that goes directly and indirectly to labor of every sort in 1882 is double that which went to labor of every sort in 1840.

Mr. George argues rightly that, at any particular moment, industry is not limited by capital, for there are always surplus stocks ready to support more labor, and likely to be speedily made good by quickened production; but, indirectly, and in the long run, industry is very much affected by the increasing efficiency of capital, for on this depends the magnitude of the total annual product, and on this the rewards of industry. To secure this, together with a greater diversity and division of employments, and to secure to our own labor as large a proportion of the best possible field of employment — that, namely, which is found in satisfying by our own efforts as many of our desires as possible, was the avowed object of the

PROTECTIVE POLICY

as set forth by Alexander Hamilton; and under this policy, when thoroughly carried out, we have attained that high rate of wages which attracts two thirds of a million of men annually to our shores, and which gives us warrant to hope that, before population can press upon the means of subsistence in these United States, our people will have become accustomed to so high a scale of living as to ensure the exercise of that prudence which will become necessary in the altered conditions of the nation.

Mr. George can see nothing in the policy but a foolish effort to make certain classes rich!

Few things, however, are so settled in political economy as that "no industry can for any length of time obtain a higher rate of profit than that which is common in the community." If it could, it would be doubly desirable to have those industries which might be turned into monopolies within reach, and not upon the other side of the Atlantic! Let it be ascertained that a monopoly exists among us, likely to be permanent, not likely to be speedily destroyed by internal competition, — and the remedy would be the easiest conceivable. A reduction of the duty would put the would-be monopolists upon their good behavior. But if, upon a false or mistaken cry of monopoly,

we destroy some of our own industries, and transfer the scene of monopoly to foreign shores, we shall be thenceforth without remedy.

The outcry of monopoly as to industries easily inaugurated by moderate amounts of capital is generally passed over as the product of insincerity; but Mr. George is above suspicion in this respect. He writes what he believes.

We come now to what he has to say about the Malthusian Doctrine.

MR. GEORGE quotes as follows from Mr. John Stuart Mill: "A greater number of people cannot, in any given state of civilization, be collectively as well provided for as a smaller. The niggardliness of nature, not the injustice of society, is the cause of the penalty attached to over-population. An unjust distribution of wealth does not aggravate the evil, but, at most, causes it to be somewhat earlier felt. It is in vain to say that all mouths which the increase of mankind call into existence bring with them hands. The new mouths require as much food as the old ones, and the hands do not produce as much. If all instruments of production were held in joint property by the whole people, and the produce divided with perfect equality among them, and if in a society thus constituted industry was as energetic and the produce as ample as at the present time, there would be enough to make all the existing population extremely comfortable; but when that population had doubled itself, as with existing habits of the people it undoubtedly would in little more than twenty years, what would then be their condition? Unless the arts of production were in the same time improved in an almost unexampled degree, the inferior soils which must be resorted to, and the more laborious and scantily remunerative cultivation which must be employed on the superior soils to procure food for so much larger a population, would, by an insuperable necessity, render every individual in the community poorer than before. If the population continued to increase at the same rate, a time would soon arrive when no one would have more than mere necessarices, and soon after a time when no one would have a sufficiency of those, and the further increase of the population would be arrested by death.”

To this Mr. George replies:
:-

"All this I deny. I assert that the very reverse of these propositions is true. I assert that in any given state of civilization a greater

number of people can collectively be better provided for than a smaller. I assert that the injustice of society, not the niggardliness of nature, is the cause of the want and misery which the current theory attributes to over-population. I assert that the new mouths which an increasing population call into existence require no more food than the old ones, while the hands they bring with them can, in the natural order of things, produce more. I assert that, other things being equal, the greater the population the greater the comfort which an equitable distribution of wealth would give to each individual. assert that, in a state of equality, the natural increase of population would constantly tend to make each individual richer instead of poorer.

"I thus distinctly join issue and submit the question to the test of facts."

Now, let us look at his facts. They are these: That, in our times, communities have increased faster in wealth than in population; that it is in the densest populations we find "costly buildings, fine furniture, luxurious equipages, statues, pictures, pleasure-gardens, and yachts, men of income and of elegant leisure, thieves, policemen, menial servants, lawyers, men of letters, and the like; and that capital overflows for remunerative investment from these densely populated to sparsely populated regions." These things, he says, "conclusively show that wealth is the greatest where population is densest; that the production of wealth to a given amount of labor increases as population increases."

But these things do not prove the contradictory of Mr. Mill's propositions. Mr. Mill would not deny that, in countries so greatly underpeopled (having regard to the existing skill and knowledge of mankind and the available land) as were our colonies when, as Adam Smith relates, a widow with half a dozen children was looked upon as an heiress, - he would not deny that in such cases a mere increase of population would bring increase of wealth. Mr. Mill was speaking of communities in which to support a widow who had six children would be a good deal more difficult than to support a widow without any; and, with respect to such, he says that a great increase of population would bring great misery, unless, at the same time, the arts of production were

improved in an almost unprecedented degree. This, Mr. George thinks, he disproves by adducing the experience of the last forty years, in which the arts of production have been improved in an almost unprecedented degree.

Wealth has increased in consequence of these improvements, not in consequence of the greater population. The greater wealth and the greater population are joint effects; or rather the improvements brought greater wealth, and this brought greater density of population. This answers his point as to the general advance in wealth and population in our times. With respect to the comparison he draws between countries now underpeopled, those in which that density of population which can be maintained to the best advantage with the skill and the productive instruments known in our time has not been reached, it is quite true that greater wealth would ensue from greater population up to a certain not very well defined point. More capital can be used to advantage as population increases; the steamship and the railroad become paying instruments where before they could not be used, and capital speedily appears, either from home savings or from other communities, when the conditions exist for its safe and paying investment. And with the application of more capital comes the possibility of satisfying new desires, the desires for "costly buildings, fine furniture, luxurious equipages, statues, pictures, pleasure-gardens, yachts, elegant leisure, protection by means of police, menial servants, instruction in the law, in religion, in literature, and the like on the part of the rich, and for better food, better clothing, better houses, better schooling, and more amusements on the part of the rest of the community."

It is the existence of those desires and the possibility of gratifying them that leads to the accumulation of those instruments of production of which Mr. George himself says:

"If the farmer must use the spade because he has not capital enough for a plough, the sickle instead of the reaping-machine, the flail instead of the thresher; if the machinist must rely upon the chisel for cutting iron, the weaver on the hand-loom, and so on, the productiveness of industry cannot be a tithe of what it is when aided by capital in the shape of the best tools now in use."