How do Gin Lane and Migrant Mother (p. 568) differ in their portrayals of poverty?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
In a few paragraphs, state, in your own words, the argument that Hogarth makes visually in Gin Lane.
Write an essay that proposes contemporary images to replace Gin Lane. What might symbolize poverty and urban decay in society today?
Select one of the characters depicted in Gin Lane and write a brief story of that person's life. You may use either the first- or the third-person point of view.
Gin Lane can be read as both a critique of the poor for drinking gin and a critique of the wealthy for ignoring the poor. Argue for one of these interpretations over the other. Support your argument with a close analysis of the image.
Choose a contemporary film, painting, photograph, or literary work that depicts poverty and urban decay. Compare this contemporary source with Gin Lane. How do the concerns, elements, and treatments differ? How are they similar?
thomas malthus
from An Essay on the Principle of Population
[1798]
BEFORE THE ENGLISH ECONOMIST Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) published "An Essay on the Principle of Population," most British economists and politicians believed that population increases were desirable, in that they supplied extra workers on farms and in factories and led to elaborate family systems, which acted as security networks for the old and the unemployed. After the publication of this essay, Chapter 2 of which is excerpted here, the concept of "overpopulation" entered the general European consciousness. Within a generation, population increases began to be seen as threats to, rather than harbingers of, prosperity.
Malthus was an unlikely messenger for the bad news that he bore. He belonged to a wealthy, intellectual family and attended Cambridge University, where he studied for the ministry; upon graduation, he became an Anglican pastor. Deeply religious, he vehemently opposed population-control measures such as abortion and contraception, which he viewed as sinful.
For Malthus, the problem of population could be reduced to a simple, abstract mathematical proposition: that human population, when left unchecked, increases geometrically, while the ability of a given society to produce food increases arithmetically. In practical terms, this means that every society in which the population increases will eventually produce more people than it can feed, thereby condemning a certain percentage of the population to live beneath the subsistence level. When this occurs, poverty becomes a check on population, as people are unable to support more children. This natural check disappears when the food supply catches up to the population level, and the cycle of growth and check begins anew. Malthus believed that while population and food production could increase indefinitely, they could not increase indefinitely at the same rate. Population will always win the race; therefore, some percentage of the human race will always live in poverty.
Most people in the early nineteenth century saw Malthus as a pessimist, and many condemned him for the matter-of-fact way that he dealt with these potentially emotional issues; legislators, however, paid attention to his ideas. In the 1830s, Malthu- sian principles were invoked by the British Parliament when it dramatically decreased government aid to the poor. Politicians argued that government aid allowed those who could not support children to have them anyway and increase the population, and therefore poverty, even further. Charles Dickens created the character Ebenezer Scrooge—who famously tells a solicitor that those who would rather die than go to a workhouse "had better do it, and decrease the surplus population"—as a satire of precisely this view. Malthus's writings also helped prompt the development of the
British Census, which began in 1801, and they proved a major influence on Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. As population increases in the twentieth (and so far, the twenty-first) century have confirmed many of Malthus's assertions, his writings continue to influence public policy and social theory.
Malthus supports his claim with statistical data and other facts. All of the facts that he gives, though, were well known to his contemporaries. It is his ability to analyze these facts deductively and produce a seemingly inescapable conclusion that made Malthus's essay so compelling.
I said that population, when unchecked, increased in a geometrical ratio, and subsistence for man in an arithmetical ratio.[269]
Let us examine whether this position be just. I think it will be allowed, that no state has hitherto existed (at least that we have any account of) where the manners were so pure and simple, and the means of subsistence so abundant, that no check whatever has existed to early marriages, among the lower classes, from a fear of not providing well for their families, or among the higher classes, from a fear of lowering their condition in life. Consequently in no state that we have yet known has the power of population been left to exert itself with perfect freedom.
Whether the law of marriage be instituted or not, the dictate of nature and virtue seems to be an early attachment to one woman. Supposing a liberty of changing in the case of an unfortunate choice, this liberty would not affect population till it arose to a height greatly vicious;2 and we are now supposing the existence of a society where vice is scarcely known.
In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where pure and simple manners prevailed, and where the means of subsistence were so abundant that no part of the society could have any fears about providing amply for a family, the power of population being left to exert itself unchecked, the increase of the human species would evidently be much greater than any increase that has been hitherto known.
In the United States of America, where the means of subsistence have been more 5 ample, the manners of the people more pure, and consequently the checks to early marriages fewer, than in any of the modern states of Europe, the population has been found to double itself in twenty-five years.
This ratio of increase, though short of the utmost power of population, yet as the result of actual experience, we will take as our rule, and say, that population,
2. Vicious: For Malthus, "vicious" means simply "full of vice," rather than "extremely cruel." A conservative Anglican minister, Malthus believed that adultery, premarital sex, abortion, and contraception were sinful and, therefore, "vicious."
when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years or increases in a geometrical ratio.
Let us now take any spot of earth, this Island[270] for instance, and see in what ratio the subsistence it affords can be supposed to increase. We will begin with it under its present state of cultivation.
If I allow that by the best possible policy, by breaking up more land and by great encouragements to agriculture, the produce of this Island may be doubled in the first twenty-five years, I think it will be allowing as much as any person can well demand.
In the next twenty-five years, it is impossible to suppose that the produce could be quadrupled. It would be contrary to all our knowledge of the qualities of land. The very utmost that we can conceive, is, that the increase in the second twenty- five years might equal the present produce. Let us then take this for our rule, though certainly far beyond the truth, and allow that, by great exertion, the whole produce of the Island might be increased every twenty-five years, by a quantity of subsistence equal to what it at present produces. The most enthusiastic speculator cannot suppose a greater increase than this. In a few centuries it would make every acre of land in the Island like a garden.