Almost doubling therefore, as does New York, the worst of those fearful ratios of fœtal mortality existing in Europe, it is not strange that our metropolis has been held up, even by a Parisian, to the execration of the world. “On le voit (l’avortement)” says Tardieu, “en Amérique, dans une grande cìté comme New York, constituer une industrie véritable et non poursuivie.”
In this description of New York, we have that of the country.[62] The relative annual increase of the population existing throughout America, depending as this does chiefly on immigration, must not mislead us. The ratio of fœtal death in the metropolis surpasses what has ever been dreamed to obtain even in old countries, where innumerable more legitimate causes for it might be thought to exist. At Boston, which for morals is allowed to compare favorably with any city of its size in the Union, “undoubtedly more than a hundred still-births yearly escape being recorded, a large proportion of which, no doubt, result from criminal abortion.”[63] And our public prints, far and wide, even in the smaller towns and villages, constantly chronicle deaths from the commission of the crime.
In the State of Massachusetts at large, it has been found of late years that “the increase of the population, or the excess of the births over the deaths, has been wholly of those of recent foreign origin;”[64] this in 1850. In 1853 “it is evident that the births within the Commonwealth, with the usual increase, have resulted in favor of foreign parents in an increased ratio.”[65] In other words, it is found that in so far as depends upon the American and native element, and in the absence of the existing immigration from abroad, the population of Massachusetts is stationary or decreasing.[66]
“This result will doubtless surprise many, who will hardly think it possible. Is it general, or is it accidental? If it be general, how has it happened? What causes have been in operation to produce it? How is it to be accounted for?”[67] These questions have hitherto been unanswered. We shall find, however, their solution only too easy.
Amid such general thrift and wealth, there has been every reason for the native, like the foreign population, to increase. The preventive check of the economists, though undoubtedly present, can have played but an inferior part, as we shall prove. Emigration westward, the only apparent positive check, though extensive, cannot wholly account for the result.
But statistics exist by whose light, if acknowledged, we may read this important problem.[68]
In 1850, the ratio of births to the population in Massachusetts, foreign and American combined, was 1 in 36,[69] and in 1855, 1 in 34;[70] a ratio much smaller than that obtaining in most countries of Europe, and about equaling that of France, which, in 1850, was 1 in 37.
In 1855, the ratio of still-births, at the full time and premature, as compared with the living births, was 1 to 15.5.[71] In France it is 1 to 24; in Austria, 1 to 49.
In 1851, the ratio of fœtal deaths to the general mortality, was 1 to 13.3;[72] in 1855,1 to 10.4.[73] In New York City, in 1856, it was 1 to 11. In any city we should expect to find the proportion much greater than in a State at large; we here find it less.