The holiday season is here, and with it a chance to read or watch Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Whether the book itself, or portrayals onscreen with Alistair Sim, George C. Scott, Patrick Stewart, Mr. Magoo or Kermit the Frog, the reclamation of Ebenezer Scrooge by the three ghosts is irresistible.
The story starts by establishing that Scrooge is a really bad guy. Dickens says that he’s “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner.” But in a book, and especially in a movie, it’s more effective to show us.
Every version of the story that I know uses one telling scene to show us Scrooge’s character. The charitable gentleman arrives at the counting house to ask Scrooge for a donation, to “make some slight provision for the poor and destitute.” Scrooge asks if the prisons, workhouses, treadmill and poor law are still in operation. He says “Those who are badly off must go there.” The gentleman responds, “Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”
Then Scrooge says what may be his second most famous line (after “Bah, humbug”):
“If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” That sentence leaves us in no doubt that Ebenezer Scrooge is a terrible person.
It’s a strange line, though. There’s a “surplus population”? Great Britain’s population in 1840 was 18.5 million. Today it’s about 66 million. Why would anyone think there were too many people back when the book was published in 1843?
The answer, I think, is in the work of the Rev. Thomas Malthus, an economist who lived in Britain from 1766 to 1834. His most famous work was An Essay on the Principle of Population, published in 1798. His argument went like this.
People keep having children. The average woman in 1800 had five children during her lifetime. In good times, when there was enough food to go around, more of these children would survive to adulthood, and have children themselves. If a couple had five children, and each of them married and had five children, the number of people could get very large very fast. Population would grow exponentially.
All those people must eat. So, farmers would bring more land into production, to increase the food supply. The problem is, each added acre produces just one more acre of grain. Food production grows linearly. Add the fact that each new acre is less productive — because surely they were planting the best acres to start with — and each new acre adds a little less to the total.
In good times population would grow rapidly, the food supply would grow slowly, and eventually there would be more people than the land could feed. Malthus thought that rapid population growth would outstrip the food supply, leading to violence, famine and disease. Good times would always be followed by bad times.
When there is surplus population, poor people die.
What a convenient excuse not to give to the poor! It’s easy to believe that people like Scrooge would refuse to contribute, smirking at the do-gooders and arguing that charity to the poor would only prolong their misery.
Malthus hoped that people could be encouraged to have fewer children by postponing marriage or becoming celibate. Then good times could add to their standard of living.
He didn’t anticipate the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the food supply. The average corn yield in 1800 was about 25 bushels an acre. Now it’s about 175. He also didn’t guess that industrialization would reduce the birth rate. The average woman has fewer than two children today. Malthus was wrong about population and food. But whenever we talk about the pressure that human activity puts on natural resources, we’re recalling Malthus.
Later in A Christmas Carol, Scrooge asks whether Tiny Tim will die. The Ghost of Christmas Present throws his words back at him: “What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” The Ghost says “forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered what the surplus is, and where it is.”
Ebenezer Scrooge is ashamed. His reclamation has begun.
