The Effects of Civilisation on the People in European States/Section III
SECTION III.
THAT THE POOR ARE NOT SUFFICIENTLY SUPPLIED
WITH THE NECESSARIES OF LIFE.
We will begin with the poor, they being by far the greater number of the people in most civilised countries; and, therefore, whatever regards them should be deemed of the greater importance.
And, first, as to their food. The food of man is of a mixed nature, partly animal, partly vegetable. A certain proportion of the former is necessary to the health, strength, and growth of the human species, and without it those things cannot be obtained. The appetites and the organs he is furnished with by nature plainly indicate this.
It would be difficult to discover whether the poor have a sufficiency of animal and vegetable food, by any other method than by considering the quantity of each sort which their nature requires, and their means of obtaining that quantity; or, in other words, what their earnings are, and what quantity of food such earnings could procure.
The number of husbandmen in most states is greater probably than that of any class of artificers. To begin, therefore, with them. The average wages of a labourer appear to have been about eight shillings a-week, previous to the few late years, more or less, according to the price of provisions in different nations. We will suppose that this labourer has a wife and three children. The wife, if she keeps the house clean, free from vermin, washes, makes and mends the husband's and children's clothes, dresses their victuals, &c., will not, or ought not to have any time to add anything to the earnings of the husband. But we will suppose that she does, to the amount of two shillings per week; which makes their income ten shillings a-week.
Whether ten shillings a-week will furnish a proper quantity of flesh-meat, bread, flour, milk, butter, cheese, and clothes, bedding, fuel, soap, candles, salt, &c., I will leave to the reader to form his own conjectures on; for calculations made in this matter must be in a great measure arbitrary, and of course unsatisfactory. I shall only observe, that Judge Hale, above a century ago, after having made a more diligent inquiry than any body else seems to have done, judged ten shillings a-week as little as a family could be supported on in England at that time, at the price things then were.
But I think a general argument may be adduced, that will throw great light on this matter, and but too clearly show that that sum is inadequate, and that it was so at the time mentioned; and that the poor are not in fact furnished with the requisite quantity of the necessaries of life. This argument is of the presumptive kind, but that is the only sort the nature of the subject will admit of.
If we consider the economy of nature, with regard to animal and vegetable life, we may observe that, in order, probably, to keep up the different species of living creatures and plants, the seed produced of both kinds is very abundant; for instance, the spawn of a carp or a salmon shall amount to eighty or a hundred thousand; insomuch that any one species of fish would in a few ages fill the ocean, if all that were brought into life were brought to maturity. In the same manner, the offspring of any one species of land animal would fill, some in a longer, others in a shorter time, the whole earth, if proper and sufficient sustenance were provided for them. The same may be said of any vegetable, if the ground were prepared for the reception of its seed, and the other plants destroyed to make room for it. To illustrate this: if the number of rabbits put into a warren to stock it, be less than the quantity which the ground will maintain, they will increase till they rise to the utmost number that it will maintain; but if the number which it at first was stocked with be greater than it will carry, they will gradually sink down to that number. Again, if you plant a piece of ground with young trees much thicker than they ought to be, so many will die away after some years, that they will be reduced to that number which ought in the first instance to have been planted; the stronger plants, after a long contest, destroying the weaker. So that the increase in the number of animals of any particular species does not depend so much on the number of their young brought into existence, as on the degree of the support and sustenance they receive, after being brought into life, to preserve them and bring them to maturity. Hence, we certainly conclude, if the number of individuals of any species of animals do not increase in proportion to the number brought into life, that it is owing to the offspring of them not being properly sustained.
These facts obtain, with regard to the human race, in as full a manner as in the brute species, or in the class of vegetables.
We find that the inhabitants in few of the states of Europe have doubled in five hundred years. Hence there is a presumption that the people have not been well fed, or have wanted some other thing necessary to their subsistence; for, where their subsistence is better, we see they actually increase much the faster.
In America, the land is not engrossed by a few, in the manner it is in Europe. It is easy there for a man to procure ground sufficient to produce what nature requires for the preservation and health of his offspring: the consequence is, that the inhabitants increase much faster than they do in Europe; some states doubling every fourteen years, others every twenty years. This happy effect may in part be owing to their being exempted from the many destructive employments to which most Europeans are subjected; but, whichever of those ways it be, it is still to be ascribed to their not being arrived at the state of extreme civilisation.
We do not suppose that even this, the greatest increase that happens in America, is the greatest possible; or that it is so great as would actually be, if the people and their offspring were well supplied with everything nature requires, since in America, on account of the great labour in clearing the ground for cultivation, the quantity tilled by the first planters may frequently be too scanty. But if any European state, consisting of ten millions, were to increase in the proportion they do in America, viz., to double in twenty years, they would increase ten millions in every twenty years; that is, five hundred thousand a-year. Hence, therefore, in such a case, this number fall a sacrifice every year to the want of proper or sufficient food and other necessaries, the unwholesomeness of their employments, or to some other cause equally attributable to extreme civilisation. A sad reflection this! It is nevertheless strictly true, or very near the truth: a loss greater than the most destructive wars have ever occasioned.[1]
Another fact strengthens this argument. When the Equitable Insurance Office, at Blackfriars Bridge, was first established, the premiums taken were according to a ratio proposed by Dr. Price, who formed it from the accounts of the annual deaths, taken from the bills of mortality kept in different cities of Europe. These deaths were about one in twenty-two, annually, of all the people, taken indiscriminately. Proceeding thus, the profits of the Society were so great, that in a few years they realised their enormous capital; upon which, their premiums were lowered. Their profits being still very great, they returned, in a very honourable manner, part of the premiums that had been received from the insured, which they continue to do, at certain periods, with still greater liberality. The Society, notwithstanding, continued to increase greatly in riches. The cause of this phenomenon, therefore, was a matter of inquiry; on which it was found that they had adapted their premiums to the deaths of the rich and poor taken together; and it soon occurred that none but the rich were insured. Their extraordinary profit, therefore, must arise from the circumstance of their being fewer deaths annually among the rich than among the poor, in proportion to the numbers of both,
It is not possible to calculate what this great disproportion is between the deaths of the rich and the poor, as that cannot be done without the knowledge of the exact profits of the Company; but it seems probable that the deaths of the poor are to those of the rich as two to one, in proportion to the numbers of each.
This greater mortality among the poor can only be owing to the difference in the manner in which they are supplied with the necessaries of life.
I will add one other relation of a fact, from which the inference is obvious.
There are, at the cotton-mills belonging to Mr. Dale, of Lanark, in Scotland, three thousand children: these children are said to be treated in a proper manner, in most respects; the consequence is, that during a term of twelve years, viz., from 1785 to 1797, only fourteen have died.[2]
This mortality is chiefly observable among children, of whom more than one half die before they are two years and a half old. Children, as well as the young of all animals, bear want and hardships worse than adult persons, and full-grown brute animals. Infants, though their deaths be really occasioned by the above-mentioned causes, have nearly the same symptoms that occur in many chronic diseases; to which their deaths are frequently attributed.
The diseases which are the chief agents in this great mortality among infants, are fevers and the disorders of the stomach and bowels. The latter are so frequent among infants, that physicians, when called to them, almost always consider these as the seat of the complaint. The weaknesses or disorder of the bowels seem chiefly to be occasioned by the poor, watery, meagre, vegetable diet of the children and of their mothers. The latter, from the use of this diet, have their milk poor, and not sufficiently animalised. To produce good milk, the woman should be well fed, with a full proportion of animal food; perhaps some quantity of good beer; live in good houses; good air; be employed in wholesome and pleasant exercises; and void of care. The children, after they are weaned, should have a sufficiency of well-prepared vegetable and animal food, such as new milk, and broths of fresh meat: for want of these, the state of their bowels is induced, which proves so destructive to our race. With regard to the fevers of children, there are many of them generated by the circumstances of their condition; almost all of them are exasperated by it. It has frequently happened to me, and to all other physicians, that, after being called to a child of a man of fortune, ill of this disease, whom I have found in a large lofty room, well ventilated, clean, and sweet; bed soft, undisturbed by noise, anxiously attended by people relieving each other; furnished with everything the cellars, the kitchen, the garden, the druggist, can furnish; in short, everything the four quarters of the world can supply: after, I say, being with such a patient, we are frequently entreated to visit the child or children of a poor man, in the same illness; several of them generally lying in the same bed; heated by and heating each other, in a small room, corrupted by the exhalations of the whole family; disturbed by one another's cries; their wakefulness and restlessness, the effects of the disorder, increased by the vermin and hard beds, covered by filthy clothes; having nothing proper to use from the cellar, the kitchen, the garden, or apothecary's shop; no attendants but the poor mother, worn out by watchings, anxiety, &c.; the father from home, obliged to leave it to get their daily bread. That these things happen unavoidably in almost all cases, in poor families, all medical people must bear testimony; and also to the ill effects of them on the sufferers—I have said unavoidably, which is true; for, though single instances, by charitable assistance, may in some things be relieved, it is impossible that in general the poor can be better supplied; unless you alter the condition of the whole, by giving them good houses, containing more and better rooms; better furniture, better linen, better supplies—in short, making their condition nearer to the first described; that is, wholly altering the condition of that whole order of people.
It is remarkable, that poor living does not lessen the fertility of women, though it deprives them of the means of bringing up their children. Adam Smith says, that it is not uncommon, in the Highlands of Scotland, for a woman to bear twenty children, and not to rear one of them. He adds, that officers of great experience have assured him, that, so far from recruiting their regiment, they have never been able to supply it with fifes and drums, from all the soldiers' children that were born in it.
This slow increase of the people may be supposed by some to be not wholly attributable to the difficulties attending the rearing of the children of the poor, and consequent mortality; and that it might be in part owing to these difficulties being foreseen and dreaded, by the more prudent part of the poor; and their being, from that consideration, prevented from marrying. This, no doubt, may happen sometimes; but prudence is not the virtue of the youthful, especially when opposed by a passion the strongest and most difficult to be checked that human nature is subject to. We are not warranted by any direct facts to ascribe much to this cause. When the masters of sheep-flocks are short of keep, from backward springs, poor land, or other causes; when the milk of the ewes is in small quantities, and a great loss of lambs follows; do they impute the slow increase of their flock to the ewes not taking the ram? The other cause of the slow increase of the people is more obvious. We see half of the children born, die before they are two years and a half old; and a very great part of the remainder drop off before they are seven. We have, therefore, no occasion to look for other causes. The Earl of Lauderdale, in a very ingenious discourse, lately published, on Wealth, quotes a passage from a letter of the Marquis of :
"On a soin de les marier d'aussi bonne heure que les grands seigneurs, le pays n'en est pas plus peuplé, car presque tons les enfans meurent: les femmes n'y ont presque pas de lait.[3]"
But if three-fourths or two-thirds of this deficiency in the increase of the people be chargeable on the mortality complained of, we have still enough to lament. And it may be added, that if this forbearance of the poor, in the indulgence of their strongest desires, actually takes place, it strongly evinces the reality and magnitude of the evils they see around them.
What renders this matter still more grievous is, that there are many more sufferers than those who die, from the same causes: many who have struggled with the difficulties, and escaped with their lives, have suffered greatly in the conflict, and continue ever after to suffer, from the injury their constitution received. As a proof of this, what rickety, squalid, dwarfed, distorted objects, do we see in the manufacturing towns of Europe! This will further appear from the consideration of the employments of the poor.[4]
- ↑ The Chinese, who suffer the exposition of their children, and even appoint men to destroy them, seem to act more humanely than the Europeans, who cause the long, languishing sufferings of their children.
- ↑ James Neel's Letter to Dr. Lettsom—Gent. Mag. for June, 1804.
- ↑ Extrait d'une Lettre de la Marquis de * * A. M * Du 17 Août, 1767. Append. No. XIV.
- ↑ Vide Notes A. B. C. D. E. F.