I. Social Reforms proposed for the Hypothetical Purpose of increasing Natality.—Nobody has ever shown that the emancipation of woman, selection in paternity, the suppression of divorce, or, the contrary, laws facilitating divorce, would augment natality. Nobody has ever given a proof, or the beginning of a proof, in support of these fancies.
Would socialistic reforms leading to a diminution of the share of capital, and a corresponding increase of the share of labor, have any effect upon natality? I can not pronounce upon this question, because I have not sufficient data; nevertheless, the remuneration of capital has not ceased to diminish since the beginning of the century—we may even estimate that it has diminished nearly one half, for the nominal interest on money has fallen from five to three per cent. This has not prevented natality from decreasing in our country. Would it be augmented if capital should come to have no remuneration at all? I have not examined this difficult and very hypothetical question, for, if such a thing should happen, it could be only in an extremely remote future. But the supreme struggle of which our country has always to think will have taken place long before that.
The revival of religious ideas, if it should come about, might have some effect on natality. Demographic studies have shown how great an influence religion has on habits and on phenomena of moral pathology (on the frequency of suicides, for example), and prove that men put the prescriptions of their religion into practice more than one would believe. All religions direct man, more or less imperatively, to have as numerous a posterity as possible. There may therefore exist a relation between natality and the degree of sincerity of religious convictions. But it is manifest that, whatever we may do, we can not change our age nor prevent its growing more and more incredulous.
II. Summary Examination of Measures having in View the Increase of the Number of Marriages.—Nuptiality is nearly the same in France as it has been. It has, however, diminished during the last twenty years, falling gradually from eight marriages to seven marriages a year per thousand inhabitants. For seven years past it has gained a little, and is now 7.6—a fairly satisfactory rate. It is not here that the saddle galls us.
It has been proposed, as a measure for increasing the number of marriages, to simplify the required formulas. I believe that these formulas are indeed too long, too many, and too expensive. The countries which have been so foolish as to copy our civil code have taken pains to strike out this chapter, and they have done well. But he is greatly mistaken who believes that the number of marriages could be perceptibly increased by suppressing unpleasant formulas. When one wants to marry, he generally does so in spite of the obstacles which maladroit legislation may have piled up. In case of need, the matter is settled by an irregular affiance, and natality loses little.
The violent suppression of convents has also been proposed as a measure for promoting the increase of marriages. A person who has reflected much could not speak of such a thing. To what extent does any one suppose that might augment natality? The convents at this time contain about sixty thousand women. Suppose they were all as ready as other women to marry—which is not the case, for the fact that they have retired to a cloister proves that family life has few attractions for them—a simple calculation shows that they would afford forty-five hundred births a year. So France needs six hundred thousand infants every year, and a plan is advanced to give it four or five thousand at most—and that by means of a violent measure, unworthy of an age of freedom!
Next are the measures proposed for diminishing involuntary sterility. Is involuntary sterility as frequent as it is supposed to be? Our respected master, Jules Rochard, was surprised to find two million sterile families recorded in the census reports. But the number does not appear excessive. We can not compare it with similar returns abroad, for France is the only country, except in the case of a few cities abroad, in which items of this kind are inquired into by the census takers. But, according to different gynæcologists—chiefly German—cited in the Academy of Medicine, the number of sterile families should be sixteen per cent. Now, this is the exact proportion found in France in the enumeration of 1896. The really surprising thing about the matter is not the number of sterile families, but the limited fecundity of the fertile families. There are other figures to show that absolute sterility is not the cause of the low rate of French natality. An inquiry respecting sterile families was made in 1856, at a time when French natality was a little higher than it is now, a comparison of the results of which with those of the enumeration of 1886 shows that the number of fruitful families had not diminished (83.6 per cent of the families having one or more children then, to 83.3 in 1886). The factor that has diminished is the fertility of the families. It is only necessary to cite the measures that have been suggested to counteract this supposed excessive sterility to make their inanity apparent. Among them are reform of the abuse of tobacco and alcohol and war upon syphilis. Do not these scourges exist among other nations than us? Nothing could be more salutary than to war upon them, but to connect their existence with the depopulation of France is a singular exaggeration of their importance. More than this, the physician of a benevolent institution in Paris has told me that the large families who resort to his dispensary nearly all have a drunkard at their head. The families that issue from such parents are not necessarily degenerate. This curious observation ought not certainly to make us partisans of drunkenness, but it demonstrates to us that the suppression of alcoholism is not what will restore French natality. Rather the contrary.
III. Examination of Measures proposed for diminishing Mortality.—As the question of the population of France has been more especially discussed by the doctors, it has done great service as a vaulting board for medical theories. Doctors are very ready to reason as if they could dispose of human life at their will. It is very hard to keep a man from dying. The most skillful doctors have not reached that point; but it is very easy to have a man born, and is within the reach of the latest-made young practitioner. It is very doubtful whether the proposed measures will be efficacious or practical. See how much trouble we have had, after a century of experiments, in realizing the benefit of vaccination, the only nearly infallible remedy we have against disease. Surely a country ought to guard itself as much as possible against sickness and death, and should do everything that will conduce to that end, as we do all that is possible to cure a man ill with pneumonia or any other disease. But we should not delude ourselves with illusions, and we have to confess that the efficacy of the measures which we take to satisfy our conscience is very doubtful. The failures of hygiene are almost as numerous as those of medicine.
Mortality has not increased in France. It is rather less there than in other countries in the same latitude, and even less than that of some of the countries situated farther north. So we can hardly hope to diminish it very much.
The effect of mortality on the whole is, moreover, not to diminish natality, but rather to favor it. The death of an adult leaves some position vacant, and makes room for the institution of a new household and the birth of other children. So when a rich old man dies, the money he leaves helps set up his children in life; and when a poor old man dies, a burden is taken away from his descendants, who had to support him and who can now marry and have children. Some of the parallelisms in the movements of population which statisticians have observed may be explained thus. We might compare a human society to a tank so arranged as to be always full of water. It has a supply pipe (natality and immigration) which opens and operates only when the discharge pipe (mortality and emigration) is also open; or to a forest of definite extent, in which, when a clearing is opened, a new growth appears in the cleared space, unless some cause exists to prevent it, which cause it will be the forester's business to find and remove. He would not think, however, of stopping the cutting of the old trees, for that would be to prevent the essential condition of the new growth's getting a headway. The law of all living societies, in forests and in nations, is the perpetual renewal of the stock.