Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/529

Rh Adding the two together we find that, out of the 128 marriages in which the cause of limitation is stated, the poverty of the parents in relation to their standard of comfort is a factor in 73 cases, sexual ill-health (that is, generally, the disturbing effect of child-bearing) in 24 and the other ill-health of the parents in 38 cases. In 24 cases the disinclination of the wife is a factor, and the death of a parent has in eight cases terminated the marriage. It should be added that in one or two cases of marriages in the earlier years tabulated recent deaths of parents are mentioned which could not have affected the size of the families, and these are not included in the above.

The confidential voluntary census thus taken is, of course, far too small to be, in itself, any proof of a widespread custom. But taken in conjunction with the very extensive statistical evidence already adduced, it seems to me to complete the demonstration. We must, I think, now take it as proved that the principal, if not the sole, cause of the present continuous decline in the birth rate in Great Britain is the deliberate regulation of the marriage state. This practise prevails, it must be inferred, either with the object of family limitation, or merely with that of regulating the intervals between births, among at least one half, and probably among three fourths, of all the married people in Great Britain of reproductive age—not, as is often imagined, only among those above the ranks of labor, but practically among all classes, from the agricultural laborer in sparsely populated districts, and the artisan in the towns, up to the various grades of professional men and even to the wealthy property owners. The result is that after a quarter of a century of this practise, the total number of children born annually in Great Britain is less than four fifths of what it would be if no such interference took place. Nor is the practise confined to this country. The statistics indicate that New South Wales and Victoria have already carried it further than we have, whilst New Zealand is not far behind. Registration in the United States is very imperfect, but it is clear that the American-born inhabitants of New England, and perhaps throughout the whole of the northern states, are rapidly following suit. The same phenomenon is clearly to be traced in the German Empire, especially in Saxony, Hamburg and Berlin, but the German rural districts are as yet unaffected. The Roman Catholic population of Ireland (and of the British cities), as well as those of Canada and Austria, appear to be still almost untouched, but those of Belgium, Bavaria and Italy are beginning to follow in the footsteps of France. The fact that almost every country which has accurate registration is showing a declining birth rate indicates—though, of course, it does not prove—that the practise is becoming ubiquitous.

These clearly proved facts—which we are bound to face whether we like them or not—will appear in different lights to different people. In some quarters it seems to be considered sufficient to dismiss them with