Women and economic evolution: or, The effects of industrial changes upon the status of women

by Theresa Schmid McMahon

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.