FOOTNOTES:
[67] Howard, A History of Matrimonial Institutions, I, pp. 60-61.
[68] Ibid, I, p. 115.
[69] Ward, Pure Sociology, p. 358.
[70] Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 501.
[71] Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, p. 140.
[72] Grosse, Familie und Wirthschaft, p.
[73] Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, I, p. 43.
[74] Grosse, Familie und Wirthschaft, pp. 73-4.
[75] Grosse, Ibid, pp. 104-5.
[76] Starke, The Primitive Family, pp. 99, 100.
[77] Hobhouse, Morals and Evolution, I, p. 176.
[78] Earle, Home Life in Colonial Days, pp. 166-7.
[79] Letourneau, The Evolution of Marriage, p. 352.
[80] E. Vandervelde, L’Exode Rural.
[81] Bailey, Modern Social Conditions, p. 139.
[82] Mayo-Smith, Statistics and Sociology, p. 100.
[83] Letourneau, The Evolution of Marriage, pp. 351-2.
[84] See page 51.
[85] Howard, A History of Matrimonial Institutions, III, 227-8.
CHAPTER VIII
Economic Forces and the Birth-Rate
In primitive times infanticide was often resorted to as a means of freeing the tribe from the care and responsibility of unwelcome children. McLennan says, “The moment infanticide was thought of as an expedient for keeping down numbers, a step was taken, perhaps the most important that was ever taken in the history of mankind.”[86]
Westermarck thinks McLennan places too much emphasis upon the extent of the practice of infanticide. “A minute investigation of the extent to which female infanticide is practiced has convinced me that McLennan has much exaggerated the importance of the custom. It certainly prevails in many parts of the world; and it is true that, as a rule, female children are killed rather than male. But there is nothing to indicate that infanticide has ever been so universal or had anywhere been practiced, on so large a scale, as McLennan’s hypothesis presupposes.”[87]
Among primitive peoples when starvation threatened a tribe, it is reasonable to believe a sacrifice of life was considered necessary to lessen immediate as well as prospective suffering and where the new-born infants were the selected victims, the female children would be sacrificed before the male. The services of women were of less importance to a warring community than of men, and under ordinary circumstances there would be a tendency for women to out number men since they were not exposed to the risks and hardships warfare imposed upon the men.
That infanticide was widely practiced where there was no danger from starvation does not seem likely. The maternal instinct is very pronounced among all animals, and the mother shows greater willingness to sacrifice herself than her offspring. It must have been necessary to overcome the mother feeling by force of reasoning, or by an exercise of tyrannical authority to win her consent.
There existed many natural checks to the increase of population among primitive peoples. Droughts and the ravages of diseases played no small part in keeping down numbers. These same natural forces in perhaps fewer forms are still effective in all countries of the world, producing an infant mortality of an alarming proportion.
Unsanitary conditions, bad housing, impure milk and water, and the heat of summer are among the checks to the more rapid increase of population. Mr. Phelps says in his statistical study of infant mortality, “In view of the many material changes in the living habits and industrial conditions of the world’s population in the last generation, the great advance in medical knowledge and the marked decrease in the general death-rate, the practical uniformity of the infantile death-rate the world around is simply astounding.”[88]
The problem of how to decrease infant mortality has received considerable attention from municipal and philanthropic associations. The results obtained are far from satisfactory, so great and far reaching are its causes.
The fall of the birth-rate is generally attributed to psychological rather than to physiological causes. Statistical reports do not show the same decline in the birth-rate among the inhabitants of poor districts of a city as among the well-to-do. A large number of the unskilled workers are foreigners, or people ignorant in respect to medical and physiological knowledge, and likewise unconscious of the prevalence of the practice of the restriction of the birth-rate. But the rapid diffusion of knowledge of all kinds in a democratic country will soon change this state of affairs. Mrs. Commander’s study of the birth-rate led her to believe that the birth-rate among immigrants who come to the United States of America “falls decidedly below European standards, and that the majority of immigrants when only a short time in this country imbibe the idea of limiting family. The small family appears to be an American ideal which immigrants accept as they do other American ideals.”[89]
The investigation of the Fabian Society of London brought to light the fact that “the decline in the birth-rate appears to be especially marked in places inhabited by the servant keeping class. The birth-rate of Bethnal Green—the district in London in which there are fewest non-Londoners and in which fewest of the inhabitants keep domestic servants fell off between 1881 and 1901 by twelve per cent and that of Hampstead, where most domestic servants are kept, fell off by no less than 36 per cent. The birth-rate for 1901 of five separate groups of metropolitan boroughs arranged in grades of average poverty gave the following interesting result. The small group of three ‘rich’ boroughs have, for 100,000 population 2,004 legitimate births; the four groups comprising 19 intermediate boroughs have almost identical legitimate birth-rate between 2,362 to 2,490 for 100,000 whilst the poorest group of 7 boroughs has a legitimate birth-rate of no less than 3,078, or 50 per cent more than that in the ‘rich’ quarters.”[90]
The pathological reason for the decline in the birth-rate is presented by The National League for the Protection of the Family. “Since the discovery of the germ of what was formerly considered the milder and less harmful of the two chief sexual diseases, and more especially since the numerous ramifications and effects of this milder form, hitherto little suspected to exist, have been found and studied, there has been a strong tendency towards agreement among medical authorities that this disease is the real cause of a large part of the decline in the birth-rate everywhere. While the difficulty of getting accurate statistics on the subject is fully recognized by the authorities upon it, they seem to agree that nearly or quite one-half of the cases of sterility among the married are due to this milder of the two diseases, and some would put it much higher. The more recent investigations also go to show, so the medical authorities say, that a large number of what they call ‘one-child marriages’ must be accounted for by the effects of this milder of the two diseases.”[91]
Thorndyke suggests that the opinion that the decline in the birth-rate is psychological rather than physiological may be “as wide of the mark as the common belief that unwillingness is the main cause of the failure of the women of the better classes to nurse their children”. As a contradiction of natural selection, he says, “I may suggest that the existence, amount and result of the elimination of types by their failure to produce of their kind is after all a problem which only statistical inquiries can settle and that if the doctrine is to be used as an excuse for reading certain obvious facts in human history it is perhaps time that it should be questioned.”[92]
Undoubtedly various causes are responsible for the decline in the birth-rate, some of which have existed for ages. When the dominant cause is psychological the remedy, if desirable, must be looked for in the education of a community. Conditions must be brought about making children desirable in the home, and a sufficient number of them for the race to hold its own. But if the cause is beyond individual selfishness—is other than psychological, and is a symptom of race degeneracy in its reproductive capacities, it is as Thorndyke suggests “time that it should be questioned.”
A statistical study of 524 families in the city of Chicago made in the summer of 1909 suggests the possibilities of race degeneracy brought about by economic causes. The mothers of these 524 families had been married at least ten years and were born in foreign countries. The nationalities represented were Italians, Germans, Irish, Bohemians, Polish, Swedish and Norwegian, English and Scotch. They were people who lived in the congested districts of the city and whose families represented from one to thirteen children. 588 children died before they reached the age of three years and 303 more were prematurely born or died at birth, making the total loss under three years of age of 891.
Of the 588 deaths practically all would be attributed to social causes such as unsanitary conditions existing in large cities or the ignorance of mothers in the care and feeding of their children. Of the 303 babies who died at birth or were prematurely born a large percentage would be attributed to psychological causes resulting in foetiside. But when one considers that only 20 per cent of the mothers embraced the Protestant religion, a little less than 15 per cent were Jews and 65 per cent Catholics—the Catholic mother believes the unbaptized child is destined to eternal punishment—the suspicion seems unwarranted.
It is true the above cases are all abnormal. They do not even represent the average family of the congested parts of Chicago but rather the most unfortunate of the unfortunate. They are the mothers who were sent by the charity associations to the summer camps for a few weeks’ rest. Nearly all were miserably poor, and had large families which in all probability were important factors bringing about their poverty.
Undoubtedly the men of the families were the most inefficient workers and the women possessed the least vitality when compared with the women of the more fortunate classes. They might have been the least fit to be parents, and their children—those who did survive the first three years of life—help to swell the number of defective children in our schools.
The fact, as Phelps notes, that so little difference exists in the infant mortality-rate in the various countries of the world in spite of increased medical knowledge may be indicative of a social evil common to all countries, namely poverty.
The people who come from Europe and make up the tenement districts are the poorest class at home, and many of them have never been properly nourished. A United States Emigration report says, “The Poles are a most prolific race, of strong and good physique, but rather anaemic in appearance, owing to insufficient diet;” of the Bohemians, “the people are industrious and economical. Their homes are primitive and barren of everything except necessities.” One of the reasons the Italian comes to this country is “the fact that the needs of the people have outstripped the means of satisfying them.”[93]
It is most often real hunger that drives the emigrant to a new country in the hopes of bettering his condition. And perhaps it is generations of hunger, of malnutrition, on the part of the mother that is responsible for the inability of the new-born child to resist infantile diseases, or that prevents its natural birth. Thus the economic sins of one generation are visited upon the next. There is indeed danger of race degeneracy if the mothers and fathers of the future generations are to be the underfed and the underpaid of the present time.
When necessity forced men to invade women’s field of work they did not assume the heavier tasks because of their inconsistency with motherhood, but because they were those tasks most in harmony with their habits of life. Primitive women’s work was severe, but it was work consistent with a stationary life which was desirable in the bearing and rearing of children. Convenience helped to determine habits of life and they in turn developed into customs. These customs were responsible for many of the sex barriers, and class barriers of later historical times.
The individual belonged to a class and his status was apparently fixed. There was complete subordination within the class and competition became class competition rather than individual competition. Thus occupations were fixed and the plane of living showed little variation from one generation to the other. There was no incentive to leave one’s class, and little possibility of doing so. The individual’s future was secure. At least it was not a game of chance, and children had an equal chance at prosperity or starvation with their parents. The son followed the occupation of his father which was in all probability the occupation of his grandfather as well. The daughter was content with the status of her mother, for she knew nothing different. She accepted things as they were, just as her brother did, and whether her lot was hard or comparatively easy, it was not for her to question it.
Wherever this social regime exists, the birth-rate is high. But wherever class barriers are let down, and there is a possibility of the individual shifting from one class to the other, competition between individuals grows keen and individualization progresses by leaps. The tyranny of custom and tradition ceases, and the lower classes can with impunity imitate the higher classes. This creates an insatiable desire for invidious distinction. The means to attain the desired end are purely economic. The mother often engages in gainful occupations to raise the plane of living and gain social prestige. An increasing family becomes of vital concern to both parents because it would entail a foregoing of luxuries which have to them become necessities.
This same overwhelming power of new wants is in a large measure responsible for the increasing number of women in the professional fields of work. To them it is an economic necessity. When measured by the mental torture involved it is as essential to maintain the standards of one’s class as bread is to the poor Russian peasant. A girl will stand behind the counter from morning until night displaying goods to exacting customers in order to maintain her standard of dress. If she fails, she suffers probably as much as if her supply of food were insufficient to satisfy her hunger.
The decrease of the birth-rate among the middle classes is thought to be psychological. The Royal Commission on the decline of the birth-rate in New South Wales after a careful investigation came to the conclusion that the reasons for limiting the birth-rate “have one element in common, namely selfishness.” Other investigators call this force egoism, individualization, or the result of a struggle to maintain the standard of life common to a class, all of which means an increased consciousness of self. Ross says, “In the face of the hobby-riders I maintain that the cause of the shrinkage in fecundity lies in the human will as influenced by certain factors which have their roots deep in the civilization of our times.”[94]
With the decrease of the importance of women’s work in the home, and the increase of the necessity for them to enter the industrial field, the birth-rate will continue to fall. Women’s invasion of the fields of work outside the home will eventually result in a marked decline in fecundity. So long as individual competition prevails in the business world, the successful women will be those without the handicap of small children. Mothers of small children cannot compete successfully in the industrial world with the women who have no ties making demands on their time or energy. Here lies the real danger arising out of the necessity of women seeking employment outside the home. Under the present industrial regime motherhood is not compatible with business careers.
As long as the home was an industrial sphere and demanded the entire time and energy of women there was little chance on their part for individual development. But with the transition of work from the home to the factory, women’s interests ceased to be necessarily centered about the hearth, and many of them developed an individuality formerly characteristic of men only. Freed from the cares of maternity women are quite as radical as men. It is maternity that is largely responsible for the conservatism of women and their indifference toward affairs outside the home.
The high birth-rate of former times will not return nor is it desirable, for the decreased death-rate among infants will tend to maintain numbers. But while in the past children were accepted without question, and parents never thought of the possibility of limiting the size of their families, in the future the human will will play an ever increasing part. Whether the guiding motive in restricting the birth-rate will be a worthy one, or one to be deprecated will depend upon those social institutions which are responsible for the production of individuals’ ideals.