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During my adult life, the main arguments about global population typically revolved around the topic of whether growth in population would overwhelm natural resources and lead to mass starvation and environmental collapse, or whether growth in population would be accompanied by technological progress in a way that would lead to a generally rising standard of living. Although the dire predictions of overpopulation from the 1960s and 1970s have not materialized on schedule, those concerned about overpopulation could always argue that even if the doomsday predictions were premature or delayed, they were nonetheless on their way. 

However, both sides of this controversy started from an assumption that population levels would continue to rise. In the 21st century, this assumption may be proven false. 

US birthrates have been in decline for some years. William Frey recently reported some historical figures on US population growth from the Census Bureau. Here\’s population growth by decade. Notice that the rate of population growth in the 2010s is the lowest of any decade in US history.

Here\’s US population growth annually since 1900. It looks as if 2020 will be the lowest population growth in that time. 

The US pattern is reasonably representative of the world as a whole: that is, population growths is faster in some countries and slower in others. In Japan, Russia, and Spain, for example, total population has already peaked in the last few years and how has started to decline. For an look at projected global population growth, a group of 24 demographers published a \”Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study (The Lancet, October 17, 2020, pp. 1285-1306).  Here\’s a flavor of their results (for readability, I\’ve deleted footnotes and parenthetical references to statistical confidence intervals):

Our reference scenario, based on robust statistical models of fertility, mortality, and migration, suggested that global population will peak in 2064 at 9·73 billion and then decline to 8·79 billion (6·in 2100 … 

Responding to sustained low fertility is likely to become an overriding policy concern in many nations given the economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical consequences of low birth rates. A decline in total world population in the latter half of the century is potentially good news for the global environment. Fewer people on the planet in every year between now and 2100 than the number forecasted by the UNPD would mean less carbon emission, less stress on global food systems, and less likelihood of transgressing planetary boundaries. …

Although good for the environment, population decline and associated shifts in age structure in many nations might have other profound and often negative consequences. In 23 countries, including Japan, Thailand, Spain, and Ukraine, populations are expected to decline by 50% or more. Another 34 countries will probably decline by 25–50%, including China, with a forecasted 48·0% decline.

For the United States, their baseline scenario suggests that population will rise from 324 million in 2017 to a peak of 363 million by 2064, before declining to 335 million in 2100. 

When confronted with predictions that are decades in the future, it\’s of course important to note that they rely on underlying estimates about fertility and longevity, which in turn rely on estimates about factors like education levels and use of contraception. Perhaps there will be a new global baby boom that will surprise the demographers. But it\’s also important to note that much of the future population has already been born. For example, those who will be 40 or older by the year 2061 are already born right now. A sizeable share of those born in the last few years will live to see 2100. Thus, it\’s worth some thought as to where we seem to be headed. 

One obvious shift is that countries around the world will be much more focused on the elderly, because the elderly will be a much large share of the population. The demographers writing in the Lancet note: 

In 2100, if labour force participation by age and sex does not change, the ratio of the non-working adult population to the working population might reach 1·16 globally, up from 0·80 in 2017. This ratio implies that, at the global level, each person working would have to support, through taxation and intra-family income transfers, 1·16 non-working individuals aged 15 years or older (the working age population is defined by the International Labour Organization as those aged 15 years or older).41 Moreover, the number of countries with a dependency ratio higher than 1 is expected to increase from 59 in 2017 to 145 in 2100. Taxation rates required to sustain national health insurance and social security programmes might be so large as to further reduce economic growth and investment. Insecurity from the risk that these programmes could fail might generate considerable political stress in societies with this demographic contraction …

When thinking of these challenges, one\’s mind immediately turns to financing of government programs that support the elderly, like Social Security and Medicare in the United States, but that\’s only the beginning. For example, the US and other countries are going to face an enormous challenge in financing and providing long-term care options for the elderly. There are also likely to be hard-to-predict effects on the rate of economic growth: 

Having fewer individuals between the ages of 15 and 64 years might, however, have larger effects on GDP growth than what we have captured here. For example, having fewer individuals in these age groups might reduce innovation in economies, and fewer workers in general might reduce domestic markets for consumer goods, because many retirees are less likely to purchase consumer durables than middle aged and young adults. Developments such as advancements in robotics could substantially change the trajectory of GDP per working-age adult, reducing the effect of the age structure on GDP growth. However, these effects are very difficult to model at this stage. Furthermore, the impact of robotics might have complex effects on countries for which the trajectory for economic growth might be through low-cost labour supply.

These population shifts will alter perspectives on the magnitude of of countries around the world, too. For example, China is the now the most populous country in the world with a population of 1,412 million in 2017. However, China took dramatic steps to reduce fertility back in the early 1970s, later culminating in the \”one-child\” policy. Thus, the forecast is for China\’s population to peak in 2024 at 1,431 billion, and then fall by nearly half to 731 million in 2100. 

The decline in fertility for India started later. India\’s population is 1,380 million in 2017, but it will overtake China in the next few years, before peaking in these projections at 1,605 million in 2048–and then falling back to 1,093 million by 2100. 

Meanwhile, the fertility decline has barely started in Nigeria. Thus, Nigeria\’s current population of 206 million is forecast to rise continually through the rest of this century, and by 2100 the 790 million Nigerians would outnumber the population of China. 

I do not know if the problems of flat and falling population will ultimately be bigger or smaller than the problems of continually rising population, but the problems will be different ones, and it\’s none too early to start thinking about them. 

The \”curse of knowledge\” refers to a bias documented in various psychology and behavioral economics studies. Once you know something, it can be hard to  remember what it was like before you knew it, or to put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn\’t know it. It\’s a barrier to communication.

The context of planning provides many examples in which the distribution of outcomes in past experience is ignored. Scientists and writers, for example, are notoriously prone to underestimate the time required to complete a project, even when they have considerable experience of past failures to live up to planned schedules. A similar bias has been documented in engineers\’ estimates of the completion time for repairs of power stations (Kidd, 1970). Although this \’planning fallacy\’ is sometimes attributable to motivational factors such as wishful thinking, it frequently occurs even when underestimation of duration or cost is actually penalized. 

Roger Buehler, a researcher in this area, put it this way in a short explainer piece in 2019 (Character and Context blog of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, \”The Planning Fallacy: An Inside View,\” May 30, 2019). 

The planning fallacy refers to an optimistic prediction bias in which people underestimate the time it will take them to complete a task, despite knowing that similar tasks have typically taken them much longer in the past. An intriguing aspect of the planning fallacy is that people simultaneously hold optimistic expectations concerning a specific future task along with more realistic beliefs concerning how long it has taken them to get things done in the past. When it comes to plans and predictions, people can know the past well and yet be doomed to repeat it. …

 For example, university students typically acknowledge that they have typically finished past assignments very close to their deadlines, yet they insist that they will finish the next project well ahead of the new deadline. Then, predictably, they go on to finish the next project (as usual) right at the deadline.

The planning fallacy is remarkably robust. It appears for small tasks like daily household chores (such as cleaning), as well as for large scale infrastructure projects such as building subways. It generalizes across individual differences in personality and culture, and it applies both to group and individual projects. For example, conscientious people often get things done well before procrastinators, but both groups typically underestimate how long it will take them to get things done.

Thomas Sowell offers some autobiography and vivid examples in his 2001 essay, \”Some Thoughts about Writing.\” He offers both a case for the importance of editing, and also some vivid frustrations about overly officious editors. He writes near the start: \”People who want to be complimentary sometimes tell me that I have a `gift\’ for writing. But it is hard for me to regard as a gift something that I worked at for more than a decade—unsuccessfully—before finally breaking into print. Nor was this a case of unrecognized talent. It was a case of quickly recognized incompetence.\”

Here\’s Sowell on his own experience with editing academic writers (footnote omitted): 

To say that my relationship with editors has not always been a happy one would be to completely understate the situation. To me, the fact that I have never killed an editor is proof that the death penalty deters. However, since nowadays we are all supposed to confess to shameful episodes in our past, I must admit that I was once an editor. Only once. And I didn’t inhale.

It was the most painful kind of editing—editing academic writers. Too many academics write as if plain English is beneath their dignity and some seem to regard logic as an unconstitutional infringement of their freedom of speech. Others love to document the obvious and arbitrarily assume what is crucial. A typical work of this genre might read something like this:

As surely as the world is round (Columbus, 1492), and as surely as what goes up must come down (Newton, 1687), when Ronald Reagan was elected President (Cronkite, 1980) and then re-elected (Rather, 1984), it signaled a change in the political climate (Brinkley, 1980–88). Since then, we have seen exploitation (Marx, 1867) and sexism (Steinem, 1981) on the rise.

But no attempt to parody academic writing can match an actual sample from a scholarly journal:

Transnationalization further fragmented the industrial sector. If the dominant position of immigrant enterprises is held to have reduced the political impact of an expanding industrial entrepreneurate, the arrival of multinational corporations possibly neutralized the consolidation of sectoral homogeneity anticipated in the demise of the artisanate.

You can’t make that up.

If academic writings were difficult because of the deep thoughts involved, that might be understandable, even if frustrating. Seldom is that the case, however. Jaw-breaking words often cover up very sloppy thinking. It is not uncommon in academic writings to read about people “living below subsistence.” The academic writers I edited seemed to have great difficulty accepting my novel and controversial literary doctrine that the whole purpose of writing is so that people can read the stuff later on and know what you are trying to say. These professors seemed to feel that, once they put their priceless contributions to mankind on paper, a sacred obligation fell upon the reader to do his damndest to try to figure out what they could possibly mean.  

I\’ve worked 34 years as an academic editor, so I enjoyed reading that passage. But I would also say that while the problems of academic writing are well-described here, my own experience is that authors are quite willing, and even grateful, to work with my editing in producing an improved draft. 

Sowell also conveys the horror of the kind of copy-editing that makes everything taste the same, or worse. He writes: 

But these are just two kinds of absurdities from the rich spectrum of the absurdities of copy-editors. Where Shakespeare wrote, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” a copy-editor would substitute: “The issue is one of existence versus non-existence.” Where Lincoln said, “Fourscore and seven years ago,” a copy-editor would change that to: “It has been 87 years since . . .” Where the Bible said, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” a copy-editor would run a blue pencil through the first three words as redundant.

Pedestrian uniformity and shriveled brevity are the holy grail of copy-editors, the bureaucrats of the publishing industry. Like other bureaucrats, copy-editors tend to have a dedication to rules and a tin ear for anything beyond the rules. Seldom is there even the pretense that their editorial tinkerings are going to make the writing easier for the reader to follow, more graceful, more enjoyable, or more memorable.

Self-justifying rules and job-justifying busy work are the only visible goals of copy-editors.

In my experience, relatively few of those who pretend to adjudicate between capitalism and socialism are interested weighing the evidence: instead, most of these discussions quickly turn into denunciations of the flaws of capitalism, apparently with the assumption that any un-capitalism would inevitably be an improvement. Joseph Schumpeter, in his classic 1943 book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy,  coined a memorable phrase to describe this prejudgement, when he wrote: 

\”[C]apitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets. They are going to pass it, whatever the defense they may hear …\”

It\’s part of a passage that includes another of my favorite acerbic Schumpeter comments: \”\”[P]ractically every nonsense that has ever been said about capitalism has been championed by some professed economist.\”

When I was being socialized into economics, it was common to for professors to say something like\” Economics cannot carry out experiments like the natural sciences, and thus we must turn to other standards of evidence.\” But the last couple of decades have shown that economists can indeed carry out experiments in the form of randomized control trials: that is, an experiment in which one group of participants selected at random gets a \”treatment\” of some kind and the other \”control\” group does not. 

Indeed, the 2019 Nobel prize economics was awarded “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty” to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer. Going back a little farther, Vernon L. Smith received a share of the 2002 Nobel Prize \”for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms.\” 

But as with all seismic shifts in what one group of economists do, some other economists push back. A collection of essays by prominent economists edited by Florent Bédécarrats, Isabelle Guérin, and François Roubaud, Randomized Control Trials in the Field of Development: A Critical Perspective, has just been published by Oxford University Press. Broadly speaking, the concerns are that the evidence from such trials can often be less compelling than their advocates claim, and that such trials may in some cases be more productive as a format for producing publishable economic research than for gaining a deeper understanding of the challenges of economic development. Here, I\’ll give a quick sample of some main points made in the first few essays, while recommending the book itself for additional discussion.  

The first essay, by Angus Deaton, is entitled \”Randomization in the Tropics Revisited: A Theme and Eleven Variations.\” A sizeable portion of Deaton\’s argument focuses on treating randomized control trials as just another form of empirical study, with no presumption that it should be better or worse.  For example, Deaton writes (I draw here on the version of the essay published as NBER Working Paper No. 27600, issued in July 2020, footnotes omitted):

Yet some of the development RCTs seem to pose challenges to the most basic rules. How is informed consent handled when people do not even know they are part of an experiment? Is it OK to run experiments that might change the results of an election? Beneficence is one of the basic requirements of experimentation on human subjects. But beneficence for whom? Foreign experimenters or even local government officials are often poor judges of what people want. Thinking you know what is good for other people is not an appropriate basis for beneficence.  …

My main concern is broader. Even in the US, nearly all RCTs on the welfare system are RCTs done by better-heeled, better-educated and paler people on lower income, less-educated and darker people. My reading of the literature is that a large majority of American experiments were not done in the interests of the poor people who were their subjects, but in the interests of rich people (or at least taxpayers or their representatives) who had accepted, sometimes reluctantly, an obligation to prevent the worst of poverty, and wanted to minimize the cost of doing so. That is bad enough, but at least the domestic poor get to vote, and are part of the society in which taxpayers live and welfare operates, so that there is a feedback from them to their benefactors. Not so in economic development, where those being aided have no influence over the donors. Some of the RCTs done by western economists on extremely poor people in India, and that were vetted by American institutional review boards, appear unethical, and likely could not have been done on American subjects. It is particularly worrying if the research addresses questions in economics that appear to have no potential benefit for the subjects. Using poor people to build a professional CV should not be accepted. Institutional review boards in the US have special protection for prisoners, whose  autonomy is compromised; there appears to be no similar protection for some of the poorest people in the world. There is an uncomfortable parallel here with the debates about pharmaceutical countries testing drugs in Africa. …

 Working to benefit the citizens of other countries is fraught with difficulties. In countries ruled by regimes that do not care about the welfare of their citizens—extractive regimes that see their citizens as source of plunder—the regime, if it has complete control, will necessarily be the beneficiary of aid from abroad. … The RCT is in itself a neutral statistical tool but as Dean Spears notes60, “RCTs provide a ready and high-status language” that allows “mutual legitimization among funders, researchers, and governments.” When the RCT methodology is used as a tool for “finding out what works,” in a way that does not include freedom in its definition of what works, then it risks supporting oppression. 

There\’s a sort of parlor game that the economically-minded sometimes play around the Christmas holiday, related to A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. Was Dickens writing his story as an attack on economics, capitalism, and selfishness? After all, his depiction of Ebenezer Scrooge, along with his use of phrases like \”decrease the surplus population\” and the sarcastic use of \”a good man of business\” would suggest as much, and a classic example of such an interpretation is here. Or was Dickens just telling a good story with distinct characters? After all, Scrooge is portrayed as an outlier in the business community. The warm portrayal of Mr. Fezziwig certainly opens the possibility that one can be a successful man of business as well as a good employer and a decent human being. And if Scrooge hadn\’t saved money, would he have been able to save Tiny Tim?

The article does not seem especially well-known today, but it is the source of a couple of the most common quotations from Charles Dickens about \”political economy,\” as the study of economics was usually called at the time. Early in the piece, Dickens wrote: \”Political Economy was a great and useful science in its own way and its own place; but … I did not transplant my definition of it from the Common Prayer Book, and make it a great king above all gods.\” Later in the article, Dickens wrote: \”[P]olitical economy is a mere skeleton unless it has a little human covering and filling out, a little human bloom upon it, and a little human warmth in it.\”

But more broadly, the article is of interest because Dickens, telling the story in the first person, takes the position that in thinking about a strike taking place in the town of Preston, one need not take the side either of management or labor. Instead, Dickens writes, one may \”be a friend to both,\” and feel that the strike is \”to be deplored on all accounts.\” Of course, the problem with a middle-of-the-road position is that you can end up being hit by ideological traffic going in both directions. But the ability of Dickens to sympathize with people in a wide range of positions is surely part what gives his novels and his world-view such lasting power. The article goes into a fair amount of detail, and can be read on-line, so I will content myself here with a substantial excerpt.

Here\’s a portion of the 1854 essay by Dickens:

\”ON STRIKE\”

Travelling down to Preston a week from this date, I chanced to sit opposite to a very acute, very determined, very emphatic personage, with a stout railway rug so drawn over his chest that he looked as if he were sitting up in bed with his great coat, hat, and gloves on, severely contemplating your humble servant from behind a large blue and grey checked counterpane. In calling him emphatic, I do
not mean that he was warm; he was coldly and bitingly emphatic as a frosty wind is.

\”You are going through to Preston, sir?\” says he, as soon as we were clear of the
CharPrimrose Hill tunnel.

The receipt of this question was like the receipt of a jerk of the nose; he was so short and sharp.

\”Yes.\”

\”This Preston strike is a nice piece of business!\” said the gentleman. \”A pretty piece of business!\”

\”It is very much to be deplored,\” said I, \”on all accounts.\”

\”They want to be ground. That\’s what they want to bring \’em to their senses,\” said the gentleman; whom I had already began to call in my own mind Mr. Snapper, and whom I may as well call by that name here as by any other. *

I deferentially enquired, who wanted to be ground?

\”The hands,\” said Mr. Snapper. \” The hands on strike, and the hands who help \’em.\”

I remarked that if that was all they wanted, they must be a very unreasonable people, for surely they had had a little grinding, one way and another, already. Mr. Snapper eyed me with sternness, and after opening and shutting his leathern-gloved hands several times outside his counterpane, asked me
abruptly, \” Was I a delegate?\”

I set Mr. Snapper right on that point, and told him I was no delegate.

\”I am glad to hear it,\” said Mr. Snapper. \”But a friend to the Strike, I believe?\”

\”Not at all,\” said I.

\”A friend to the Lock-out?\” pursued Mr. Snapper.

\”Not in the least,\” said I,

Mr. Snapper\’s rising opinion of me fell again, and he gave me to understand that a man must either be a friend to the Masters or a friend to the Hands.

\”He may be a friend to both,\” said I.

Mr. Snapper didn\’t see that; there was no medium in the Political Economy of the subject. I retorted on Mr. Snapper, that Political Economy was a great and useful science in its own way and its own place; but that I did not transplant my definition of it from the Common Prayer Book, and make it a great king above all gods. Mr. Snapper tucked himself up as if to keep me off, folded his arms on the top of his counterpane, leaned back and looked out of the window.

\”Pray what would you have, sir,\” enquire Mr. Snapper, suddenly withdrawing his eyes from the prospect to me, \”in the relations between Capital and Labour, but Political Economy?\”

I always avoid the stereotyped terms in these discussions as much as I can, for I have observed, in my little way, that they often supply the place of sense and moderation. I therefore took my gentleman up with the words employers and employed, in preference to Capital and Labour.

\”I believe,\” said I, \”that into the relations between employers and employed, as into all the relations of this life, there must enter something of feeling and sentiment; something of mutual explanation, forbearance, and consideration; something which is not to be found in Mr. M\’CulIoch\’s dictionary, and is not exactly stateable in figures; otherwise those relations are wrong and rotten at the core and will never bear sound fruit.\”

Mr. Snapper laughed at me. As I thought I had just as good reason to laugh at Mr. Snapper, I did so, and we were both contented. …

Mr. Snapper had no doubt, after this, that I thought the hands had a right to combine?

\”Surely,\” said I. \” A perfect right to combine in any lawful manner. The fact of their being able to combine and accustomed to combine may, I can easily conceive, be a protection to them. The blame even of this business is not all on one side. I think the associated Lock-out was a grave error. And
when you Preston masters—\”

\”I am not a Preston master,\” interrupted Mr. Snapper.

\”When the respectable combined body of Preston masters,\” said I, \” in the beginning of this unhappy difference, laid down the principle that no man should be employed henceforth who belonged to any combination—such as their own—they attempted to carry with a high hand a partial and unfair impossibility, and were obliged to abandon it. This was an unwise proceeding, and the first defeat.\”

Mr. Snapper had known, all along, that I was no friend to the masters.

\”Pardon me,\” said I; \” I am unfeignedly a friend to the masters, and have many friends among them.\”

\”Yet you think these hands in the right?\” quoth Mr. Snapper.

\”By no means,\” said I; \” I fear they are at present engaged in an unreasonable struggle, wherein they began ill and cannot end well.\”

Mr. Snapper, evidently regarding me as neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, begged to know after a pause if he might enquire whether I was going to Preston on business?

Indeed I was going there, in my unbusinesslike manner, I confessed, to look at the strike.

\”To look at the strike!\” echoed Mr. Snapper fixing his hat on firmly with both hands. \”To look at it! Might I ask you now, with what object you are going to look at it?\”

\”Certainly,\” said I. \” I read, even in liberal pages, the hardest Political Economy—of an extraordinary description too sometimes, and certainly not to be found in the books—as the only touchstone of this strike. I see, this very day in a to-morrow\’s liberal paper, some astonishing novelties in the politico-economical way, showing how profits and wages have no connexion whatever; coupled with such references to these hands as might be made by a very irascible General to rebels and brigands in arms. Now, if it be the case that some of the highest virtues of the working people still shine through them brighter than ever in their conduct of this mistake of theirs, perhaps the fact may reasonably suggest to me—and to others besides me—that there is some little things wanting in the relations between them and their employers, which neither political economy nor Drum-head proclamation writing will altogether supply, and which we cannot too soon or too temperately unite in trying to
find out.\”

Mr. Snapper, after again opening and shutting his gloved hands several times, drew the counterpane higher over his chest, and went to bed in disgust. He got up at Rugby, took himself and counterpane into another carriage, and left me to pursue my journey alone. …

In any aspect in which it can be viewed, this strike and lock-out is a deplorable calamity. In its waste of time, in its waste of a great people\’s energy, in its waste of wages, in its waste of wealth that seeks to be employed, in its encroachment on the means of many thousands who are labouring from day to day, in the gulf of separation it hourly deepens between those whose interests must be understood to be identical or must be destroyed, it is a great national affliction. But, at this pass, anger is of no use, starving out is of no use—for what will that do, five years hence, but overshadow all the mills in England with the growth of a bitter remembrance? —political economy is a mere skeleton unless it has a little human covering and filling out, a little human bloom upon it, and a little human warmth in it. Gentlemen are found, in great manufacturing towns, ready enough to extol imbecile mediation with dangerous madmen abroad; can none of them be brought to think of authorised mediation and explanation at home? I do not suppose that such a knotted difficulty as this, is to be at all untangled by a morning-party in the Adelphi; but I would entreat both sides now so miserably opposed, to consider whether there are no men in England above suspicion, to whom they might refer the matters in dispute, with a perfect confidence above all things in the desire of those men to act justly, and in their sincere attachment to their countrymen of every rank and to their country.

 Charles Dickens wrote what has become one of the iconic stories of Christmas day and Christmas spirit in A Christmas Carol. But of course, the experiences of Ebenezer Scrooge are a story, not a piece of reporting. Here\’s a piece by Dickens written for the weekly journal Household Words that he edited from 1850 to 1859. It\’s from the issue of January 26, 1856, with his first-person reporting on \”A Nightly Scene in London.\” Poverty in high-income countries is no longer as ghastly as in Victorian England, but for those who take the time to see it in our own time and place, surely it is ghastly enough. Thus, I repeat this post each year on Christmas day.

Economists might also wince just a bit at how Dickens describes the reaction of some economists to poverty, those who Dickens calls \”the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school.\” Dickens writes: \”I know that the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school, demented disciples who push arithmetic and political economy beyond all bounds of sense (not to speak of such a weakness as humanity), and hold them to be all-sufficient for every case, can easily prove that such things ought to be, and that no man has any business to mind them. Without disparaging those indispensable sciences in their sanity, I utterly renounce and abominate them in their insanity …\”  Here\’s a fuller passage from Dickens:

A NIGHTLY SCENE IN LONDON

On the fifth of last November, I, the Conductor of this journal, accompanied by a friend well-known to the public, accidentally strayed into Whitechapel. It was a miserable evening; very dark, very muddy, and raining hard.

There are many woful sights in that part of London, and it has been well-known to me in most of its aspects for many years. We had forgotten the mud and rain in slowly walking along and looking about us, when we found ourselves, at eight o\’clock, before the Workhouse.

Crouched against the wall of the Workhouse, in the dark street, on the muddy pavement-stones, with the rain raining upon them, were five bundles of rags. They were motionless, and had no resemblance to the human form. Five great beehives, covered with rags— five dead bodies taken out of graves, tied neck and heels, and covered with rags— would have looked like those five bundles upon which the rain rained down in the public street.

\”What is this! \” said my companion. \”What is this!\”

\”Some miserable people shut out of the Casual Ward, I think,\” said I.

We had stopped before the five ragged mounds, and were quite rooted to the spot by their horrible appearance. Five awful Sphinxes by the wayside, crying to every passer-by, \” Stop and guess! What is to be the end of a state of society that leaves us here!\”

As we stood looking at them, a decent working-man, having the appearance of a stone-mason, touched me on the shoulder.

\”This is an awful sight, sir,\” said he, \”in a Christian country!\”

\”GOD knows it is, my friend,\” said I.

\”I have often seen it much worse than this, as I have been going home from my work. I have counted fifteen, twenty, five-and-twenty, many a time. It\’s a shocking thing to see.\”

\”A shocking thing, indeed,\” said I and my companion together. The man lingered near
us a little while, wished us good-night, and went on.

We should have felt it brutal in us who had a better chance of being heard than the working-man, to leave the thing as it was, so we knocked at the Workhouse Gate. I undertook to be spokesman. The moment the gate was opened by an old pauper, I went in, followed close by my companion. I lost no
time in passing the old porter, for I saw in his watery eye a disposition to shut us out.

\”Be so good as to give that card to the master of the Workhouse, and say I shall be glad to speak to him for a moment.\”

We were in a kind of covered gateway, and the old porter went across it with the card. Before he had got to a door on our left, a man in a cloak and hat bounced out of it very sharply, as if he were in the nightly habit of being bullied and of returning the compliment.

\”Now, gentlemen,\” said he in a loud voice, \”what do you want here?\”

\”First,\” said I, \” will you do me the favor to look at that card in your hand. Perhaps you may know my name.\”

\”Yes,\” says he, looking at it. \” I know this name.\”

\”Good. I only want to ask you a plain question in a civil manner, and there is not the least occasion for either of us to be angry. It would be very foolish in me to blame you, and I don\’t blame you. I may
find fault with the system you administer, but pray understand that I know you are here to do a duty pointed out to you, and that I have no doubt you do it. Now, I hope you won\’t object to tell me what I want to know.\”

\”No,\” said he, quite mollified, and very reasonable, \” not at all. What is it?\”

\”Do you know that there are five wretched creatures outside?\”

\”I haven\’t seen them, but I dare say there are.\”

\”Do you doubt that there are?\”

\”No, not at all. There might be many more.\”

\’\’Are they men? Or women?\”

\”Women, I suppose. Very likely one or two of them were there last night, and the night before last.\”

\”There all night, do you mean?\”

\”Very likely.\”

My companion and I looked at one another, and the master of the Workhouse added quickly, \”Why, Lord bless my soul, what am I to do? What can I do ? The place is full. The place is always full—every night. I must give the preference to women with children, mustn\’t I? You wouldn\’t have me not do that?\”

\”Surely not,\” said I. \”It is a very humane principle, and quite right; and I am glad to hear of it. Don\’t forget that I don\’t blame you.\”

\”Well!\” said he. And subdued himself again. …

\”Just so. I wanted to know no more. You have answered my question civilly and readily, and I am much obliged to you. I have nothing to say against you, but quite the contrary. Good night!\”

\”Good night, gentlemen!\” And out we came again.

We went to the ragged bundle nearest to the Workhouse-door, and I touched it. No movement replying, I gently shook it. The rags began to be slowly stirred within, and by little and little a head was unshrouded. The head of a young woman of three or four and twenty, as I should judge; gaunt with want, and foul with dirt; but not naturally ugly.

\”Tell us,\” said I, stooping down. \”Why are you lying here?\”

\”Because I can\’t get into the Workhouse.\”

She spoke in a faint dull way, and had no curiosity or interest left. She looked dreamily at the black sky and the falling rain, but never looked at me or my companion.

\”Were you here last night?\”

\”Yes, All last night. And the night afore too.\”

\”Do you know any of these others?\”

\”I know her next but one. She was here last night, and she told me she come out of Essex. I don\’t know no more of her.\”

\”You were here all last night, but you have not been here all day?\”

\”No. Not all day.\”

\”Where have you been all day?\”

\”About the streets.\”

\’\’What have you had to eat?\”

\”Nothing.\”

\”Come!\” said I. \”Think a little. You are tired and have been asleep, and don\’t quite consider what you are saying to us. You have had something to eat to-day. Come! Think of it!\”

\”No I haven\’t. Nothing but such bits as I could pick up about the market. Why, look at me!\”

She bared her neck, and I covered it up again.

\”If you had a shilling to get some supper and a lodging, should you know where to get it?\”

\”Yes. I could do that.\”

\”For GOD\’S sake get it then!\”

I put the money into her hand, and she feebly rose up and went away. She never thanked me, never looked at me— melted away into the miserable night, in the strangest manner I ever saw. I have seen many strange things, but not one that has left a deeper impression on my memory than the dull impassive way in which that worn-out heap of misery took that piece of money, and was lost.

One by one I spoke to all the five. In every one, interest and curiosity were as extinct as in the first. They were all dull and languid. No one made any sort of profession or complaint; no one cared to look at me; no one thanked me. When I came to the third, I suppose she saw that my companion
and I glanced, with a new horror upon us, at the two last, who had dropped against each other in their sleep, and were lying like broken images. She said, she believed they were young sisters. These were the only words that were originated among the five.

And now let me close this terrible account with a redeeming and beautiful trait of the poorest of the poor. When we came out of the Workhouse, we had gone across the road to a public house, finding ourselves without silver, to get change for a sovereign. I held the money in my hand while I was speaking to the five apparitions. Our being so engaged, attracted the attention of many people of the very poor sort usual to that place; as we leaned over the mounds of rags, they eagerly leaned over us to see and hear; what I had in my hand, and what I said, and what I did, must have been plain to nearly all the concourse. When the last of the five had got up and faded away, the spectators opened to let us pass; and not one of them, by word, or look, or gesture, begged of us.

Many of the observant faces were quick enough to know that it would have been a relief to us to have got rid of the rest of the money with any hope of doing good with it. But, there was a feeling among them all, that their necessities were not to be placed by the side of such a spectacle; and they opened a way for us in profound silence, and let us go.

My companion wrote to me, next day, that the five ragged bundles had been upon his bed all night. I debated how to add our testimony to that of many other persons who from time to time are impelled to write to the newspapers, by having come upon some shameful and shocking sight of this description. I resolved to write in these pages an exact account of what we had seen, but to wait until after Christmas, in order that there might be no heat or haste. I know that the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school, demented disciples who push arithmetic and political economy beyond all bounds of sense (not to speak of such a weakness as humanity), and hold them to be all-sufficient for every case, can easily prove that such things ought to be, and that no man has any business to mind them. Without disparaging those indispensable sciences in their sanity, I utterly renounce and abominate them in their insanity; and I address people with a respect for the spirit of the New Testament, who do mind such things, and who think them infamous in our streets.

The revenue of an individual may be spent either in things which are consumed immediately, and in which one day’s expence can neither alleviate nor support that of another, or it may be spent in things more durable, which can therefore be accumulated, and in which every day’s expence may, as he chooses, either alleviate or support and heighten the effect of that of the following day. A man of fortune, for example, may either spend his revenue in a profuse and sumptuous table, and in maintaining a great number of menial servants, and a multitude of dogs and horses; or contenting himself with a frugal table and few attendants, he may lay out the greater part of it in adorning his house or his country villa, in useful or ornamental buildings, in useful or ornamental furniture, in collecting books, statues, pictures; or in things more frivolous, jewels, baubles, ingenious trinkets of different kinds; or, what is most trifling of all, in amassing a great wardrobe of fine clothes, like the favourite and minister of a great prince who died a few years ago.

Were two men of equal fortune to spend their revenue, the one chiefly in the one way, the other in the other, the magnificence of the person whose expence had been chiefly in durable commodities, would be continually increasing, every day’s expence contributing something to support and heighten the effect of that of the following day: that of the other, on the contrary, would be no greater at the end of the period than at the beginning. The former, too, would, at the end of the period, be the richer man of the two. He would have a stock of goods of some kind or other, which, though it might not be worth all that it cost, would always be worth something. No trace or vestige of the expence of the latter would remain, and the effects of ten or twenty years profusion would be as completely annihilated as if they had never existed.

As the one mode of expence is more favourable than the other to the opulence of an individual, so is it likewise to that of a nation. The houses, the furniture, the clothing of the rich, in a little time, become useful to the inferior and middling ranks of people. They are able to purchase them when their superiors grow weary of them, and the general accommodation of the whole people is thus gradually improved, when this mode of expence becomes universal among men of fortune. In countries which have long been rich, you will frequently find the inferior ranks of people in possession both of houses and furniture perfectly good and entire, but of which neither the one could have been built, nor the other have been made for their use. What was formerly a seat of the family of Seymour is now an inn upon the Bath road. The marriage-bed of James the First of Great Britain, which his queen brought with her from Denmark as a present fit for a sovereign to make to a sovereign, was, a few years ago, the ornament of an ale-house at Dunfermline.

In some ancient cities, which either have been long stationary, or have gone somewhat to decay, you will sometimes scarce find a single house which could have been built for its present inhabitants. If you go into those houses too, you will frequently find many excellent, though antiquated pieces of furniture, which are still very fit for use, and which could as little have been made for them. Noble palaces, magnificent villas, great collections of books, statues, pictures and other curiosities, are frequently both an ornament and an honour, not only to the neighbourhood, but to the whole country to which they belong. Versailles is an ornament and an honour to France, Stowe and Wilton to England. Italy still continues to command some sort of veneration by the number of monuments of this kind which it possesses, though the wealth which produced them has decayed, and though the genius which planned them seems to be extinguished, perhaps from not having the same employment.

The expence too, which is laid out in durable commodities, is favourable, not only to accumulation, but to frugality. If a person should at any time exceed in it, he can easily reform without exposing himself to the censure of the public. To reduce very much the number of his servants, to reform his table from great profusion to great frugality, to lay down his equipage after he has once set it up, are changes which cannot escape the observation of his neighbours, and which are supposed to imply some acknowledgment of preceding bad conduct. Few, therefore, of those who have once been so unfortunate as to launch out too far into this sort of expence, have afterwards the courage to reform, till ruin and bankruptcy oblige them. But if a person has, at any time, been at too great an expence in building, in furniture, in books or pictures, no imprudence can be inferred from his changing his conduct. These are things in which further expence is frequently rendered unnecessary by former expence; and when a person stops short, he appears to do so, not because he has exceeded his fortune, but because he has satisfied his fancy.

The expence, besides, that is laid out in durable commodities gives maintenance, commonly, to a greater number of people than that which is employed in the most profuse hospitality. Of two or three hundredweight of provisions, which may sometimes be served up at a great festival, one half, perhaps, is thrown to the dunghill, and there is always a great deal wasted and abused. But if the expence of this entertainment had been employed in setting to work masons, carpenters, upholsterers, mechanics, &c., a quantity of provisions, of equal value, would have been distributed among a still greater number of people who would have bought them in pennyworths and pound weights, and not have lost or thrown away a single ounce of them. In the one way, besides, this expence maintains productive, in the other unproductive hands. In the one way, therefore, it increases, in the other, it does not increase, the exchangeable value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country.

I would not, however, by all this be understood to mean that the one species of expence always betokens a more liberal or generous spirit than the other. When a man of fortune spends his revenue chiefly in hospitality, he shares the greater part of it with his friends and companions; but when he employs it in purchasing such durable commodities, he often spends the whole upon his own person, and gives nothing to anybody without an equivalent. The latter species of expence, therefore, especially when directed towards frivolous objects, the little ornaments of dress and furniture, jewels, trinkets, gewgaws, frequently indicates, not only a trifling, but a base and selfish disposition. All that I mean is, that the one sort of expence, as it always occasions some accumulation of valuable commodities, as it is more favourable to private frugality, and, consequently, to the increase of the public capital, and as it maintains productive, rather than unproductive hands, conduces more than the other to the growth of public opulence.