ntal error of the Malthusian theory of population and poverty
is to confound the difficulties 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 question 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
multiplication, such a question might conceivably disturb the equanimity
of mankind. But it need not now. It is only one of many disasters 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,
inevitable. Yet no one concerns himself with it. So should it be with
the danger of the ultimate overcrowding of the globe.

I lay stress upon this problem of the increase of population because, to
my thinking, it is in this connection that the main work and the best
hope of social reform can be found. The children of the race should be
the very blossom of its fondest hopes. Under the present order and with
the present gloomy preconceptions they have been the least of its
collective cares. Yet here--and here more than anywhere--is the point
towards which social effort and social legislation may be directed
immediately and successfully. The moment that we get away from the idea
that the child is a mere appendage of the parent, bound to share good
fortune and ill, wealth and starvation, according to the parent's lot,
the moment we regard the child as itself a member of society--clothed in
social rights--a burden for the moment but an asset for the future--we
turn over a new leaf in the book of human development, we pass a new
milestone on the upward path of progress.

It should be recognized in the coming order of society, that every child
of the nation has the right to be clothed and fed and trained
irrespective of its parents' lot. Our feeble beginnings in the direction
of housing, sanitation, child welfare and education, should be expanded
at whatever cost into something truly national and all embracing. The
ancient grudging selfishness that would not