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Page 16
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. Ars�ne 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.
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