Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/262

258 public functionaries. This suggestion has been made by the commission on depopulation and by many writers and social reformers. Bills embodying this idea have frequently been before parliament, and in 1908 the Chamber of Deputies adopted a resolution inviting the government to introduce a projét for granting to the employés of the state receiving small salaries an allocation in proportion to the size of their families. Some of the administrative departments have in fact already adopted such a policy. Thus in the department of indirect taxes, every employé whose salary is less than $440 a year and who has three or more children under eighteen years of age receives a subsidy of $12 a year. Likewise in the post-office department and in the customs service there is a similar grant of $9.00 per year. Somewhat similar allowances are made by the state railroads and other branches of the public service. Thus the principle has already been given an extended application, though on a somewhat small scale. Not very different in principle and without the objections which characterize punitive taxation of celibacy and infecundity is the proposal advocated by M. Leroy-Beaulieu and others to take into account the size of the family in fixing the amount of the personal tax, which, in France, is mainly a tax on habitation and one which therefore weighs heavily upon renters having large families. This principle has been embodied in the tax systems of various continental states, notably in the German income tax law which allows a reduction of $12.50 in the amount of the tax for every child under fourteen years of age. The abolition of the tax on doors and windows, letters patent, the octroi and others of a similar character which are peculiarly burdensome to the poor would be, as has often been asserted, conducive to the rearing of larger families.

Such are some of the means that have been proposed for combatting the conditions which threaten France with depopulation. Some of them, like discriminating measures against celibates, the payment of bounties for the production of children, the exemption of heads of families from certain public impositions, and the partial confiscation of inheritances where there is but a single child, were tried by the Romans, but they were largely illusory and of little effect. Of the other measures proposed, some are impracticable, others are impossible of execution and still others would be productive of but slight results. The true remedy lies not in legislative, administrative or fiscal measures, though some of these may contribute toward the checking of the evil, but in a reform of the morals and customs of the French people. There must be a fundamental change in the attitude of French men and women toward the obligation to rear families; there must be an awakening to the duty which devolves upon the citizen to contribute to the