There are, therefore, no accurate figures to indicate the extent to which birth control has contributed to the decline in the birth-rate.
Section 3. AND TO CHARACTER OF OCCUPATION
Moreover the claim of birth controllers, that the decline in the English birth-rate is mainly due to the use of contraceptives, is rendered highly improbable by the fact that the Registrar-General [65] has shown that in 1911 the birth-rate in different classes varied according to the occupation of the fathers. The figures are these:
Births per 1,000 married
Social Class. males aged under 55, including
retired.
1. Unskilled workmen 213 2. Intermediate class 158 3. Skilled workmen 153 4. Intermediate 132 5. Upper and middle class 119
Thus, ascending the social scale, we find, in class upon class, that as the annual income increases the number of children in the family diminishes, until we come to the old English nobility of whom, according to Darwin, 19 per cent. are childless. These last have every reason to wish for heirs to inherit their titles and what land and wealth they possess, and, as their record in war proves them to be no cowards' breed, it would be a monstrous indictment to maintain that their childlessness is mostly due to the use of contraceptives. If all these results arose from the practice of birth control, it would imply a crescendo of general national selfishness unparalleled in the history of humanity. No, it is not possible to give Neo-Malthusians credit, even for all the evil they claim to have achieved.
Section 4. AGGRAVATED DOUBTLESS BY MALTHUSIANISM
Nevertheless, artificial birth control is an evil and too prevalent thing. My contention is that the primary cause of our falling birth-rate is over-civilisation; one of the most evil products of this over-civilisation, whereby simple, natural, and unselfish ideals, based on the assumption that national security depends on the moral and economic strength of family life, have been replaced largely by a complicated, artificial, and luxurious individualism; and that diminished fertility, apart from the practice of artificial birth control, is a result of luxurious individualism. Even if it be so, one of the most evil products of over-civilisation is the use of contraceptives, because this practice, more than any other factor in social life, hastens, directly and indirectly, the fall of a declining birth-rate; and artificial birth control, to the extent to which it is practised, therefore aggravates the consequences of a law of decline already apparent in our midst. I have already said that restriction of intercourse, as held lawful by the Catholic Church, is possibly as efficacious in limiting the size of a family as are artificial methods. If any man shall say that therefore there is no difference between these methods, let him read the fuller explanation given in another connection on p. 153. (See [Reference: Explanation]) The method which reason and morality alike permit is devoid of all those evils, moral, psychological, and physiological, that follow the use of contraceptives.
[Footnote 62: The Small Family System, pp. 195 and 160, New York, 1917.]
[Footnote 63: The Declining Birth-rate, p. 323.]