518 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



portionately as many births in 1904 as the members of 1880 had in that 

 year, there would have been born to them nearly 70,000 babies, instead 

 of 32,000. If the birth rate in these 280,000 families of comparatively 

 prosperous artisans had only fallen in the same degree as that of Eng- 

 land and Wales generally, there would have been born to them 58,000 

 babies instead of 32,000. What was the special influence in these 

 exceptionally thrifty families that prevented the other babies being 

 born? 



6. The decline in the birth rate is due to some new cause which was 

 not appreciably operative fifty years ago. 



We may, indeed, infer, from the relatively stationary birth-rate, 

 alike of the whole population and of selected classes down to some date 

 between 1861 and 1881, and the steady persistence of the subsequent 

 decline, that the decline is due to some new cause. The same conclu- 

 sion is reached by the elaborate calculations just published by Mr. 

 Heron. 7 



In 1851, as in 1901, it could have been inferred from a comparison 

 of different districts in the metropolis that ' the more cultured, the 

 more prosperous, healthy, and thrifty classes of the community ' were 

 producing fewer children per marriage than the classes of lower social 

 status. But, as regards London in 1851, Mr. Heron is " driven to 

 almost certain conclusion that differences in the mean age of wives 

 were amply sufficient ... to account for the differential birth rates of 

 districts with divergent social status." The operating cause of a low 

 birth rate was, in fact, at that date, postponement of marriage. We 

 know, however, from Dr. Newsholme's corrected birth rates that no 

 such cause as a greater postponement of mariage, with the correspond- 

 ing rise in the age of the average wife, has anything to do with the 

 decline in the birth rate now recorded. This decline is due to some 

 cause other than those that were appreciably in operation in 1851. 



7. The decline in the birth rate is principally, if not entirely, the 

 result of deliberate volition in the regulation of the marriage state. 



The reader can scarcely have read the foregoing statements without 

 coming to the conclusion that the falling-off in the birth rate, which 

 has during the last twenty years deprived England and Wales of some 

 two hundred thousand babies a year, is the result of deliberate inten- 

 tion on the part of the parents. The persistence and universality of 

 the fall in town and country alike ; the total absence of any discoverable 

 relation to unhealthy conditions, mental development, the strain of 

 education, town life or physical deterioration of any kind; the remark- 

 able fact that it has been greatest where it is known to be widely 

 desired ; the evidence that it accompanies not extreme poverty but social 



7 ' On the Relation of Fertility in Man to Social Status and the changes 

 in this relation that have taken place during the last fifty years.' By David 

 Heron, 1906, p. 20. 



