living" on which everything depends would rise.
The difficulty lay in the fact that the teaching afforded no evidence
that it would thus rise. The common impression of readers was that it
was destined to remain stationary and that too at a low level. The
workmen of Malthus's time were not accustomed to getting much more
than the barest subsistence, and not many economists expected that
they would get much more, even though the world generally should make
gains.

_The Popular Inference from the Malthusian Law._--If we state the
conclusion which most people drew from the Malthusian law in its
simple and dismal form it is this: Whenever wages rise, population
quickly increases, and this increase carries the rate of pay down to
its former level. The earnings of labor depend upon the number of
laborers; a lessening of the number of workers raises their earnings
and an increase depresses them; and therefore, if every rise in pay
brings about a quick increase of population, labor can never hold its
gains; every rise is the cause of a subsequent fall.

_Malthus's Qualification of his Statement._--As we have said, Malthus
so qualified his statement that he did not positively assert that this
would describe the experience of the future; the fall in pay that
should follow the increase of numbers might not always be as great as
the original rise, and when a later rise should occur the fall
following it might be less than this second rise. In some way workers
might insist upon a higher standard of living after each one of their
periodical gains.

_Why this Qualification is not Sufficient._--The mere fact that the
standard of living may conceivably rise does not do much to render the
outlook cheerful, unless we can find some good ground for supposing
that it will rise and that economic causes will make it do so. We
should not depend too much on the slow changes that education may
effect, or base our law on anything that presupposes an improvement in
human nature. We need to see that in a purely economic way progress
makes further progress easier and surer and that the gains of the
working class are not self-annihilating but self-perpetuating. We may
venture the assertion that such is the fact: that when workers make a
gain in their rate of pay they are, as a rule, likely to make a
further gain rather than loss. While there must be minor fluctuations
of wages, the natural and probable effect of economic law is to make
the general