France is on the way to become a country of the third rank. It is
perishing for lack of births. Its population remains stationary, while
that of all the other great countries has largely increased since the
beginning of the century. This points ultimately to a certain growing
inferiority in military strength, economical prosperity, literary
prestige, and scientific repute; and finally to a progressive
diminution of French influence upon the march of civilization. This
depreciation of France comes partly from political causes and partly
from its low birth rate.
In the examination of the remedies which have been proposed to
antagonize this evil, we shall begin with a rapid review of those
which appear to be least efficacious. Then we shall present those
which figure on the programme of the _Alliance Nationale pour
l'accroissement de la population française_, a society which should
include all French people who care for the future of their country.
The reforms for which the depopulation of France has served as the
vaulting board may be divided, notwithstanding the great variety of
them, into four categories: (1) Various social reforms; (2) increase
in the number of marriages; (3) diminution of involuntary sterility;
and (4) reduction of mortality.
We have a word to say with respect to each of these:
I. SOCIAL REFORMS PROPOSED FOR THE HYPOTHETICAL PURPOSE OF INCREASING
NATALITY.--Nobody has ever shown that the emancipation of woman,
selection in paternity, the suppression of divorce, or, the contrary,
laws facilitating divorce, would augment natality. Nobody has ever
given a proof, or the beginning of a proof, in support of these
fancies.
Would socialistic reforms leading to a diminution of the share of
capital, and a corresponding increase of the share of labor, have any
effect upon natality? I can not pronounce upon this question, because
I have not sufficient data; nevertheless, the remuneration of capital
has not ceased to diminish since the beginning of the century--we may
even estimate that it has diminished nearly one half, for the nominal
interest on money has fallen from five to three per cent. This has not
prevented natality from decreasing in our country. Would it be
augmented if capital should come to have no remuneration at all? I
have not examined this difficult and very hypothetical question, for,
if such a thing should happen, it could be only in an extremely remote
future. But the supreme struggle of which our country has always to
think will have taken place long before that.
The revival of religious ideas, if it should come about, might have
some effect on natality. Demographic studies have shown how great an
influence religion has on habits and on phenomena of moral pathology
(on the frequency of suicides, for example), and prove that men put
the prescriptions of their religion into practice more than one would
believe. All religions direct man, more or less imperatively, to have
as numerous a posterity as possible. There may therefore exist a
relation between natality and the degree of sincerity of religious
convictions. But it is manifest that, whatever we may do, we can not
change our age nor prevent its growing more and more incredulous.
II. SUMMARY EXAMINATION OF MEASURES HAVING IN VIEW THE INCREASE OF THE
NUMBER OF MARRIAGES.--Nuptiality is nearly the same in France as it
has been. It has, however, diminished during the last twenty years,
falling gradually from eight marriages to seven marriages a year per
thousand inhabitants. For seven years past it has gained a little, and
is now 7.6--a fairly satisfactory rate. It is not here that the saddle
galls us.
It has been proposed, as a measure for increasing the number of
marriages, to simplify the required formulas. I believe that these
formulas are indeed too long, too many, and too expensive. The
countries which have been so foolish as to copy our civil code have
taken pains to strike out this chapter, and they have done well. But
he is greatly mistaken who believes that the number of marriages could
be perceptibly increased by suppressing unpleasant formulas. When one
wants to marry, he generally does so in spite of the obstacles which
maladroit legislation may have piled up. In case of need, the matter
is settled by an irregular affiance, and natality loses little.
The violent suppression of convents has also been proposed as a
measure for promoting the increase of marriages. A person who has
reflected much could not speak of such a thing. To what extent does
any one suppose that might augment natality? The convents at this time
contain about sixty thousand women. Suppose they were all as ready as
other women to marry--which is not the case, for the fact that they
have retired to a cloister proves that family life has few attractions
for them--a simple calculation shows that they would afford forty-five
hundred births a year. So France needs six hundred thousand infants
every year, and a plan is advanced to give it four or five thousand at
most--and that by means of a violent measure, unworthy of an age of
freedom!
Next are the _measures proposed for diminishing involuntary
sterility_. Is involuntary sterility as frequent as it is supposed to
be? Our respected master, Jules Rochard, was surprised to find two
million sterile families recorded in the census reports. But the
number does not appear excessive. We can not compare it with similar
returns abroad, for France is the only country, except in the case of
a few cities abroad, in which items of this kind are inquired into by
the census takers. But, according to different gynæcologists--chiefly
German--cited in the Academy of Medicine, the number of sterile
families should be sixteen per cent. Now, this is the exact proportion
found in France in the enumeration of 1896. The really surprising
thing about the matter is not the number of sterile families, but the
limited fecundity of the fertile families. There are other figures to
show that absolute sterility is not the cause of the low rate of
French natality. An inquiry respecting sterile families was made in
1856, at a time when French natality was a little higher than it is
now, a comparison of the results of which with those of the
enumeration of 1886 shows that the number of fruitful families had not
diminished (83.6 per cent of the families having one or more children
then, to 83.3 in 1886). The factor that has diminished is the
fertility of the families. It is only necessary to cite the measures
that have been suggested to counteract this supposed excessive
sterility to make their inanity apparent. Among them are reform of the
abuse of tobacco and alcohol and war upon syphilis. Do not these
scourges exist among other nations than us? Nothing could be more
salutary than to war upon them, but to connect their existence with
the depopulation of France is a singular exaggeration of their
importance. More than this, the physician of a benevolent institution
in Paris has told me that the large families who resort to his
dispensary nearly all have a drunkard at their head. The families that
issue from such parents are not necessarily degenerate. This curious
observation ought not certainly to make us partisans of drunkenness,
but it demonstrates to us that the suppression of alcoholism is not
what will restore French natality. Rather the contrary.
III. EXAMINATION OF MEASURES PROPOSED FOR DIMINISHING MORTALITY.--As
the question of the population of France has been more especially
discussed by the doctors, it has done great service as a vaulting
board for medical theories. Doctors are very ready to reason as if
they could dispose of human life at their will. It is very hard to
keep a man from dying. The most skillful doctors have not reached that
point; but it is very easy to have a man born, and is within the reach
of the latest-made young practitioner. It is very doubtful whether the
proposed measures will be efficacious or practical. See how much
trouble we have had, after a century of experiments, in realizing the
benefit of vaccination, the only nearly infallible remedy we have
against disease. Surely a country ought to guard itself as much as
possible against sickness and death, and should do everything that
will conduce to that end, as we do all that is possible to cure a man
ill with pneumonia or any other disease. But we should not delude
ourselves with illusions, and we have to confess that the efficacy of
the measures which we take to satisfy our conscience is very doubtful.
The failures of hygiene are almost as numerous as those of medicine.
Mortality has not increased in France. It is rather less there than in
other countries in the same latitude, and even less than that of some
of the countries situated farther north. So we can hardly hope to
diminish it very much.
The effect of mortality on the whole is, moreover, not to diminish
natality, but rather to favor it. The death of an adult leaves some
position vacant, and makes room for the institution of a new household
and the birth of other children. So when a rich old man dies, the
money he leaves helps set up his children in life; and when a poor old
man dies, a burden is taken away from his descendants, who had to
support him and who can now marry and have children. Some of the
parallelisms in the movements of population which statisticians have
observed may be explained thus. We might compare a human society to a
tank so arranged as to be always full of water. It has a supply pipe
(natality and immigration) which opens and operates only when the
discharge pipe (mortality and emigration) is also open; or to a forest
of definite extent, in which, when a clearing is opened, a new growth
appears in the cleared space, unless some cause exists to prevent it,
which cause it will be the forester's business to find and remove. He
would not think, however, of stopping the cutting of the old trees,
for that would be to prevent the essential condition of the new
growth's getting a headway. The law of all living societies, in
forests and in nations, is the perpetual renewal of the stock.
IV. OF MEASURES THAT WILL BE EFFECTIVE.--The evil must be fought in
its causes. These causes are detestable family customs, dictated by
pecuniary considerations. These being the things to be reformed, and
money being the cause of them, the beginning should be made with
money. We have a right to demand energetic measures, severe if
necessary, against the evil that is eating France. Those which we
shall ask for here are only equitable. They shall fully respect
individual liberty, and in some cases augment it. Their purpose is to
teach the French people who do not know it the immense wrong which
their mistaken selfishness is inflicting upon the country. They aim
especially to modify customs, and to invoke for reasonably numerous
families the profound respect and protection that are due them. And
they seek to harmonize general with particular interests, a thing to
which the present laws have precisely the contrary effect.
_It is just as much every man's duty to contribute to the perpetuity
of his country as it is to defend it._ This is a moral truth which the
French have forgotten, and it will have to be inculcated in them. The
case is beyond the reach of the most eloquent sermons, and will have
to be met, if the mass of men are to be convinced, by palpable facts
that will touch all personally. This leads to the principle, which
seems, moreover, self-evident, that the fact of bringing up a child
should be considered a form of tax payment. The payment of a tax is,
in fact, the imposition of a pecuniary sacrifice for the profit of the
whole nation. This is what the father accepts who rears a child.
_A family, to be acquitted of the tax, should rear at least three
children._ It takes two children to fill the place of the parents, and
there should be a third in addition, for one in three families, on an
average, will have no children. Hence the family which does not rear
three children will fail of imposing sufficient sacrifices upon itself
for the future of the nation. It is free to do this, but should pay
damages for it. He, on the other hand, who rears more than three
children imposes supplementary burdens upon himself, for which he
should be recompensed every time occasion offers. The principle of a
reduction of taxes proportioned to the number of children was applied
in June, 1898, at the instance of the _Alliance Nationale_, by the
city of Lyons. It has been adopted, very timidly at first, and then a
little more broadly, by the Minister of Finance.[F] But it would be
easy, and even necessary, to go considerably further in this
direction.
[Footnote F: France is not the first country that has started on
this course. The spirit of justice has suggested similar reforms
in countries which have no questions of depopulation to deal
with. Reductions of taxes proportioned to the number of children
have been granted in Prussia, Saxony, most of the secondary
states of Germany, Servia, Norway, Sweden, several Swiss cantons,
and Austria.]
To accomplish this reduction without the treasury losing anything, it
is only necessary to charge the less prolific families with one fifth
additional tax. The demographic condition of France is, in fact, so
deplorable that families of more than three children form only one
sixth part of the whole number, or are 2,122,210 out of 12,127,023;
hence, in order to clear fully from liability for taxes these two
million families, it is enough to charge the other ten million
families with supplementary taxes of twenty per cent--a thing that is
entirely practicable. It may, however, seem more expedient to scale
the supplementary impost, so that it shall fall in inverse proportion
to the number of children. Thus, let bachelors more than thirty years
old pay fifty per cent; households without children, forty per cent;
families with one child, thirty per cent; families with two children,
ten per cent; families with three children, the present tax without
addition; while families with more than three children should be
wholly exempt. A simple calculation will show that the treasury would
gain by such an adjustment. It would lose 2,122,210 contributors of
taxes, and would gain, against these, 2,456,112. Furthermore, families
with more than four children are usually poor and hardly able to pay
even light assessments, while those we propose to tax supplementarily
are mostly wealthy, whence the tax against them would be generally
productive.
These scalings and exemptions might be applied to all the various
kinds of direct taxes, so that the state should say, in effect, to the
infertile families: "You have done a wrong to your country. We have no
thought of punishing you for it, but it is not right that you profit
by it. You must pay damages for it."
The plan actually followed by the state, instead of making lighter the
meritorious burden which the head of a numerous family assumes, does
everything to make it harder. All the direct and indirect taxes seem
to fall higher upon families having many children. It would not be
exact to say that the law is indifferent to natality. It would be more
just to say that it does all it can to discourage it, and that every
Frenchman is officially invited, in his own interest and that of his
posterity, to limit it as much as possible. The contrary is what
should be done.
There are wealthy families which are in a position to contribute most
liberally to the perpetuity of the nation, and yet, strangely, they
are the most abstemious. It would not be fair to tax them according to
the number of servants they have, for this must increase as children
multiply; but the tax might be adjusted to the excess of servants over
children.
As an objection to our plan, it may be asked if we really believe that
those "neo-Malthusian" families who have only one or two children will
decide to have four in order to save themselves from some taxes? We do
not cherish this illusion; but the sordidness of the family customs of
the country should not be exaggerated. Most of the families sin
through selfishness, while they do not realize that their selfishness
is culpable, harmful, and ignoble. This must be made clear to them,
and no method of publishing the fact is as imposing and effective as
the tax-collector's schedule. The reform in direct taxes which we
propose will therefore have an educational influence.
The same principle might be applied in the military service by
expediting the discharge of soldiers who are married. A bill to this
effect has been introduced in the French Senate, and an amendment has
been proposed extending the favor to the eldest son of a family of
five children.
The inheritance tax is a particularly fitting form of impost in which
insufficiently fruitful families might pay the indemnity which they
justly owe the state on account of their sterility; for the prime
object of the neo-Malthusians is to forestall the necessity of
dividing their fortunes among too many children. The laws of
succession are so framed now that _only_ sons pay less than others;
not only are the expenses of notarial acts less for them than for
families with several children, but the latter are liable to pay the
tax several times, for when one of the heirs dies his brothers and
sisters will have to pay new succession taxes. In all cases of this
order the treasury burdens numerous families, and spares
neo-Malthusian ones. The institution of heritage stimulates industry,
and is one of the chief reasons for it. A great many men, we are sure,
would work less and would certainly save less except for the prospect
of leaving the fruit of their labor and economy to their children--or,
too often, to their only child. But as the institution of heritage
becomes under these conditions one of the prime factors of
depopulation, it will have to be modified.
The state is as much interested in the fecundity of families as it is
in their industry and thrift. To stimulate the latter virtues it
guarantees them the right of inheritance. It might withdraw it or
diminish it to its own profit, if their fertility was not judged
sufficient for it. For such a measure to be effective its application
should be severe enough to touch sensibly the fortunes of families
which have given the country only one or two children. The state, for
instance, might reserve to itself the disposable part of the
inheritance--half, for instance, in the case of families having only
one child; a third, of families where there are two children; and
waiver of the extra tax where there are three children. The principle
might be approximately expressed as that of treating single children
as to their inheritance portions as if they had brothers. But as a
proposition so worded would have but little chance of immediate
adoption, we should have to be satisfied with a less radical reform.
If it is objected that such measures would be too revolutionary and
too much opposed to existing ideas and habits, the answer is that
anodynes would be without effect upon so profound and inveterate an
evil. French families must cease to have an evident interest in
limiting the number of their children, and something more than half
measures will be needed to achieve such a result.
Our principle is equality of burdens. We say to the French: "You have
three chief duties toward your country: to contribute to its
perpetuity, to its defense, and to its pecuniary burdens. We affirm
that you have failed in the first of these duties. This being true,
you must accept the other two with a supplement. With this principle
severely applied, and with some other reforms, we hope to bring back
to the country the idea of the respect that is due to numerous
families and of aversion against the detestable habits that are
destroying France."
The sums derived from the increased succession taxes which we have
proposed to assess upon families that have given the country only one
or two children might be reserved for the education of poor children
or for the realization of some such plan as has been proposed by M.
Raoul de la Grasserie for the pensioning of a retreat in old age for
the parents of large families.
Another means of encouraging parentage may be found in instituting
special honors and marks of esteem for the fathers and mothers of
numerous children. Thus the General Council of the Drôme gives a gold
medal on the 14th of July to each of the two women in the department
who excel in this respect. A fund has been created at Nantes for
providing rewards to those who have the most children under fifteen
years of age. A system of rewards also exists at Meaux for those who
have contributed most to the population.
The French law requiring the equal division of estates among all the
children operates as a deterrent to parentage. A father who has built
up a large business or accumulated a handsome domain is exceedingly
averse to the prospect of having it cut up and dispersed, and is
therefore careful to have but one child, so that it may descend
unimpaired to him. The coincidence that France is the only country
where this system prevails, and is, at the same time, the only one
where the population is decreasing, is striking enough to suggest a
connection between the two phenomena. The law works mischievously in
this respect, and requires modification in the direction of giving the
parent larger privileges of testamentary disposition.
Thus, the state should in every way and in every department of law and
administration manifest its profound respect for large families; it
should set the example on this point, for it is the party most largely
interested.--_Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the
Revue Scientifique._