We thus find that from the three great Anglo-Saxon centres of the world—north, west, and south—the same story comes. We need not consider the case of South Africa, for it is well recognized that there the English constitute a comparatively infertile fringe, mostly confined to the towns, while the earlier Dutch element is far more prolific and firmly rooted in the soil. The position of the Dutch there is much the same as that of the French in Canada.
Thus we find that among highly civilized races generally, and not least among the English-speaking peoples who were once regarded as peculiarly prolific, a great diminution of reproductive activity has taken place during the past forty years, and is in some countries still taking place. But before we proceed to consider its significance it may be well to look a little more closely at our facts.
We have seen that the "crude" birth-rate is not an altogether reliable index of the reproductive energy of a nation. Various circumstances may cause an excess or a defect of persons of reproductive age in a community, and unless we allow for these variations, we cannot estimate whether that community is exercising its reproductive powers in a fairly normal manner. But there is another and still more important consideration always to be borne in mind before we can attach any far-reaching significance even to the corrected birth-rate. We have, that is, to bear in mind that a high or a low birth-rate has no meaning, so far as the growth of a nation is concerned, unless it is considered in relation to the death-rate. The natural increase of a nation is not the result of its birth-rate, but of its birth-rate minus its death-rate. A low birth-rate with a low death-rate (as in Australasia) produces a far greater natural increase than a low birth-rate with a rather high death-rate (as in France), and may even produce as great an increase as a very high birth-rate with a very high death-rate (as in Russia). Many worthy people might have been spared the utterance of foolish and mischievous jeremiads, if, instead of being content with a hasty glance at the crude birth-rate, they had paused to consider this fairly obvious fact.
There is an intimate connection between a high birth-rate and a high death-rate, between a low birth-rate and a low death-rate. It may not, indeed, be an absolutely necessary connection, and is not the outcome of any mysterious "law." But it usually exists, and the reasons are fairly obvious. We have already encountered the statement from an official Canadian source that the large infantile mortality of French Canadian families is due to parental carelessness, consequent, no doubt, not only on the dimly felt consciousness that children are cheap, but much more on inability to cope with the manifold cares involved by a large family. Among the English working class every doctor knows the thinly veiled indifference or even repulsion with which women view the seemingly endless stream of babies they give birth to. Among the Berlin working class, also, Hamburger's important investigation has indicated how serious a cause of infantile mortality this may be. By taking 374 working-class women, who had been married twenty years and conceived 3183 times, he found that the net result in surviving children was relatively more than twice as great among the women who had only had one child when compared to the women who had had fifteen children. The women with only one child brought 76.47 per cent of these children to maturity; the women who had produced fifteen children could only bring 30.66 of them to maturity; the intermediate groups showed a gradual fall to this low level, the only exception being that the mothers of three children were somewhat more successful than the mothers of two children. Among well-to-do mothers Hamburger found no such marked contrast between the net product of large families as compared to small families. [101]
It we look at the matter from a wider standpoint we can have no difficulty in realizing that a community which is reproducing itself rapidly must always be in an unstable state of disorganization highly unfavourable to the welfare of its members, and especially of the new-comers; a community which is reproducing itself slowly is in a stable and organized condition which permits it to undertake adequately the guardianship of its new members. The high infantile mortality of the community with a high birth-rate merely means that that community is unconsciously making a violent and murderous effort to attain to the more stable and organized level of the country with a low birth-rate.
The English Registrar-General in 1907 estimated the natural increase by excess of births over deaths as exceptionally high (higher than that of England) in several Australian Colonies, in the Balkan States, in Russia, the Netherlands, the German Empire, Denmark, and Norway, though in the majority of these lands the birth-rate is very low. On the other hand, the natural increase by excess of births over deaths is below the English rate in Austria, in Hungary, in Japan, in Italy, in Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, and Ontario, though in the majority of these lands the birth-rate is high, and in some very high. [102] In most cases it is the high death-rate in infancy and childhood which exercises the counterbalancing influence against a high birth-rate; the death-rate in adult life may be quite moderate. And with few exceptions we find that a high infantile mortality accompanies a high birth-rate, while a low infantile mortality accompanies a low birth-rate. It is evident, however, that even an extremely high infantile mortality is no impediment to a large natural increase provided the birth-rate is extremely high to a more than corresponding extent. But a natural increase thus achieved seems to be accompanied by far more disastrous social conditions than when an equally large increase is achieved by a low infantile death-rate working in association with a low birth-rate. Thus in Norway on one side of the world and in Australasia on the opposite side we see a large natural increase effected not by a profuse expenditure of mostly wasted births but by an economy in deaths, and the increase thus effected is accompanied by highly favourable social conditions, and great national vigour. Norway appears to have the lowest infantile death-rate in Europe. [103]
Rubin has suggested that the fairest measure of a country's well-being, as regards its actual vitality—without direct regard, of course, to the country's economic prosperity—is the square of the death-rate divided by the birth-rate. [104] Sir J.A. Baines, who accepts this test, states that Argentina with its high birth-rate and low death-rate stands even above Norway, and Australia still higher, while the climax for the world is attained by New Zealand, which has attained "the nearest approach to immortality yet on record." [105] The order of descending well-being in Europe is thus represented (at the year 1900) by Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, England, Scotland, Finland, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Austria, France, and Spain.
On the other hand, in all the countries, probably without exception, in which a large natural increase is effected by the efforts of an immense birth-rate to overcome an enormous death-rate the end is only effected with much friction and misery, and the process is accompanied by a general retardation of civilization. "The greater the number of children," as Hamburger puts it, "the greater the cost of each survivor to the family and to the State."
Russia presents not only the most typical but the most stupendous and appalling example of this process. Thirty years ago the mortality of infants under one year was three times that of Norway, nearly double that of England. More recently (1896-1900) the infantile mortality in Russia has fallen from 313 to 261, but as that of the other countries has also fallen it still preserves nearly the same relative position, remaining the highest in Europe, while if we compare it with countries outside Europe we find it is considerably more than four times greater than that of South Australia. In one town in the government of Perm, some years ago if not still, the mortality of infants under one year regularly reached 45 per cent, and the deaths of children under five years constituted half the total mortality. This is abnormally high even for Russia, but for all Russia it was found that of the boys born in a single year during the second half of the last century only 50 per cent reached their twenty-first year, and even of these only 37.6 per cent were fit for military service. It is estimated that there die in Russia 15 per thousand more individuals than among the same number in England; this excess mortality represents a loss of 1,650,000 lives to the State every year. [106]
Thus Russia has the highest birth-rate and at the same time the highest death-rate. The large countries which, after Russia, have the highest infantile mortality are Austria, Hungary, Prussia, Spain, Italy, and Japan; all these, as we should expect, have a somewhat high birth-rate.