In this way, the working classes hold in their own hands one of the principal elements which determine the rate of wages; and it is wrong to speak of an "iron law" which, under the control of supply and demand, always reduces the average wages down to the means of subsistence.[163-1] For the moment, indeed, not only individual workmen, but the whole working class is master of the supply of its commodity only to a very small extent; since, as a rule, the care for existence compels it to carry, and that without interruption, its whole labor-power to market. But it is true that the future supply depends on its own will; since, with an increase or decrease in the size of the families of workingmen, that supply increases or diminishes. If, therefore, by a favorable combination of circumstances, wages have risen above the height of urgent necessity, there are two ways open to the working class to take advantage of that condition of things. The workman either raises his standard of living, which means not only that his necessary wants are better satisfied, his decencies increased and refined, but also and chiefly, that the intellectual want of a good prospect in the future, which so particularly distinguishes the honorable artisan from the proletarian is taken into consideration. And it is just here that a permanent workingmen's union, which should govern the whole class, might exert the greatest influence. Their improved economic state can be maintained only on condition that the laboring class shall create families no larger than they hope to be able to support consistently with their new wants.[163-2] Or, the laboring class continues to live on as before, from hand to mouth, and employ their increased resources to gratify their sexual appetite earlier and longer than before, thus soon leading to an increase of population. The English took the former course in the second quarter of the last century, when English national economy received a powerful impetus, and the large demand for labor rapidly enhanced the rate of wages. The Scotch did in like manner a generation later. The second alternative was taken by the Irish, when the simultaneous spread of the cultivation of the potato[163-3] and the union with England, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, gave an extraordinary extension to their resources of food. While the population of Great Britain, between 1720 and 1821, did little more than double, the population of Ireland increased from 2,000,000 to nearly 7,000,000 between 1731 and 1821. No wonder, therefore, that the average wages of labor was twenty to twenty-four pence per day in the former, and in the latter only five pence. (_MCCulloch._)[163-4]