Over-population and its remedy, or, an inquiry into the extent and causes of the distress prevailing among the labouring classes of the British Islands, and into the means of remedying it / By William Thomas Thornton.

  • William Thomas Thornton
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Over-population and its remedy, or, an inquiry into the extent and causes of the distress prevailing among the labouring classes of the British Islands, and into the means of remedying it / By William Thomas Thornton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    OVEE-POPULATION. V who can work, will suffice to maintain not only themselves, but also those who cannot work. The rate of wages ought to be such, as, supposing the care of maintaining the helpless members of their class to belong equally to all the able-bodied, would enable each of the latter to keep his fair proportion of dependents as well as himself. Now, even supposing that children above ten years of age, and women under sixty, can earn enough to de- fray their own expenses, there will still remain a vast number of persons who may be regarded as almost entirely helpless; for children under ten years of age, old women of sixty, and old men of seventy, are generally incapable of earning any thing worth mentioning. It was ascertained at the last census, that the number of such persons is, to the number of males between the ages of twenty and seventy, as 4,566,813 to 3,670,677, or as about 14 to 1. In England, therefore, the 1 average earnings of an able-bodied male adult, | whether married or single, ought, after supplying | his own personal wants, to yield a surplus which ] would suffice for the subsistence of 1^ other per- | sons. If the average rate of wages be anywhere i insufficient for this purpose, that part of the coun- I try may be considered to be overpeopled. It | is, however, no sign of over-population that a | man's income is too small to allow of his main- I taining a more than average family. His distress j in such a case proceeds from causes peculiar to himself. It does not spring from any excess of labourers, nor, strictly speaking, from the low