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1925
21
We have two schools of thought. The first views the falling
birth-rate with dismay and sees in it the decay of the race; the
other regards the same phenomenon as the only solution to the
danger of over-population.
Neither the fear of race suicide nor that of over-population
has much to do with the falling birth-rate. Other factors operate,
and these are of such a character that under present conditions
tend to perpetuate a low birth-rate.
Most people if they were asked what the normal condition
has been throughout recorded history would reply that an increasing
population was normal. As a matter of fact, the population of
England and Wales increased very slowly for 700 years, and then in
the nineteenth century shot up with a rapidity previously
unparalleled.
During the same period the same general tendencies were
at work in the Continent of Europe. The causes are not difficult
of explanation. Among primitive races, abortion and infanticide
were prevalent. The Christian era witnessed a profound change.
Abortion and infanticide were rendered illegal, but as the former
practices went out so the postponement of marriage came in, and
agencies were at work which enforced it, in part by legal enactment,
but chiefly by the pressure of customs and conventions.
In England in the Middle Ages not only were early marriages
determinedly discouraged, but the opportunity for them did not
exist. A labourer living in a cottage by himself was a rare exception
to the rule ; and the work of the fields was performed generally by
servants who lived in the families of the squire or farmer, and who,
while in that position, commonly remained single, and married
only when by prudence they had saved a sufficient sum to enable
them to enter some other position.
At the same period there existed in the towns a system of
compulsory apprenticeship, and until the apprenticeship was
terminated, youths could not marry. Thus in many ways a pressure
was exercised upon the youth of the nation whereby they were
discouraged, if not prevented, from marrying early.
In addition, elimination played an important part. Warfare
was constant; plagues and epidemics swept through all countries,
and disease and famine assumed a great importance as an agent of
elimination.