6 to 1.7 for the same period.
The remarkable thing about the facts that this table so clearly
discloses is that with a gradual increase of the means of subsistence
from 1846 to 1877 there is also a gradual increase in the proportion of
births to population. But at the year 1877 there, is a very sudden and
striking increase in food products, and the purchasing power of the
people coincides exactly with a very sudden and striking decrease in the
birth-rate of the people. The greater the decrease in the birth-rate,
the greater the increase in the people's purchasing power. Now, what has
brought about this change in the ratios of increase in population and in
food respectively?
Some serious factor, inoperative during the thirty years prior to 1877
must have suddenly been introduced into the social system, to work such
a marvellous revolution during the last twenty years.
Some economic writers find it easy here to discover a law, and declare
that the birth-rate is in inverse ratio to the abundance of food.
(Doubleday quoted by Nitti, Population and the Social System, p. 55).
Other economic writers of recent date attribute this great change in
ratio of increase to economic causes. Only a few find the explanation in
biological laws.
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