PHYSICAL DEGENERACY OR RACE SUICIDE? 515 



3. The decline in the birth rate is exceptionally marked where the 

 inconvenience of having children is specially felt. 



There is not much evidence to be adduced under this head, but what 

 there is is of some significance. Where married women habitually go 

 to work in factories, and where their earnings form an important ele- 

 ment in the weekly income of the family, the interruption caused by 

 maternity is probably most acutely felt. The enforcement by the 

 factory and workshops acts of 1891 and 1901 of four weeks' absence 

 from employment after child-birth comes as an additional objection. 

 Moreover, in the factory districts the later age at which children can 

 now become productive wage-earners has certainly rendered large fam- 

 ilies less economically desirable than of yore. It is, therefore, of some 

 significance that the ten towns in all England in which the relative fall 

 in the birth rate between 1881 and 1901 is most startingly great are 

 Northampton, Halifax, Burnley, Blackburn, Derby, Leicester, Brad- 

 ford, Oldham, Huddersfield and Bolton — all towns in which an excep- 

 tionally large proportion of married women are engaged in factory 

 work, in textiles, hosiery or boots. I can adduce no statistics of the 

 decline in the birth rate among the married women teaching in schools ; 

 but it is known to be great. 



4. The decline in the birth rate appears to be specially marked in 

 places inhabited by the servant-keeping class. 



It is significant that Brighton shows a relatively heavy falling off 

 from a birth rate which was already a low one. But a comparison 

 between various districts of London gives us further indications. Let 

 us take, as a convenient index of relative wealth, the percentage of 

 domestic servants to population. The corrected birth rate of Bethnal- 

 green — the district of 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 12 per cent, (or exactly as much as that of 

 the North Eiding of Yorkshire). But that of Hampstead — where 

 most domestic servants are kept — fell off by no less than 36 per cent., 

 and attained the distinction of reaching the lowest of all the corrected 

 birth rates that Dr. Newsholme has computed. Second only to Hamp- 

 stead in this respect come Kensington and Paddington, which have 

 statistically to be taken together, and which, keeping nearly as high a 

 proportion of domestic servants as Hampstead, saw their corrected 

 birth rates, already lower than that of Hampstead, fall off by 19 per 

 cent., and sink to less than two thirds of that of the Bethnal-green of 

 1881. It would be interesting to extend this comparison, taking all 

 the districts of London in the order of their average poverty, as shown 

 by such indices as the proportion of the inhabitants who live in one- 

 or two-room tenements, by the rateable value per head, and by the per- 

 centage keeping domestic servants. But the variations in the registra- 

 tion areas in nearly all these cases prevent accurate comparison of birth 



