The Pressure of Population

IMMENSE increase in the world’s population was the most important legacy from the nineteenth century to the twentieth. No achievements in the field of science during that period will exercise such far-reaching influence on future generations as the unparalleled increase which occurred in the number of human beings.

This decided change in world-population has assumed a significance hitherto unknown. Widely extended decrease in the number of human beings would tend ultimately to disorganize the economic structure of society; on the other hand, over-liberal increase for a considerable period, or inflation of population, would create new and grave problems, perhaps resulting in even greater demoralization than would be caused by decrease.

In earlier ages insecurity of life and property, especially the prevalence of war, famine, and pestilence, frequently transferred entire tribes or nations for long periods into the non-productive class; but in our time increasing civilization and stability of government have created for each human being a distinct economic value, and in consequence every man and woman possesses a minute but definite place in the vast mosaic of human activities.

Already the race has responded to this stimulation to an extraordinary degree. It becomes important, therefore, to consider whether rapid increase in world-population is likely to continue indefinitely, and whether new problems, which may be termed population phenomena, are beginning to manifest themselves because of the noteworthy increase which already has occurred.

During most of the long period for which there is historical record the number of human beings on the earth doubtless was comparatively small. More than a century ago, in his essay upon ‘The Populousness of Ancient Nations,’ David Hume brought together, with singular patience and learning, the scanty comments of Greek and Roman writers concerning the number of inhabitants in ancient cities and states. According to Hume, the aggregate population must have been insignificant, when judged by modern standards.

The total population of Greece, except Laconia, in the period of Philip of Macedon, approximated 1,300,000. Ancient Athens, at the time of her great prosperity, probably contained less than 300,000 inhabitants, according to Hume’s estimate, based on Xenophon’s computation of 10,000 houses. The number of houses in Rome, in her glory, was probably between forty and fifty thousand; so the population of the Mistress of the World may have approximated 1,500,000 in her prime, but even this figure is probably overliberal. These estimates, it must be remembered, include great numbers of slaves.

Continual warfare, famines, plagues, private strifes and political massacres, aided by universal slavery which withdrew large numbers of potential parents of both sexes from the reproducing class, undoubtedly held down the population of the world in ancient times t o a small total. Moreover, under the control of these ‘parasites,’ the aggregate of the earth’s inhabitants seems to have fluctuated from century to century within rather narrow limits. Signor Bodio, the accomplished Director of the Italian Census Bureau, estimates that at the death of Augustus, the entire world contained not more than 54,000,000 human beings. If this estimate be accepted, an increase of a little more than twenty per cent per century would produce our present world-population, and a considerably smaller percentage of increase per century would have produced the total population actually living on the earth in 1800. There seems, however, to have been no appreciable change in ability, desire, or willingness to reproduce, although before the nineteenth century human life and the home in all nations were frequently, and often for long periods, extremely insecure. Mortality from numerous causes was so great that the birth-rate must have been high, merely to have maintained numbers without increase.

The tendency toward stationary population manifested through the ages makes it not unreasonable to suppose that if political, economic, and industrial conditions had continued practically the same throughout the nineteenth century as at the period when Malthus declared that population was limited by means of subsistence, changes during the century would have varied little from those which occurred during previous centuries.

The extraordinary quickening of industrial activity which in the nineteenth century attended the application of steam to manufacture and transportation, the progress of the world in scientific knowledge, and in liberal and enlightened government, and the decrease of warfare, created entirely new conditions, all of which tended to stimulate increase in the number of human beings. India practically doubled in population, reaching in 1900 the huge total of 290,000,000. The population of Europe and the number of persons of European stock increased from about 125,000,000 in 1750 to 500,000, 000 in 1900. Moreover, the European exercised a stimulat ing effect upon other races with which he came in contact.¹ In short, the human race increased about fifty per cent in numbers, or from approximately a billion in 1800 to a billion and a half in 1900. The remarkable increase in the number of human beings during the last century, or a little more, is thus clearly at variance with the previous experience of the race.

It is significant that the increase here noted tended, especially in more civilized nations, to create large numbers of cities of great size. In 1900 there were two hundred cities in the world with a population exceeding 100,000 but less than 250,000, eightyfour with from 250,000 to 1,000,000 and seventeen which exceeded 1,000,000. These three hundred cities aggregated 100,000,000 population. Here again is a phenomenon of population, new in our time.

In France, in one hundred years a group of specified cities increased fourfold, while the nation, exclusive of these municipalities, increased little more than twenty per cent. Stated in another way, the urban population increased 6,500,000, and the remainder of France but 5,100,000. The population of large cities, which in 1801 was less than one tenth of all, had become a century later one quarter of all the French people. In England, rather insufficient data indicate that the cities increased over six-fold, and the remainder of England and Wales about two-and-one-half-fold. The urban population, one quarter of all in 1801, a century later constituted more than one half of all.

In the United States, the urban increase approximated one hundred-fold. That of the remainder of the population about eleven-fold. Economic conditions in this age of industrial activity, and the urban tendency result ing from it, are sharply at variance with those which prevailed in antiquity. ‘I do not remember a passage in any early author,’ declares Dr. Hume, ‘where the growth of a city is ascribed to the establishment of a manufacture. The commerce which is said to flourish is chiefly the exchange of those commodities for which different soils and climates are suited.’²

Thus far attention has been especially invited to these facts: —

1. The population of the world prior to 1800 was comparatively small.

2. The increase from age to age was exceedingly slow, and the general tendency of humanity to maintain rather small numbers showed no striking change.

3. During the century from 1800 to 1900 the hindrances to the increase of human beings, in general the same as those established by nature to limit the increase of other living creatures, were largely overcome by civilized man; and in addition entirely new industrial conditions developed, which offered means of support for many millions of people.

4. In consequence, the number of human beings on the globe increased to an extraordinary degree, and at the close of the nineteenth century, the population of the world exceeded a billion and a half.

5. Principally under the influence of industrial activity, mankind has tended more and more to concentrate in large cities.

These facts create the impression that nature tended to limit men to reasonable numbers, and to pass the globe on from the possession of one generation to that of the next with little depreciation. Viewing the earth as a vast property, one may claim that the tribes of men have been mere tenants upon it from age to age. They cultivated small areas of the richer portions, scratched the surface for minerals, and utilized beasts of burden and windpower for purposes of commerce and transportation. In consequence, ‘the tenants’ bequeathed the property to their posterity in good condition.

Until the nineteenth century, the vast stored-up wealth of the earth had been practically unimpaired through all recorded history. Within the last hundred years, however, the influences by which an equilibrium of population had been previously maintained appear to have been overcome by mankind, and Nature has been forced to stop paying an annuity, and to some extent to yield up the principal. The present age, in consequence, witnesses unprecedented numbers of human beings, and a feverish attack all over the world upon the earth’s resources of forest, field, and mine.

The significance of this fact is best appreciated by imagining the population of the earth at the beginning of the Christian Era to have been the same as it was in 1900, and that it began an attack upon natural resources in the first century with the vigor with which it is conducted in the twentieth. Assuming such attack to have continued and increased for nineteen hundred years, it takes little reflection to reach a state of gratitude to Nature that she succeeded so long in holding mankind down in numbers and in supporting them upon an ‘annuity.’

But if a variety of causes have contributed to invite very large human increase in a comparatively brief period, does it also follow that these influences will never spend themselves, and that a liberal increase of world-population will continue indefinitely? An affirmative answer to this question does not appear to be reasonable. If, for example, the increase of world-population should continue at the nineteenthcentury rate, five hundred years later, in 2400, the world would be supporting thirteen and one half billions of human beings.

Obviously, somewhere there must be bounds, though perhaps distant ones, to the multiplication of humanity. If so, what are the methods by which nature will again effect the limitation of numbers? Since man has overcome and passed beyond the cruder means of retarding increase, as war, pestilence, and famine, what natural law will be encountered, or become increasingly effective, to produce the same result ?

It must be remembered that as increase of population progresses, the mere fact of increase creates new conditions. These in turn may check or destroy earlier tendencies. Thus, out of the great increase in population in our time, has come already at least one significant fact. This may be termed ‘the pressure of population.’ It is the general instinctive realization of large numbers. Expression of this realizat ion appears in the decreasing belief that personal responsibility rests on the individual to rear a large family, or even, in many cases, to become a parent. Mere numbers — the pressure of humanity on all sides, especially in the large cities — constitute ever-present evidence to the average man and woman that there are people enough, and the struggle for existence is too severe already to be increased by unnecessary burdens. In consequence, there has arisen a rather remarkable and widespread tendency, now clearly evident in most of the larger communities of Europe, voluntarily to limit the family. The effect of this tendency is most marked in France, where it has produced a present state of equilibrium of population liable to be changed at any time into a positive national decrease. Limitation of family has also appeared in other parts of the world and has caused much concern in Australia, where a very small total white population is shown. It should not be overlooked, however, in connection with the apparently exceptional problem presented by Australia, that the Southern Continent seems never to have sustained a large population. The aborigines of Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania were not numerous, and those that remain are dying out so rapidly as to suggest a very frail racial grasp upon existence.

In the United States, the conditions have tended more and more to approximate those of Europe. From the pioneer stage which prevailed when Malthus called attention to the phenomenal fertility of many American communities, the nation has advanced so far and with such rapidity that the change constitutes one of the marvels of the age. By a sort of forced draught, secured with the assistance of all Europe, the United States has attained an eighteen-fold increase in population in one hundred years. The national policy during this era of feverish development may be summed up as a continuous and successful attempt to compress the normal national growth of a long period into a few decades.

Beginning as an agricultural nation, the American people have been turning more and more toward mining and industrial operations upon a vast scale. Both citizens of native stock and newly arrived immigrants have drifted to manufacturing and commercial centres, until nearly one third of the inhabitants of the United States now live in cities containing more than 20,000 inhabitants. This, it must be remembered, has occurred in a nation possessing vast areas of rich land, much of which is not cultivated. In consequence of this national tendency, already there are large sections of the United States in which the pressure of population has become clearly evident. But one other city in the world now exceeds New York in population, and doubtless at no distant period the American city will be the largest on the earth in numbers. Within her limit s are nearly 5,000,000 human beings. The actual pressure of population in such a vast aggregation of races, temperaments, ambitions, and purposes, representing all degrees of success and failure, of hope and hopelessness, of good and evil, can only be likened to the pressure of the ocean at great depths.

In consequence, it is not strange that in the United States also has appeared the modern tendency to limit the family. It has become so general, indeed, in many sections, that the effect upon the states and the nation in all probability would be more evident even than it is in France, if it were not concealed by immigration. Substantially all the national increase is now contributed by the later stock, and by persons born in other countries and their children.

The conditions and practice here alluded to have been aggressively and very justly assailed as being destructive to domestic happiness, character-building, and national stability. To these assertions there can be no effective reply.

The large family has been, and is, one of the principal sources of the finer elements of American character. The United States is what it is to-day because of large families. Their decrease should be a cause of much concern. It is useless, however, to ignore world-tendencies. If, in response to a conscientious conviction that larger families were proper and necessary for the welfare of the nation, the American people should increase the proportion of children to that which prevailed in 1790, there would be added nearly 16,000,000 to the total population. The continuation of this rate of increase added to the present actual increase (derived largely from external sources) would advance the population of the United States by leaps and bounds. Without radical change in the wants and consumption of each individual, in other words, without an economic revolution, such increase obviously could not long continue.

The American people, almost instinctively, have turned away from the old domestic policy. A large family implies a home in the old-fashioned sense, but the urban life of America necessitates a departure from the home as thus defined. The cramped apartment, with those ministering angels, the kitchenette, the baker, the laundry-man and delicatessen shop, are not adapted to numerous children. Children often are not wanted. In fact, a man with a large family finds it difficult in many cities even to secure living accommodations. Thus, in great numbers of communities, the social order has passed beyond the conviction that the large family is a normal and necessary condition, and has adapted itself to a scale of living based on small families, or none at all.

The significance of this new phase of human fertility, or lack of it, clearly lies in the fact that it is world-wide. A practice which is almost as common among the Negroes of the Mississippi ‘black belt’ as in Paris or New York, cannot be summarily dismissed as a crime or as a sign of degeneracy. If the age-old natural methods of checking increase, such as war, pestilence, and famine, which may be termed the external methods, have been eliminated, clearly other means of limitation, if any there are to be, must arise from within, from voluntary action, responsive to instinct. This at once suggests the question whether Nature is not utilizing for purposes of limitation the pressure of population, now so evident in many parts of the world, as a modern substitute for the agencies effective in earlier periods, but now ineffective. In short, is not the increasing inclination shown by a vast multitude of civilized humanity to check excessive increase of population obedience to a new instinctive impulse? Obviously the inquirer is compelled to look far beyond such evident local causes of limitation as wealth, selfishness, and fashion, often ascribed as the actual causes.

But if, as thus suggested, the race is now becoming obedient to new population-influences, whither do they lead us? In the past, the crude limitations of population incidentally tended to strengthen the character and increase the endeavor of those who survived. In this age, by wonderful invention and achievement, we have directly stimulated increase in numbers; but if in so doing we have brought into operation new forces or influences which in turn war insidiously against further pronounced increase, we may have entailed much ultimate injury upon society by affecting one of the main sources of human strength and progress. When individuals of both sexes, oppressed by the pressure of population on all sides and convinced that the race is increasing without their aid, or that it already is too numerous without increase, feel themselves absolved from the performance of the supreme natural function, society is confronted with a problem of the gravest importance. The avoidance of having children has become already so general that the man of intelligence and influence who rears a large family is now both exceptional and courageous. Thus the age-old instinct, for the quickening of which far-sighted statesmen in this and other countries are pleading, seems to have been dulled. The energy which, under the old conditions, would be devoted to the rearing of children is now largely turned in other directions. It seldom benefits the state and society, but is generally expended upon some form, however innocent, of self-gratification.

No defense is here implied of blind and unreasoning increase in communities or nations which cannot offer their offspring opportunity for support. Such increase, of which China presents an illustration, becomes a source of weakness. This fact, however, rather heightens the significance of the opposite policy of deliberate limitation exemplified in France, where it has resulted in loss of political prestige, and has not eased the strain upon social and economic life. In the United States the pressure of population is manifested in the steadily decreasing fertility of the older and what are called the better, and certainly the more stable, elements of society.

Innumerable races and tribes have died out as the centuries have passed, and there are nations and races dying out in various parts of the globe at the present time. In general, this results, in the case of human beings as in that of animals, from uncongenial environment. Instinct probably dictates to each sex a reluctance to produce offspring which shall be subjected to conditions deemed unsatisfactory. This fact suggests the sinister possibilities which lurk in the shadow of the new influences upon population, — since equilibrium or slight increase borders close upon decrease. France is an illustration of the futility of attempting to control natural functions by mere public appeal.

If the large family is the most wholesome state for society, then its decline must be a distinct loss. Moreover, this loss comes at a period of time when more better men are needed than in any previous period. Never before has the race been called upon to administer and increase such a vast accumulation of knowledge, or to deal with such a complexity in the social order.

These considerations suggest that perhaps the human race, in its magnificent endeavor in this age, has in reality over-reached itself and sown the seeds of decay. It is possible to imagine stationary and then decreasing population as becoming at length worldwide, and finally a distinct downward movement of the race, as though humanity vvere burnt out by over-excitement, wealth, and excess. Mankind is no longer young; is the race to be always virile?

Science and civilization waged successful war upon the population-parasites of the past by removing them. It is unlikely that in the future the new form of limitation can be so completely disposed of. But it is reasonable to expect that the nations, per ceiving that, the limitation of progeny — with its attendant drawbacks — has become a definite instinctive tendency, will attempt the supremely difficult task of securing a higher average of men and women, by preventing reproduction by criminals and incompetents, and by increasingly scientific breeding. If the state is confronted by limited reproduction, it cannot afford to allow the weak, incompetent, insane and feeble-minded to thrust their tainted progeny upon the community, as now occurs to a serious degree. The race must be perpetuated by those most competent to produce the best men and women.

There will be also another cause for future concern. In the past, by a rat her cruel process, breeding was generally accomplished by the physically fittest, since those who were not fit died of disease or were killed off. A marked change, however, has now occurred. All the discoveries and resources of modern medicine, surgery, and sanitation are exerted, not only to prolong the lives of the physically unfit and to set them upon their feet, but also to enable them to contribute an appreciable proportion to the next generation. In earlier periods most of the graduates of modern hospitals would have died off without leaving issue; doubtless the race was much better off physically.

Summed up, the history of the world in all earlier ages is a record of the substitution of a virile and fertile tribe for one inferior in these essentials. Here also the past is likely to offer no precedent for the future. Modern progress has revolut ionized so many of the conditions of life that migration of races and extensive conquest grow less and less possible. The tragic substitution of strong nations for weaker ones is likely to be superseded by slow internal changes affecting many nations.

Have we no sign or intimation of what these changes will be?

Here, perhaps, we of this generation should pause. Solution of these sobering problems assuredly lies not with us, but with those who shall follow long after us. This period of ours has overturned all precedent by creating human beings in numbers far in excess of those in any previous age, and has revolutionized industrial and economic conditions; but in this great adventure, we have embarked on a voyage upon an uncharted sea.