[132] J. Holt Schooling, "The English Marriage Rate," Fortnightly Review, June, 1901.
[133] G. Udny Yule, "Changes in the Marriage-and Birth-rate in England," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, March, 1906.
[134] At an earlier period Hooker had investigated the same subject without coming to any very decisive conclusions ("Correlation of the Marriage-rate with Trade," Journ. Statistical Soc., September, 1901). Minor fluctuations in marriage and in trade per head, he found, tend to be in close correspondence, but on the whole trade has risen and the marriage-rate has fallen, probably, Hooker believed, as the result of the gradual deferment of marriage.
[135] The higher standard need not be, among the mass of the population, of a very exalted character, although it marks a real progress. Newsholme and Stevenson (op. cit.) term it a higher "standard of comfort." The decline of the birth-rate, they say, "is associated with a general raising of the standard of comfort, and is an expression of the determination of the people to secure this greater comfort."
[136] Ploss, Das Weib, Vol. I, chap. XX.
[137] It must not, however, be assumed that the rural immigrants are in the mass better suited to urban life than the urban natives. It is probable that, notwithstanding their energy and robustness, the immigrants are less suited to urban conditions than the natives. Consequently a process of selection takes place among the immigrants, and the survivors become, as it were, immunized to the poisons of urban life. But this immunization is by no means necessarily associated with any high degree of nervous vigour or general physical development.
[138] Havelock Ellis, A Study of British Genius, pp. 22, 43.
[139] "National Health: a Soldier's Study," Contemporary Review, January, 1903. The Reports of the Inspector-General of Recruiting are said to show that the recruits are every year smaller, lighter, and narrower-chested.
[140] This has been well illustrated during the past forty years in the flourishing county of Glamorgan in Wales, as is shown by Dr. R.S. Stewart ("The Relationship of Wages, Lunacy, and Crime in South Wales," Journal of Mental Science, January, 1904). The staple industry here is coal, 17 per cent of the population being directly employed in coal-mining, and wages are determined by the sliding scale as it is called, according to which the selling price of coal regulates the wages. This leads to many fluctuations and sudden accesses of prosperity. It is found that whenever wages rise there is a concomitant increase of insanity and at the same time a diminished output of coal due to slacking of work when earnings are greater; there is also an increase of drunkenness and of crime. Stewart concludes that it is doubtful whether increased material prosperity is conducive to improvement in physical and mental status. It must, however, be pointed out that it is a sudden and unstable prosperity, not necessarily a gradual and stable prosperity, which is hereby shown to be pernicious.
[141] The relationship is sometimes expressed by saying that the more highly differentiated the organism the fewer the offspring. According to Plate we ought to say that, the greater the capacity for parental care the fewer the offspring. This, however, comes to the same thing, since it is the higher organisms which possess the increased capacity for parental care. Putting it in the most generalized zoological way, diminished offspring is the response to improved environment. Thus in Man the decline of the birth-rate, as Professor Benjamin Moore remarks (British Medical Journal, August 20, 1910, p. 454), is "the simple biological reply to good economic conditions. It is a well-known biological law that even a micro-organism, when placed in unfavourable conditions as to food and environment, passes into a reproductive phase, and by sporulation or some special type produces new individuals very rapidly. The same condition of affairs in the human race was shown even by the fact that one-half of the births come from the least favourably situated one-quarter of the population. Hence, over-rapid birth-rate indicates unfavourable conditions of life, so that (so long as the population was on the increase) a lower birth-rate was a valuable indication of a better social condition of affairs, and a matter on which we should congratulate the country rather than proceed to condolences."