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the adequate training of midwives and their
careful supervision; the making of arrangements
for giving instruction to wives in mother-craft and
infant hygiene; and, above all, efficient domestic
and municipal sanitation and housing.
I extract the following remarks from a paper, by
Dr. Fremantle, on the interaction of death, birth, and
marriage rates.
Having first demonstrated the fact that, so far as
England is concerned, fertility is still highest in rural
counties and lowest in London, despite the effect of
overcrowding in houses and areas, the speaker continued:—
"Let us, then, briefly consider the quality of the decline
(in the birth-rate). University College of the University of
London issued in 1906 the first of the studies in national
deterioration from its department of applied mathematics, in
which Heron showed results of superlative interest as to the
relation of human fertility to social status during the years
1851 to 1901.
They may be summed up as follows :
1. In 1901, in homes where many domestic servants are
kept, there the married women have fewest children. This
relation is exceedingly close.
2. Prevalence of cancer, especially amongst females, is
associated with a low birth-rate.
3. Where labour is of the lowest type, where poverty leads
to the pawnbroker and forces the child at an early age into
employment, there the married women have most offspring.