ugh the percentage yielded by
a given amount invested grows continually smaller.

_The Conditions of Increasing Future Well-being._--The realization of
this resultant of all dynamic forces requires that the rate of growth
of population should be subject to a natural check, that the increase
of capital should not be unduly retarded, that technical improvements
should go on, and that the organization which is effected should be of
the kind which makes for efficiency but not for monopoly. Competition
must be kept alive. In altered ways, indeed, the essential power of it
must forever dominate the industrial system, as it will do if the
state shall do its duty and not otherwise. A dynamic society requires
a dynamic government whose enlarging functions are shaped by economic
conditions.

CHAPTER XIX

THE LAW OF POPULATION

Since the optimistic conclusion reached in the preceding chapter is
contingent on an increase of wealth which is not neutralized by an
increase of population, it remains to be seen whether the population
tends to grow at a rate that gives reason to fear such a neutralizing.
Does progress in method and in wealth tend to stimulate that enlarging
of the number of working people which, in so far as they are
concerned, would bring progress to an end? Is the dynamic movement
self-retarding and will it necessarily halt? The answer to this
question depends, in part, on the law of population.

_The Malthusian Law._--We need first to know whether the growth of
population is subject to a law, and if so, whether this law insures
the maintenance of the present rate of increase or a retarding of it.
The law of population formulated by Malthus at the beginning of the
last century is the single extensive and important contribution to
economic dynamics made by the early economists. It was based more upon
statistics and less on _a priori_ reasoning than were most of the
classical doctrines. Even now the statement as made by Malthus
requires in form no extensive supplementing, and yet the change which
is required is sufficient to reverse completely the original
conclusion of the teaching. Malthusianism constituted the especially
"dismal" element in the early political economy, and yet, as stated by
its author, it revealed the possibility of a comfortable future for
the working class. One might look with cheerfulness on every
threatening influence it described if he could be sure that the
so-called "standard of