There can be no doubt that the more intelligent classes of
skilled labourers have already profited by this consideration, and as
education and intelligence are more widely diffused, we may expect these
prudential checks on "over-population" will operate with increased
effect among the whole body of workers. But precisely because these
checks are moral and reasonable, they must be of very slow acceptance
among that class whose industrial condition forms a stubborn barrier to
moral and intellectual progress. Those who would gain most by the
practice of prudential checks, are least capable of practising them. The
ordinary "labourer" earns full wages as soon as he attains manhood's
strength; he is as able to support a wife and family at twenty as he
will ever be; indeed he is more so, for while he is young his work is
more regular, and less liable to interruption by ill-health. The
reflection that an early marriage means the probability of a larger
family, and that a large family helps to keep wages low, cannot at
present be expected to make a deep impression upon the young unskilled
labourer. The value of restraint after marriage could probably be
inculcated with more effect, because it would appeal more intelligibly
to the immediate interest of the labourer. But it is to the growing
education and intelligence of women, rather than to that of men, that we
must look for a recognition of the importance of restraint on early
marriages and large families.
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