The Question of Population.
In the theory of the millennium, as popularly held, it is assumed that wars will cease; that intemperance, and many other evils which destroy the race, will cease, and that this state of things, favorable to the increase and longevity of the human race, will continue one thousand years. Several years since a gentleman of Cincinnati published a carefully prepared estimate, showing that, under such circumstances, the earth would not hold its inhabitants at the end of five hundred years, and, at the end of a thousand years, counting the increase in the same proportion, the people must be literally heaped up on the face of the earth. Newspaper paragraphers, and others equally wise in their own conceit, made themselves merry over the estimate; but no one, to our knowledge, ever tried to show that it contained any serious error. It was set aside with sneering—never answered by arguments and facts. This question is pressing itself upon the notice of the people of the present century. Men, not wont to be carried away by their imaginations, are considering it seriously. An article which we clipped from the San Francisco Chronicle some time since, entitled “England and India,” furnishes some important suggestions and calculations. It says:— “It is now something over a century since Clive and Hastings completed the conquest of India. The population of that country was then reckoned at 117,000,000—rather less than more. It had been kept down by several causes. Infanticide was the chief one, no doubt. It was a custom among Orientals and in ancient Egypt, and even in some of the more crowded States of Greece, from time immemorial. As they could not find outlet by emigration, and as the doctrine of Malthus was constantly being verified, they had to choose between this cruel remedy and starvation. Another remedy was found in the immolation of the widow on the death of the husband, and another, in the constantly recurring wars between the different sovereign princes. Since the conquest, all these customs, so destructive to human life, have been set aside by British authority, under penalties severe enough to insure respect for the law. The result (by the census of 1875) is that the population of India is over 220,000,000—an increase of more than 100,000,000 in a century; and still the increase goes on without check, save by famine. “It is hard for an American to conceive what a famine in India is. Our sparse population, fruitful soil and admirable means of transportation, by which any suffering section of the republic may be promptly relieved by supplies from other sections where there is no suffering, and an abundance of provisions, make famine here as it exists in India, impossible. The old Californian may get some idea of what an India famine is if he will call to mind the general failure of all crops in this State from drouth in 1864, and, for the average of three or four persons we then had to the square mile, substitute the Hindostan average of 200 to 220. That year most of our cattle perished, and we saved no grain. Had the population of the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys been as dense as that of the famine districts of India we must have lost some millions of people by starvation.” Here we find the population nearly doubled in a single century, while two famines have been quite severe within, comparatively, a few years. What would another century bring to India? The Chronicle farther says:— “Where every part of the country is over-crowded, every acre must be made to yield a harvest or death ensues. It is therefore becoming a most serious question with England how in the future to provide against these fearful scourges. If the population increases in the next half century proportionately as in the last century it will reach 330,000,000; and it will increase unless the old restraining causes are again put in motion, which is a thing not to be thought of for an instant. The readiest remedy would be emigration; but where to? They cannot cross over into Siam, Anam, and China, because these countries are already as densely peopled as India. They cannot cross the Indus, because the country thither is too sterile. They might find an outlet into Africa and Indian Archipelago, but that is something that requires preparation. “Of late years, availing themselves of the use of English machinery, the people of India have come into active competition in their home supply of cotton fabrics with the mills of Manchester. This promises in the future to give living employment to millions, and as has happened in England, to cause a large and regular exchange for and importation of foreign bread-stuffs. It may result in a check of famine, assisted, as it will be, by greater facilities for inland transportation; and it must inevitably curtail the market for English manufactures and cause a corresponding distress in that country. On the whole, viewing the subject in a political or commercial light, it is not so easy to determine whether the conquest of India has permanently benefited England or not. Sometimes it looks like an argosy, sometimes like a white elephant.” At an increase no greater than that of the past century, another century would give British India a population of nearly 500,000,000. It is needless to say that she could not nearly contain it. What, then, would she do with the same ratio of increase for a thousand years? Only two methods are suggested whereby she can be able to maintain her present population or at least the increase of a brief period. One is, that of emigration. But that is not feasible, because her neighboring empires are as largely overstocked as herself. They also must find room for their constantly increasing surplus of inhabitants. The other is, the introduction of English machinery and manufactures. But the result of this, as shown, would be to cause the troubles to recoil upon England, and reduce her home population to starvation:—a fate which is even now staring many of them in the face. If India could dispense with England's manufactures, instead of being a jewel in the British crown, she would soon become the means of her prostration. Slight or temporal relief might be given to England by cutting up her large estates and distributing the lands; but this will never come unless by an entire revolution—an overthrow of the kingdom and abolition of the aristocracy. Unfortunately the tendency in all countries is to strengthen monopolies with increase of years. England is far from being any exception to this rule. We scarcely appreciate the importance and magnitude of this subject, because it concerns a people and empire so remote from us. But it is a matter of life or death with some hundreds of millions of earth's inhabitants, and may be even now becoming a matter of interest to us whether or not we realize it. While the presentation of these facts is yet fresh in our minds, another series of facts rises before us of equal magnitude, and perhaps to us, of more immediate interest. The recent terrible famine in the Chinese empire seems to have aroused that people to the necessity of more extended territory to sustain her over-crowded population. To what extent China is over-crowded none can understand who has not seen how Chinamen can live,—how they have been accustomed to live. The Wheeling, West Virginia Intelligencer gives a conversation with Gen. Garfield in which the General says:— “I have seen in a space no greater than the length and hight of this sleeping-car berth, in a Chinese tenement quarter in San Francisco, the home of twelve Chinamen. In that space they actually lived—yes, actually lived most of their time. There they crouched (all doubled up), and there they cooked, ate, slept, and, in a word, lived. They cooked with a little lamp a mess of stuff that they import from China, which, like their rice food, is very cheap, and a mere pittance in the way of earnings on the street will supply them food and clothes for an indefinite time. A few cents per day is more to them than a dollar to the commonest American laborer.” But the most important part of the conversation is the following, showing that Europe is even now troubled on the subject of population, especially that which relates to the Asiatics. Gen. Garfield said he derived his information from an intelligent man who has traveled much in the old countries, and who appeared to be much depressed with the prospect, which, he said concerns all the nations of the earth. The following are his words:— “It is believed in Europe that one of those great historic movements of the Mongolian race, that in the remote past have dispersed their people into less densely populated countries than their own, is now preparing. For instance, the Russians, in pressing recently upon the Asiatic borders of their empire, developed by actual reconnoissance a Chinese army, of which they were totally ignorant, 250,000 strong, and armed, too, with all the effective enginery of modern war, including the Krupp guns. These guns have been made by their own skilled workmen, who had been sent to Europe and secretly taught the art, and Russian officers had drilled their armies in the use of them. No man knows to-day the strength of the Chinese military establishment. All we see or know of what is going on in China is on the shore edges. It is believed that the skeleton for an army of 20,000,000 already exists. It is believed, further, that the idea of conquest has once again taken hold of the Chinese mind, and that the great Buddhistic family of Asiatic races can be leagued for not only a wholesale raid upon Europe, but also a descent upon the Pacific coast of the United States. “Such a movement means the possible wiping out of Caucasian civilization. England has mobilized these Asiatics as a defense against Russia's ambition in the east, but, as Count Schouvaloff said in the Berlin conference, what if the Asiatics, taught the art of war, should, like the irresistible Turks, once again look down upon the plains of Europe, bearing upon their banners the legend, ‘We come, we see, we conquer?’ Modern war is now a matter of effective arms, and of a simple and reliable commissariat system. The Mongolian race is capable of great personal prowess. Being fatalists, they dare everything for the end they have in view. Their food is simple, easily supplied and easily transported. Their endurance of fatigue is proverbial. Once organized and in motion they could swarm into Russia as irresistably as the locusts of Egypt, and upon the Pacific coast of this continent as numerous and destructive as the grasshoppers. Once started, where would they stop? Civilization would retire before them as from a plague. Look at the plague-spots in San Francisco to-day. Nobody lives in them but Chinese. Nobody else can live in them.” It may be said that steps may be taken by the nations to prevent this wholesale raid; but granting that it might be checked or entirely prevented, the question is not thereby answered, What is to become of these over-crowded and constantly accumulating millions who cannot find a place on the earth to set their feet? America has boasted that she was the asylum for the poor and the oppressed of all lands. But lately, appalled at the prospect, she retracts her boast and invites the unwelcome Asiatic to depart out of her coasts and to come no more. We have considerable territory yet to be improved, but an influx of fifty millions of Mongolians—more than our present population—would be a startling event to contend with. And China must part with more than fifty millions to make life in her empire possible for the possible increased population of only a few decades. It is no use to slight these facts, for they “will not down.” Statesmen look upon them with trembling. We would like to see some advocate of the theory of the conversion of the world, and of a thousand years peace among the nations of the earth, consider this question with the frankness which its magnitude and importance demand.