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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 ANÆSETICS 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 £250,000. 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
5½ 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.