Thorstein Veblen
Review author to: 'La Viriculture. Ralentissement de la Population - 
Dégénérescence - Causes et Remèdes'. Par G. DE MOLINARI. 
Paris: Guillaumin et Cie., 1897. 12mo. Pp. 253.
The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 5, No. 2. (Mar., 1897), p. 273-275.
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The motive of M. de Molinari's book is given in the subtitle, and it is 
a sufficiently curious motive far a book from an economist of his 
conservative position and wide range of learning. And the substance of 
the volume is perhaps no less curious, coming from such a source. The 
early chapters (i-viii) are taken up with an elementary exposition of 
the Malthusian premises, M. Molinari's contribution being a supplementary 
explanation - not altogether unfamiliar to Malthus - of how, as the 
outcome of the Malthusian factors, the population of Euro-[274]pean 
countries has kept pace in its advance or decline with the advance, or 
decline of the nation's industrial productivity and with the extension 
and contraction of the market for the products of the national 
industries (chapters ix and x). France is especially unfortunate in 
having suffered a very sensible retardation in its rate of increase.
But this retardation of the rate of increase is not the most serious 
difficulty presented by the movement of population, and is not a 
sufficient cause for apprehension. The white race has nothing to fear 
from a failure of its numbers as compared with the rival yellow race, 
with which pessimists are fond of threatening us. The danger lies in the 
deterioration of the stock - visibly going forward today. The causes of 
the deterioration - the presents of which is infected from a somewhat 
narrow range of data, some of which would bear a different 
interpretation from the one given them - are (p. 108):

1. Defects and diseases inherited from parents;
2. Ill-assorted unions of parents, comprising untoward crosses between 
races;
3. Unwise laws relating to marriage, and the artificial encouragement 
of population;
4. Insufficient care and nourishment, early and excessive child labor;
5. Prostitution.
It therefore appears that the questions of population have come to be 
so many and so important as to require the separation of this subject 
from the body of economic questions with which they have hitherto been 
classed. These questions taken by themselves are sufficient to make up 
the subject-matter of a special science which will draw its data, on 
the one hand, from the moral sciences - particularly from political 
economy - and, on the other hand, from the natural sciences - 
particularly from biology. This new science is Viriculture (p. 134).

It will be the office of this new science to find a remedy for the three 
grave difficulties of the present situation: (1) surplus or deficit of 
population, (2) degeneration, (3) prostitution. There are but the barest 
and most general indications given of the outlines of the new science. 
Under the first head there is a tentative suggestion that something 
might be accomplished by an intelligent and concerted statistical 
determination of the "demand" for population and the establishment of 
an equilibrium through the peoples' taking thought to multiply only up 
to the limit. Under the second it is likewise suggested, in similarly 
general terms, that something may be done [275] toward a maintenance 
of the present standard of the population, if not toward its 
improvement, by extirpation of disease and through selective breeding.
The appendix (pp. 163-250) is made up of notes drawn from a grant 
variety of sources and of very diverse value. For the most part they 
comprise facts more or less familiar to all readers, and betray no 
eagerness in the writer to parade a recondite erudition.
V.