[Footnote 2: _Economic Review_, January 1892.]
[Footnote 3: So says the Secretary of the Malthusian League. Vide _The Declining Birth-rate_, 1916, p. 88.]
[Footnote 4: Bagehot, _Economic Studies_, p. 193.]
[Footnote 5: To assign a personality to "Nature" is, of course, a mere _façon de parler_; the believer holds that the "course of Nature" is an expression of the Mind and Will of the Creator.]
[Footnote 6: _Problems of Population_, p. 382.]
[Footnote 7: _The Malthusian_, July 15, 1921.]
[Footnote 8: _Lancet_, 1915, vol. ii, p. 862.]
[Footnote 9: The New Sydenham Society, vol. clvi, section viii, p. 12.]
[Footnote 10: Charles S. Devas, _Political Economy_, 1901, p. 191.]
[Footnote 11: _Revue Pratique d'Apologétique_, September 15, 1914.]
[Footnote 12: _Man and Superman_, p. 195.]
[Footnote 13: By rationalism we mean a denial of God and of responsibility for conduct to a Higher Being.]
[Footnote 14: Quoted by W.H.S. Jones, _Malaria and Greek History_ 1909, p95.]
From the original root-fallacy Malthus argued that poverty, prostitution, war, disease, and a high death-rate are necessary in order to keep down the population: and from the same false premises birth controllers are now arguing that a high birth-rate causes (1) poverty, and (2) a high death-rate. The steps in the argument whereby these amazing conclusions are reached are as follows. Before the death-rate can be lowered the social conditions of the people must be improved; if social conditions are improved there will be an enormous increase of population in geometrical progression; the food supply of the country and even of the world cannot be increased at the same rate; and therefore there will be greater poverty and a higher death-rate unless the birth-rate is lowered. Thus Malthusians argue. In view of the false premises on which their argument is based, it is not surprising to find that their deductions are erroneous and contain many economic and statistical fallacies, to the consideration of which we may now devote our attention.
The first false deduction of birth controllers is that a high birth-rate, by intensifying the struggle for existence, increases poverty. In order to bolster up this contention, Malthusians quote three arguments concerning (a) famines, (b) abundance, and (c) wages, and each of these arguments is fallacious.