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The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife by Edward Carpenter
page 108 of 164 (65%)
and I suppose the wildest anti-Teuton could hardly hope that _more_ than
a million Germans will be actually killed in the present conflict--less
than 1-1/2 per cent.--a fraction which would probably soon be
compensated by the increased uxoriousness of the returning troops.

No, War is no solution for the over-population question. If that
question is a difficulty, other means must be employed. We ask
therefore: (1) Is it a serious difficulty? (2) If so, what is the
remedy?

That over-population is in certain localities a serious difficulty few
would deny. China, with her four hundred millions, is probably
over-populated; that is, with her present resources in production the
population presses against the margin of subsistence and can only just
maintain itself. There is evidence to show that in the past the natives
of some of the Pacific islands, isolated in the great ocean and unable
to migrate to other lands, have suffered from the same trouble. Britain
is often said to be over-populated; but here quite other considerations
come in. Though it might be pleasant for many reasons to have more land
at our immediate command, we cannot fairly say that our population
presses against the margin of subsistence, for the simple reason that
with our immense powers of industrial production and the enormous wealth
here yearly obtained the total, if evenly distributed (anything like as
well, for instance, as in China), would yield to every man, woman, and
child in the United Kingdom an ample affluence.[26] The _appearance_
here of over-population arises from the fact that while the wage-earners
actually produce this mass of wealth, two-thirds of it are taken by the
employers and employing classes. Great portions, therefore, of the
actual producers or producing classes _are_ on the margin of
subsistence, while the rest of the wealth of the country is absorbed by
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