Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/678

 662 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

the habits induced by that aversion and dread, may in the end cause a diminution of fertility. Dr. J. Rochard, quoted above, speaks of the "injustice" of attributing the lack of prolificness of French marriages exclusively to voluntary causes ; for it is an actual fact, he says, well known to all physicians, that there are in the cities a great many young couples who eagerly desire to have offspring, but are prevented through absolute barrenness ; and he adds that the number of such marriages is constantly on the increase.' I would also notice that of the European residents of Algeria the French are the most unprolific, the average number of births per marriage between 1853 and 1876 having been 3.6, while among the German, Italian, and Spanish residents the numbers were 4.8, 5.7, and 6.3, respectively.^ Although this may be due to the same voluntary checks prevailing in the mother country, and although the opposite phenomenon is observable in Canada, where the fecundity of French marriages is very great, 3 the phe- nomenon, whatever its cause, is remarkable.

I have dwelt a little at length on the reduced birth-rate in France, as (though we may admit the existence of some real sterility) it is one of the most striking illustrations of the tend- ency of the psycho-economic check to anticipate the biologic check to overmultiplication. Nor is it unreasonable to believe that, as claimed by M. Leroy-Beaulieu and others, France may be taken in this respect as a type to which advancing civilization tends to reduce all nations. In so far, at least, as the marriage- and birth-rates can be taken as indications of that tendency, the conclusion is fully warranted by statistical data. The following is a table showing the birth- and marriage-rates of various countries for periods differing by intervals of six years ; it gives the average yearly marriages and births for every 1,000 inhabit- ants, and the corresponding ratios of births to marriages : ♦

'Van der Smissen, La population, f. ^ot. In 1856 the number of childless families in France was 15.5 per cent, of the existing families ; in 1886 the number had increased to 19.9 per cent. (Mulhall, s. v. "Births," p. 94-)

■MULHALL, s. V. "Births," p. 98.

i Statistical YearBook of Canada for iSqi (Ottawa, 1892), § 142, p. 102.

■< For the construction of this table I have taken the birth- and marriage-rates from the Bulletin de I' Institut international de Statistique (Rome, 1894), t. VII, z" livraison,