To every proposal for a general increase of incomes it is objected that its benefits will be swallowed up by married people having too many children. It is also alleged that existing poverty is due to the world being too small to produce food enough for all the people in it. The real cause is that there are too many people living as parasites on their fellows instead of by production. Illustrations from domestic service. Increase of population, leading to division of labor, enriches the community instead of impoverishing it. Limits to this law of increasing return. Possibilities of human multiplication. The question is not one of food alone but of space. The speed at which population increases has to be considered as well as the ultimate desirability of the increase. Too many unproductive children may starve a family though the country as a whole may have unlimited employment for adults; therefore the cost of bearing and bringing up children should be borne by the State. Checks to population. War, pestilence, and poverty. Contraception, or artificial birth control. Exposure of female infants. Mahomet’s view of it. Capitalism, by producing parasitism on an enormous scale has produced premature overpopulation, kept under by excessive infant mortality and the diseases of poverty and luxury. Equality of income can get rid of this, and place population on its natural basis. University teaching on the subject, which alleges that a natural law of diminishing return is now in operation, is merely one of the corruptions of political science by Capitalism. Possibility of local overpopulation in an underpopulated world. Examples. 83 26 THE DIAGNOSTIC OF SOCIALISM Socialism entirely independent of Socialists or their writings and utterances. “Joining the Socialists”. Many professed Socialists are so because they believe in a delusion called Equality of Opportunity, and would recant if they discovered that Socialism means unconditional equality of income for everyone without regard to character, talent, age, or sex. This is the true diagnostic of Socialism, and the touchstone by which Socialists may be distinguished from Philanthropists, Liberals, Radicals, Anarchists, Nationalists, Syndicalists, and malcontents of all sorts. Henri Quatre’s prescription of “a chicken in the pot for everybody” is amiable and kindly; but it is not Socialism. 92 27 PERSONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS