[25] H.M. Tomlinson, in the Daily News.
THE OVER-POPULATION SCARE
Some cheerful and rather innocent people insist that
because of the over-population difficulty wars must
go on for ever. The population of the world,
they say—or at any rate of the civilized
countries—is constantly increasing, and
if war did not from time to time reduce the numbers
there would soon be a deadlock. They seem to think
that the only way to solve the problem is for the
men to murder each other. This says nothing about
the women, who, after all, are the chief instruments
of multiplication. It may also be pointed out
that even the barbaric method of slaughter is not
practicable. Although wars of extermination may
have now and then occurred in the past among tribes
and small peoples, such wars are not considered decent
nowadays; and the numbers killed in modern campaigns—horribly
“scientific” and “efficient”
as the methods are—is such a small fraction
of the population concerned as to have no appreciable
result. The population of Germany is about seventy
millions, and I suppose the wildest anti-Teuton could
hardly hope that more than a million Germans
will be actually killed in the present conflict—less
than 1-1/2 per cent.—a fraction which would
probably soon be compensated by the increased uxoriousness
of the returning troops.
No, War is no solution for the over-population question.
If that question is a difficulty, other means must
be employed. We ask therefore: (1) Is it
a serious difficulty? (2) If so, what is the remedy?
That over-population is in certain localities a serious
difficulty few would deny. China, with her four
hundred millions, is probably over-populated; that
is, with her present resources in production the population
presses against the margin of subsistence and can only
just maintain itself. There is evidence to show
that in the past the natives of some of the Pacific
islands, isolated in the great ocean and unable to
migrate to other lands, have suffered from the same
trouble. Britain is often said to be over-populated;
but here quite other considerations come in.
Though it might be pleasant for many reasons to have
more land at our immediate command, we cannot fairly
say that our population presses against the margin
of subsistence, for the simple reason that with our
immense powers of industrial production and the enormous
wealth here yearly obtained the total, if evenly distributed
(anything like as well, for instance, as in China),
would yield to every man, woman, and child in the
United Kingdom an ample affluence.[26] The appearance
here of over-population arises from the fact that while
the wage-earners actually produce this mass of wealth,
two-thirds of it are taken by the employers and employing
classes. Great portions, therefore, of the actual
producers or producing classes are on the margin
