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15
[1907
the decreases ranged from 6.4 to 9.8 per cent., in Scotland the decrease was
12.7 per cent., in England and Wales 17 7 per cent, in France 19 7 per cent.,
and in Belgium 19.8 per cent. In New Zealand and in the States of the
Australian Commonwealth the decrease ranged from 23.2 to 30.6 per cent.*
The obvious conclusion to be drawn from these statistics is that there must
be some universal cause operating throughout these civilised communities to
account for the phenomenon of the general decline in human fertility, apart
from any decrease which may be due to changes in the age constitution of
married women at conceptive ages, and that there is strong ground for the
assumption that in greater or lesser degree, the chief cause has been the
deliberate restriction of child-bearing on the part of the people themselves.†
In our Colonies there is, with a marked exception, the same startling
decline in fertility, to which the Medical Officer of Health for Montreal calls
attention, for he finds that the birth-rate among the Protestant community was
23.7 per 1,000, whereas among the French Canadians—the Roman Catholic
community in the main—the birth-rate was 43.5 per 1,000 of the population.
The French Canadians are a fertile race, of whom a recent writer, referring
particularly to those of the French provinces in Canada, says:—"It is a land
of families—fifteen is a usual number—and the enormous development in
population of the French Canadians, contrasted with the falling birth-rate in
the Anglo-Saxon stock, is likely to have strange results in the future of the
race."‡
In the United States the matter is also assuming importance, because, as
Dr. Charles Harrington, an American Sanitarian, points out that in his country
the same decline is to be noticed among the descendants of the original
colonists and earlier immigrants, whereas in colonial times and in the earlier
years of national independence, families of a dozen, fifteen and more were
exceedingly common, while nowadays one of six or eight becomes a subject for
comment, surprise, and even ridicule. The large families to to-day,
he adds, are mainly those of the more recently arrived immigrants
and of their first generation. § There is one significant circumstance
in connection with these facts:—namely that it is among Roman
Catholic communities alone that there is little or no diminution
in the birth-rate among married women at the child-bearing age. It is
so in Ireland, where, despite the emigration of a large number of its young
*Op. cit. lxii.
†Op. cit., lxiii.
‡" Canadian Life in Town and Country."—Daily Neius, 30th July, 1905.
§"Practical Hygiene." Harrington, p. 695.