Chart IV: Westward Movement of Center of Population. This, in effect, is the well-known Malthusian doctrine. The thorough reader will also consult the original “Essay” of Malthus. Mr. Bowen(119) and other writers oppose it, saying it has “no relation to the times in which we live, or to any which are near at hand.” He thinks the productive power of the whole world prevents the necessity of considering the pressure of population upon subsistence as an actuality now or in the future. This, however, does not deny the existence of Malthus’s principles, but opposes them only on the methods of their action. Mr. Rickards(120) holds that man’s food—as, e.g., wheat—has the power to increase geometrically faster than man; but he omits to consider that for the growth of this food land is demanded; that land is not capable of such geometrical increase; and that without it the food can not be grown. Of course, any extension of the land area, as happened when England abolished the corn laws and drew her food from our prairies, removes the previous pressure of population on subsistence. No believer in the Malthusian doctrine is so absurd as to hold that the growth of population actually exceeds subsistence, but that there is a “constant _tendency_ in all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it,” no one can possibly doubt. This is not inconsistent with the fact that subsistence has at any time increased faster than population. It is as if a block of wood on the floor were acted on by two opposing forces, one tending to move it forward, one backward: if it moves backward, that does not prove the absence of any force working to move it forward, but only that the other force is the stronger of the two, and that the final motion is the resultant of the two forces. It is only near-sighted generalization to say that since the block moves forward, there is therefore no opposing force to its advance.(121) Mr. Doubleday maintains that, as people become better fed, they become unprolific. Mr. Mill’s answer, referring to the large families of the English peerage, is unfortunate.(122) In Sweden the increase of the peasantry is six times that of the middle classes, and fourteen times that of the nobility. The diminishing fertility of New England families gives a truer explanation, when it is seen that with the progress in material wealth later marriages are the rule. When New-Englanders emigrate to the Western States, where labor is in demand and where it is less burdensome to have large families, there is no question as to their fertility.(123)