Customer center

We are a boutique essay service, not a mass production custom writing factory. Let us create a perfect paper for you today!

Example research essay topic: 19 Th Century Cost Of Production - 1,890 words

NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote

Malthus was an English economist, sociologist, and pioneer in modern population study. In addition, he was an English clergyman and political economist; he was the originator of Malthusian population theory. Broadly stated, Malthusian theory holds that human and other populations will increase until checked by natural limitations, principally to do with food supply. Thomas Robert Malthus was born in 1766 in Dorking, just south of London England to Daniel and Henrietta Malthus.

He had seven siblings, one brother (Sydenham) and six sisters (Harriet, Eliza Maria, Anne, Catharine Lucy, Mary Catherine Charlotte, Mary Anne Catherine, and another that is not documented). His father, Daniel Malthus, was a Jacobin and knew Voltaire, Rousseau, and Hume. When Malthus was a young child, Hume brought Rousseau to their home, he was then known as The Rookery. Malthus was impressed by their ideas and he was influenced by their presence. As a boy, Malthus was educated privately by Richard Graves. His father took an active role in his education and constantly looked over the teaching methods of his tutors.

When Malthus turned eighteen, in 1784, he started attending College at Cambridge. He did well at Cambridge despite having a marked speech impediment. While at College Malthus became a curate, or clergyman in charge of a parish, in the Church of England. In about 1796, he took up his parochial duties at Albury, Surrey, all the while living with his father Daniel.

In 1804, twenty years after starting college, Malthus got married. This meant that he had to leave the Cambridge, which had been a safe haven for his early years in life. His marriage was a happy one and he had three children. In 1805, he got a job as a professor at Haileybury College.

He taught Political economy in the college which was owned and run by the general education of civil servants of the East India Company. He lived a placid existence as a scholar and teacher at Haileybury College. All of his students called him 'Pop'. Malthus was a political economist who was concerned about, what he saw as, the decline of living conditions in nineteenth century England. He blamed this decline on three elements: the overproduction of young; the inability of resources to keep up with the rising human population; and the irresponsibility of the lower classes. To combat this, Malthus suggested the family size of the lower class ought to be regulated such that poor families could not produce more children than they can support.

Does this sound familiar? China has implemented such a measure on family size. Malthus was best known for his assertion that the power of population is greater than the power of the earth to produce subsistence for that population. In his An Essay on the Principle of Population he theorized that population grew geometrically- 1 - 2 - 4 - 8 - 16 -- while food grew arithmetically He argued about the destructive potential of unbridled population growth and about the inevitable out come of such growth.

He predicted a nightmare of famine, pestilence, and war if the population was not checked. Originally, he accepted war, famine, and disease as checks on population growth, but in his revised work, he admitted also that 'moral restraint' was an acceptable preventative check. Even though Malthus thought famine and poverty were natural outcomes, he believed the real reason for those outcomes was divine institution. He believed that such natural outcomes were God's way of preventing laziness. Both Darwin and Wallace formed similar theories of natural selection after reading the writings of Malthus. They used his principles in purely natural terms, in both outcome and ultimate reason.

They extended Malthus' logic further than he could ever take it himself. That is not all there is to it, of course; his theories hold enough permutations and implications to rouse objectors and supporters on all sides. Marx thought him an enemy of the proletariat for his supposed belief that their fate would lead them to be famine victims, and the new- right consider him a killjoy for implying that growth needed to have limits at all. The implications of his theories caused general controversy. His theories were also later adapted by neo-Malthusians, and they influenced classical economists like David Ricardo. Among other writings, Malthus wrote Principles of Political Economy in 1820.

This book expresses many of his more controversial ideas in detail and is referenced frequently by modern economists, population researchers, and other experts. Aside from his theories on population, Malthus was and is regarded as one of the great economic thinkers, alongside Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes, who said, "if only Malthus had been the parent-stem from which the 19 th century economics had proceeded, what a much wiser and richer place the world would be today! This is high praise from such a well-known economist. Malthus also concerned himself with the Poor Laws. He argued that any intervention to help the poor, including subsidizing food, was self-defeating because it would encourage early marriage and population growth and so the ultimate result would be starvation resulting from the intervention of positive population checks.

He said that the Poor Laws provided perverse incentives" and created the poverty that they were trying to help relieve. His belief that welfare is counterproductive has gained new popularity thanks to the writing of Charles Murray who has seen many ills of the modern world, from single parenthood to unemployment, as a result of modern welfare. Malthus' theories are still alive and well. Malthus did not agree with the idea that held that overproduction and unemployment were impossible since supply creates its own demand. He believed that unemployment could never occur when there was a surplus of unwanted products. By the late 19 th Century, the "Neo-Malthusians" were advocating artificial contraception, which probably would have offended the good Reverend; he definitely preferred "moral restraint.

After his death in 1834, he was described in his obituary as "tall elegantly formed his appearance no less than his conduct, was that of a perfect gentlemen. An amiable and benevolent man. He was looked up to but his ideas have been frequently misrepresented and abused by both revolutionaries and conservatives. His ideas would probably not go over well in our society today, especially, for his radical ideas about limiting the rights of the lower class. In this famous work, Malthus stated his hypothesis that unchecked population growth always exceeds the growth of means of subsistence. Actual checked population growth is kept in line with food supply growth by "positive checks, " for example: starvation, disease and other things of that nature, elevating the death rate and "preventive checks" for example: postponement of marriage and other things that keep down the birthrate, both of which are characterized as "misery and vice." Malthus' hypothesis implied that actual population always has a tendency to push above the food supply.

Because of this tendency, any attempt to improve the living conditions of the lower classes by increasing their incomes or improving agricultural productivity would be pointless, because the extra food would be followed and consumed by an increase in the population. If population grew unchecked, Malthus argued, that the "perfectibility" of society would always be out of reach. In his revised 1803 edition of the Essay, Malthus concentrated on bringing actual researched evidence to back up his theories. He acquired much of this evidence on his theories while traveling in Germany, Russia, and Scandinavia. He also introduced the idea of "moral restraint, " or voluntary abstinence, which leads to neither misery nor vice bringing the unchecked population growth rate down. In practical policy terms, this meant changing the culture and belief system of the lower class.

He believed this could be done with the introduction of universal suffrage, state-run education for the poor and, more controversially, the elimination of the Poor Laws and the establishment of a nation-wide labor market. He also argued that once the poor had a taste for luxury, then they would demand a higher standard of living for themselves before starting a family. So although, it seemed contradictory, Malthus suggested the possibility of demographic transition" which meant that sufficiently high incomes might be enough by themselves to reduce fertility in the lower class. The Essay transformed Malthus into an intellectual celebrity. He was thought of by many as a hard-hearted monster, a prophet of doom, an enemy of the working class. A sufficient number of people recognized his Essay for what it was: the first serious economic study of the welfare in the lower classes.

Even Karl Marx, who disagreed with his conservative policy conclusions, granted him this. Malthus got interested in economics in 1800, when he published a pamphlet, which was praised enthusiastically by Keynes, expounding an endogenous theory of money. Contrary to the Quantity Theory, Malthus argued that rising prices are followed by increases in the quantity supplied of money. Around 1810, Malthus came across a series of tracts by a stockbroker, David Ricardo, on monetary questions.

He immediately wrote to Ricardo and the two men began a friendship and correspondence that would last for over a decade. Their relationship was warm in all respects but one -- economics. They found themselves on opposite sides of the fence on practically every issue. In 1814, Malthus got himself involved in the Corn Laws debate, which was raging in parliament at the time. After a first pamphlet, Observations, outlining the pros and cons of the proposed protectionist laws, Malthus lent his support to the free traders, arguing that the cultivation of British corn was increasingly expensive, it was best if Britain at least in part relied on cheaper foreign sources for its food supply. He changed his mind the next year, in his 1815 Grounds of an Opinion pamphlet; he now sided with the protectionists.

He noticed that foreign laws often prohibit or raise taxes on the export of corn in hard times, which meant that the British food supply was a victim of foreign politics. By encouraging domestic production, Malthus argued, the Corn Laws would guarantee British self-sufficiency in food. In his 1815 'Inquiry', Malthus came up with the differential theory of rent. Although it was simultaneously discovered by Torrens, West, and Ricardo, Malthus's pamphlet was the first of the four to be published. It refuted older contentions that rent was a cost of production; he argued that it was simply a deduction from the surplus. He argued that rent is enabled by three facts: (1) that agricultural production yields a surplus; (2) that the wage-fertility dynamics guarantee that the price of corn would remains steadily above its cost of production; (3) that fertile land is scarce.

Ricardo's own 1815 essay was actually a response to Malthus. Ricardo dismissed Malthus's arguments, stating that Malthus's "third" cause -- that land differs in quality and is limited in quantity -- is sufficient to explain the phenomenon of rent. He incorporated Malthus's theory of rent with his own theory of profits to provide the "Classical" statement of the theory of distribution. He slammed Malthus's feeble attempts to defend parasitical property owners and the Corn Laws as well. Malthus's own criticism of Ricardo's 1815 essay led them into a debate on the question of "value. Malthus supported Smith's old "labor-commanded" theory of value, whereas Ricardo supported the "labor-embodied" version.

The outcome of...


Free research essays on topics related to: population growth, corn laws, poor laws, cost of production, 19 th century

Research essay sample on 19 Th Century Cost Of Production

Writing service prices per page

  • $18.85 - in 14 days
  • $19.95 - in 3 days
  • $23.95 - within 48 hours
  • $26.95 - within 24 hours
  • $29.95 - within 12 hours
  • $34.95 - within 6 hours
  • $39.95 - within 3 hours
  • Calculate total price

Our guarantee

  • 100% money back guarantee
  • plagiarism-free authentic works
  • completely confidential service
  • timely revisions until completely satisfied
  • 24/7 customer support
  • payments protected by PayPal

Secure payment

With EssayChief you get

  • Strict plagiarism detection regulations
  • 300+ words per page
  • Times New Roman font 12 pts, double-spaced
  • FREE abstract, outline, bibliography
  • Money back guarantee for missed deadline
  • Round-the-clock customer support
  • Complete anonymity of all our clients
  • Custom essays
  • Writing service

EssayChief can handle your

  • essays, term papers
  • book and movie reports
  • Power Point presentations
  • annotated bibliographies
  • theses, dissertations
  • exam preparations
  • editing and proofreading of your texts
  • academic ghostwriting of any kind

Free essay samples

Browse essays by topic:

Stay with EssayChief! We offer 10% discount to all our return customers. Once you place your order you will receive an email with the password. You can use this password for unlimited period and you can share it with your friends!

Academic ghostwriting

About us

© 2002-2024 EssayChief.com