Study Guide Index

Book II:
"Population and Subsistence"

Chapter 1: "The Malthusian Theory, Its Genesis and Support
Chapter 2: "Inferences from Facts"
Chapter 3: "Inferences from Analogy"
Chapter 4: "Disproof of the Malthusian Theory"

Chapter 1:
"The Malthusian Theory, Its Genesis and Support

1. To what does George attribute the sustained support for Malthus' theory? 99

It stills the conscience of the rich, and discourages reformers, by attributing poverty and want to unavoidable natural causes. It "parries the demand for reform, and shelters selfishness from question and from conscience by the interposition of an inevitable necessity."

2. How does Ricardo's rent law support Malthus? 97

It presumes that rising population forces recourse to less and less productive lands, lowering wage rates. It contains and reinforces the same grim premise as Malthus, that rising population crowds onto fixed resources and lowers living standards. Do not think that George is repudiating Ricardo's Law of Rent: later he will generalize it, and base much of his analysis on it.

3. How do Darwin's theories support and extend Malthus? 100-02

Darwin wrote that Malthus inspired him, that the struggle for existence is simply the doctrine of Malthus applied to other organisms. McCulloch says the very cause of progress is the struggle for existence engendered by poverty. Darwin gave to Malthus the prestige of Science.

4. How did Alfred Russell Wallace diverge from Darwin?

Wallace published the principle of natural selection simultaneously with Darwin, at the very same meeting in 1857. Darwin may even have cribbed from Wallace, an historical mystery still being unraveled. Wallace rebelled against the reactionary social implications that many, like Huxley, and Herbert Spencer, were drawing from natural selection, and disavowed them.
Wallace, having become an international celebrity, and financially independent, dropped biology and became a land reformer. He and George came up with parallel ideas and proposals at the same time. Wallace did not just repudiate Malthusianism, he sponsored George when George visited England.

Top

**************************

Chapter 2:
"Inferences from Facts"

1. Under what conditions do human populations increase fastest? 103

Where human life is occupied with the physical necessities of existence, and "where the perpetuity of the race is threatened by the mortality induced by adverse conditions." George surmises that birthrates will fall with higher incomes, and peace. Later experience and research roughly confirm that, although there are anomalies like the low birthrate of the Great Depression. The postwar baby boom is an apparent anomaly, in purely economic terms, but not in terms of "threats to the perpetuity of the race." Wars always raise the birthrate.

2. To what does George attribute poverty in India? 113 ff.

Suppression and ruthless exploitation of the working classes by various conquerors, not least the English.

3. Why did Ireland export food during its famines? 125

To pay rent to absentee landlords, resident in England. These landlords had acquired their estates not through purchase, but conquest and appropriation.

Top

************************

Chapter 3:
"Inferences from Analogy"

1. How and why do prey populations respond differently to growth of human population than to growth of animal predator populations? 130

Man controls the reproductive powers of the species on which he feeds. He saves the seed corn; he pastures the bull with the cow, and the rooster with the hen. "No other species can make that statement." Thus, "... the more jay-hawks the fewer chickens, while the more men the more chickens."

2. What limits the population of food-importing cities? 132; 142

The physical limit of the globe, because to produce one thing is to produce all the things for which it will exchange.

3. How do human and animal populations differ in their response to increased subsistence? 134-35

The only use that animals make of increased subsistence is to multiply. Man's desires expand beyond reproduction: he raises his standard of living. At first these added desires are material, but as man evolves they grow more intellectual, social, public-spirited, and spiritual, requiring fewer resources.
At this point George's idealism swells beyond his evidence, but he may be right. What do you think?

4. How does George use the law of conservation of matter and energy? 133

Nature recycles everything; nothing is lost.
What about the "Second Law of Thermodynamics," the law of entropy? George says nothing about that; it was hardly known in his day, and he lived on a frontier with abundant untapped resources. It doesn't hurt to review this notion of resource abundance periodically, especially as we draw down the energy resources stored up by nature over millions of years past. That would not necessarily conflict with George, whose basic message is that we should economize on natural resources more conscientiously.

5. What are Malthus' "positive" and "prudential" checks on population? What third check does George identify? 138

Malthus' "positive" checks do not sound very positive. They are vice and misery, with their various subdivisions like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: fire, warfare, disease, starvation. His "prudential" check is abstinence, which he favored, hair-shirt puritan that he was. Modern technology, uncoupling procreation and recreation, has brought prudence within reach of all but the most insouciant.
George's check is rise of the standard of comfort, and development of the intellect.

Top

**********************

Chapter 4:
"Disproof of the Malthusian Theory"

1. What does George mean by "Disproof of the Malthusian Theory." 143-47; 149-50; Cf. 230-43.

Nations that increase in population increase in wealth per head. Densely populated countries support more people in idleness, and export capital. They have the greatest surplus to devote to warfare. The denser the population, the more the specialization, or subdivision of labor. He develops this last theme at greater length in Book IV, Chapter 2, "The effect of increase of population on the distribution of wealth."

********************