence. ”

“ A Retarded Growth of Population.—If Malthusianism, as most people understood it, were true, population should increase most rapidly during this period of great prosperity, and should do its best to neutralize the effect of new lands, new capital, and new methods. In some places the increase has been abnormally rapid, and in a local way this has had its effect; but if we include in our view the whole of what we have defined as civilized industrial society, the rate of growth has not become more rapid, but has rather become slower during this period. ”

“ The increase of this republic in population during the last two decades has been over one hundred and fifty per cent., a rapidity of growth almost without precedent. The increase of population in our own country, during the same period, was less than eighty per cent. ”

“ Whether it is well to rejoice that the population of our planet has grown so fast during the last century, even as the inhabitants of a city rejoice when a decennial census reveals a rapid growth in their city, is a question which may be deemed a branch of the larger one whether life is worth living. ”

“ Instead, therefore, of trebling in a generation, the population increased in that period about 20 per cent; and if the growth of towns, and of employments not agricultural, in the same space of time, is sufficient to absorb this increase, there needs not be, and will not be, even if the law does its worst, any increase of subdivision. Now, the towns of France have increased, and are increasing, at a rate far exceeding the general increase of the population. ”

“ By increasing the pressure on the means of subsistence, a larger population again augments these results; seeing that each person is forced more and more to confine himself to that which he can do best, and by which he can gain most. This industrial progress, by aiding future production, opens the way for a further growth of population, which reacts as before: in all which the multiplication of effects is manifest. ”

“ The growth of population is, of course, more or less indirectly connected with the family life, since the growth of population in the world as a whole is dependent upon the surplus of births over deaths. ”

“ But they are also natural in whole national economies, during that period of youthful and rapid growth in which the increasing density of population continues still, for a long time, to be really only a spur and an assistance, and in which, therefore, there can be no expression of anxiety concerning over-population; in which the new and rapidly growing division of labor draws attention particularly to the market-side of all businesses and to the circulation of goods ”

“ Let us consider the broad features of the redistribution of the population that has characterised the nineteenth century. It may be summarised as an unusual growth of great cities and a slight tendency to depopulation in the country. The growth of the great cities is the essential phenomenon. ”

“ Such a movement, on whatever scale it occurs, is to be treated as causing an acceleration of the rate of increase of the population within the center. Whatever results arise from growth of population within are emphasized by immigration. ”

“ At the present rate of growth, it is estimated, the population will have increased by the middle of the century to twenty millions of people, practically all of them dependent on agriculture, and so on this one river system. ”

“ But according to the eleventh census the decennial rate of growth of population fell suddenly from over 30%, which the figures had shown between 1870 and 1880, and in every preceding decade of the century, except that of the Civil War, to less than 25%, in spite of an immigration nearly double that of any preceding decade. ”

“ Our mastery over the forces of mature has led to a rapid growth of population, and a vast accumulation of wealth; but these have brought with them such au amount of poverty and crime, and have fostered the growth of so much sordid feeling and so many fierce passions, that it may well be questioned, whether the mental and moral status of our population has not on the average been lowered, and whether the evil has not overbalanced the good. ”

“ Conserving the agricultural resource base and livelihood security of the poor can be mutually supportive in three ways. First, secure resources and adequate livelihoods lead to good husbandry and sustainable management. Second, they ease rural-to-urban migration, stimulate agricultural production from resources that otherwise would be underused, and reduce the need for food to be produced elsewhere. Third, by combating poverty, they help to slow population growth. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Except, therefore, in the very peculiar cases which I have just noticed, of which the only one of any practical importance is that of a new colony, or a country in circumstances equivalent to it; it is impossible that population should increase at its utmost rate without lowering wages. Nor will the fall be stopped at any point, short of that which either by its physical or its moral operation, checks the increase of population. In no old country, therefore, does population increase at anything like its utmost rate ”

“ But though improvement may during a certain space of time keep up with, or even surpass, the actual increase of population, it assuredly never comes up to the rate of increase of which population is capable: and nothing could have prevented a general deterioration in the condition of the human race, were it not that population has in fact been restrained. ”

“ The increase which has taken place in those extended regions since they came under the authority of our Government, should obviously be reckoned as a part of the development and progress of our population, nor is it necessary to complicate the comparison by taking into account the probable natural increase of this acquired population, because we have not the means of determining its rate of advancement, nor the law which governed its progress, while yet beyond the influence of our political system. ”

“ We must, therefore, in considering the effects of the progress of industry, admit as a supposition, however greatly we deprecate as a fact, an increase of population as long-continued, as indefinite, and possibly even as rapid, as the increase of production and accumulation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Among other questions, this one too has been proposed:—Whether the population of a State may not become too large? In our opinion, the indolent and unproductive Citizen is at all times, and in every state of the population, superfluous and unnecessary; but when, with a growing population, Agriculture, Manufactures, and Commerce also increase in suitable proportions to each other, then the country can never have too many inhabitants; for the productiveness of Nature, when systematically cultivated, may be regarded as inexhaustible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Does the relative power of producing wealth decrease with the increase of population?
The facts are so patent that it is only necessary to call attention to them. We have, in modern times, seen many communities advance in population. Have they not at the same time advanced even more rapidly in wealth? We see many communities still increasing in population. Are they not also increasing their wealth still faster? Is there any doubt that while England has been increasing her population at the rate of two per cent. per annum, her wealth has been growing in still greater proportion? ”

“ When we speak of the power of population to increase in a certain continued ratio, we do not mean to say that it will or will not do so, but merely that it is possible that it should do so from the nature of the principle itself. The power of population to increase is in fact the same both before and after it has become excessive. ”

“ Whilst we spend our time in deliberating on the mode of governing two millions, we shall find we have millions more to manage. Your children do not grow faster from infancy to manhood than they spread from families to communities, and from villages to nations. ... But the population of this country, the great and growing population, though a very important consideration, will lose much of its weight, if not combined with other circumstances. The commerce of your colonies is out of all proportion beyond the numbers of the people. ”

“ Whether we compare different communities with each other, or examine the same community at different times, it is obvious that the progressive society, which is marked by increase of population, is also marked by an increased consumption and an increased accumulation of wealth, not merely in the aggregate, but per capita. ”

“ I think we may fairly say, from all the accounts that we have of nations of shepherds, that population invariably increased among them, whenever, by emigration, or any other cause, the means of subsistence were increased; and, that a further population was checked, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice. ”

“ And in basing our estimates of population upon the development of trade, the advance of the arts, and the size of cities, we are apt to underrate the density of population which the intensive cultivations, characteristic of the earlier civilizations, are capable of maintaining—especially where irrigation is resorted to. ”

“ It is no paltry question of an outlet for the surplus products of a mere nation of seventy-five millions that confronts you. Your mathematical professors will tell you that, at the ratio of increase established in this Nation by the census returns for the century just closing, its population would amount during the next century to the bewildering and incomprehensible figure of twelve hundred millions. ”

“ The increase of inhabitants within two particular decades, will be found, by reference to the above table, to be remarkable. Between 1800 and 1810, the population nearly doubled itself; between 1840 and 1850, the increase was two-thirds; and for the past five years, the numerical extension of our population has been even more rapid than during the previous decade. ”

“ 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. I have mentioned, on the authority of a pamphlet published by a Dr Styles and referred to by Dr Price, that the inhabitants of the back settlements of America doubled their numbers in fifteen years. ”