Scrooge would be pleased

We recently learned that America’s population has grown only 0.1 percent in the past year. That is the lowest growth rate in our nation’s history, going back to the founding—lower even then the period that included World War I and the Spanish Flu. As you watch whichever is your favorite film version of A Christmas Carol, stop for a moment and note that Scrooge would be delighted by the news that we are pretty much at zero growth. That’s because Dickens presents Scrooge as a population control hysteric.

A careful reading of A Christmas Carol shows that we do not have to guess which economic philosophy Scrooge adhered to, he tells us. When a pair of visitors solicit a private contribution for the poor from Scrooge, he points to “prisons … union workhouses … the treadmill … the poor law,” all public institutions as the solution. When one of the men laments that many would rather die than go there, Scrooge says, “they had better do it and decrease the surplus population.” And there we have it in a phrase, “surplus population.” Scrooge was of the school of Thomas Malthus, the economist who popularized the belief that human population grows faster than the food supply. Malthusianism lies behind modern ideologies of zero population growth, including eugenics, and shoots of the poisoned root such as abortion, mass sterilization, one-child policies, and other evils.

Malthus had been dead nine years before Dickens published A Christmas Carol, but his ideas were still multiplying (but not being fruitful) during the time Dickens was writing the novella. Elite circles in particular were fearful about population growth among the poor. This is the context into which Dickens wrote, and it is clear that he was concerned about the rising tide of population growth hysteria.

Not only did he put Malthusian sentiments into Scrooge’s mouth in the scene in which he is asked for private alms, it happens again, later. When Scrooge meets the Ghost of Christmas Present, the ghost asks him if he has ever met any of his “brothers,” referring to past Christmases. Scrooge asks how many brothers he has. “More than 1,800,” he answers, to which Scrooge responds, “what a tremendous family to provide for.” The ghost rises in anger. Scrooge’s stock response to fertility is fear of scarcity. Christmas Present's stock response to that fear of scarcity is outrage.

Later, while observing the Cratchits’ Christmas, they discuss the fate of Tiny Tim, and the Ghost throws Scrooge’s earlier words about “surplus population” back in his face. “… forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!”

Scrooge cowers beneath the “rebuke,” feeling justly ashamed. It is interesting how Dickens anticipated the rise in our own time of population hysteria based on insect models, like those of the most famous promoter of the idea of a population explosion, the entomologist Paul Ehrlich.

Scrooge's anti-natal attitudes are evident throughout the story, for instance, as he jousts with his nephew Fred about Christmas. Fred invites Scrooge to Christmas dinner and Scrooge implies he’d sooner see Fred in Hell first. “Why?” exclaims Fred. Scrooge replies, “Why did you marry?” This is a seeming non-sequitur. How could Fred’s marriage be the basis for the relational break? But the objection makes sense in light of Scrooge’s Malthusian fear. Marriage and fertility are, of course, deeply interrelated and were even more so before the rise of modern contraceptive technologies. Notably, when Christmas Present and Scrooge surreptitiously observe the party, we see Fred’s friend, Topper, courting the sister of Fred's wife. Abundance, marriage, and fertility are key themes of the story and Scrooge’s rejection of them is the key to his own character deficiencies.

In the end, the moral of the story is put in the mouth of young Tim, “God bless us, Every One!” It's not “God bless us all!” nor even “God bless us, everyone!” We've heard the line so many times, it has lapsed into a cliché. The point is that Every One should be blessed. Human dignity is to be bestowed on each last person, and perhaps especially on the ones whom eugenicists of all labels consign to the category “the surplus population.” America seems to have forgotten that.