Lots could be said about how the early Victorians thought about the problem of the poor. But to limit this to Dickens: Scrooge is very much echoing Thomas Malthus ( 1766-1834), who had pointed out some years earlier that human populations grew geometrically but food only arithmetically, so that in theory humans would always outgrow their food supply, and that growth would therefore create a desperate struggle among the poorest for food. To put Malthus in context, at the time he was writing England had enacted Corn Laws, which put a tariff on imported grain. This kept prices high, which worked to the benefit of landowners ( and most of the arable land in England was owned by the upper classes who were in control of the government)) but made it harder for the poor, at a time when a lot of the lower classes' income had to be spent on food. Other economists were for free trade and against the Corn Laws. Malthus was for the Corn Laws, partially because he thought free trade would depress wages and earnings, but partially because he thought that, if they were just fed more without having to work more, the poor would just increase until they were poor and again needed help. Malthus also disliked the whole notion of poor laws, which essentially distributed free food to the poor in a parish, collecting funds (called rates) to do so from the people in the parish.

The poor laws of England tend to depress the general condition of the poor in these two ways. Their first obvious tendency is to increase population without increasing the food for its support. A poor man may marry with little or no prospect of being able to support a family in independence. They may be said therefore in some measure to create the poor which they maintain, and as the provisions of the country must, in consequence of the increased population, be distributed to every man in smaller proportions, it is evident that the labour of those who are not supported by parish assistance will purchase a smaller quantity of provisions than before and consequently more of them must be driven to ask for support.

Thomas Malthus: An Essay on the Principle of Population ( 1798) chapter 5

Malthus thought that requiring people to first be self-supporting before they could have children would help limit the poor population. He and ( later) Jeremy Bentham would begin a movement that would take the poor away from the older parish food-doles to new workhouses and poor farms, where , instead of just getting free food, they would supposedly be supervised and have to work to support themselves. As Scrooge would say, when pressed for donations for the aid of the poor, "Are there no prisons? No workhouses? "

Later in Dickens' story Scrooge is shown a huge market by the Ghost of Christmas Present with foods from all around the world- clearly, Dickens felt that, with international commerce, there was enough food for all. And Scrooge's "conversion" is not a very religious one- rather an odd thing for a Victorian. Dickens was not a particularly devout Christian either..but Malthus was an Anglican minister, and perhaps that's significant, for Scrooge's sudden conviction to always "keep Christmas" has nothing in it about going to Church, following Christ, abjuring sin, reading his Bible, etc etc, but about spending money on pies and turkeys and sending them in a cab to Bob Cratchit and then raising his salary, giving to the poor... in short, merry Christmas and to hell with Malthus.