88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



is temporarily standardized for the upper classes, it will soon become 

 the model elsewhere, and when one child takes the place of two, as it 

 is already doing, the contagion will not be limited to the class in which 

 it originates. 



It may be that the population of the western world increased dur- 

 ing the nineteenth century as rapidly as it could be assimilated. If 

 Malthus had been correct in his theories it might be as anti-social and 

 be made as illegal to have six children as to have two wives. But 

 Malthus was a false prophet; thanks to the applications of science the 

 means of subsistence have increased more rapidly than the population. 

 If the density of population in the United States were equal to that 

 in Great Britain, all the people in the world could live here ; and they 

 could live in comfort. There is a complete lack of the constructive 

 imagination which might lead to bitter mourning for the hundreds of 

 millions of human beings that might have been but are not, and to 

 boundless regret for the science and art they might have produced for 

 the benefit of all; but the decline and extinction of the race can not 

 well be dismissed as a matter of no consequence. 



It is now only to a limited extent the case that there are vigorous 

 races waiting to take the place of those decayed. The Teutons may 

 supplant the Celts, and be supplanted by the Slavs. If the negroes 

 maintain their fertility and decrease their morbidity, and the eastern 

 nations maintain their family sanctions, they may supplant the white 

 races. But an extension of rationalism and a tolerably uniform world 

 civilization will tend toward similar conditions ever3rw^here in regard 

 to the family and the birth rate. The past history of the human race 

 is probably longer than its future history will be. Physicists tell us 

 that the earth may be uninhabitable in twenty million years; it may 

 be uninhabited by man in twenty centuries. 



The disintegration of the family and the decline of the birth rate 

 are due to many causes of which we need here concern ourselves with 

 but two — the city and the school — for the object of this article is to 

 offer a constructive suggestion intended to make these factors less 

 destructive. 



The modern city is surely subversive of the home and the family. 

 Houses without individuality, dark and ugly, tenements and apart- 

 ments, boarding houses and hotels, not owned by those who live in 

 them, inhibit the instinct to form a home. Children do not stay in 

 the house and can be put to no use about it. They are away at school 

 and on the street; later they earn money for themselves. Women are 

 not physiologically fit to bear and nurse children. The father is away 

 all day, and the mother is often away. The parents and the children 

 do not have work, amusements or interests in common. There are no 

 family traditions and sanctions. A certain irresponsibility in the 



