check tends to become stronger, and population to slacken its rate of increase, relatively to subsistence; and that it is an error to maintain that population, in any improving community, tends to increase faster than, or even so fast as, subsistence.171 The word tendency172 is here used in a totally different sense from that of the writers who affirmed the proposition; but waiving the verbal question, is it not allowed, on both sides, that in old countries population presses too closely upon the means of subsistence?
Chapter III. Of Remedies For Low Wages.
§ 1. A Legal or Customary Minimum of Wages, with a Guarantee of Employment.
The simplest expedient which can be imagined for keeping the wages of labor up to the desirable point would be to fix them by law; and this is virtually the object aimed at in a variety of plans which have at different times been, or still are, current, for remodeling the relation between laborers and employers. No one, probably, ever suggested that wages should be absolutely fixed, since the interests of all concerned often require that