Experience and statistics force us to the startling conclusion, that the birth-rate is declining amongst the best classes of citizens, and remains undisturbed amongst the worst.
Now the first-class responsible for the decline includes those who do not marry, and those who marry late. The Michigan vital statistics for 1894 (p. 125) show that the mean number of children to each marriage at the age of 15-19 years is 6.75, at the age of 20-25 years it is 5.32, a difference of 1.44 in favour of delayed marriage for a period of five years.
In New Zealand the marriage rate has gone up from 5.97 per thousand persons living in 1888 to 7.67 in 1900.
This class includes clerks with an income of £100 and under,—a large number with £150, and all misogynists with higher incomes.
It includes labourers with £75 a year and under, and many who receive £100.
Their motives for avoiding marriage are mostly prudential.
Those who abstain from marriage for prudential reasons are as a rule good citizens. They are workers who realise their responsibilities in life, and shrink from undertaking duties which they feel they cannot adequately perform. By far the largest class who practice prevention, consists of those who marry, and have one or two children, and limit their families to that number, for prudential, health, or selfish reasons.
These too are as a rule good citizens, and there are two qualities that so distinguish them. First, their prudence; they have no wish to burden the State with the care or support of their children. Their fixed determination is to support and educate them themselves, and they set themselves to the work with thriftiness and forethought.
In order to do this, however, it is essential that the family is limited to one, two, or three, as the case may be, and before it is too late, preventive measures are resorted to.
The second quality that distinguishes them as good citizens is their self-control. Every preventive measure in normal individuals implies a certain amount of self-restraint, and in proportion as prudential motives are strong is the self-imposed restraint easy and effective.