The unsolved riddle of social justice / by Stephen Leacock.

  • Stephen Leacock
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The unsolved riddle of social justice / by Stephen Leacock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    counted plenty. And every human being born upon the world represents a power of work that, rightly directed, more than supplies his wants. The fact that as an infant he does not maintain himself has nothing to do with the case. This was true even in the Garden of Eden. The fundamental error of the Malthusian theory of population and poverty is to confound the diffi- culties of human organization with the question of physical production. Our existing poverty is purely a problem in the direction and distribution of human effort. It has no connection as yet with the ques- tion of the total available means of subsistence. Some day, in a remote future, in which under an improved social system the numbers of mankind might increase to the full power of the natural capacity of multiphcation, such a question might conceivably disturb the equanimity of mankind. But it need not now. It is only one of many dis- asters that must sooner or later overtake mankind. The sun, so the astronomer tells us, is cooling down ; the night is coming; an all-pervading cold will some day chill into rigid death the last vestige of organic life. Our poor planet will be but a silent ghost whirling on its dark path in the starlight. This ultimate disaster is, as far as our vision goes,
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