_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 rate tend steadily upward, and nothing can stop the rise but perversion of the system. Monopoly may do it, or bad government, or extensive wars, or anarchy growing out of a struggle of classes; but every one of these things, not excepting monopoly, would naturally be temporary, and even in spite of them, the upward trend in the earning power of labor should assert itself. Instead of being hopelessly sunk by a weight that it cannot throw off, the labor of the future bids fair to be buoyed up by an influence that is irrepressible.