STERILITY OF THE CAPABLES.
We saw, in the last chapter, that in social communities the struggle
of one individual with another for wealth and power is not a fair
and open contest, but that all are more or less handicapped by
surrounding conditions, lack of capital, education, or influence.
We saw that recently more equal chances for success are being given
to all, and with the result that the more capable and pushing are
gradually tending to form a new upper class, and thereby draining
from the labouring classes all those who possess the qualities we
have alluded to.
_Are the More Capable Relatively Sterile?_
So far we have viewed this as a struggle for wealth and position, and
have purposely kept out of view its influence upon those who will
come after us: this we have now to consider. Provided the successful
and capable competitors contribute on an average an equal number of
children per head, as do the unsuccessful and less capable, it is
evident that talent will neither increase nor suffer decrease; it
will merely undergo a sifting process, and tend to find its place
more and more in the ranks of the aristocracy. If, however, it
should be found that the successful ones are less prolific, from
one cause or another, then talent will tend to diminish, and the
aristocracies will tend to dwindle by the side of the more prolific
democracy, and will possibly eventually disappear. In assuming this
result, we, of course, conclude that there will be comparatively
few marriages between members of widely different classes, and
we have reason for conjecturing that this will be the case from
the fact that distinctions of class have ever been a bar to free
intermarriage, even when these class distinctions have been of the
most artificial kind.
_If so, we are Breeding from our Incapables._
Now there is good reason to believe that the career necessary to
individual success in the life-struggle of modern societies is one
which carries with it and necessitates relative sterility; and if
this is so, we have to face the certainty that talent is being bred
out of us, as it were, and that the average capacity of the race must
therefore assuredly deteriorate. And whereas, in the animal world,
those qualities which determine the success of an individual in the
battle of life become stamped upon its progeny, our modern system
entails just the reverse. In the animal world, fitness results in
life and reproduction, and unfitness in death and sterility; while
amongst men, the capable and successful are rewarded by honour and
wealth, but are relatively sterile, and the man that society is
inclined to overlook contributes a large percentage to the race of
the future.
It would indeed be difficult to conceive any plan more inimical
to the future of a race, or better devised to sap and undermine
the power of a nation, than that of taking from it in perpetuity
those possessed of innate capacity, a result which follows when
the best citizens are induced, for the sake of gifts and honours,
to relinquish their obligation to the race of being the parents
of many children. Such a plan must continually withdraw from the
nation those qualities which are most admired, and which, it must be
presumed, it is most desirable to preserve.[27] A nation subjected
for long to such a treatment can only become, like the mould of a
garden from which the produce has been taken for many years, but
to which nothing has been added in return, a soil prolific enough
in weeds and brambles, but incapable of growing any of the choicer
plants.
If, then, we find that our more democratic views of to-day are
tending to bring about such a result, we must admit the danger
into which we are passing, and see whether there is not a way of
escape. We cannot but feel a strong sympathy with every plan which
tends to place a round man in a round hole, and to develop to the
utmost whatever of capacity, whatever of goodness, there may be
present at any one time in the social community. Our sympathy for
the downtrodden, and our efforts to assist those who are willing
to do life’s better work, are but expressions of the fact that we
live and have lived together socially, because we have it in us to
love, and to value the love of others. It would indeed be a sad
tale if that love had never acted in perhaps unwise excess, if it
had not prompted us to action, which we may afterwards realise is
not in itself and by itself the most judicious.
As already maintained, we naturally consider our fellows first, and
we study the picture of life around us; our power of foretelling the
future and the results of our present actions comes later on. So
it is that our politicians, in cases where sincerity is undoubted,
have aimed at the betterment of the individual, and the adjustment
in the community of individual capacity to suitable occupation. Few
have ever asked themselves the question, What will be the result of
my present action on the next generation born? For this there is
every excuse, for until recently these questions were unanswerable
in the face of our great ignorance of the chief facts of evolution.
_Capable and Ambitious Men Marry Late in Life._
When we turn to the experiences of life common to most of us,
we shall find, I think, pretty strong evidence that surrounding
conditions determine that, as a rule, the capable and ambitious
man has fewer children than his fellows. Let us examine some of
these facts of common experience. The agricultural labourer, of
the intellectual value of whose education I have by no means a low
opinion, nevertheless obtains this education without cost. Bred on
the farm, he insensibly imbibes from what he sees around him the
multifarious bits of information a farm hand requires. The manual
labour which he is called upon to perform implies a very varied,
although often underrated, skill, but this skill, and, indeed, his
whole education, may easily be acquired, and that without cost, by the
age of twenty. He is then capable of earning a maximum wage, for he
has reached the period of life at which he is a full-farm-labourer,
and at forty he does nothing more and receives no higher wage. Now
this maximum wage which he is capable of earning at so early an
age is sufficient to support a wife and family. In consequence of
this condition of things the countryman generally marries in his
early twenties, and selects in preference to an older woman one of
about his own age. The pair are married during nearly the whole of
their child-bearing period, and have as many children as they, in
the ordinary course of nature, can produce. Much the same sort of
statement applies to the lower artisan, factory hand, etc. In these
cases perfect accomplishment of the set routine of their especial
work can be obtained at a very early age, and for the rest of life
no further advance is made. The manual dexterity required in most
of these occupations is indeed best acquired during youth, and at
twenty or thereabouts the full standard of efficiency is reached, and
full wages demanded in return. Need we wonder at the fertility of
these marriages, or at the swarms of children seen in every street
where the town labourers and lower artisans reside. Now, rightly
or wrongly, the man who dresses fashionably, who drives a pen or
serves behind a counter, is held of much more account than one who
pursues the more manly occupations of tilling the ground or of laying
drains. How this sentiment has arisen we need not discuss; there
it is, and it has the effect of drawing from the agricultural and
lower artisan classes the more ambitious and capable, and turning
them into clerks and shop attendants. The slightly-increased wage
is not more than is required in the new position, and is expended
on dress and those appearances and pleasures which associate
themselves with town life. The future has, no doubt, possibilities,
for the clerk may rise, and the shop attendant may become himself a
master, and with these possibilities in view most are inclined to
wait in hope, many fondly believing in their power and certainty
of eventual success. Marriage, however, is a very serious thing,
for though the country hand is comfortable enough with his fifteen
shillings a week, free cottage, etc., and a wife used to roughing
it, the clerk has to mate with a woman who has to be dressed like
a lady, and who has placed a foot on that ladder which strikes all
who find themselves upon it with the folly of wishing to appear to
be on one rung above that on which they really rest. His means are,
therefore, quite inadequate for marriage, unless with discomfort
and privation, and it tends, therefore, to be postponed. This
especially will be the case with those whose capacity is opening
out a brighter future, and who would naturally hesitate before they
imperil this by a course which, to say the least, might complicate
the issue.
A step further we come to occupations which require a long preliminary
training, and we find that the time of marriage is postponed maybe
to the later years of life. An artist requires years of careful
training before his work can reach a standard which is of marketable
value, and even then his progress is generally delayed while a
connection is being established, and a reputation built up. The
manufacturer requires general education of a fairly advanced kind,
to be followed by a more or less protracted acquaintance with the
special business to which he may be devoted, an acquaintance which
tends to be wider and of greater value as time goes on; he frequently
has to wait for openings only obtainable on the decease of those
with whom he is associated. The lawyer and doctor are only able
to marry comparatively late in life owing again to the prolonged
and special training required of them. The medical student must
continue his studies for at least five years after he has left his
school, and then almost invariably continues for a few years to act
as assistant or partner, content to learn the practical aspects of
his profession, with but a small monetary return. Amongst these the
most ambitious aim at special knowledge of some small branch, and
here again a longer training is required and years of patience,
until their work has received sufficient recognition to bring the
rich harvest to which they ultimately aspire.
_Many Unmarried Persons among Upper Classes._
For such reasons ambitious rising men fear marriage, and the
possibility of large families. In many cases marriage is never
contracted, and the middle and upper classes are full of men and
women living single lives, without contributing their share to
the production of the race. The lower classes, less hampered by
a sense of prudence, contract marriages most freely, increasing
thereby the relative fertility of their class. While the success of
a woman in the upper classes who has several daughters to dispose
of is proverbially precarious, we read that in the East End of
London every girl in the lowest classes can get married, and with
hardly one exception does marry.[28] Those in the upper classes
who marry at all do so, as already remarked, at a later period. In
verification of this fact we have not only the statements previously
adduced from the circumstances of every-day experience, but we also
have statistical information at hand in the Forty-Ninth Report on
Births, Deaths, and Marriages, where we can find the average age of
marriage given for a variety of trades and occupations as follows:--
AVERAGE AGES AT MARRIAGE, 1884–85.
---------------------------------------------
Occupations. Bachelors. Spinsters.
---------------------------------------------
Miners 24·06 22·46
Textile hands 24·38 23·43
Shoemakers, tailors 24·92 24·31
Artisans 25·35 23·70
Labourers 25·56 23·66
Commercial clerks 26·25 24·43
Shopkeepers, shopmen 26·67 24·22
Farmers and sons 29·23 26·91
Professional and }
independent class } 31·22 26·40
---------------------------------------------
We shall see from a study of this table that marriage is contracted
at a more advanced age by those who occupy what in the world’s
estimation are high positions, and this implies diminished fertility
on the part of the women. We should expect from common observation
that the younger women would be more prolific, and this is borne out
by exact statistical observation. Matthews Duncan[29] concludes that
women who marry from twenty to twenty-four are the most prolific,
and that the only period which at all rivals this is the five years
from fifteen to nineteen inclusive, and that women married later
in life than twenty-four are distinctly less prolific.
_Lower Class Marriages are the Most Prolific._
Not only do the wives of the working classes produce individually
more children than those of the professional classes, but, owing
to these earlier marriages, generations succeed each other with
greater rapidity. In order to realise how soon a slight advantage
like this tells upon the composition of the race, we will suppose
for the nonce that the labourer’s wife A marries at twenty-three,
and the lawyer’s wife B marries at twenty-six, and that they have
the same number of children, in each case four. In the case of A
the population will double, say roughly, every twenty-seven years,
and in the case of B every thirty years, allowing in each case four
years for the birth of the family. As we shall see by the following
table, the population produced by the labourer’s wife A will in
270 years be 2,048, while the population produced by the lawyer’s
wife B will be half as much, namely, 1,024 in the same period.[30]
------------+------------------------------
| Years required to produce it.
No. of +------------------------------
Population. | A B
------------+------------------------------
4 | 27 30
5 | 54 60
6 | 81 90
32 | 108 120
64 | 135 150
128 | 162 180
256 | 189 210
512 | 216 240
1,024 | 243 270
2,048 | 270 300
------------+------------------------------
As regards the men, it is also probable that those who marry at
thirty will on the whole be fathers of smaller families than those
who marry at twenty-five, even did they mate with women of the
same age. Of this, however, I cannot adduce reliable statistical
evidence.
_Their Infant Mortality is Greater._
The lower classes appear, therefore, to be more fertile; they more
frequently marry, and they marry at earlier and more fertile ages.
On the other hand it must at once be admitted that they manage
to rear a smaller percentage of their off-spring. The mortality
amongst the infants and children is often alarmingly great through
ignorance and neglect on the parent’s part.
While, therefore, the lower classes are undoubtedly the most
fertile, it is not certain how far this is counterbalanced by the
lower mortality which exists among the children and youth of the
upper classes.
_Artificial Restriction of the Family._
That the counterbalance is not complete is generally believed, and
we must view with dismay any agencies which tend still more to make
the middle and upper classes sterile relatively to the lower. There
can be little doubt that this has recently, and to an increasing
extent, been brought about by the wilful avoidance, on the part of
the parents of the middle and upper classes, of the full duties of
parenthood. It can no doubt be urged that whereas, in many instances,
the care of one or two children can be undertaken in such a manner
as to insure their careful upbringing and education, the rearing
of a large family would be quite beyond the power of the parents,
and would lead to their neglect, or deprivation of some of those
advantages which we have already seen to be so necessary for life’s
struggle.
However true this may be, and however we may sympathise with a
parent’s desire to do his best by his offspring, it is likewise
true that this is an important means, and probably one of greatly
increasing importance, by which the upper and middle classes are
becoming, relatively speaking, sterile. It is probable, too, that
this sterility will be mostly found in the case of those who rise
in life and have a longer and more difficult battle to fight, and
who have, therefore, most cause to avoid unnecessary complication.
_Fertility of French and English Marriages Contrasted._
We can see very clearly in the pages of contemporary history the
disastrous effects which may follow diminished fertility. Owing
to custom, and subsequently to legislation, property in France is
divided equally among the children of a family; and in consequence
of this, were there many children to a marriage, this property would
be split up into smaller and smaller portions, insufficient at last
to furnish the necessities of life. Among the rural population, a
farmer by thrift can live and marry on his small farm, but half
the farm would be a piece of property upon which no one could live
an independent existence.
It is necessary, therefore, that this property should be passed on
intact, and this can be done when on an average a farmer brings
to maturity two children. Of these, on an average, one will be a
boy and the other a girl, so that by adjustment farmer A can marry
his daughter to farmer B, and marry the daughter of farmer C to
his own son. In this case the son of farmer A gains by his wife’s
dowry what his family lost by his sister’s marriage. As a result
of this artificial limitation of the family, the population of
France remains stationary, there is no pressure of numbers, and
by thrift and care the people are prosperous and happy. While,
however, this may suit the convenience of individual French men
and women, it is fatal for the future of the French race, who are
becoming insignificant in numbers and influence as compared with
those nations whose citizens have more fully accepted the duties of
parenthood. It is interesting in this relationship to contrast the
births, deaths and marriages, together with the estimated population
of France, with those of the United Kingdom, which may be done by
reference to the following table taken from Tables 40 and 54 of the
Fifty-Fourth Annual Report of the Registrar General’s Returns.
POPULATION, MARRIAGES, BIRTHS, DEATHS.
-----+-------------------------------+-------------------------------
| United Kingdom. | France.
+------------+------------------+------------+------------------
| | Proportion per | | Proportion per
Year.| | 1000 Persons. | | 1000 Persons.
| Population.+------------------+ Population.+------------------
| | Mar. Bths. Dths.| | Mar. Bths. Dths.
-----+------------+------------------+------------+------------------
1867 | 30,409,132 | 15·2 33·8 20·8 | 38,188,749 | 15·7 26·4 22·7
1871 | 31,555,694 | 15·4 33·7 21·5 | 36,544,067 | 14·4 22·6 24·81
1875 | 32,838,758 | 15·3 33·9 22·1 | 36,638,163 | 16·4 26·0 23·0
1879 | 34,302,557 | 13·8 33·3 20·5 | 37,365,544 | 15·1 25·0 22·5
1883 | 35,449,411 | 14·4 32·0 19·6 | 37,866,000 | 15·0 24·8 22·2
1887 | 36,598,235 | 13·5 30·7 19·0 | 38,320,000 | 14·5 23·5 22·0
1891 | 37,795,475 | 14·6 30·4 20·0 | 38,343,000 | 15·0 22·6 22·6
-----+------------+------------------+------------+------------------
We see that from 1867 till 1891 the population of the United Kingdom
has increased twenty-five per cent., but that of France has remained
stationary. While the marriage-rate--the number of persons married
per 1000 of the population--is about the same in both countries,
the births are over fifty per cent. in excess of the deaths in
the United Kingdom; while in France they are but very slightly in
excess. It cannot be doubted that, in very large measure, it is due
to this relative sterility that France has failed as a colonising
power. The French have ever been full of enterprise, and have long
desired to establish colonies, but they have in the main been ousted
by the British. Colonisation to them has been an ambition, an idea,
but not a necessity; to us the alternative has been overcrowding
and misery on the one hand, and extensive emigration on the other.
Can we wonder that British necessity has overmatched French vanity?
One cannot read the accounts of the struggle between the British
and French in North America, antecedent to the War of Independence,
without feeling that from the first the issue was certain. The French,
who took the palm in enterprise and exploration, were nevertheless
rapidly outnumbered by the British settlers, who crowded out of
their own congested country into the new land, and increased there
with enormous rapidity, the population doubling during the period
of fifteen years in many districts.
It is in their relative fertility by the side of the French that
the English-speaking race, at first a smaller people, have now far
outnumbered their Gaelic neighbours, and have peopled the choicest
portions of the inhabitable world, and formed dominions by the
side of which France is already becoming a small and unimportant
province.
_Possible Swamping of the Capables by the Incapables._
We have here, then, a demonstration of the effects of diminishing
the fertility of a group of persons, and, returning once more to a
consideration of the relative infertility of the upper classes in
our own country, we cannot doubt that, if the present tendencies
continue, we shall here also find that the ranks of those who
possess the qualities suited to worldly success will increasingly
be outnumbered by those more deficient in these qualities. If we
tend to the production of aristocracy of innate worth, there is a
danger that these aristocracies will die out, or, at any rate, that
the number of capables of whom they are comprised will constitute
an ever-diminishing number of the whole community.
_Artificial Restrictions at Present Most Disastrous._
It may be truly urged that, at some time or another, the present
increase of population must come to an end, for as new countries
become filled up, the limits of subsistence must at last be reached.
The discovery of America, Australia, and the opening up of vast
tracts of country in Africa and Asia, has for some hundreds of years
permitted certain European nations to increase their birth-rate
above their death-rate, and we are so accustomed to such a condition
of things that we do not realise that it is exceptional, and that
countries, once they have reached a stable condition, only permit
of the maintenance of a given number of population. Increased care
and knowledge in agriculture may, as time goes on, gradually allow
of a slight increase in the number of the inhabitants, but this will
be slight indeed, as compared with the present ratio of increase.
We may therefore rest assured that, at some time or another, we
shall have to reduce the birth-rate to that of the death-rate,[31]
but we are certainly not called upon to do so at present. It is the
experience of many men of practical knowledge that at the present
time any healthy Englishman, who is fairly capable, industrious and
sober, will be able to earn a living for himself, wife, and family.
He may have to face a possibility of temporary misfortune, and even
catastrophe, in the event of sickness, but his chances are as good,
and the comforts that he can obtain for his wage are greater than
those of wage-earners in other countries. We are not, therefore,
called upon at present to diminish a population which, by its
increase, has been enabled to possess itself of a large portion of
the inhabitable world, and upon whose future increase will depend
in great measure our faculty for keeping it; but we are called upon
to see that this increase is derived from the best, and not from
the worst, members of the community. It will be most disastrous not
only to our Empire, whose strength depends in great measure upon
the numbers of our citizens, but also to the quality of the race,
if the more prudent and capable are bred out of and eliminated from
the community. These, in the nature of things, will be the first
to limit their fertility, no doubt to their individual advantage,
but to the detriment of the race at large. The work on population
by Malthus reads like a modern book. His contributions to social,
and his stimulus to biological science can never be underestimated,
but his advocacy of those measures which insure relative sterility,
such as late marriages, etc., will lead to the final extermination
of those who follow his advice. The world will fall to the share of
those who produce most offspring. Let us be sure that in our own
nation it shall not be to the offspring of the deteriorated, but
that the generations that succeed us shall possess those qualities
of mind and body which we admire most among our fellowmen, and
which will only be preserved to the race if those possessing them
carry out fully their duties of motherhood and fatherhood.
FOOTNOTES
[27] It is here taken for granted that the successful are the best.
This is, however, open to question, as was seen in the last chapter.
[28] “Labour and Life of the People,” p. 472, by Miss Collett.
[29] “Fecundity, Fertility, and Sterility,” second edition,
chapter xiv.
[30] For the sake of simplicity the ages at which the men marry have
been omitted; their inclusion would make the case even stronger.
[31] See a most instructive paper by Dr. Ogle in the Journal of
the Royal Statistical Society, June, 1890.