The Fertility of the Unfit / Chapple, W. A. (William Allan), 1864-1936

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Title: The Fertility of the Unfit

Author: William Allan Chapple

Commentator: Rutherford Waddell

Release Date: July 10, 2005 [EBook #16254]

Language: English

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The Fertility of the Unfit

BY

W.A. CHAPPLE, M.D., Ch.B., M.R.C.S., D.P.H.

WITH PREFACE BY RUTHERFORD WADDELL, M.A., D.D.

MELBOURNE: CHRISTCHURCH, WELLINGTON, DUNEDIN, N.Z., AND
LONDON

WHITCOMBE & TOMBS LIMITED.




PREFACE.

The problem with which Dr. Chapple deals in this book is one of extreme
gravity. It is also one of pressing importance. The growth of the
Criminal is one of the most ominous clouds on every national horizon. In
spite of advances in criminology the rate of increase is so alarming
that the "Unfit" threatens to be to the new Civilization what the Hun
and Vandal were to the old. How to deal with this dangerous class is
perhaps the most serious question that faces Sociologists at this hour.
And something must be done speedily, else our civilization is in
imminent peril of being swamped by the increasingly disproportionate
progeny of the Criminal.

Various methods have from time to time been suggested to ward off this
danger. In my judgment one of the most effective has yet to be tried in
the Colony--the system of indeterminate sentences. Nothing can be more
futile than the present method of criminal procedure. After a certain
stated period in gaol, we allow Criminals--even of the most dangerous
character--to go out free without making the slightest effort to secure
that they are fit to be returned to society. We quarantine the
plague-stricken or small-pox ship, and keep the passengers isolated till
the disease is eradicated. But we send up the Criminal only for a
definite time, and at the end of that, he is allowed to go at large even
though we may know he is a more dangerous character than when he entered
the gaol. This is egregious folly.

Dr. Chapple's treatise, however, takes things as they are. He proposes
to save society from the multiplication of its Criminals by a remedy of
the most radical kind. When he was good enough to ask me to write a
preface for his book I hesitated somewhat. I read the substance of it in
MS.S. and was deeply impressed by it. But still I am in some doubt. I am
not quite prepared to accept at once Dr. Chapple's proposed remedy.
Neither am I prepared to reject it. I am simply an enquirer, trying to
arrive at the truth regarding this clamant social problem. The time has
certainly come when the issues raised in Dr. Chapple's book must be
faced. It is very desirable therefore, that the public should have these
put before it in a frank, cautious way, by experts who understand what
they are writing about, and have a due sense of the grave
responsibilities involved. Dr. Chapple's contribution seems to me very
fully to satisfy these requirements. No doubt both his premises and
conclusions are open to criticism at various points. It is, indeed, not
unlikely that the plan whereby he proposes to limit the "fertility of
the Unfit" may come with a sort of shock to some readers.

It is, perhaps, well that it should, for it may lead to thought and
criticism. In any case, this policy of drift must be dropped and Dr.
Chapple's remedy, or some other, promptly adopted. A preface is not the
place to discuss the pro's and con's of Dr. Chapple's treatise. My main
object in this foreword is to commend to the public who take an interest
in this grave problem a discussion of it, which is alike timely and
thorough and reverent. And this, I believe, readers will find in the
following pages.

RUTHERFORD WADDELL.

_Dunedin_,

_Dec. 9th, 1903._


FROM DR. J.G. FINDLAY, M.A., LL.D.

DEAR DR. CHAPPLE,--

You are aware that I gave your Treatise on the "Fertility of the Unfit"
a very careful perusal. It is a subject to which I have devoted some
attention, both at College and since I left College, and I feel
competent to say that no finer work on the subject has been accomplished
than that contained in your Treatise. I consider it of value, not only
from a statistical point of view, but also from a point of view of
scientific originality.

I have no doubt that if the work were published in New Zealand it would
be read and bought by a large number of people. I may add that I
discussed your views with competent critics, and they share the opinion
which I have expressed in this letter. I sincerely hope that the volume
will be published, and need not add that my friends and myself will be
subscribers for copies.

Yours sincerely,

J.G. FINDLAY.

       *       *       *       *       *


FROM MALCOLM ROSS, ESQ.

DEAR DR. CHAPPLE,--

I am pleased to hear that your MS. is to be published. The subject is
one that must attract an increasing amount of attention on the part of
all who have the true interests of the state at heart. There can be
no doubt that the Parliamentary machine has failed, lamentably, to
grapple with the problems you have referred to. At the present time,
when some of our most earnest statesmen and greatest thinkers are
discussing the supposed commercial decadence of the nation, the
publication of such a treatise as you have prepared is opportune, and a
perusal of it prompts the thought that the main remedy lies deeper, and
may be found in sociological even more than in economic reform.

I do not profess myself competent to express any opinion regarding the
remedy you propose. That is a matter for a carefully selected expert
Royal Commission. The whole question, however, is one that might with
advantage be discussed, both in the Press and the Parliament, at the
present time, and I feel sure your book will be welcomed as a valuable
contribution on the subject.

Yours sincerely,

MALCOLM ROSS.

       *       *       *       *       *


FROM SIR ROBERT STOUT, K.C.M.G., CHIEF JUSTICE.

MY DEAR DR. CHAPPLE,--

I have read your MSS., and am much pleased with it. It puts the problem
of our times very plainly, and I think should be published in England. I
have a friend in England who would, I think, be glad to help, and he is
engaged by one of the large publishing firms in England. If you decide
on sending it to England I shall be glad to write to him, and ask his
assistance. The subject is one that certainly required ventilation, and
whether your remedy is the proper one or not, it ought certainly to be
discussed.

Yours truly,

ROBERT STOUT.




CONTENTS.


INTRODUCTION


CHAPTER I.--THE PROBLEM STATED      p. 1

The spread of moral restraint as a check.--Predicted by Malthus.--The
declining Birth-rate.--Its Universality.--Most conspicuous in New
Zealand. Great increase in production of food.--With rising food
rate falling birth-rate.--Malthus's checks.--His use of the term
"moral restraint."--The growing desire to evade family
obligations.--Spread of physiological knowledge.--All limitation
involves self-restraint.--Motives for limitation.--Those who do and
those who do not limit.--Poverty and the Birth-rate.--Defectives
prolific and propagate their kind.--Moral restraint held to include
all sexual interference designed to limit families.--Power of
self-control an attribute of the best citizens.--Its absence an
attribute of the worst.--Humanitarianism increases the number and
protects the lives of defectives.--The ratio of the unfit to the
fit.--Its dangers to the State.--Antiquity of the problem.--The
teaching of the ancients.--Surgical methods already advocated.

CHAPTER II.--THE POPULATION QUESTION     p. 10

The teaching of Aristotle and Plato.--The teaching of Malthus.--His
assailants.--Their illogical position.--Bonar on Malthus and his
work.--The increase of food supplies held by Nitti to refute Malthus.--The
increase of food and the decrease of births.--Mr. Spencer's biological
theory--Maximum birth-rate determined by female capacity to bear
children.--The pessimism of Spencer's law.--Wider definition of moral
restraint.--Where Malthus failed to anticipate the future.--Economic law
operative only through biological law.

CHAPTER III.--DECLINING BIRTH-RATE       p. 26

Declining birth-rates rapid and persistent.--Food cost in New
Zealand.--Relation of birth-rate to prosperity before and after
1877.--Neo-Malthusian propaganda.--Marriage rates and fecundity of
marriage.--Statistics of Hearts of Oak Friendly Society.--Deliberate
desire of parents to limit family increase.

CHAPTER IV.--MEANS ADOPTED      p. 32

Family responsibility--Natural fertility undiminished.--Voluntary
prevention and physiological knowledge.--New Zealand
experience.--Diminishing influence of delayed marriage.--Practice of
abortion.--Popular sympathy in criminal cases.--Absence of complicating
issues in New Zealand.--Colonial desire for comfort and happiness.

CHAPTER V.--CAUSES OF DECLINING BIRTH-RATE      p. 36

Influence of self-restraint without continence.--Desire to limit families
in New Zealand not due to poverty.--Offspring cannot be limited without
self-restraint.--New Zealand's economic condition.--High standard of
general education.--Tendency to migrate within the colony.--Diffusion of
ideas.--Free social migration between all classes.--Desire to migrate
upwards.--Desire to raise the standard of ease and comfort.--Social status
the measure of financial status.--Social attraction of one class to next
below.--Each conscious of his limitation.--Large families confirm this
limitation.--The cost of the family.--The cost of maternity.--The craving
for ease and luxury. Parents' desire for their children's social
success.--Humble homes bear distinguished sons.--Large number with
University education in New Zealand.--No child labour except in hop and
dairy districts.--Hopeless poverty a cause of high birth-rates.--High
birth-rates a cause of poverty.--Fecundity depends on capacity of the
female to bear children.

CHAPTER VI.--ETHICS OF PREVENTION      p. 31

Fertility the law of life.--Man interprets and controls this
law.--Marriage law necessary to fix paternal responsibility.--Malthus's
high ideal.--If prudence the motive, continence and celibacy violate
no law.--Post-nuptial intermittent restraint.--Ethics of prevention
judged by consequences.--When procreation is a good and when an
evil.--Oligantrophy.--Artificial checks are physiological sins.

CHAPTER VII.--WHO PREVENT       p. 64

Desire for family limitation result of our social system.--Desire and
practice not uniform through all classes.--The best limit, the worst do
not.--Early marriages and large families.--N.Z. marriage rates.--Those
who delay, and those who abstain from marriage.--Good motives mostly
actuate.--All limitation implies restraint.--Birth-rates vary inversely
with prudence and self-control.--The limited family usually born in early
married life when progeny is less likely to be well developed.--Our
worst citizens most prolific. Effect of poverty on fecundity.--Effect
of alcoholic intemperance.--Effect of mental and physical
defects.--Defectives propagate their kind.--The intermittent inhabitants
of Asylums and Gaols constitute the greatest danger to society.--Character
the resultant of two forces--motor impulse and inhibition.--Chief criminal
characteristic is defective inhibition.--This defect is strongly
hereditary.--It expresses itself in unrestrained fertility.

CHAPTER VIII.--THE MULTIPLICATION OF THE FIT IN RELATION TO STATE   p. 77

The State's ideal in relation to the fertility of its subjects.--Keen
competition means great effort and great waste of life.--If in the minds
of the citizens space and food are ample multiplication works
automatically.--To New Zealanders food now includes the luxuries as well
as the necessities of life.--Men are driven to the alternative of
supporting a family of their own or a degenerate family of
defectives.--The State enforces the one but cannot enforce the other.--New
Zealand taxation.--The burden of the bread-winner.--As the State lightens
this burden it encourages fertility.--The survival of the unfit makes the
burden of the fit.

CHAPTER IX.--THE MULTIPLICATION OF THE UNFIT IN RELATION TO THE
STATE      p. 85

Ancient methods of preventing the fertility of the unfit.--Christian
sentiment suppressed inhuman practices.--Christian care brings many
defectives to the child-bearing period of life.--The association of mental
and physical defects.--Who are the unfit?--The tendency of relatives to
cast their degenerate kinsfolk on the State.--Our social conditions
manufacture defectives and foster their fertility.--The only moral force
that limits families is inhibition with prudence.--Defective self-control
transmitted hereditarily.--Dr. MacGregor's cases.--The transmission of
insanity.--Celibacy of the insane is the prophylaxis of insanity in the
race.--The environment of the unfit.--Defectives snatched from Nature's
clutches.--At the age of maturity they are left to propogate their kind.

CHAPTER X.--WHAT ANAESETICS AND ANTISEPTICS HAVE MADE POSSIBLE      p. 99

Education of defectives in prudence and self-restraint of little
avail.--Surgical suggestions discussed.

CHAPTER XI.--TUBO-LIGATURE      p. 110

The fertility of the criminal a greater danger to society than his
depredations.--Artificial sterility of women.--The menopause artificially
induced. Untoward results.--The physiology of the Fallopian tubes.--Their
ligature procures permanent sterility.--No other results immediate or
remote.--Some instances due to disease.--Defective women and the wives of
defective men would welcome protection from unhealthy offspring.

CHAPTER XII.--SUGGESTIONS AS TO APPLICATION      p. 118

The State's humanitarian zeal protects the lives and fosters the fertility
of the degenerate.--A confirmed or hereditary criminal defined.--Law on
the subject of sterilization could at first be permissive.--It should
apply, to begin with, to criminals and the insane.--Marriage certificates
of health should be required.--Women's readiness to submit to surgical
treatment for minor as well as major pelvic diseases.--Surgically induced
sterility of healthy women a greater crime than abortion.--This danger not
remote.

CONCLUSION      p. 124




THE FERTILITY OF THE UNFIT.

       *       *       *       *       *

INTRODUCTION.


Biology is the Science of Life. It seeks to explain the phenomena of all
life, whether animal or vegetable. Its methods are observation and
experiment. It observes the tiny cell on the surface of an egg yolk, and
watches it divide and multiply until it becomes a great mass of cells,
which group off or differentiate, and rearrange and alter their shapes.
It observes how little organs unfold themselves, or evolve out of these
little cell groups--how gradual, but how unvarying the change; how one
group becomes a bone, another a brain, another a muscle, to constitute
in three short weeks the body of a matured chick. Those little tendons
like silken threads, that run down those slender pink legs to each and
every toe, and move its little joints so swiftly that we hardly see
them--that little brain, no bigger than a tiny seed, in which is planted
a mysterious force that impels it to set all those brand-new muscles in
motion, and to dart after a fly with the swiftness of an arrow--all this
wondrous mechanism, all this beauteous structure, all this perfection of
function, all this adaptation to environment, have evolved from a few
microscopic cells in three short weeks.

Biology is the science that observes all this, and enunciates the law
that the life history of this animal cell, _i.e._, its history from a
simple unicellular state in the egg, to its complex multicellular state
in the matured chick, represents the history of the race to which the
chick belongs. If we could trace that chicken back through all its
ancestry, we would discover at different periods in the history of life
upon the globe (about 100 million years, according to Haeckel) exactly
the stages of development we found in the life history of the chick, and
arrive at last at a primordial cell.

What is true of the chick is true of all life. This is the law of
evolution. It is true of all plant and animal life; it is true of man as
an individual; it is true of his mind as well as of his body; it is true
of society as an aggregation of individuals. As men have evolved from a
lower to a higher, a simple to a complex state, so they are still
evolving and rising "on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher
things."

Natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, is one of the
processes by which evolution takes place. According to this law, only
the fittest survive in the struggle for life. Darwin was led to this
discovery on reading Malthus's thesis regarding the disproportion
between the rates of increase in population and food, and the consequent
struggle for existence.

All living organisms require food and space. The power of multiplication
in plants and animals is so great that food or space is sooner or later
entrenched upon, and then commences this inevitable struggle for
existence. In this struggle for life, the individuals best able to
conform to their environment, _i.e._, the best able to resist adverse
circumstances, to sustain hardships, to overcome difficulties, to defend
themselves, to outstrip their fellows, in short, to harmonise function
with environment, survive. These propagate their kind according to the
law of heredity. Variations exist in the progeny, and the individuals
whose variations best adapt them to their environment are the fittest
to, and do, survive.

In a state of nature the weaklings perish. If man interferes with this
state of nature in the lower animals, he may make a selection and
cultivate some particular attribute. This is artificial selection, and
is best exemplified in the experiments with pigeons. Pasteur saved the
silk industry of France, and perhaps of the whole world, by the
application of this law of artificial selection. The disease of
silkworms, known as Pebrine, was spreading with ruinous rapidity in
France. Pasteur demonstrated that the germ of the disease could be
detected in the blood of affected moths by the aid of the microscope. He
proved that the eggs of diseased moths produced unhealthy worms, and he
advised that the eggs of each moth be kept apart, until the moth was
examined for germs. If these were found, the eggs were to be burned.
Thus the eggs of unhealthy moths were never hatched, and artificial
selection of healthy stock stamped out a disease, and saved a great
industry.

Each individual plant in the struggle for life has only itself to
maintain. In the higher forms of animal life, each animal has its
offspring as well as itself to maintain. In a state of nature, that is
in a state unaffected by man's rational interference, defective
offspring and weaker brethren were the victims of the inexorable law of
natural selection. When Christ gave _his_ reply to the question, "Am I
my brother's keeper?" the defective and the weakling became the special
care of their stronger brother. They constituted thenceforth The Fit
Man's Burden. The work a man has to do during life, in order to support
himself, is the unit of measurement of the burden he has to bear. Many
factors in modern times have helped to reduce that work to a minimum.
The invention of machinery has multiplied his eyes, his hands, his feet;
and one man can now produce, for his own maintenance and comfort, what
it took perhaps a score of men to produce even a century ago. Man's
disabilities from incidental and epidemic disease have been immeasurably
reduced by modern sanitation, and the teaching and practice of
preventive medicine. Agricultural chemistry has made the soil more
productive, and manufacturing arts have aided distribution as well as
production.

All the departments of human knowledge have been placed under
contribution to man's necessity, and longer life, better health, and
more food and clothing for less work, are the blessings on his head
to-day.

While the burden has been lessened by the industrial and scientific
progress of the last half century, it has been augmented by the
fertility of the unfit; and the maintenance in idleness and comfort of
the great and increasing army of defectives constitutes the fit man's
burden. The unfit in the State include all those mental and moral and
physical defectives who are unable or unwilling to support themselves
according to the recognised laws of human society. They include the
criminal, the pauper, the idiot and imbecile, the lunatic, the drunkard,
the deformed, and the diseased. We are now face to face with the
startling fact that this army of defectives is increasing in numbers and
relative fertility.

Consider what a burden is the criminal. Every community is more or less
terrorised by him; our property is liable to be plundered, our houses
invaded, our women ravished, our children murdered. To restrain him we
must build gaols, and keep immense staffs of highly paid officials to
tend him in confinement, and watch him when he is at liberty.
Notwithstanding these, crime is rife, and is rapidly increasing. Says
Douglas Morrison:--"It is perfectly well known to every serious student
of criminal questions, both at home and abroad, that the proportion of
habitual criminals in the criminal population is steadily on the
increase, and was never so high as it is now.... The population under
detention in reformatory institutions is increasing more rapidly than
the growth of the community as a whole, and, as far as it is possible to
see, the juvenile population in prisons is doing the same thing."
Havelock Ellis ("The Criminal," p. 295), Boies, and McKim, all
corroborate this testimony. "Among the three or four millions of
inhabitants of London, one in every five dies in gaol, prison, or
workhouse." ("Heredity and Human Progress," p. 32.)

All these defectives are prolific, and transmit their fatal taints. "In
a certain family of sixteen persons, eight were born deaf and dumb, and
one at least of this family transmitted the defect as far as the third
generation." ("Heredity and Human Progress.") A murderer was the son of
a drunkard; of three brothers, one was normal, one a drunkard, and the
third was a criminal epileptic. Of his three paternal uncles, one was a
murderer, one a half idiot, and one a violent character. Of his four
cousins, sons of the latter, two were half idiots, one a complete idiot,
and the other a lunatic.

There is an agricultural community of about 4000 in the rich and fertile
district in the valley of Artena, in Italy, who have been thieves,
brigands, and assassins since 1155 A.D. They were outlawed by Pope Paul
IV., in 1557, but they still live and flourish in their crime, the
victims of a criminal inheritance. The ratio of homicides in Italy and
Artena is as 9 to 61; of assault and battery as 34 to 205; of highway
robbery as 3 to 145; of theft as 47 to 111. Professor Pellman, of Bonn
University, has traced the careers of a large number of defectives, and
shown their cost to the State. Take this example:--A woman who was a
thief, a drunkard, and a tramp for forty years of her life, had 834
descendants, 709 of whom were traced; 106 were born out of wedlock, 142
were beggars, and 64 more lived on charity. Of the women, 181 lived
disreputable lives. There were in the family 76 convicts, 7 of whom were
convicted of murder. In 75 years, this family cost their country in
almshouses, trials, courts, prisons, and correctional establishments
about L250,000. The injury inflicted by this one family on person and
property was simply incalculable.

In New Zealand, the ratio of those dependent upon the State, or on
public or private support, has gone up from 16.86 per thousand of
population, over 15 years of age in 1878, to 23.01 in 1901. The ratio of
defectives, including deaf and dumb, blind, lunatics, epileptics,
paralytics, crippled and deformed, debilitated and infirm, has gone up
from 5.4 per thousand, over fifteen years, in 1874, to 11.4 in 1896,
declining slightly to 10.29 in 1901. The ratio of lunatics has gone up
from 1.9, in 1874, to 3.4 in 1901. This is the period of the most rapid
and persistent decline in the New Zealand birth-rate; and, coincident
with this period, the marriage-rate went down from 8.8 per thousand in
1874, to 5.8 in 1886, and then gradually rose to 7.83 in 1901. The
number of weekly rations (Parkes's standard), purchasable by the average
weekly wages of an artisan in Wellington province, has gone up from 11
to 16.5 between the years 1877 and 1897. In other words, the price of
food and the rate of wages in 1897 would enable an artisan to fill
51/2 more mouths than he could have done at the rates prevailing in
1877.

Notwithstanding the development of civilising, Christianising, and
educational institutions, crime, insanity, and pauperism are increasing
with startling rapidity. The true cause is to be found deep down in
biological truth. Society is breeding from defective stock. The best fit
to produce the best offspring are ceasing to produce their kind, while
the fertility of the worst remains undisturbed. The most striking
demographical phenomenon of recent years is the declining birth-rate of
civilised nations. In Germany the birth-rate has fallen from 40 to 35
per thousand of the population; in England from 35 to 30; in Ireland
from 26 to 22; in France from 26 to 21; and in the United States from 36
to 30 during the last twenty years; while, in New Zealand, it has
declined from 40.8, in 1880, to 25.6, in 1900. In Australia there were
47,000 less births in 1899 than would have occurred under the rates
prevailing ten years ago.

There is a consensus of opinion among demographists that this decline is
due to the voluntary curtailment of the family in married life. Prudence
is the motive, and self-restraint the means by which this curtailment is
made possible. But prudence and self-restraint are the characteristic
attributes of the best citizens. They are conspicuous by their absence
in the worst; and it is a matter of common observation that the
hopelessly poor, the drunken and improvident, the criminal and the
defective have the largest families, while those in the higher walks of
life rejoice in smaller numbers. The very qualities, therefore, that
make the social unit a law-abiding and useful citizen, who could and
should raise the best progeny for the State, also enable him to limit
his family, or escape the responsibility of family life altogether;
while, on the other hand, the very qualities which make a man a social
burden, a criminal, a pauper, or a drunkard--improvidence and defective
inhibition--ensure that his fertility will be unrestrained, except by
the checks of biological law. And it now comes about that the good
citizen, who curtails his family, has the defective offspring of the bad
citizen thrown upon his hands to support; and the humanitarian zeal,
born of Christian sentiment, which is at flood-tide to-day, ensures that
all the defectives born to the world shall not only be nursed and
tended, but shall have the same opportunities of the highest possible
fertility enjoyed by their defective progenitors.

A higher and nobler human happiness is attainable only through social
evolution, and this comes from greater freedom of thought, from bolder
enquiry, from broader experience, and from a scientific study of the
laws of causation. What "is" becomes "right" from custom, but with our
yearnings for a higher ideal, sentiment slowly yields to the logic of
comparison, and, often wiping from our eyes the sorrows over vanishing
idols, we behold broader vistas of human powers, possibilities, duties,
and destiny.

As the proper study of mankind is man, influenced wholly by a desire to
be useful to a society to which I am indebted for the pleasures of
civilised life, I offer this brief volume as a comment on a phase of the
social condition of the times, and as my conclusions regarding its
interest for the future.

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER I.

THE PROBLEM STATED.


_The spread of moral restraint as a check.--Predicted by Malthus.--The
declining Birth-rate.--Its Universality.--Most conspicuous in New
Zealand.--Great increase in production of food.--With rising food
rate falling birth-rate.--Malthus's checks.--His use of the term "moral
restraint."--The growing desire to evade family obligations.--Spread
of physiological knowledge.--All limitation involves self
restraint.--Motives for limitation.--Those who do and those who do not
limit.--Poverty and the Birth-rate. Defectives prolific and propagate
their kind.--Moral restraint held to include all sexual interference
designed to limit families.--Power of self-control an attribute of the
best citizens.--Its absence an attribute of the worst.--Humanitarianism
increases the number and protects the lives of defectives.--The ratio of
the unfit to the fit.--Its dangers to the State.--Antiquity of the
problem.--The teaching of the ancients.--Surgical methods already
advocated._


A century has passed since Malthus made his immortal contribution to the
supreme problem of all ages and all people, but the whole aspect of the
population question has changed since his day. The change, however, was
anticipated by the great economist, and predicted in the words:--"The
history of modern civilisation is largely the history of the gradual
victory of the third check over the two others" (_vide_ Essay, 7th
edition, p. 476). The third check is moral restraint and the two others
vice and misery.

The statistics of all civilized nations show a gradual and progressive
decline in the birth-rate much more marked of recent years. In Germany,
between the years 1875 and 1899, it has diminished from 40 to 35.9 per
thousand of the population. In England and Wales, it dropped from 35 to
29.3 during the same time; in Ireland, from 26 to 22.9; in France, from
26 to 21.9; in the United States of America (between the years 1880 and
1890) the decline has been from 36 to 30; while in New Zealand it
gradually and persistently declined from 40.8 in 1880 to 25.6 in 1900.

During the period, 1875-1890, the rapid strides made in industry and
production have been unparallelled in the history of the world. Wealth
has accumulated on all sides, and production and distribution have far
outrun the needs and demands of population. To-day food is far more
abundant, cheaper, and therefore more accessible to all classes of the
people than it was 50 years ago, and coincident with this rapid and
abundant increase in those things which go to supply the necessities,
the comforts, and even the luxuries of life, there has been a constant
and uniform decline in the birth-rate, and this decrease is even more
conspicuous in those nations in which the rate of production has been
most pronounced. It would even be true to say that the birth-rate during
recent years is in inverse proportion to the rate of production.

At first sight this might appear to falsify the law of population
enunciated by Malthus. Malthus maintained that population tended to
increase beyond the means of subsistence; that three checks constantly
operated to limit population--vice, misery, and moral restraint: vice,
due largely to diseased conditions, misery, due to poverty and want, and
moral restraint due to a dread of these. I shall show later that nothing
has been said or written to add to or take away from the truth and force
of these great principles, but, that the moral restraint of Malthus has
been practised to an extent, and in a direction of which the great
economist never dreamt. By moral restraint in the limitation of families
Malthus meant only delayed marriage. In so far as men and women
abstained from, or delayed their marriage, on the ground of inability to
support a family, they fulfilled the law, and followed the advice of
Malthus. Continence without the marriage bond was assumed; incontinence
was classed with another check vice.

Contrary to the expectations arising out of the famous progressions,
wealth and production have increased and the birth-rate has decreased.
It is the purpose of this work to show what are the causes that have led
to this decline, that those causes are not equally operative through all
classes of the people, and that the chief cause of the decline of the
birth-rate is the desire on the part of both sexes to limit the number
they have to support and educate. The considerations that lead up to,
and, to some extent, justify this desire, will be discussed later.

The fact remains that an increasingly large number of people have come
to the conclusion that the burden and responsibility of family
obligations limit their enjoyments in life, their ambition, and even
their scope for usefulness, and have discovered, through the spread of
physiological information, means by which marriage may be entered upon
without necessarily incurring these responsibilities and limitations.

It is the knowledge of these physiological laws and the practice of
rules arising out of that knowledge, that account for the declining
birth-rate of civilized nations.

If it be true that the birth-rate is controlled by a voluntary effort on
the part of married people to limit their families, and that that effort
implies self restraint and self denial, it would not be too much to
claim that those most capable of exercising self-control and with the
strongest motives for such exercise, are those most responsible for the
declining birth-rate, and that those with least self-control and the
fewest motives for exercising the control they have, are most likely to
have the normal number of children.

It has already been suggested, that the desire to limit families is due
to a consciousness of responsibility on the part of prospective
parents. They realise the stress of competition in the struggle for
existence, they are anxious for their own pecuniary and social
stability, and even more anxious that the children, for whose birth they
are responsible, should be provided with the necessities and comforts of
life which health and development require. They are eager, too, that
their children should be equipped with a good education, and thus be
given a fair advantage in the race of life.

To the great mass of people this is possible only when the numbers of
the family are limited. As the numbers of the family increase, the
difficulties of clothing and feeding and educating increase, and each
member is the poorer for every birth, and in this sense an increasing
birth-rate is a cause of poverty. The sense in which poverty causes a
high birth-rate will be dealt with later on.

It will be readily conceded, that those actuated by the motives just
considered, those with the keenest sense of responsibility in life,
those capable of exercising the self-restraint which family limitation
requires, constitute the best type of citizens in any community. From
such the State has good reason to expect the best stock.

It is one purpose of this work to show that this class, which can and
should produce the best in the largest numbers, is being overwhelmed
with the burden of supporting an ever-increasing number of incapables,
and, largely in consequence of this increasing burden and
responsibility, are unwilling to produce, because they are unable
adequately to support their own kind.

There is a class in every large community, whose sense of responsibility
in life is at zero, whose self-control is substituted by the law and its
sanctions, and whose modes and habits of life are little better than
those of the lower animals. Their appetites are stronger, their desires,
though fewer, are more intense, and their self-control less easily and
less frequently exerted than those in the highest planes of life.

In the first place then they have less desire to limit their families,
and less power to exercise the self-restraint that is necessary to do
so. Less sense of responsibility is attached to the rearing of a family,
whilst the education of their children gives them little or no concern.
They entertain no ambition that members of their family should compete
in the struggle for social status. Their instincts and their impulses
are their guide in all things. They marry early, and procreation is
unrestrained except by the hardships of life.

This constitutes a numerous class in every large community, and includes
the criminal, the drunkard, and the pauper, and many defectives such as
epileptics and imbeciles. Now all these propagate their kind. The checks
to the increase of this class, are the checks which are common to the
lower animals, and which were elaborated in his first essay by Malthus.
They are vice and misery.

If it were not for moral restraint (not the limited restraint of
Malthus, delayed marriages simply), but restraint in the wider sense,
within as well as without the marriage bond, and including all
artificial checks to conception, these two checks, vice and misery,
would absolutely control the population of the world.

The mind of man has added to the checks which control increase in the
lower animals, a new check, which applies to, and can be exercised only
by himself, and the problem is, how far will misery and vice as checks
to the population be eliminated, and moral restraint take their places?
And if this restraint must control and determine the population of the
future how far will its exercise affect the moral and mental evolution
of the race?

If moral restraint with the consequent limitations of families is the
peculiar characteristic of the best people in the state, and the absence
of this characteristic expressing itself in normal fertility is peculiar
to the worst people of the state, the future of the race may be divined,
by reference to the history of the great nations of antiquity.

An accumulating amount of evidence shows that society is face to face
with this grave aspect of the population question. The birth-rate of the
unfit is steadily maintained. Improved conditions of life increase the
number that arrive at maturity and enter the procreative period, so that
not only are defectives born into the world at a constant rate, but
sanitary laws and a growing impatience with the sufferings of the poor,
tend so to improve their conditions of life, as to increase their
birth-rate and their chances of arriving at adult life.

Shortly stated then, the problem that society has to solve is this,--The
birth-rate is rapidly declining amongst the most fit to produce the best
offspring, while it is steadily maintained amongst the least fit, so
that the relative proportion of the unfit born into the world is
annually increasing.

What should be the State's attitude to this problem, and how it should
attempt to solve it will be discussed in detail in a subsequent chapter.
Let it suffice to say now, that the right of the State to interfere
directly with the limitation of families amongst the best classes would
find few advocates amongst reformers.

The right of the State to say, however, that the criminal, the drunkard,
the diseased, and the pauper, shall not propagate their kind should be
stoutly maintained by all rational men.

Most of the nations of history have recognized the gravity of the
population question, but they were mostly concerned with the tendency of
the numbers in the State to increase beyond the means of subsistence,
instead of the tendency to degeneration as it now concerns us.




CHAPTER II.

THE POPULATION QUESTION.


_The Teaching of Aristotle and Plato.--The teaching of Malthus.--His
assailants.--Their illogical position.--Bonar on Malthus and his
work.--The increase of food supplies held by Nitti to refute
Malthus.--The increase of food and the decrease of births.--Mr.
Spencer's biological theory.--Maximum birth-rate determined by female
capacity to bear children.--The pessimism of Spencer's law.--Wider
definition of moral restraint.--Where Malthus failed to anticipate the
future.--Economic law operative only through Biological law._


Births, deaths, and migration are the factors which make up the
population question.

The problem has burned in the minds of all great students of human life
and its conditions.

Aristotle says (Politics ii. 7-5) "The legislator who fixes the amount
of property should also fix the number of children, for if they are too
many for the property, the law must be broken." And he proceeds to
advise (ib. vii. 16-15) "As to the exposure and rearing of children, let
there be a law that no deformed child shall live, but where there are
too many (for in our State population has a limit) when couples have
children in excess and the state of feeling is adverse to the exposure
of offspring, let abortion be procured."

The difficulty of over-population was conspicuous in the minds of
Aristotle and Plato, and these philosophers both held that the State had
a right and a duty to control it.

But some States were almost annihilated because they were not
sufficiently populous, and Aristotle attributes the defeat of Sparta on
one celebrated occasion to this fact. He says:--"The legislators wanting
to have as many Spartans as they could, encouraged the citizens to have
large families, and there is a law at Sparta, that the father of three
sons should be exempt from military service, and he who has four, from
all the burdens of the State. Yet it is obvious that if there were many
children, the land being distributed as it is, many of these must
necessarily fall into poverty."

The problem in the mind of the Greek philosophers was this.
Over-population is a cause of poverty; under-population is a cause of
weakness. Defectives are an additional burden to the State. How shall
population be so regulated as to established an equilibrium between the
stability of the State, and the highest well-being of the citizens?

The combined philosophy of the Greeks counselled the encouragement of
the best citizens to increase their kind, and the practice of the
exposure of infants and abortion.

A century of debate has raged round the name of Malthus, the great
modern analyst of the population problem. He published his first essay
on population in 1798, a modest pamphlet, which fed so voraciously on
the criticism supplied to it, that it developed into a mighty
contribution to a great social problem, second only in time and in
honour to the work of his great predecessor in economic studies, Adam
Smith.

Malthus's first essay defined and described the laws of multiplication
as they apply only to the lower animals and savage man. It was only in
his revised work, published five years later, that he described moral
restraint as a third check to population.

Adverse criticism had been bitter and severe, and Malthus saw that his
first work had been premature. He went to the continent to study the
problem from personal observation in different countries. He profited by
his observation, and by the writings of his critics, and published his
matured work in 1803.

The distinguishing feature about this edition was the addition of moral
restraint as a check, to the two already described, vice and misery.

Malthus maintained that population has the power of doubling itself
every 25 years. Not that it _does_ so, or _had done_ so, or _will do
so_, but that it is _capable_ of doing so, and he instanced the American
Colonies to prove this statement.

One would scarcely think it was necessary to enforce this distinction,
between what population has done, or is doing, and what it is capable
of doing. But when social writers, like Francesco Nitti (Population and
the Social System, p. 90), urge as an argument against Malthus's
position that, if his principles were true, a population of 176,000,000
in the year 1800 would have required a population of only one in the
time of our Saviour, it is necessary to insist upon the difference
between _increase_ and the _power of increase_.

One specific instance of this doubling process is sufficient to prove
the _power of increase_ possessed by a community, and the instance of
the American Colonies, cited by Malthus, has never been denied.

A doubling of population in 25 years was thus looked upon by Malthus as
the normal increase, under the most favourable conditions; but the
checks to increase, vice, misery, and moral restraint are operative in
varying degrees of intensity in civilized communities, and these may
limit the doubling to once in 50, or once in 100 years, stop it
altogether, or even sweep a nation from the face of the earth.

The natural increase among the lower animals is limited by misery only,
in savage man by vice and misery only, and in civilized man by misery,
vice, and moral restraint.

Misery is caused by poverty, or the need of food or clothing, and is
thus proportionate to the means of subsistence. As the means of
subsistence are abundant, misery will be less, the death-rate lower,
and _caeteris paribus_ the birth-rate higher. The increase will be
directly proportional to the means of subsistence.

Vice as a check to increase, is common to civilized and savage man, and
limits population by artificial checks to conception, abortion,
infanticide, disease, and war. The third check, moral restraint, is
peculiar to civilized man, and in the writings of Malthus, consists in
restraint from marriage or simply delayed marriage.

Bonar says (Malthus and his Work, p. 53), "Moral restraint in the pages
of Malthus, simply means continence which is abstinence from marriage
followed by no irregularities."

These checks have their origin in a need for, and scarcity of
food,--food comprising all those conditions necessary to healthy life.
The need of food is vital and permanent. The desire for food, immediate
and prospective, is the first motive of all animal activity, but the
amount of food available in the world is limited, and the possible
increase of food is estimated by Malthus at an arithmetical ratio.

Whether or not this is an accurate estimate of the ratio of food
increase is immaterial. Malthus's famous progressions, the geometrical
ratio of increase in the case of animals, and the arithmetical ratio of
increase in the case of food, contain the vital and irrefutable truth of
the immense disproportion between the power of reproduction in man and
the power of production in food.

Under the normal conditions of life, the population tends constantly to
press upon, and is restrained by the limits of food. The true
significance of the word _tends_ must not be overlooked, or a similar
fallacy to that of Nitti's will occur, when he overlooked the
significance of the term "power to multiply." It is perfectly true to
say, that population _tends_ to press upon the limits of subsistence,
and unrestrained by moral means or man's reason actually does so.

Some social writers appear to think that, if they can show that
production has far outstripped population, that, in other words,
population for the last fifty years at least has _not_ pressed upon the
limits of food, Malthus by that fact is refuted.

Nitti says (Population and the Social System, p. 91), "But now that
statistics have made such great progress, and the comparison between the
population and the means of subsistence in a fixed period of time is no
longer based upon hypothesis, but upon concrete and certain data in a
science of observation it is no longer possible to give the name of law
to a theory like that of Malthus, which is a complete disagreement with
facts. As our century has been free from the wars, pestilences and
famines which have afflicted other ages, population has increased as it
never did before, and, nevertheless, the production of the means of
subsistence has far exceeded the increase of men."

And later on (p. 114) he says "Malthus's law explains nothing just as it
comprehends nothing. Bound by rigid formulas which are belied by history
and demography, it is incapable of explaining not only the mystery of
poverty, but the alternate reverses of human civilization."

Nitti's conclusions are based largely on the fact that while food
supplies have become abundant and cheap, birth-rates have steadily and
persistently declined.

No-one who has studied the economic and vital statistics of the last
half century can fail to be impressed with the change that has come over
the relative ratios of increase in population and food.

Bonar says (Malthus and his Work, p. 165), "The industrial progress of
the country (France) has been very great. Fifty years ago, the
production of wheat was only half of what it is to-day, of meat less
than half. In almost every crop, and every kind of food, France is
richer now than then, in the proportion of 2 to 1. In all the
conveniences of life (if food be the necessaries) the increased supply
is as 4 to 1, while foreign trade has become as 6 to 1."

In a remarkable table prepared by Mr. F.W. Galton, and quoted by Mr.
Sydney Webb in "Industrial Democracy," it is clearly shown, that, while
the birth-rate and food-rate (defined as the amount of wheat in Imperial
quarters, purchased with a full week's wages) gradually increased along
parallel lines between 1846 and 1877, the former suddenly decreased from
36.5 per thousand in 1877 to 30 per thousand in 1895, the latter
increasing from .6 to 1.7 for the same period.

The remarkable thing about the facts that this table so clearly
discloses is that with a gradual increase of the means of subsistence
from 1846 to 1877 there is also a gradual increase in the proportion of
births to population. But at the year 1877 there, is a very sudden and
striking increase in food products, and the purchasing power of the
people coincides exactly with a very sudden and striking decrease in the
birth-rate of the people. The greater the decrease in the birth-rate,
the greater the increase in the people's purchasing power. Now, what has
brought about this change in the ratios of increase in population and in
food respectively?

Some serious factor, inoperative during the thirty years prior to 1877
must have suddenly been introduced into the social system, to work such
a marvellous revolution during the last twenty years.

Some economic writers find it easy here to discover a law, and declare
that the birth-rate is in inverse ratio to the abundance of food.
(Doubleday quoted by Nitti, Population and the Social System, p. 55).

Other economic writers of recent date attribute this great change in
ratio of increase to economic causes. Only a few find the explanation in
biological laws.

Herbert Spencer is the champion of the biological explanation of a
decreasing birth-rate.

With the intellectual progress of the race there is a decadence of
sexual instinct. In proportion as an individual concentrates his
energies and attention on his own mental development, does the instinct
to, and power of, generation decrease.

It may be true, it certainly is true, that if an individual's energies
are concentrated in the direction of development of one system of the
body, the other systems to some extent suffer. A great and constant
devotion to the development of the muscular system will produce very
powerful muscles, and great muscular energy, with a strong tendency to,
and pleasure in exercise. It is true also, that time and energy are
monopolized in this creation of muscle, and that less time and energy
are available for mental pursuits and mental exercise.

Up to a certain point muscular exercise aids mental development, but
beyond that point concentration of effort in the direction of muscular
development starves mental growth.

On the other hand, if the education and exercise of the mind receive
all attention, the muscular system will suffer, and to some extent
remain undeveloped. Or generally, one system of the body can be highly
developed only at the expense of some other system, not immediately
concerned.

It is true that the more an individual concentrates his efforts on his
own intellectual development, the more his sexual system suffers, and
the less vigorous his sexual instincts.

And the converse of this is also true, for examples of those with great
sexual powers are numerous.

In plant life, this same law is also in operation. If one system in a
plant, the woody fibre for instance, takes on abundant growth, the fruit
is starved and is less in quality and quantity, and _vice versa_.

But to what extent does this affect fertility? Sexual power and
fertility are not synonymous terms.

The vast profusion of seed in plant and animal life, would allow of an
enormous reduction in the amount produced, without the least affecting
fertility. Even admitting the application of Spencer's law to sexual
vitality, and allowing him to claim that, with the progress of
"individuation," there is a decline in sexual instinct, would the
fertility of the race be affected thereby?

To have any effect at all on the birth-rate, the instinct would have
either to be killed or to be so reduced in intensity as to stop
marriage, or to delay it till very late in life.

When once marriage was contracted sexual union once in every two years,
would, under strictly normal conditions, result in a very large family.

For according to Mr. Spencer's theory, it is the instinct that is
weakened not the power of the spermatozoa to fertilize.

Evidence is wanting, however, to show that there is a decrease in the
sexual power of any nation.

France might be flattered to be told that her low birth-rate is due to
the high intellectual attainments of her people, and that the rapidly
decreasing birth-rate is due to a rapid increase of her intellectual
power during recent years.

Ireland and New Zealand would be equally pleased could they believe that
their low, and still decreasing birth-rate is due to the lessening of
the sexual instinct, attendant upon, and resulting from a high and
increasing intellectual power and activity.

The fact is, that the sexual instinct is so immeasurably in excess of
the maximum power of procreation in the female, that an enormous
reduction in sexual power would require to take place before it would
have any effect on the number of children born.

The number of children born is controlled by the capacity of the human
female to bear children, and one birth in every two years during the
child-bearing period of life is about the maximum capacity.

A moderate diminution in the force of the sexual instinct might lead to
a decrease in the marriage rate, but it would require a very serious
diminution bordering on total extinction of the instinct to exert any
serious effect on the fecundity of marriage.

All that can be claimed for this theory of population is, that,
reasoning from known physiological analogies, we might expect a
weakening of the desire for marriage, coincident with the general
development of intellect in the race.

There are as yet no facts to prove that such weakening has taken or is
taking place, nor are there facts to prove that population has in any
way suffered from this cause.

If such a law obtained, and resulted in a diminished birth-rate, the
future of the race would be the gloomiest possible. An inexorable law
would determine that there could be no mental evolution, for the best of
the race would cease to propagate their kind. All who would arrive at
this standard of mental growth would become barren. And against this
there could be no remedy.

One of the main contentions of this work is that the best have to a
large extent ceased to propagate their kind, but it is not maintained
that this is the result of a biological law, over which there is no
control. It can be safely claimed that to Malthus's three checks to
population--vice, misery, and moral restraint, the demographic phenomena
of a century have added no other. The third check, however, moral
restraint, must be held to include all restraint voluntarily placed by
men and women on the free and natural exercise of their powers of
procreation.

Malthus used the term "moral" in this connection, not so much in
relation to the _motive_ for the restraint, but in relation to the
result, viz., the limitation of the family. The "moral restraint" of
Malthus meant to him, restraint from marriage only, chiefly because of
the inability to support a family. It implied marriage delayed until
there was reasonable hope that the normal family, four in number, could
be comfortably supported, continence in the mean time being assumed.
Bonar interpreting Malthus says (p. 53) that impure celibacy falls under
the head of "vice," and not of "moral restraint."

To Malthus, vice and misery, as checks to population, were an evil
greatly to be deplored in civilized man, and not only did he declare
that moral restraint obtained as a check, but he also declared it a
virtue to be advocated and encouraged in the interest of society, as
well as of the individual.

His moral restraint was delayed marriage with continence. He trusted to
the moral force of the sexual passion in a continent man to stimulate to
work, to thrift, to marriage; to work and save so that he may enter the
marriage state with a reasonable prospect of being able to support a
wife and family.

Malthus never anticipated the changes and developments of recent years.
He advised moral restraint as a preventive measure in the hope that vice
and misery, as checks would be superseded, and that no more would be
born into the world than there was ample food to supply. He believed
that moral restraint was the check of civilized man, and as civilization
proceeded, this check would replace the others, and prevent absolutely
the population pressing upon the limits of subsistence.

He saw in moral restraint only self-denial, constant continence, and
entertained not a doubt, that the generative instinct would be cheated
of its natural fruit. The passion for marriage is so strong (thought
Malthus) that there is no fear for the race; it cannot be
over-controlled.

The gratification of the sexual instinct, and procreation were the same
thing in the mind of Malthus.

But this is not so.

A physiological law makes it possible, in a large proportion of strictly
normal women, for union to take place without fertilisation. If it were
possible to maintain an intermittent restraint in strict conformity with
this law, it would control considerably the population of the world.

It is easier to practice intermittent than to practice constant
restraint.

It is just here that Malthus failed to anticipate the future. Malthus
believed that "moral restraint" would lessen the marriage rate, but
would have no direct effect on the fecundity of marriage.

A man would not put upon himself the self-denial and restraint, which
abstinence from marriage implied, for a longer period than he could
help.

The greater the national prosperity, therefore, the higher the
birth-rate. But prosperity keeps well in advance of the birth-rate; in
other words, population, though it still _tends_ to, does not actually
_press_ upon the food supply.

If the moral restraint of Malthus be extended so as to include
intermittent moral restraint within the marriage bond, then, under one
or other, or all of his three checks, vice, misery, and moral restraint,
will be found the explanation of the remarkable demographic phenomena of
recent years.

_Misery_ will cover deaths from starvation and poverty, the limitation
of births from abortion due to hardship, from deaths due to improper
food, clothing, and housing; and emigration to avoid hardship.

_Vice_ will cover criminal abortions, limitation of births from
venereal disease, deaths from intemperance, etc., and artificial checks
to conception. Malthus included artificial checks of this kind under
vice (7 ed. of Essay, p. 9.n.), though they have some claim to be
considered under moral restraint. But the question will be referred to
in a later chapter.

_Moral restraint_ will cover those checks to conception, voluntarily
practised in order to escape the burden and responsibility of rearing
children--continence, delayed marriage, and intermittent restraint.

No other checks are directly operative.

Misgovernment and the unequal distribution of wealth and land affect
population indirectly only, and can only act through one or other or all
of the checks already mentioned.




CHAPTER III.

DECLINING BIRTH-RATE.


_Decline of birth-rates rapid and persistent.--Food cost in New
Zealand.--Relation of birth-rate to prosperity before and after
1877.--Neo-Malthusian propaganda.--Marriage rates and fecundity of
marriage.--Statistics of Hearts of Oak Friendly Society.--Deliberate
desire of parents to limit family increase._


It is not the purpose of this work to follow any further the population
problem so far as it relates to deaths and emigration. Attention will be
concentrated on births, and the influences which control their rates.

A rapid and continuous decline in the birth-rate of Northern and Western
Europe, in contravention of all known biological and economic laws, has
filled demographists with amazement.

A table attached here shows the decline very clearly. According to
Parkes ("Practical Hygiene," p. 516), the usual food of the soldier may
be expressed as follows:--

Articles.                Daily quantity in
                             oz. av.
Meat                          12.0
Bread                         24.0
Potatoes                      16.0
Other vegetables               8.0
Milk                           3.25
Sugar                          1.33
Salt                           0.25
Coffee                         0.33
Tea                            0.16
Total                         65.32
Butter                         2.4--(Moleschott.)

[Illustration]

The New Zealand Official Year Book gives the following as the average
prices of food for the years mentioned:--

                            1877      1887      1897      1901
                           s   d.    s   d.    s   d.    s   d.
Bread            per lb.   0   21/4    0   13/4    0   11/2    0   11/2
Beef             per lb.   0   51/4    0   31/2    0   3     0   5
Mutton           per lb.   0   4     0   23/4    0   2     0   41/2
Sugar            per lb.   0   53/4    0   3     0   21/2    0   23/4
Tea              per lb.   3   0     2   3     2   0     1  10
Butter (fresh)   per lb.   1   3     1   0     0   8     0  11
Cheese (col'n'l) per lb.   0  10     0   53/4    0   6     0   6
Milk             per qt.   0   41/2    0   3     0   3     0   31/2

The official returns give the average daily wage for artisans for the
years 1877, 1887, 1897, and 1901 as 11s., 10s. 6d., 9s. 9d., and 10s.
3d., respectively.

The weekly rations (the standard food supply for soldiers--Parkes's)
purchaseable by the weekly wages for these years respectively are 11.1,
14.3, 16, and 12.4; _i.e._, the average weekly wage of an artisan in
constant employment in 1877 would purchase rations for 11.1 persons, in
1887 for 14.3 persons, in 1897 for 16 persons, and in 1901 for 12.4
persons.

Up to the year 1877, the birth-rate in England and Wales conformed to
the law of Malthus, and kept pace with increasing prosperity; but, after
that year, and right up to the present time, the nation's prosperity has
gone on advancing at a phenomenal rate _pari passu_ with an equally
phenomenal decline in the number of births per 1000 of the population.

Now, it is a remarkable coincidence that in this very year, 1877, the
Neo-Malthusians began to make their influence felt, and spread amongst
all classes of the people a knowledge of preventive checks to
conception.

People were encouraged to believe that large families were an evil. A
great many, no doubt, had already come to this conclusion; for there is
no more common belief amongst the working classes, at least, than that
large families are a cause of poverty and hardship. And this is even
more true than it was in the days of the Neo-Malthusians, for then child
and women labour was a source of gain to the family, and a poor man's
earnings were often considerably augmented thereby.

The uniform decrease of the birth-rate is a matter of statistics, and
admits of no dispute. It has been least rapid in the German Empire, and
most rapid in New Zealand.

With the declining birth-rate the marriage-rate must be considered.

Malthus would have expected a declining birth-rate to be the natural
result of a declining marriage-rate, and a declining marriage-rate to be
due to the practice of moral restraint, rendered imperative because of
hard times, and a difficulty in obtaining work, wages, and food.

Given the purchasing power of a people, Malthus would have estimated,
according to his laws, the marriage-rate, and, given the marriage-rate,
he would have estimated the birth-rate.

But anticipations in this direction, based on Malthus's laws, have not
been realised. The purchasing power of the people we know has enormously
increased; the marriage-rate has not increased, it has, in fact,
slightly decreased; but the birth-rate per marriage, or the fecundity of
marriage, has decreased in a remarkable degree.

In "Industrial Democracy," by Sydney and Beatrice Webb (p. 637), the
following occurs:--"The Hearts of Oak Friendly Society is the largest
centralised Benefit Society in this country, having now over two hundred
thousand adult male members. No one is admitted who is not of good
character, and in receipt of wages of twenty-four shillings a week or
upwards. The membership consists, therefore, of the artisan and skilled
operative class, with some intermixture of the small shopkeeper, to the
exclusion of the mere labourer. Among its provisions, is the "Lying-in
Benefit," a payment of thirty shillings for each confinement of a
member's wife."

From 1866 to 1880 the proportion of lying-in claims to membership slowly
rose from 21.76 to 24.78 per 100. From 1880 to the present time it has
continuously declined, until now it is only between 14 and 15 per 100.

The following table (from the annual reports of the Committee of
Management of the Hearts of Oak Friendly Society, and those of the
Registrar-General) shows, for each year from 1866 to 1895 inclusive, the
number of members in the Hearts of Oak Friendly Society at the
beginning of the year, the number of those who received Lying-in Benefit
during the year, the percentage of these to the membership at the
beginning of the year, and the birth-rate per thousand of the whole
population of England and Wales.

HEARTS OF OAK FRIENDLY SOCIETY.

Year.   Number of       Number of Cases   Percentage of      England and
        Members at      of lying-in       cases paid to      Wales: births
        the beginning   Benefit paid      total Membership   per 1000 of
        of each year.   during year.      at beginning       the total
                                          of year.           population.

1866     10,571           2,300               21.76              35.2
1867     12,051           2,853               23.68              35.4
1868     13,568           3,075               22.66              35.8
1869     15,903           3,509               22.07              34.8
1870     18,369           4,173               22.72              35.2
1871     21,484           4,685               21.81              35.0
1872     26,510           6,156               23.22              35.6
1873     32,837           7,386               22.49              35.4
1874     40,740           9,603               23.57              36.0
1875     51,144          13,103               23.66              35.4
1876     64,421          15,473               24.02              36.3
1877     76,369          18,423               24.11              36.0
1878     84,471          20,409               24.16              35.5
1879     90,603          22,057               24.34              34.7
1880     91,986          22,740               24.72              34.2
1881     93,615          21,950               23.45              33.9
1882     96,006          21,860               22.77              33.8
1883     98,873          21,577               21.82              33.5
1884    104,339          21,375               20.51              33.6
1885    105,622          21,277               20.14              32.9
1886    109,074          21,856               20.04              32.8
1887    111,937          20,590               18.39              31.9
1888    115,803          20,244               17.48              31.2
1889    123,223          20,503               16.64              31.1
1890    131,057          20,402               15.57              30.2
1891    141,269          22,500               15.93              31.4
1892    153,595          23,471               15.28              30.5
1893    169,344          25,430               15.02              30.8
1894    184,629          27,000               14.08              29.6
1895    201,075          29,263               14.55              30.4
1896    206,673          30,313               14.67

In this remarkable table the percentage of births to total membership
gradually rose from 21.76, in 1866, to 24.72, in 1880, and then
gradually declined to 14.67 in 1896.

This is a striking instance of the fact that the decrease in the total
birth-rate is due more to a decrease in the fecundity of marriage, than
to a decrease of the marriage-rate.

Mr. Webb adds:--"The well-known actuary, Mr. R.P. Hardy, watching the
statistics year by year, and knowing intimately all the circumstances of
the organisation, attributes this startling reduction in the number of
births of children to these specially prosperous and specially thrifty
artisans entirely to their deliberate desire to limit the size of their
families."

The marriage-rate in England and Wales commenced to decline about three
years before the sudden change in the birth-rate of 1877, and continued
to fall till about 1880, but has maintained a fairly uniform standard
since then, rising slightly in fact, the birth-rate, meanwhile,
descending rapidly.




CHAPTER IV.

MEANS ADOPTED.


_Family Responsibility--Natural fertility undiminished.--Voluntary
prevention and physiological knowledge.--New Zealand
experience.--Diminishing influence of delayed marriage.--Practice of
abortion.--Popular sympathy in criminal cases.--Absence of complicating
issues in New Zealand.--Colonial desire for comfort and happiness._


There is a gradually increasing consensus of opinion amongst
statisticians, that the explanation of the decrease in the number of
births is to be found in the desire of married persons to limit the
family they have to rear and educate, and the voluntary practice of
certain checks to conception in order to fulfil this desire.

It is assumed that there is no diminution in the natural fertility of
either sex. There is no evidence to show that sexual desire is not as
powerful and universal as it ever was in the history of the race; nor is
there any evidence to show that the generative elements have lost any of
their fertilizing and developmental properties and power.

Dr. J.S. Billings in the June number of the _Forum_ for 1893, says that
"the most important factor in the change is the deliberate and
voluntary avoidance or prevention of child-bearing on the part of a
steadily increasing number of married people, who not only prefer to
have but few children, but who know how to obtain their wish."

He further says, "there is no good reason for thinking that there is a
diminished power to produce children in either sex."

M. Arsene Dumont in "Natalite et Democratie" discusses the declining
birth-rate of France, and finds the cause to be the voluntary prevention
of child-bearing on the part of the people, going so far as to say that
where large families occur amongst the peasantry, it is due to ignorance
of the means of prevention.

The birth-rate in none of the civilized countries of the world has
diminished so rapidly as in New Zealand. It was 40.8 in 1880; it was
25.6 in 1900, a loss of 15.2 births per 1000 of the population in 20
years.

There is no known economic cause for this decline. The prosperity of the
Colony has been most marked during these years.

Observation and statistics force upon us the conclusion that voluntary
effort upon the part of married couples to prevent conception is the one
great cause of the low and declining birth-rate. The means adopted are
artificial checks and intermittent sexual restraint, within the marriage
bond, the latter tending to replace the former amongst normal women, as
physiological knowledge spreads.

Delayed marriage still has its influence on the birth-rate, but with
the spread of the same knowledge, that influence is a distinguishing
quantity.

Delayed marriage under Malthusian principles would exert a potent
influence in limiting the births, because early marriages were, and,
under normal circumstances would still be, fruitful.

In the 28th annual report relating to the registration and return of
Births, Marriages and Deaths in Michigan for the year 1894 (p. 125), it
is stated that "The mean number of children borne by females married at
from 15 to 19 years of age inclusive, is 6.76. For the next five year
period of ages, it is 5.32, or a loss of 1.44 children per marriage,
this attending an advance of five years in age at marriage."

Voluntary effort frequently expresses itself in the practice of
abortion. Many monthly nurses degenerate into abortionists and practise
their calling largely, while many women have learned successfully to
operate on themselves.

The extent to which this method of limiting births is practised, and the
absence of public sentiment against it, in fact the wide-spread sympathy
extended to it, may be surmised from the facts that at a recent trial of
a Doctor in Christchurch, New Zealand, for alleged criminal abortion, a
large crowd gathered outside the Court, greeting the accused by a
demonstration in his favour on his being discharged by the jury. A
similar verdict in a similar case in Auckland, New Zealand, was greeted
by applause by the spectators in a crowded Court, which brought down the
indignant censure of the presiding Judge.

In New Zealand there is no oppressive misgovernment, there is no land
question in the sense in which Nitti applies the term, there is no
poverty to account for a declining birth-rate or to confuse the problem.
There is prosperity on every hand, and want is almost unknown. And yet,
fewer and fewer children, in proportion to the population, and in
proportion to the number of marriages, are born into the colony every
year. The only reason that can be given is that the people, though they
want marriage and do marry, do not wish to bear more children than they
can safely, easily, and healthfully support, with a due and
ever-increasing regard for their own personal comfort and happiness.
They have learned that marriage and procreation are not necessarily
inseperable and they practice what they know.




CHAPTER V.

CAUSES OF DECLINING BIRTH-RATE.


_Influence of self-restraint without continence_.--_Desire to limit
families in New Zealand not due to poverty_.--_Offspring cannot be
limited without self-restraint_.--_New Zealand's economic
condition_.--_High standard of general education_.--_Tendency to migrate
within the colony_.--_Diffusion of ideas_.--_Free social migration
between all classes_.--_Desire to migrate upwards_.--_Desire to raise
the standard of ease and comfort_.--_Social status the measure of
financial status_.--_Social attraction of one class to next
below_.--_Each conscious of his limitation_.--_Large families confirm
this limitation_.--_The cost of the family_.--_The cost of maternity.
The craving for ease and luxury_.--_Parents' desire for their children's
social success_.--_Humble homes bear distinguished sons. Large number
with University education in New Zealand_.--_No child labour except in
hop and dairy districts_.--_Hopeless poverty a cause of high
birth-rates_.--_High birth-rates a cause of poverty_.--_Fecundity
depends on capacity of the female to bear children_.


The first or direct cause of this decline in the birth-rate then, is the
inhibition of conception by voluntary means, on the part of those
capable of bearing children.

This inhibition is the result of a desire on the part of both sexes to
limit their families.

Conception is inhibited by means which do not necessitate continence,
but which do necessitate some, and in many cases, a great amount of
self-restraint. But how comes it, that in these days of progress and
prosperity, especially in New Zealand, a desire to limit offspring
should exist amongst its people, and that the desire should be so strong
and so universal?

The desire for this limitation must be strong, for there is absolutely
no evidence that the passion for marriage has lost any of its force; it
must be extensive for the statistics show its results, and the
experience of medical men bears the contention out.

While the marriage passion remains normal, offspring cannot be limited
without the exercise of self-restraint on the part of both parties to
the marriage compact. Artificial means of inhibiting conception, and
intermittent restraint are antagonistic to the sexual instinct, and the
desire for limitation must be strong and mutual to counteract this
instinct within the marriage bond.

The reasons for this strong and very general desire, that marriage
should not result in numerous births must have some foundation. What is
it?

It cannot be poverty. New Zealand's economic experience has been one of
uniform progress and prosperity. There is abundant and fertile land in
these islands where droughts, floods, and famine years, are practically
unknown. Blissards and destructive storms are mysterious terms.
Fluctuations in production take place of course, but not such as to
result in want, to any noticeable extent. There are no extremes of heat
and cold, no extremes of drought and flood, no extremes of wealth and
poverty. The climate is equable, the progress is uniform, the classes
are at peace.

Every natural blessing that a people could desire in a country, is to be
found in New Zealand. Climate, natural fertility, and production,
unrivalled scenery in mountain, lake, and forest, everything to bless
and prosper the present, and inspire hope in the future. Why is it that,
with all this wealth, and with the country still progressing and yet
undeveloped, a desire exists in the heart of the people to limit
families.

The reason is social not economic, if one may contrast the terms.

Take women's attitude to the question first. Our women are well
educated. A state system of compulsory education has placed within the
reach of all a good education, up to what is known as the VI. or VII.
Standard, and only a very few in the colony have been too poor or too
rich to take advantage of it.

Most women can and do read an extensive literature, and to this they
have abundant access, for even small country towns have good libraries.
Alexandra, a little town of 400 inhabitants amongst the Central Otago
mountains, has a public library of several thousand volumes, and the
people take as much pride in this institution as in their school and
church.

People move about from place to place, and it is surprising how small
and even large families keep migrating from one part of the colony to
another. They are always making new friends and acquaintances, and with
these interchanging ideas and information.

Class distinctions have no clear and defined line of demarcation, and
there is a free migration between all the classes; the highest, which is
not very high, is always being recruited from those below, and from even
the lowest, which is not very low.

The highest class is not completely out of sight of any class below it,
and many families are distributed evenly over all the classes. A woman
is the wife of a judge, a sister is the President of a Woman's Union,
another sister is in a shop, and a fourth is married to a labourer.

If one of the poorer (they do not like "lower") class rises in the
social scale, he or she is welcome--if one of the richer (they do not
like "higher") falls, no effort is made by the class they formerly
belonged to to maintain her status in order to save its dignity or
repute.

In other words, there are not the hindrances to free migration between
the various strata of society that obtain in other lands. Not only is
that migration continually taking place, but there are very few who are
not touched by a consciousness of it.

Members of the lower strata, all well educated voters, can give
instances of friends, or relatives, or acquaintances, who are higher up
than themselves--have "made their way," have "risen in society," have
"done well," are "well off." And this consciousness inspires in all but
the very lowest classes an ambition to rise.

Because it is possible to rise, because others rise, the desire to be
migrating upwards soon takes possession of members of all but the lowest
or poorest class, or those heavily ballasted with a large or increasing
family.

The desire to rise in social status is inseparably bound up with the
kindred desire to rise in the standard of comfort and ease.

Social status in New Zealand is, as yet, scarcely distinguishable from
financial status. Those who are referred to as the better classes, are
simply those who have got, or who have made, money. All things,
therefore, are possible to everyone in this democratic colony.

There is thus permeating all classes in New Zealand a spirit of social
rivalry, which shows no tendency to abate nor to be diverted. The social
status of one class exerts an attractive force on the class next below.

But, apart from the influence of status, one class keeps steadily in
view, and persistently strives to attain, the ease, comfort, and even
luxury of the class above it.

Because the members of different grades are so migratory, there are
many in one class known well to members in some class or classes below,
and the ease and luxury which the former enjoy are a constant
demonstration of what is possible to all.

Many who do not acquire wealth enough to make any appreciable difference
in their social status, are able, through family, to improve their
position. Their sons and daughters are given an University education,
and by far the largest number of those entering the learned professions
in New Zealand are the sons of farmers, tradespeople, and retail
dealers.

The great mass of the people in our Colony are conscious of the fact
that their social relations and standard of comfort, or shall one say
standard of ease, are capable of improvement, and the desire to bring
about that improvement is the dominant ambition of their lives.

Anything that stands in the way of this ambition must be overcome. A
large family is a serious check to this ambition, so a large family must
be avoided.

This desire to rise, and this dread too of incurring a responsibility
that will assuredly check individual progress were counselled by
Malthus, and resulted, and he said should result, in delayed marriage,
lest a man, in taking to himself a wife, take also to himself a family
he is unable to support.

But if this man can take to himself a wife without taking to himself a
family, what then?

Men and women, in this Colony at least, have discovered that conformity
to physiological law makes this possible.

A wife does not really add very much to a man's responsibility--it is
the family that adds to his expense, and taxes all his resources. It is
the doctor and the nurse, the food and the clothing, and the education
of the uninvited ones to his home, that use up all his earnings, that
keep him poor, or make him poorer.

Then there is one aspect of the question peculiar to the women
themselves. Women have come to dread maternity. This is part of a
general impatience with pain common to us all. Chloroform, and morphia,
and cocaine, and ethyl chloride have taught us that pain is an evil.

When there was no chance of relieving it, we anaesthetised ourselves and
each other with the thought that it was necessary, it was the will of
Providence, the cry of our nerves for succour.

Now it is an evil, and if we must submit we do so under protest. Women
now engage doctors on condition that chloroform will be administered as
soon as they scream, and they scream earlier in their labour at each
succeeding occasion.

Women are less than ever impressed with the sacredness and nobility of
maternity, and look upon it more and more as a period of martyrdom.
This attitude is in consonance with the crave for ease and luxury that
is beginning to possess us.

It is, however, no new phase in human experience. It characterised all
the civilisations of ancient times, at the height of their prosperity,
and was really the beginning of their decay.

Women with us are more eager to limit families than are their husbands.
They feel the burdens of a large family more. They are often heard to
declare that, with a large family around her, and limited funds at her
disposal with which to provide assistance, a woman is a slave. A large
number think this, and, if there is a way out of the difficulty, they
will follow that way. And they are not content to escape the hardships
of life. They want comforts, and seek them earnestly. With the advent of
comfort, they seek for ease, and, when this is found, they seek for
luxury and social position.

Parents with us have a high ideal of what upbringing should be. Every
parent wants his children to "do better" than himself. If he does not
wish to make a stepping-stone of them, on which to rise to higher social
things, he certainly wishes to give them such a "start in life" as will
give them the best prospects of keeping pace with, or outstripping their
fellows.

The toil and self-denial that many poor parents undergo, in order to
give their children a good education, is almost pathetic, and is not
eclipsed by the enthusiasm for education even in Scotland.

There is a shoemaker in a small digging town in New Zealand, still
toiling away at his last, whose son is a distinguished graduate of our
University, author of several books, and in a high position in his
profession.

There is a grocer in another remote inland village whose son is a doctor
in good practice. There is a baker in a little country district whose
sons now hold high positions in the medical profession, one at home and
the other abroad.

These facts are widely known amongst the working classes, and inspire
them with a spirit of rivalry.

With regard to the general education of the people, the
Registrar-General says, (New Zealand Official Year Book for 1898, page
164) "In considering the proportions of the population at different age
periods, the improvement in education is even more clearly proved. It is
found that, in 1896, of persons at the age-period 10-15 years, 98.73 per
cent, were able to read and write, while 0.65 per cent. could merely
read, and 0.62 per cent. were unable to read. The proportion who could
not read increased slowly with each succeeding quinquennial period of
age, until at 50-55 years it stood at 4.04 per cent. At 75 to 80 years
the proportion was 7.05, and at 80 and upwards it advanced to 8.07.
Similarly, the proportion of persons who could read only increased from
0.65 at 10-15 years to 3.66 at the period 50-55 years, and again to 9.74
and upwards. The better education of the people at the earlier stages is
thus exhibited."

Further evidences of improved education will be found in the portion of
his work relating to marriages, where it is shown that the proportion of
persons in every thousand married, who signed by mark, has fallen very
greatly since 1881. The figures for the sexes in the year 1881 were
32.04 males, and 57.04 females, against 6.19 males and 7.02 females in
1895.

For the position of teacher in a public school in New Zealand, at a
salary of L60 a year, there were 14 female applicants, 10 of whom held
the degree of M.A., and the other four that of B.A.

The number of children, 5-15 years of age, in New Zealand, was estimated
as on 31st December, 1902, at 178,875. The number of children, 7-13
years of age (compulsory school age), was estimated as on 31st December,
1902, at 124,986. The attendance at schools, public and private, during
the fourth quarter of 1902, was European 150,332, Maoris and half-castes
5,573. If children spend their useful years of child life at school,
they can render little or no remunerative service to their parents.

Neither boys or girls can earn anything till over the age of 14 years.
Our laws prohibit child labour.

In New Zealand, children, therefore, while they remain at home, are a
continual drain on the resources of the bread-winner. More is expected
from parents than in many other countries.

At our public schools children are expected to be well clad; and it is
quite the exception, even in the poorest localities of our large cities,
to see children attending school with bare feet.

During child-life, nothing is returned to the parent to compensate for
the outlay upon the rearing and educating of children.

If a boy, by reason of a good education, soon, say, at from 14-18 years,
is enabled to earn a few shillings weekly, it is very readily absorbed
in keeping him dressed equally well with other boys at the same office
or work.

An investment in children is, therefore, from a pecuniary point of view,
a failure. There are, perhaps, two exceptions in New Zealand--in dairy
farming in Taranaki, where the children milk outside school hours; and
in the hop districts of Nelson, where, during the season, all the
children in a family become hop-pickers, and a big cheque is netted when
the family is a large one.

Quite apart from considerations of self, parents declare that the fewer
children they have, the better they can clothe and educate them; and
they prefer to "do well" for two or three, than to "drag up" twice or
three times as many in rags and ignorance.

Clothing is dear in New Zealand. The following is a labourer's account
of his expenditure. He is an industrious man, and his wife is a thrifty
Glasgow woman. It is drawn very fine. No. 7 is less than he would have
to pay in the city by two or three shillings a week for a house of
similar size. No. 9 is rather higher than is usual with Benefit
Societies, which average about sixteen shillings a quarter.

WEEKLY EXPENSES OF FAMILY COMPRISING FIVE CHILDREN AND PARENTS.

                                  Per Week.
                                  L  s.  d.
1.  Groceries and milk            0  15   0
2.  Coal and light                0   4   0
3.  Butcher                       0   4   0
4.  Baker                         0   4   0
5.  Boots, with repairing         0   2   6
6.  Clothing and underclothing    0   5   0
7.  Rent in suburbs               0  10   0
8.  Sundries                      0   2   0
9.  Benefit Society               0   2   0
                                  -----------
  Weekly total                   L2   8   6

Most young people make a good start in New Zealand. Even men-servants
and maid-servants want for nothing. They dress well, they go to the
theatres and music-halls, they have numerous holidays, and enjoy them by
excursions on land or sea. It is when they marry, and mouths come
crying to be filled, that they become poor, and the struggle of life
begins.

In our Colony, there is no more prevalent or ingrained idea in the minds
of our people than that large families are a cause of poverty.

A high birth-rate in a family certainly is a cause of poverty. Many
children do not enable a father to earn higher wages, nor do they enable
a mother to render the bread-winner more assistance; while in New
Zealand, especially, compulsory education and the inhibition of
child-labour prevent indigent parents from procuring the slight help
that robust boys and girls of 10 years of age, or so, are often able to
supply.

These considerations go far to explain the desire on the part of married
couples to limit offspring; and, if there were no means at their
disposal of limiting the number of children born to them, a great
decline in the marriage-rate would be the inevitable result of the
existing conditions of life, and the prevalent ideas of the people.

Hopeless poverty appears to be a cause of a high birth-rate, and this
seems to be due to the complete abandonment by the hopelessly poor of
all hope of attaining comfort and success.

Marriage between two who are hopelessly poor is extremely rare with us.
Each is able to provide for his or herself at least, and in all
probability the husband is able to provide comfortably for both.

If he is not, the wife can work, and their joint earnings will keep them
from want. But, if one of the partners has not only to give herself up
to child-bearing, and thus cease to earn, but also bring another into
the home that will monopolise all her time, attention, and energy, and a
good deal of its father's earnings, how will they fare?

If a man's wages has to be divided between two, then between three, then
four, six, eight, ten, while all the time that wages is not increasing,
have we not a direct cause of poverty, and, moreover, is not that cause
first in time and importance?

Later on in the history of the family their poverty will become a cause
of an increase in the children born to them. At first they may struggle
to prevent an increase, but, when they are in the depths of hopeless
poverty, they will abandon themselves to despair.

Could they have had born to them only one, or two, or three, during
their early married life, they might not only have escaped want, but
later in life may have had others born to them, without either their
little ones or themselves feeling the pinch of poverty.

It must be remembered in this connection that fecundity and sexual
activity are not convertible terms.

It is certainly not true to say that the greater the fecundity of the
people the stronger their sexual instinct, or the greater the sexual
exercise.

A high fecundity does not depend on an inordinate sexual activity.

Fecundity depends on the child-bearing capacity of each female, and a
sexual union at an appropriate time once in two years between puberty
and the catamenia is compatible with the highest possible fecundity.

It would be quite illogical, and inconsistent with physiological facts,
to aver that, were the poor less given to indulge the pleasures of
sense, their fecundity would be modified in an appreciable degree.




CHAPTER VI.

ETHICS OF PREVENTION.


_Fertility the law of life.--Man interprets and controls this
law.--Marriage law necessary to fix paternal responsibility.--Malthus's
high ideal.--If prudence the motive, continence and celibacy violate no
law.--Post-nuptial intermittent restraint.--Ethics of prevention judged
by consequences.--When procreation is a good and when an
evil.--Oligantrophy.--Artificial checks are physiological sins._


"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He
him, male and female created He them, and God blessed them and God said
unto them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the
earth.'"--(Genesis i., 27-28). This commandment was repeated to Noah and
his sons.

Whether Moses was recording the voice of God, or interpreting a
physiological law is immaterial to this aspect of a great social
question. The fact remains that in obedience to a great law of life, all
living things are fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and
multiplication in a state of nature is limited only by space and food.

In a state of nature, reproduction is automatic, and only in this state
is this physiological law, or this divine command obeyed.

The reason of man intervenes, and interprets, and modifies this law.

A community of men becomes a social organism, calls itself a State, and
limits the law of reproduction. It decrees that the sexes shall, if they
pair, isolate themselves in pairs, and live in pairs whether inclined to
so live or not.

If the State has a right so to interpret and limit the law of
reproduction, a principle in human affairs is established, and its
decree that individuals shall not mate before a certain age, or not mate
at all, is only a further application of the same principle. By the law
of reproduction a strong instinct, second only in force and universality
to the law of self-preservation, is planted in the sexes, and upon a
blind obedience to this force, the continuity of the race depends.

The tendency in the races of history has been to over-population, or to
a population beyond the food supply, and there is probably no race known
to history that did not at some one period of its rise or fall suffer
from over-population.

States have mostly been concerned, therefore, with restraining or
inhibiting the natural reproductive instinct of their subjects through
marriage laws which protect the State, by fixing paternal
responsibility. There were strong reasons why a State should not be
over-populated, and only one reason why it should not be
under-populated. That one reason was the danger of annihilation from
invasion.

Sparta was said to have suffered thus, because of under-population, and
passed a law encouraging large families. Alexander encouraged his
soldiers to intermarry with the women of conquered races, in order to
diminish racial differences and antagonism, and Augustus framed laws for
the discouragement of celibacy, but no law has ever been passed
decreeing that individuals must mate, or if they do mate that they shall
procreate.

Malthus, the great and good philanthropist of Harleybury, a great
moralist and Christian clergyman, urged that it was people's duty not to
mate and procreate until they had reasonable hope of being able easily
to rear, support, and educate the normal family of four, and, if that
were impossible, not to mate at all. As a Christian clergyman, Malthus
did not interpret the Divine command apart from the consequences of its
literal acceptance.

"Be fruitful," meant to Malthus reproduce your kind,--that implied not
only bringing babies into the world, but rearing them up to healthy,
robust, and prosperous manhood, with every prospect of continuing the
process.

"Multiply and replenish the earth" as a command to Noah, meant in the
mind of the Rector of Harleybury, "People the earth with men after your
own image."

Very little care would be required in Noah's time, with his fine
alluvial flats, and sparse population, but in Malthus's time the command
could not be fully carried out without labour, self-development, and
"moral restraint."

The physiological law is simple and blind, taking no cognisance of the
consequences, or the quality of the offspring produced. The divine
command is complex. It embodies the reproductive instinct, but restrains
and guides it in view of ultimate consequences.

So much for the views and teaching of Malthus. To him no ethical
standard was violated in preventing offspring by protracted continence,
or lifelong celibacy, provided the motive was the inability so to
provide for a family as to require no aid from the state. And it is
difficult to escape this conclusion. There is no ethical, Christian, or
social law, that directs a man or woman to procreate their kind if they
cannot, or have reasonable grounds to think they cannot, support their
offspring without aid from others.

There can be, therefore, no just law that decrees that men or women
shall marry under such circumstances. In fact most philanthropists think
they violate a social and ethical law if they do marry.

But, if with Paul, they resolve that it is better to marry than to burn,
is there any law that can or should prevent them selecting the
occasions of their union, with a view to limiting fertility.

Abstention is the voluntary hindrance of a desire, when that desire is
strongest in both sexes; and as such it limits happiness, and is in
consequence an evil _per se_. A motive that will control this desire
must be a strong one; such a motive is not necessarily bad. It may be
good or evil.

There can be no essential ethical difference between constant
continence, prior to marriage, and intermittent continence subsequent to
marriage, both practices having a similar motive.

If post nuptial restraint with a view to limiting offspring is wrong,
restraint from marriage with the same motive is wrong.

If delayed marriage in the interest of the individual and the State is
right, marriage with intermittent restraint is in the same interest, and
can as easily be defended.

The ethics of prevention by restraint must be judged by its
consequences. If unrestrained procreation will place children in a home
where the food and comfort are adequate to their healthful support and
development, then procreation is good,--good for the individual,
society, and the State.

If the conditions necessary to this healthful support and development,
can by individual or State effort be provided for all children born, it
is the duty of the individual and of the State to make that effort.

All persons of fair education and good intelligence know what those
conditions are, and if they procreate regardless of their absence, that
procreation is an evil, and prevention by restraint is the contrary
virtue.

It is not suggested, however, that all those who prevent, without or
within the marriage bond, do so from this worthy motive, nor is it
suggested that all those who prevent are not extravagant in their demand
for luxurious conditions for themselves and for their children.

Many require not merely the conditions necessary to the healthful
development of each and every child they may bear, but they demand that
child-bearing shall not entail hardships nor the prospect of hardships,
shall not involve the surrender of any comfort or luxury, nor the
prospect of any such surrender.

Whatever doubt may exist in the minds of moralists and philanthropists
as to the ethics of prevention in the face of poverty, there can be no
doubt that prevention by those able to bear and educate healthy
offspring, without hardship, is a pernicious vice degrading to the
individual, and a crime against society and the State.

Aristotle called this vice "oliganthropy." Amongst the ancients it was
associated with self-indulgence, luxury, and ease. It was the result of
self-indulgence, but it was the cause of mental and moral anaemia, and
racial decay.

So far in this chapter prevention has been dealt with only in so far as
it is brought about by ante-nuptial and post-nuptial restraint.
Artificial checks were first brought prominently before the notice of
the British Public under the garb of social virtue, about the year 1877
by Mrs. Annie Besant and Mr. Charles Bradlaugh.

These checks to conception, though they are very largely used, can
hardly be defended on physiological grounds. Every interference with a
natural process must be attended, to some extent at least, with physical
injury. There is not much evidence that the injury is great, but in so
far as an interference is unnatural, it is unhealthy, and there is much
evidence to show that many of the checks advocated and used, are not
only harmful but are quite useless for the purpose for which they are
sold.

It will be conceded by most, no doubt, that with those capable of
bearing healthy children, and those unable to rear healthy ones when
born, prevention by restraint, ante-nuptial or post nuptial, is a social
virtue, while prevention under all other circumstances is a social vice.

Happiness has been defined as the surplus of pleasure over pain. What
constitutes pleasure and what pain varies in the different stages of
racial and individual development. In civilized man we have the
pleasures of mind supplementing and in some cases replacing the
pleasures of sense. We talk, therefore, of the higher pleasures--the
pleasures of knowledge and learning, of wider sympathies and love, of
the contemplation of extended prosperity and concord, of hope for
international fraternity and peace, and for a life beyond the grave.
Happiness to the highly civilized will consist, therefore, of the
surplus of these pleasures over the pains of their negation.

Self-preservation is the basal law of life, and to preserve one's-self
in happiness, the completest preservation, for happiness promotes
health, and health longevity.

The first law of living nature then is to preserve life and the
enjoyment of it, and the pleasures sought, to increase the sum of
happiness will depend on the sentiments and emotions, _i.e._, on the
faculties of mind that education and experience have developed, in the
race, or in the individual.

My first thought is for myself, and my duty is to increase the sum of my
happiness. But the mental state we call happiness is relative to the
presence or absence of this state in others. Even amongst the lower
animals, misery and distress in one of the flock militate against the
happiness of the others. In a highly developed man true happiness is
impossible in the presence of pain and misery in others and _vice
versa_; happiness is contagious and flows to us from the joy of others.
If the happiness of others then is so essential to my own happiness, I
am fulfilling the first law of life and ministering to my own
preservation in health and happiness by using my best endeavours to
promote this state in others. My material comfort too depends largely on
the labour, and love, and the contribution of others in the complex
industrial system and division of labour of the higher civilisations.
Not only my happiness and health but my very existence depends on the
good-will and toil of others. Thus from a purely egoistic standpoint, my
first duty to myself is to increase the happiness in others, and,
therefore, my first duty to myself becomes my highest duty to society.

My duty to my child is comprehended in my duty to society, _i.e._, to
others. My duty to others is to increase the sum of the happiness of
others, and bringing healthy children into the world not only creates
beings capable of experiencing and enjoying pleasures, but adds to the
sum of social happiness, by increasing the number of social units
capable of rendering service to others.

The next great law of life is the law of race preservation. This law
comprises the instinct to reproduction and the instinct of parental
love. The first and chief function of these instincts in the animal
economy is the perpetuation of the race. The preservation of self
implies and comprehends the preservation of the race.

My first duty to myself is to preserve myself in health and happiness;
but this is best fulfilled and realized in labouring for the health and
happiness of others. If this be the universal law, I also am the
recipient of others' care, therefore probably better tended and
preserved. I save my life by losing it in others.

My second duty, though nominally to Society, is in reality to myself,
and it is to preserve myself by preserving the race to which I belong.

Self-preservation therefore, is the first law of life, race preservation
the second or subsidiary law.

To fulfil this second law, nature has placed on every normal healthy man
and woman the sacred duty of reproducing their kind. Reproduction as a
physiological process promotes, both directly and indirectly, the
health, happiness and longevity of healthy men and women.

Statistics confirm the popular opinion "that the length of life, to the
enjoyment of which a married person may look forward, is greater than
that of the unmarried, both male and female at the same
age."--(Coghlan).

It is a familiar observation that the mothers of large families of ten
and even twice that number are not less healthy nor shorter lived
because of the children they have borne. Pregnancy is a stimulus to
vitality. Because another life has to be supported, all the vital
powers are invigorated and rise to the occasion--the circulation
increases, the heart enlarges in response to the extra work, and the
assimilative powers of the body are greatly accelerated. During
lactation also, the same extra vital work done is a stimulus to a
physiological activity which is favourable to health and longevity. The
expectancy of life in women is greater than in men all through life, the
difference during the child-bearing period of life being about 2.2 years
in favour of women.

Statistics and physicians from their observation agree in this, that the
bearing of children by normal women, so far from being injurious to
health, is as healthful, stimulating, and invigorating a function as the
blooming of a flower, or the shedding of fruit, and a mother is no worse
for the experience of maternity than is the plant or the tree for the
fruit it bears.

The supreme law of society is the law of race-preservation, and the
infraction of this law is a social crime. One's duty to society is a
higher duty than to one's-self, but the lower duty comes first in our
present stage of racial evolution. Instinct prompts to the one,
reason--a higher and later, but less respected, faculty--prompts to the
other.

But it can be shown that from an egoistic standpoint my duty to the
State in this regard is my highest duty to myself.

The parental sacrifice necessary in rearing the normal number of
children is infinitesimal compared with the parental advantage.

Parental love is a passion as well as an instinct in normal men and
women, and the full play of this passion in its natural state is
productive of the greatest happiness.

Vice may restrain, replace, or smother it, but nothing else can damage
or adulterate this powerful passion in the human heart.

Low level selfishness, love of low level luxury, diseased imaginings,
and unreasonable dreads and fears, are some of the forms of vice that
smother this noble passion.

The pursuit of happiness and the higher forms of selfishness would
naturally point to parentage.

The ectasy of parental love, the sweet response from little ones that
rises as the fragrance of lovely flowers, self-realization in the
comfort and joy of family life, the parental pride in the contemplation
of effulgent youth, the sympathetic partnership in success, the repose
of old age surrounded by filial manhood and womanhood, all go to make a
surplus of pleasure over pain, that no other way of life can possibly
supply.

What is the alternative?

To miss all this and live a barren life and a loveless old age. Perhaps
to bear a child, that, for the need of the educative, elevating
companionship of family mates is consumed by self, inheriting that
vicious selfishness, which he by his birth defeated, and finding all the
forces of nature focussed on his defect, like a pack of hounds that turn
and rend an injured mate.

Or a family of one, after years of parental care and love, education and
expense, dies or turns a rake, and the canker of remorse takes his place
in the broken hearts.

Nature's laws are not broken with impunity--as a great Physician has
said, "She never forgives and never forgets."

Self-preservation and race-preservation together constitute the law of
life, just as Conservation of Matter and Conservation of Energy
constitute the Law of Substance in Haeckels Monistic Philosophy, and the
severest altruism will permit man to follow his highest self-interest in
obedience to these laws. It is only a perverted and vicious
self-interest that would tempt him to infraction.

That the vice of oliganthropy is growing amongst normal and healthy
people is a painful and startling fact. In New Zealand the prevailing
belief is that a number of children adds to the cares and
responsibilities of life more than they add to its joys and pleasures,
and many have come to think with John Stuart Mill, that a large family
should be looked on with the same contempt as drunkenness.




CHAPTER VII.

WHO PREVENT.


_Desire for family limitation result of our social system._--_Desire and
practice not uniform through all classes._--_The best limit, the worst
do not._--_Early marriages and large families._--_N.Z. marriage rates.
Those who delay, and those who abstain from marriage._--_Good motives
mostly actuate._--_All limitation implies restraint._--_Birth-rates vary
inversely with prudence and self-control._--_The limited family usually
born in early married life when progeny is less likely to be well
developed._--_Our worst citizens most prolific._--_Effect of poverty on
fecundity._--_Effect of alcoholic intemperance._--_Effect of mental and
physical defects._--_Defectives propagate their kind._--_The
intermittent inhabitants of Asylums and Gaols constitute the greatest
danger to society._--_Character the resultant of two forces--motor
impulse and inhibition._--_Chief criminal characteristic is defective
inhibition._--_This defect is strongly hereditary._--_It expresses
itself in unrestrained fertility._


It has been sufficiently demonstrated in preceding chapters, that the
birth-rate has been, and is still rapidly declining. It has been sought
to prove that this decline is chiefly due to voluntary means taken by
married people to limit their families, and that the desire for this
limitation is the result of our social system.

The important question now arises. Is the desire uniform through all
classes of Society, and is the practice of prevention uniform through
all classes?

In other words, is the decline in the birth-rate due to prevention in
one class more than in another, and if so which?

Experience and statistics force us to the startling conclusion, that the
birth-rate is declining amongst the best classes of citizens, and
remains undisturbed amongst the worst.

Now the first-class responsible for the decline includes those who do
not marry, and those who marry late. The Michigan vital statistics for
1894 (p. 125) show that the mean number of children to each marriage at
the age of 15-19 years is 6.75, at the age of 20-25 years it is 5.32, a
difference of 1.44 in favour of delayed marriage for a period of five
years.

In New Zealand the marriage rate has gone up from 5.97 per thousand
persons living in 1888 to 7.67 in 1900.

This class includes clerks with an income of L100 and under,--a large
number with L150, and all misogynists with higher incomes.

It includes labourers with L75 a year and under, and many who receive
L100.

Their motives for avoiding marriage are mostly prudential.

Those who abstain from marriage for prudential reasons are as a rule
good citizens. They are workers who realise their responsibilities in
life, and shrink from undertaking duties which they feel they cannot
adequately perform. By far the largest class who practice prevention,
consists of those who marry, and have one or two children, and limit
their families to that number, for prudential, health, or selfish
reasons.

These too are as a rule good citizens, and there are two qualities that
so distinguish them. First, their prudence; they have no wish to burden
the State with the care or support of their children. Their fixed
determination is to support and educate them themselves, and they set
themselves to the work with thriftiness and forethought.

In order to do this, however, it is essential that the family is limited
to one, two, or three, as the case may be, and before it is too late,
preventive measures are resorted to.

The second quality that distinguishes them as good citizens is their
self-control. Every preventive measure in normal individuals implies a
certain amount of self-restraint, and in proportion as prudential
motives are strong is the self-imposed restraint easy and effective.

The existence of these two qualities, prudence and self-control, is a
very important factor in human character, and upon their presence and
prevalence in its units depend the progress and stability of society.
But the birth-rate varies in an inverse ratio with these qualities. In
those communities or sections of communities, where these qualities are
conspicuous, will the birth-rate be correspondingly low.

There is another class of people that has strong desires to keep free
from the cares and expense of a large family. These are, too, good
citizens and belong to good stock. They are those possessed of ambition
to rise socially, politically, or financially, and they are a numerous
body in New Zealand.

They are quite able to support and educate a fairly large family, but as
children are hindrances, and increase the anxieties, the
responsibilities and the expense, they must be limited to one or two.

There is still another class that consists of the purely selfish and
luxurious members of society, who find children a bother, who have to
sacrifice some of the pleasures of life in order to rear them.

Now all those who prevent have some rational ground for prevention, and
at least are possessed of sufficient self-control to give effect to
their wish. They include the best citizens and the best stock, and from
them would issue, if the reproductive faculty were unrestrained, the
best progeny.

One grave aspect of this limitation is that, as a rule, the family is
limited after the first one or two are born. The small families, say of
two, are born when the parents are both young, and carefully compiled
statistics prove that these are not the best offspring a couple can
produce. Those born first in wedlock, are shorter and not so well
developed as those born later in married life, when parents are more
matured.

If it is substantially true, that the decline in the birth-rate is due
to voluntary prevention, and that prevention implies prudence and
self-control, it is safe to conclude that those in whom these qualities
are absent or least conspicuous, will be the most prolific.

But those in whom these qualities are absent or least conspicuous are
our worst citizens, and, therefore, our worst citizens are the most
prolific. Observation and statistics lead to the same conclusion.

Amongst the very poor in crowded localities, the passion for marriage
early asserts itself.

Its natural enemies are prudence and a consciousness of responsibility,
and these suggest restraint. But prudence and restraint are not the
common attributes of the very poor. Poverty makes people reckless, they
live from hour to hour as the lower animals do. They satisfy their
desires as they arise, whether it be the desire for food or the desire
of sex.

The very poor includes amongst its numbers, the drunkard, the criminal,
the professional pauper, and the physically and mentally defective.

The drunkard is not distinguished by his prudence, nor by his
self-restraint. In fact the alcohol which he imbibes paralyses what
self-control he has, and excites through an increased circulation in his
lower brain-centres an unnatural sexual desire. What hope is there of
the drunkard curtailing his family by self-restraint?

Dr. Billings says, (Forum, June 1893) "So far as we have data with
regard to the use of intoxicating liquors, fertility seems greatest in
those countries and amongst those classes where they are most freely
used."

Neither is the criminal blessed with the important attributes of
prudence and self-control. They are conspicuous by their absence in him.

In all defectives, in epileptics, idiots, the physical deformed, the
insane, and the criminal, the prudence and self-restraint necessary to
the limitation of families is either partially or entirely absent.

To the poor in crowded localities, with limited room-space and
insanitary surroundings, effective self-restraint is more difficult than
in any other class of society.

In all defectives the sexual instinct is as strong, if not stronger,
than in the normal, and they have not that interest in life, and regard
for the future that suggest restraint, nor have they the power to
practise it though prudence were to guide them.

The higher checks to population, as they exist among the better classes
of people, do not obtain amongst the defectives taken as a class.

Vice and misery are more active checks amongst the very poor, and
abortion is practised to a very considerable extent, but the appalling
fact remains, that the birth-rate of the unfit goes on undisturbed,
while the introduction of higher checks amongst the normal classes has
led to a marked decline, more marked than at first sight appears. The
worst feature of the problem, however, is not so much the disproportion
in the numbers born to the normal and the abnormal respectively, but the
fact that the defectives propagate their kind.

The defectives, whose existence and whose liberty constitute the
greatest danger to the State, are the intermittent inhabitants of our
lunatic asylums, prisons, and reformatories.

There is one defect common to all these, and that is defective
inhibition.

All human activity is the result of two forces, motor impulses tending
to action, and inhibition tending to inertia.

The lower animals have strong motor impulses constantly exploding and
expressing themselves in great activity, offensive, defensive,
self-preservative, and procreative, being restrained only by the
inhibitive forces of their conditions and environment.

Children have strong motor impulses, which are at first little
controlled. Inhibition is a late development and is largely a result of
education.

If the motor impulses remain strong, or become stronger in the presence
of development with exercise, while inhibition remains weak, we have a
criminal.

Inhibition is the function performed by the highest and last-formed
brain-cells. These brain cells may be undeveloped either from want of
exercise, that is, education, or from hereditary weakness, or, having
been developed may have undergone degeneration, under the influence of
alcohol, or from hereditary or acquired disease.

Motor impulses, as the springs of action, are common to all animals. In
the lower animals inhibition is external, and never internal or
subjective. In man it may be internal or external.

It is internal or subjective in those whose higher brain centres are
well developed and normal. Their auto-inhibition is such that all their
motor impulses are controlled and directed in the best interests of
society.

It is external only in those whose higher brain centres are either
undeveloped or diseased. These constitute the criminal classes. Their
motor impulses are unrestrained. They offer a low or reduced resistance
to temptation.

Weak or absent resistance in the face of a normal motor impulse whose
expression injuriously affects another, is crime, and a criminal is one
whose power of resistance to motor impulses has been reduced by disease,
hereditary or acquired, or is absent through arrested development.

A confirmed criminal is one in whom the frequent recurrence of an
unrestrained impulse injurious to others has induced habit.

Auto-inhibition is defective or absent, and society must in her own
interest provide external restraint, and this we call law.

Criminals are, therefore, mental defectives, and may be defined for
sociological purposes as those in whom legal punishment for the second
time, for the same offence, has failed to act as a deterrent.

M. Boies, in "Prisoners and Paupers," says that conviction for the third
time for an offence, is proof of hereditary criminal taint.

The existence of motor impulses in the human animal is normal. They vary
in strength and force. We cannot eradicate, we can only control them.

They may become less assertive under the constant control of a highly
cultivated inhibition, but it is only in this way that they can be
affected at all. They may be controlled, either by the individual
himself or by the State. Our reformatories are peopled by young persons
whose distinguishing characteristic is that inhibition is undeveloped or
defective. This defect may be due to want of education, but it is more
often hereditary.

Two things only can be done for them. This faculty of inhibition can be
trained by education, or external restraint can be provided by law.

But the distinguishing characteristic of all defectives, within or
without our public institutions, is defective inhibition,--they are
unable to control the spontaneous impulses that continually arise, and
which may indeed be normal.

Impulses may be abnormal from hereditary predisposition, as _e.g._ the
impulse to drink, but only through strengthening inhibition can these
impulses be controlled,--their existence must be accepted.

But whether the defect is an abnormal impulse, or a normal impulse
abnormally strong, or an abnormally weak or defective inhibition, the
condition is hereditary, and such defectives propagate their kind.

It has been shown that they are more fertile than any other classes
because of the very defect that makes them a danger to society.

The defective restraint that allows them to commit offences against
person and property, also allows their procreative impulse unrestrained
activity.

Defectives, therefore, are not only fertile, but they propagate their
kind, and a few examples will serve to show to some extent the
fertility, and to an enormous extent the hereditary tendencies, of the
unfit.

                        CASE NO. 1, p. 49.
                        J. E----'s FAMILY.

M                                     M                              F
----------+---------------------------+----------------+--------------
          |                           |                |
  A suicide, Aet. 56         Died of cancer of         | Died in a fit,
  Married. No issue          stomach, Aet. 66          | Aet. 54
                                                       |
----+---------+----------+----------+-----------+------+----