Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/257

Rh represented 18 per cent, of all cases treated in such institutions. In Paris the number of abortions is estimated to exceed the number of births and fully two thirds of these are said to be provoked. Dr. Georges Bertillon estimates that the annual number of such cases is not less than 50,000 for all France, and Premier Barthou in the course of the discussion during the past summer of a proposed law to restrain the practises of the Malthusians asserted that the number of abortions was probably as high as 100,000 per year.

One undoubted reason for the voluntary limitation of the number of births is to be found in the small incomes of the laboring classes and the petty employés of the state. That a laborer who receives but 80 cents a day or a letter carrier whose salary is only 200 or 250 dollars a year can not rear a family, especially in a city like Paris, however much he may desire to do so, is a proposition which is scarcely controvertible. Consequently they feel under an economic necessity of limiting the size of their families. It is notorious that the number of functionaries in France is excessive (nearly one million, or one fortieth of the total population) and that they are miserably paid, their average salary being scarcely more than 500 dollars per year. This explains why the birth-rate among them is lower than that of any other class except the rich, the average number of children per family being but one and a half.

Students of the depopulation problem are all agreed that another important cause of the voluntary limitation of births is the excessive spirit of economy and the passion for saving which prevails among all classes in France and especially among peasants, shopkeepers and small proprietors. Statistics show that in those communities where the number of certificates of deposit in the savings banks is the largest, the birth-rate is the lowest. Every father feels under the necessity of providing a dot for his daughter and it is one of his chief ambitions to leave an inheritance for his sons. Among the poorer classes this ambition can be realized only when the number of children is limited. There is also among the French an extreme reluctance to see their fortune divided through the operation of inheritance laws. As the existing law does not permit free testamentary disposition, but allows each child an equal share of the inheritance, the only way by which the father can prevent the division of his estate after his death is to leave but a single child to inherit it. The French peasant loves his land more than he loves children, and his ideal is, therefore, a single heir married to a single heiress. He is willing to have his name disappear with his death if his heir is a girl, rather than see his estate divided, which must necessarily be the case if he leaves several children. Therefore he leaves only one. M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, who since the death of M. Levasseur is probably the highest authority in France on matters relating to population, attributes the low birth-rate to the new democratic conception of the family—a view which regards children as a