2.—Production of Over-Population.

The conditions that caused Malthus to utter his cry of warning and to set forth his brutal doctrines,—they were addressed to the working class, which meant adding insult to injury,—have since expanded with every decade. They have expanded, not only in the native land of Malthus, Great Britain, but in all countries of the world that have a capitalistic method of production, which implies robbery of the soil and subjugation of the masses by means of the machine and the factory. This system,—as has been shown,—consists in the separation of the worker from his means of production, be it the land or tools, and their transfer into the hands of the capitalists. This system constantly creates new branches of industry, developes and concentrates them, but it also constantly turns out into the street new masses of the population and makes them “superfluous.” In many cases it also promotes, as in ancient Rome, the latifundia ownership with all its results. Ireland is the classic land of Europe that has been afflicted worst of all by the English system of robbery. As early as 1874 it already had an area of meadow and pasture land of 12,378,244 acres, but only 3,373,508 acres of cultivated fields, and every year the population decreases, and hand in hand with this decrease proceeds the further conversion of cultivated land into meadows and pastures for sheep and cattle and into hunting grounds for the landlords.[277] (In 1908 there were 14,805,046 acres of meadow and pasture land and only 2,238,906 acres of cultivated land.) Moreover, the agricultural land of Ireland is, to a great extent, rented by small tenants, who are unable to improve upon the cultivation of the soil. So Ireland presents the aspect of a country that is retrogressing from an agricultural to a pastoral country. At the same time the population that numbered 8 millions at the beginning of the nineteenth century, has declined to 4.3 millions, and a few million still are “superfluous.” This clearly explains the rebellion of the Irish against England. Scotland presents a similar picture in regard to the ownership and cultivation of its land.[278] The same thing is re-enacted in Hungary, which entered upon modern lines of development only a few decades ago. Few European countries possess such a wealth of fertile soil as Hungary, and yet it is burdened with debts and the population is pauperized and is at the mercy of usurers. Despair drives the people to wholesale emigration. The land is concentrated in the hands of modern magnates of capital, who apply their rapacious system to the forests and the fields. It is likely that in a time not far distant, Hungary will cease to be a grain exporting country. Italy presents a similar picture. In Italy, as in Germany, political unity of the nation has favored capitalistic development, but the industrious peasants of Piedmont and Lombardy, of Tuscany, Romagna and Sicily, are constantly growing poorer and are being utterly ruined. Already swamps and marshes begin to reappear, where, up to a few decades ago, were the well cultivated fields and gardens of small peasants. Before the very gates of Rome, in the district known as the Campagna, are hundreds of thousands of hectares of land that are left uncultivated, in a vicinity that was one of the most flourishing of ancient Rome. Everywhere are swamps exhaling their poisonous miasms. If the necessary means were employed to drain the swamps and to introduce a proper system of irrigation, the population of Rome would obtain a rich source of nourishment and enjoyment. But Italy suffers from the ambition to become a great power; so it ruins the population by bad administration, military and naval armament and colonization, and has no means left for true tasks of civilization, such as the cultivation of the Campagna. In southern Italy and Sicily conditions are similar as in the Campagna. Sicily, at one time the granary of Rome, is ever growing poorer. In all Europe there is no poorer, more exploited and worse treated population. The sons of the most beautiful country of Europe, flood half of Europe and America, and because their needs are few they serve to lower wages. They emigrate in masses, because they do not wish to starve on their native soil, which they no longer own. Malaria, that awful fever, has spread to such an extent thruout Italy, that in 1882 the government became alarmed and instituted an investigation. This investigation revealed that of the 96 provinces of the country, 32 were already severely afflicted, 32 others were infected and only 5 remained free from the disease. Formerly known in the country only, the disease was carried into the cities, where the congested proletarian population, increased by the rural proletariat, formed the central seat of the infection.