_Why Economic Progress perpetuates Itself._--The economic motive which causes progress to perpetuate itself and to bring about more and more progress is the determined resistence to a fall from a social status. The family must not lose caste. It must not sacrifice any of the absolute comforts to which it is accustomed, particularly when so doing entails a degradation. Such is human nature that the unwillingness to give up something to which one is accustomed is a far stronger spur to action than the ambition to get something to which one is not accustomed; and a social rank once attained is not surrendered without a struggle. A tenacious maintenance of status is the motive which figures most prominently in controlling the growth of population and the increase of capital. The rich maintain the status of the family by means of invested wealth, the poor do it by education, and members of the middle class do it by a combination of the two. _Status maintained by Education._--In case of wage earners the need of educating children and the advantages that flow from it overbalance the need of bequeathing to them property; and yet the need of bequeathing property of some kind is a powerful motive also. It is important to enable them to procure the tools of some handicraft, or to secure themselves against dangers from sickness or accident. Moreover, it is not altogether technical education which counts in this way. Culture in itself is a means, not only of direct enjoyment, but of maintaining a social rank. The well-informed person accomplishes directly what a well-to-do person accomplishes indirectly, in that he gets direct pleasures from life which other people cannot get, and he enjoys consideration of others and has influence with them as an uninformed person cannot. The need, therefore, of educating children for the sake of making them good producers and the need of doing it for the purpose of making them good consumers and of enabling them to make the most of what they produce works against too rapid an increase of numbers.