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1925
22
In the nineteenth century these factors went out of operation.
The age of industrialism brought about profound changes in social
conditions. All barriers to marriage in the shape of laws, customs
and conventions vanished. In addition, sanitation and preventive
medicine attacked the forces which formerly operated towards
elimination.
But these checks upon the power of multiplication were followed
by the growth of another system which we know to be in operation
to-day. Married people began consciously to limit the size of
their families. The date when they began to do so, and the
influences which brought them about may be doubtful, but it
is unquestioned that it is conscious limitation and not abstinence
from marriage or postponement of marriage which dominates
the position to-day.
The most celebrated attempt to review the whole problem
of population was made by Malthus, who published the first edition
of his famous book in 1798, but the views of Malthus can have had
very little influence on the birth-rate, as the birth-rate did not
decline until the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century. The
doctrines of Malthus were very similar to many expressed this year,
and yet the doctrines of Malthus were founded upon assumptions
which most people admit were erroneous. At any rate, his predictions
were hopelessly wrong. Probably had Malthus known that
in 1925 the population of Great Britain would be approaching
50 millions, he would have predicted destitution, starvation and
general misery, and would have been considerably astonished
to learn that in every particular, the conditions of life had steadily
improved with the increasing population and that starvation which
in his day was not uncommon, had become unknown.
In spite of this, since 1880, there has been a revolutionary
fall in human fertility, and the fall has been due mainly, if not
wholly, to deliberate prevention. In the earlier part of the last
century there was but little conscious limitation of the size of the
family. In the latter part of the century the practice of limitation
set in and has spread more and more widely through society.
In what circumstances and for what reasons did people, then,
and do now, in the main limit their families ?
There are some who consider that the sudden spread of the
practice of prevention after 1880 cannot be connected with any
change of economic conditions increasing the need for restricting