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Page 7
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.
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