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the chessboard, he owed about one and a half trillion tons of rice for that best way to accomplish this. Malthus suggested
square alone—more than the annual production of his entire kingdom! that a man shouldn’t marry until he had saved
Some versions of the fable say that the audacious inventor was beheaded up enough money to support five or six children.
once the king realized his mistake. Most controversially, Malthus blamed the
Malthus argued that the human population, if left unchecked, would poor’s poverty on themselves. People weren’t
tend to increase exponentially. This was not purely theoretical; he cited poor because of oppressive employers, or un-
calculations made by Benjamin Franklin showing that the population of fairly low wages or any other social or political
the United States had indeed been doubling every twenty-five years. In reason. The poor were poor because there were
fact, Franklin’s estimate accurately predicted American population growth too many of them, and they were having too
up through 1890. many children. Keep the birth rate level with
Unfortunately for the human race, Malthus claimed that it was not the death rate, Malthus proposed, and poverty
possible for agricultural production to increase geometrically, though he would disappear.
had no data to support this contention. He arbitrarily determined that the From the very beginning, Malthus’ views
best increase anyone could hope for in agriculture was an “arithmetical” were heavily criticized. Karl Marx claimed that
increase. Thus, one unit of production might be able to double to two in the real problem was an exploitative capitalistic
the next year but then could only increase to three, then four, then five. system. Charles Dickens argued that blaming the
In fact, he predicted that per-acre yields would actually diminish in the poverty of the poor on their numbers was hard-
long run because of soil exhaustion. hearted and cruel. And a few people pointed out
If population increased geometrically and food supply could only that plants and animals also had the potential to
increase arithmetically, the gap between demand for food and actual sup- increase exponentially, at a much faster rate than
ply would increase exponentially each year (Figure 2). Obviously, such humans—so why couldn’t food production keep
an increase of population in excess of the food supply was impossible in up with population growth?
reality, since human beings cannot live without food. Thus came into play Moral and social concerns aside, most
what Malthus called the “checks” on population growth. people had discarded Malthus by the end of the
Malthus said that there were two kinds of “checks” on population nineteenth century for the simple reason that
growth. One type, the “positive checks,” would raise the death rate to equal none of his predictions came true. The Industrial
the birth rate and thus keep population stable. Poverty, war, prostitution, Revolution and its concurrent increase in popu-
disease and famine all fell into this category of “positive checks”—all lation was accompanied by an agricultural revo-
very undesirable. lution, with food production actually increasing
The only way to keep the “positive checks” from operating, Malthus faster than population growth. Malthus hadn’t
argued, was for people to voluntarily adopt “preventive checks” and lower foreseen that—so why should he have been right
the birth rate to equal the death rate. He proposed late marriage as the about anything else?

FIGURE 2. When population increases geometrically and food increases arithmetically, as Malthus
proposed, the gap quickly becomes impossibly large. (Graphical representation of the numbers
listed in Malthus, Principle of Population.)

FALL 2020 Wise Traditions 83