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Gray Versus Malthus, the Principles of Population and Production Investigated, by George Purves
Gray Versus Malthus the Principles of Population and Production Investigated by George Purves Author:Simon Gray General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1818 Subjects: Social Science / Demography Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you c... more »an select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IX. THE CASE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WHICH EXHIBITS SO HIGH A RATE OF INCREASE IN A GREAT MASS OF POPULATION, DECISIVE AGAINST THE SUBSISTENCE THEORY. It is perfectly evident from facts, as we have seen, that there is no particular ratio of doubling, when measured by time, which can be considered as the natural or general ratio of the increase of population. Mr. Malthus has indeed assumed, that the ratio of doubling in the United States of America is the natural ratio of the increase of population. But this position is to be rejected as contrary to facts. The period of doubling in a large portion of the population of those states has, I believe, been really found to be what he states it, about twenty-five years. The fact, however, proves the very reverse of what it is brought by him to prove. If population can double itself in twenty-five years, and the increase of. subsistence can be fully brought up to this rate, and the history of a certain portion of American population shows that it can, why then does it not double itself, in the same time, in all other districts of the earth, while there is soil sufficient to allow the cultivator to augment the home subsistence up to that pitch, or else the importer to procure the difference from other districts? According to the law of nature in circulation, the demand regulates the Supply as far as this is dependent on the will. If there exist the same increasing rate of demand in other districts, as in the United States, there will also be the same increasing rate of supply, provided there be soil suff...« less