Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/256

252 like Normandy, Burgundy and the Valley of the Garonne, the birth-rate is the lowest, while in the poorest provinces like Brittainy, the Nord and Lozère it is the highest. They show also that it is twice as high among the poor of Paris as among the rich and that it is fifty per cent, higher among fishermen and sailors than among landlords and the professional classes. But this is a phenomenon not peculiar to France; it is found in all countries where there is a high state of civilization and therefore does not explain why the birth-rate is lower in France than in other countries where similar conditions prevail.

Our conclusion, therefore, is that the principal causes of the low birth-rate are not due to external conditions, social, legal or religious, but are the result of the general attitude of the French toward family life. The relatively high rate of mortality, inadequate hygienic conditions, alcoholism, divorce and the other causes mentioned may be contributory factors, but the chief reason is that the French people do not desire to have children. This attitude has been powerfully accentuated by the neo-Malthusian propagandists who by personal solicitation and the distribution of literature encourage the voluntary limitation of births and the practise of abortion, under the pretext of hygiene and the dissemination of philosophic and scientific doctrines. Limitation of the population is to them a legitimate means of combatting poverty and misery, a policy all the more justifiable, they argue, because of the high cost of living and the increasingly hard struggle for existence. Quality rather than quantity of population, they maintain, is the true test of civilization and national greatness. Moreover, the population of France is already as large as its resources can adequately support and therefore nothing is to be gained by producing a surplus to be forced by necessity to emigrate to America or to Madagascar and to the colonies of Africa. This very active propaganda is now being vigorously combatted as a national crime by men like Jules Lemaêtre, Edmond Perrier, Senator Berenger and others, and a bill for its suppression is being considered by the senate with every likelihood of becoming a law at an early date. Statistics seem to leave no doubt that the propaganda in favor of race suicide is exerting a marked influence on the birth-rate in many parts of France. In Roubaix, for example, where it has been particularly active, the number of births decreased from 3,837 in 1897 to 2,568 in 1906. Likewise in Turcoing the birth-rate has fallen from 34 per 1,000 inhabitants to 19 since the beginning of the propaganda in that city. This propaganda, says Dr. Lebec, is costing France an army corps every five years. Senator Paul Strauss in reporting the conclusions of the extra-parliamentary commission on depopulation recently referred to the "agonizing results" of the Malthusian crusade, and declared that statistics collected by Dr. Doleris showed that between 1898 and 1904 the number of cases of abortions treated in the maternity hospitals had tripled and that the number