The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1891-03-10
SOCIOLOGICAL
THE IDEA

The Idea of Nautilus is, that there is
a tendency.in all animated existence to
increase faster than the means of sub
stance. This is the law of which Miss
Martineau said, that it could no more
be upset than a law of arithmetic. This
Is the law which John Stuart Mills re
garded as "axiomatic."
1 deny the truth of this idea of NAL
thus. Political economists have been
too much inclined to treat the material
resources of nature as a reservoir
OF supplies for mans necessities.
This is a short-sighted and
false view Of them. Nature pro-
duces the chick supplied with the
yOlk to giveita nOurishment for a little
while, but nature does not propose that
the chick shall die, when the pre-
pared nOurishment" is exhausted!
laboratory; she furnishes man a few
products of the machine to show him
what it will produce and how to use it,
as wise, she has furnished man with
food in the form of fish, game and wild
plants to sustain him while he is learn
ing to use the machine and the labora-
tory. Even now it is estimated, that
human ingenuity and labor can pro-
duce from the soil fifteen hundred
times as much as nature herself pro-
duces from it. An able, scientific nan
-Slemens anticipates that we may yet
manufacture human ~sustenance direct
ly, without the aid of plant life at all;
and that as many human beings may
yet live comfortably upon this earth as
will convert it into one vast city! From
present information, his vision seems
more likely to prove true than does
that of the Malthusians.
War, pestilence and famine are cited
as checks to population. There is an
other slow, utsure check whichnature
has provided. This is found in the
law that, fecundity, is in inverse ratio
to means for self-defense and support.
In the case of man, the usual tendency
of the relation between food and in
crease is reversed-there being a ten
dency. for his food to increase at a
greater ratio than population, and for
the latter to finally cease to increase, or
actually to decrease.
There is a vast amount Of poverty,
suffering and crime in the world,
especially in the large cities. This is
the stumbling block of the Malthusian,
and he regards large families as the
cause of it. But his doctrine is directly
in the teeth of Genesis, which says BE
fruitful and multiply" This command,
however, vas given to the well, not to
the slck-to the worthy, not to the I'M
worthy.
The question how to induce or COM
| pei the unfit to remain childless is a
grave and difficult one. Amove in the
| right direction would be to have uni
form marriage laws in all our States
! and Territories, and to have such laws
! take cOgnizance of the moral, mental
and physical condition of those apply
ing for marriage licenses. Of course
there will be a hue and cry against
compulsory childlessness, even of Grim
mails and paupers; but we have a right
to hope for the speedy dawn of a better
day, when society will have the will or
the way to intercept the streams of
crime and corruption which are now
pouring into it, by transporting the
unfit ones to the islands of the sea, each
sex by itself, or by other and surer
means.
[ will add, in a summarized form:
First. There is no likelihood of this
earth ever being overpopulated. Mans
actual rate of increase has only
amounted to a doubling in several hun
dred years, it being estimated that
every human being ever born might
have a separate grave in the State of
Texas, and that Florida is large enough
for comfortable homes for all who now
live.
Second. The idea that human beings,
because of numbers, are, or are likely
to become a drug in the market, leads
to a low estimate of human life, and
tends to a lowering of the quality as
well as the quantity. The deliberate
repression of normal human increase
in Francs is already a matter of grave
anxiety on the part of her clearest-
sighted citizens; and in the older sec
tiOn of our W country, and among
the so-called upper classes" births
are so %infrequent that the same ratio of
increase being universal, man would
soon become an extinct animal; four
births to each married couple being
necessary to keep present numbers.
Third. Food is increasing more rap
idly than mouths. Where the condi-
tiOns of human life are too hard for
proper employment and comfortable
support, it will be found, almost al
ways, that the quality Of human life is
culpably or criminally low, OF else that
the massing is foolish and unnecessary.
Fourth. The averagenormal, healthy
individual produces, directly or indi-
rectly, more than he consumes, and
leaves the world better than he found
it; and the first and most important
factor mnational, family and Individual
veal is that the largest possible num-
Der of such should be born.
Fifth. Society is encountered and en-
dangered by hereditary incapacity or
crime, and has a right to say that pau
pers and criminals shall not become
progenitors.
Sixth. Children are an important
and well-nigh indispensable factor of a
hannY marriage. and actual or at