And later on (p. 114) he says “Malthus’s law explains nothing just as it comprehends nothing.  Bound by rigid formulas which are belied by history and demography, it is incapable of explaining not only the mystery of poverty, but the alternate reverses of human civilization.”

Nitti’s conclusions are based largely on the fact that while food supplies have become abundant and cheap, birth-rates have steadily and persistently declined.

No-one who has studied the economic and vital statistics of the last half century can fail to be impressed with the change that has come over the relative ratios of increase in population and food.

Bonar says (Malthus and his Work, p. 165), “The industrial progress of the country (France) has been very great.  Fifty years ago, the production of wheat was only half of what it is to-day, of meat less than half.  In almost every crop, and every kind of food, France is richer now than then, in the proportion of 2 to 1.  In all the conveniences of life (if food be the necessaries) the increased supply is as 4 to 1, while foreign trade has become as 6 to 1.”

In a remarkable table prepared by Mr. F.W.  Galton, and quoted by Mr. Sydney Webb in “Industrial Democracy,” it is clearly shown, that, while the birth-rate and food-rate (defined as the amount of wheat in Imperial quarters, purchased with a full week’s wages) gradually increased along parallel lines between 1846 and 1877, the former suddenly decreased from 36.5 per thousand in 1877 to 30 per thousand in 1895, the latter increasing from .6 to 1.7 for the same period.

The remarkable thing about the facts that this table so clearly discloses is that with a gradual increase of the means of subsistence from 1846 to 1877 there is also a gradual increase in the proportion of births to population.  But at the year 1877 there, is a very sudden and striking increase in food products, and the purchasing power of the people coincides exactly with a very sudden and striking decrease in the birth-rate of the people.  The greater the decrease in the birth-rate, the greater the increase in the people’s purchasing power.  Now, what has brought about this change in the ratios of increase in population and in food respectively?

Some serious factor, inoperative during the thirty years prior to 1877 must have suddenly been introduced into the social system, to work such a marvellous revolution during the last twenty years.

Some economic writers find it easy here to discover a law, and declare that the birth-rate is in inverse ratio to the abundance of food.  (Doubleday quoted by Nitti, Population and the Social System, p. 55).

Other economic writers of recent date attribute this great change in ratio of increase to economic causes.  Only a few find the explanation in biological laws.

Herbert Spencer is the champion of the biological explanation of a decreasing birth-rate.