Principles of Political Economy Part 31

[Footnote 237d-8: In Paris the houses insured had a value of 2,370,000,000 francs, but the damage from fire amounted to only 0.016 per 1,000! (Dictionn. d'Econ. politique, I, 89.) On an average, the premiums in France amount to 0.85 per 1,000. In Prussia, 1867-69 on an average: in the province of Prussia, 9.46 per 1,000; Posen, 3.75; Brandenburg, Berlin not included, 2.82; Pomerania, 2.52; Westphalia, 2.15; Schleswig-Holstein, 2.09; Hanover, 1.99; Silesia, 1.68; Saxony, 1.47; Hesse-Na.s.sau, 1.46; the Rhine country, 1.34; Sigmaringen, 0.56; city of Berlin, 0.28 per 1,000. (Preuss.

Statist. Zeitschr., 1871, 289.) How largely a higher civilization tends to arrest the spread of fire by the reason of the great facilities of rendering a.s.sistance is shown by the fact that for 100 buildings totally consumed in Posen, in 1837-40, there were 13.4 only injured: in 1866-69, 32 were injured for 100 totally consumed. In Prussian Saxony, 1839-44, 34; 1867-69, 57. (loc. cit., 329.) In Baden, the district called the _Seekreis_ got from the fire-fund, in 1845-49, 80 per cent. more than it contributed to it; the middle Rhine district contributed 37 per cent.

more than it received. The Bavarian Reza district, 1828-29, received only 11.4 per cent. for damages, and paid 19 per cent. of all premiums; the Lower Danube district, 10 and 8.8 per cent. (_Rau_, Lehrbuch, II, -- 28, 26.) The city of Leipzig contributed from 1/19 to 1/17 of the insurance paid, 1864-68, to the insurance companies taking risks on real property in the kingdom of Saxony, and received back only from 1/662 to 1/114, although its fire extinguis.h.i.+ng inst.i.tutions cost, in 1870, 26,182 thalers. (Official.)]

[Footnote 237d-9: Even premium-inst.i.tutions have frequently very different rates for the same risk, according as they fear greater or less compet.i.tion, or desire to recommend themselves in a new place, etc. Hence the tricks of the trade with which most of them surround their tariff.]

[Footnote 237d-10: In Wurtemberg, theaters, powder mills, places where brick and lime are burned, porcelain factories, iron-works, etc. cannot be insured at all. In Calenb-Grubenh. and Bremen-Verden, s.h.i.+ngle-roofed houses can be insured only at 2/3 of their real value.]

[Footnote 237d-11: Thus, for instance, in the electorate of Mark, each of the four cla.s.ses of houses bears its own loss alone. To the fourth cla.s.s, for instance, belong smithies, brick factories, and buildings with steam engines, etc. The Baden law of 1852 puts the same burthen in the same place, upon houses exposed to danger in a greater or lesser degree; but provides for 4 cla.s.ses (_Gemeindecla.s.sen_) with different rates of contribution, and a.s.signs each _Gemeinde_ every year, according to the relative magnitude of the losses of the previous year, to one of those cla.s.ses. How risky it is for large cities to confine their insurance, because of the ordinarily small amount of damage to them from fire, only to insurance inst.i.tutions of their own, is shown by the case of Hamburg in the year 1842, where three joint stock insurance companies could pay only from 75 to 80 per cent., and the Bieber Mutual Insurance Company, only 20 per cent.]

[Footnote 237d-12: In the case of buildings, the greater risk is generally calculated by correspondingly multiplying the insurance-value, but in case of damage by fire, it is simply made good.]

[Footnote 237d-13: In the insurance companies specified by _Masius_, loc. cit., 176, the aggregate amount of their insurance, stood to the amount necessary to cover it, by means of receipts from premiums, reserve, and joint-stock capital:

In the Leipzig Fire Insurance Company, as 100:1.87 In the Trieste Fire Insurance Company, as 100:1.80 In the Elberfeld Fire Insurance Company, as 100:1.19 In the Aix-Munich Fire Insurance Company, as 100:1.15 In the Cologne Colonia Fire Insurance Company, as 100:2.44 In the Karlsruhe Phnix Fire Insurance Company, as 100:3.7 In the Berlin Fire insurance Company, as 100:6.3 In the Gotha, about as 100:2.6 (including the four fold after payment note)

In the same companies the amount of damage and of expense for the last preceding year were, on every 100 thalers, of insurance, 46 pfennigs (1/300 thalers), 44, 29, 48, 67, 55, 35, 42; an average of 45, that is 1 per 1,000. Besides, much depends on the degree to which the joint-stock capital can be applied. Thus, for instance, in Berlin, on every 1,000 thalers 200 are paid in cash, and a note (_Solawechsel_) given for the rest, payable in two months after notice. Where the unpaid remaining stock is but a mere book-debt, and may even be evaded by disclaiming the stock itself, it of course affords very little security.]

[Footnote 237d-14: Compare _Volz._ Tubinger Zeitschr. 1847, 349 ff.]

[Footnote 237d-15: The preparatory steps towards this ideal were taken long ago. Thus, for instance, the personal-property insurance companies have offered premiums for special merit in extinguis.h.i.+ng fires (Calenb.-Grubenh., 1814, -- 35), saving things from a burning house is looked after by the agents of personal property insurance companies; compensation is almost universally made not only for the damage done by fire, but also that caused while the fire is being extinguished. The excellent fire-extinguis.h.i.+ng inst.i.tutions of England are maintained by the common action of the insurance companies. There have been complaints, however, that they have shown a preference for insured objects. (Mitth., 1874, 113.)]

BOOK V.

ON POPULATION.

CHAPTER I.

THEORY OF POPULATION.

SECTION CCx.x.xVIII.

INCREASE OF POPULATION IN GENERAL.

That amid the thousand dangers which threaten the existence of the individual the species may endure, the Creator has endowed every cla.s.s of organic beings with such reproductive power, and so much pleasure in propagating their kind, that if the action of these were entirely unrestricted, it would soon fill up the earth.[238-1] In the case of the human race, also, the physiological possibility of propagation has very wide limits.[238-2] It would be nothing extraordinary that a healthy pair, living in wedlock from the 20th to the 42nd year of the woman's life, that is, during the whole time of her full capacity to bear children, should rear six children to the age of p.u.b.erty. This would, therefore, suffice to treble the population in a single generation; provided that all who had grown up should marry. According to Euler,[238-3] when the births were 5 per cent. and the deaths 2 per cent., the population doubled in not quite 24 years; when the increase was 2 per annum, in 28 years; when 2, in 35 years, and when 1 per cent. in 47 years.

The United States furnish us with a striking ill.u.s.tration of this doctrine, and on the grandest scale. There the natural increase of the white population, from 1790 to 1840, was 400.4 per cent.; that is in the first decade 33.9 per cent. of the population in 1790; in the second 33.1, in the third 32.1, in the fourth 30.9, in the fifth 29.6 per cent.[238-4] [238-5]

[Footnote 238-1: Thus, for instance, the sturgeon can, according to _Leuckart_, produce 3,000,000 eggs in a year.

According to _Burdach_, the posterity of a pair of rabbits may be over 1,000,000 in four years; and that of a plant-louse, according to _Bonnet_, over a 1,000,000,000 in a few weeks. The prolificacy of a species of animals is wont to be greater in proportion as the structure-material (_Bildungsmaterial_) saved within a given time during the course of individual life, is greater, and as material wants during the embryonic period are limited; also (teleologically), in proportion as to the danger the individual is exposed to. Compare _Leuckart_ in _R.

Wagner's_ physiolog. Worterbuch, Art. Zeugung.

Teleologically, _Bastiat_ says: _cette surabondance parait calculee partout en raison inverse de la sensibilite, de l'intelligence et de la force avec laquelle chaque espece resiste a la destruction_. (Harmonies, ch. 16.)]

[Footnote 238-2: The researches of modern physiology make it probable that an ovum is detached from the ovaries at each period of healthy menstruation. (_Bischoff_, Beweis der von der Begattung unabhangigen periodischen Reifung und Losung der Eier bei den Saugethieren und Menschen, 1844.) It is hardly possible to ascertain how many of these ova are capable of fecundation. Among the animals, on which the greater number of accurate observations have been made, that is in the case of horses, it has been found that, in the two districts of Prussia most favorably conditioned, of 100 mares that had been lined, 63.3 became pregnant, and 53.5 gave birth to live foals; in the rest of the Prussian monarchy, the births were only 46 per cent. Compare _Schubert_, Staatskunde, VII, 1, 98. In the Belgian _haras_ (places for breeding horses), between 1841 and 1850, about 30 per cent. of the "leaps" proved fruitful, from 2 to 3 per cent. aborted, the rest were either probably or certainly unfruitful. (_Horn._, Statist. Gemalde, 171.) In the human species, also, the great number of first-born generated in the first weeks of marriage, bears witness to a high degree of procreative susceptibility.

On the other hand, the healthy male s.e.m.e.n ejected during a single act of coition contains innumerable germs, a very few of which are sufficient to produce fecundation. (_Leuckart_, loc. cit, 907.) According to _Oesterlen_, Handbuch der medicischen Statistik, 1865, 196, from 10 to 20 per cent. of all marriages were childless. In the United Kingdom, _Farr_, report on the Census of 1851, estimated that in a population of 27,511,000, there were 1,000,000 childless families, when the term is allowed to embrace widows and widowers as well as married couples.]

[Footnote 238-3: See the exhaustive table in _Euler_, Memoires de l'Academie de Berlin 1756, in _Sussmilch_, Gottl. Ordnung, I, -- 160. Bridge has constructed the following formula:

Log. A = Log. P + n x Log.(1+(m-b)/mb). Here P stands for the actually existing population, 1/m = the ratio between the annual mortality and the number of the living, 1/b, the ratio of the number of annual births to the number of the living, n the number of years, A, the population at the end of three years, the quant.i.ty sought for.]

[Footnote 238-4: _Tucker_, Progress of the United States, 89, ff. 98. Here deduction is already made of immigrants and their posterity, who after subtracting the loss by emigration back to the old country, amounted to over 1,000,000. It probably amounted to more yet. If, as _Wappaus_ does (Bevolekerungsstatistik, 1859, I, 93, 122 ff.), we calculate the rate of increase per annum, we have an average during the first decade of 2.89, during the second of 2.83, the third of 2.74, the fourth of 2.52, the seventh of 2.39, the eighth (1860-70) of probably 2.25 per cent. On the still greater ratio of increase in earlier times, see _Price_, Observations on reversionary Payments, 1769, 4 ed. 1783, I, 282 seq., I, 260.

It was nothing unheard of to see an old man with a living posterity of 100. (_Franklin_, Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, and the Peopling of New Countries, 1751.) It is said that in the region about Contendas, in Brazil, there were on from 70 to 80 births a mortality of from 3 to 4 per annum (how long?), and an unfortunate birth (_unglucklichen_) was scarcely ever heard of. Mothers 20 years of age had from 8 to 10 children; and one woman in the fifties had a posterity of 204 living persons. (_Spix und Martius_, Reise III, 525).]

[Footnote 238-5: Immense increase of the Israelites in Egypt. (Genesis 46, 27; Numbers, 1.)]

SECTION CCx.x.xIX.

LIMITS TO THE INCREASE OF POPULATION.

There is certainly one limit which the increase of no organic being can exceed: the limit of the necessary means of subsistence. But, so far as the human race is concerned, this notion is somewhat more extensive, inasmuch as it embraces besides food, also clothing, shelter, fuel, and a great many other goods which are not, indeed, necessary to life, but which are so considered.[239-1] We may ill.u.s.trate the matter by a simple example in the rule of division. If we take the aggregate of the means of subsistence as a dividend, the number of mankind as divisor; then the average share of each is the quotient. Where two of these quant.i.ties are given, the third may be found. Only when the dividend has largely increased can the divisor and quotient increase at the same time (prosperous increase of population). If, however, the quotient remains unchanged, the increase of the divisor can take place only at the expense of the quotient (proletarian increase of population).[239-2]

Hence it is to be expected that the quant.i.ty of the means of subsistence being given and also the requirement of each individual, the number of births and the number of deaths should condition each other. Where, for instance, the number of church livings has not been increased, only as many candidates can marry as clergymen who held such livings have died.

The greater the average age of the latter is, the later do the former marry, in the average, and _vice versa_. And so, in the case of whole nations, when their economic consumption and production remain unaltered.[239-3] A basin entirely filled with water can be made to contain more only in case it is either increased itself, or a means is found to compress its contents. Otherwise as much must flow out on the one side as is poured in on the other.

And so, everything else remaining stationary, the fruitfulness of marriages must, at least in the long run, be in the inverse ratio of their frequency. (See -- 247.)[239-4] [239-5]

[Footnote 239-1: When it is known that, in the Hebrides, one-third of all the labor of the people has to be employed in procuring combustible material (_McCulloch_, Statist.

Account, I, 319), it will no longer excite surprise that, according to Scotch statistics, some parishes increase in population after coal has been found in them, and others decrease when their turf-beds are exhausted.]

[Footnote 239-2: Compare _Isaias_, 9:3. According to _Courcelle-Seneuil_, Traite theorique et pratique d'Economie politique, I, 1858, the _chiffre necessaire de la population egal a la somme des revenus de la societe diminuee de la somme des inegalites de consommation et divisee par le minimum de consommation_: P=(R-J)/M.]

[Footnote 239-3: Thus _Sussmilch_, Gottliche Ordnung in den Veranderungen des menschlichen Geschlechts, 1st ed., 1742, 4th ed., 1775, I, 126 ff., a.s.sumes that one marriage a year takes place, on from every 107 to every 113 persons living.

On the other hand, 22 Dutch towns gave an average of 1 in every 64. This abnormal proportion is very correctly ascribed by _Malthus_, Principles of Population, II, ch. 4, to the great mortality of those towns: viz., a death for every 22 or 23 persons living, while the average is 1:36.

The Swiss, _Muret_, (in the Memoires de la Societe economique de Berne, 1766, I, 15 ff.), could not help wondering that the villages with the largest average duration of life should be those in which there were fewest births. "So much life-power and yet so few procreative resources!" Here too, _Malthus_, II, ch. 5, solved the enigma. The question was concerned with Alpine villages with an almost stationary cow-herd business: no one married until one cow-herd cottage had become free; and precisely because the tenants lived so long, the new comers obtained their places so late. Compare _d'Ivernois_, Enquete sur les Causes patentes et occultes de la faible Proportion de Naissances a Montreux: yearly 1:46, of the persons living, while the average in all Switzerland was 1:28.

In France according to _Quetelet_, Sur l'Homme, 1835, I, 83 ff., there was:

===============+===================+============+================ | _One marriage_ | _Children_ | _One death_ _In_ | _a year_ | _to a_ | _yearly _ | _for every_ | _marriage_ | _for every_ ---------------+-------------------+------------+---------------- 4 Departments |110-120 inhabitants| 3.79 |35.4 inhabitants 15 " |120-130 " | 3.79 |39.2 "

23 " |130-140 " | 4.17 |39.0 "

18 " |140-150 " | 4.36 |40.6 "

10 " |150-160 " | 4.43 |40.3 "

9 " |160-170 " | 4.48 |42.7 "

6 " |170 and more " | 4.48 |46.4 "

The two departments of Orne and Finisterre present a very glaring contrast: in the former, one birth per annum on every 44.8 (1851 = 51.6), a marriage on every 147.5, a death on every 52.4 (1851 = 54.1) living persons; in the latter, on the contrary, on every 26 (1851 = 29.8), 113.9 and 30.4 (1851 = 34.2). In Namur, the proportions were 30.1, 141, 51.8; in Zeeland, 21.9, 113.2, 28.5. (_Quetelet_, I, 142.) The Mexican province, Guanaxuato, presents the most frightful extreme: one birth per annum on every 16.08 of the population living, and one death in every 19.7. (_Quetelet_, I, 110.)]

[Footnote 239-4: Compare even _Steuart_, Principles, I, ch.

13. _Sadler_, Law of Population, 1830, II, 514: