PHYSICAL DEGENERACY OR RACE SUICIDE? 527 



tion, from the horrors of ' sweating ' or the terrors of prolonged lack 

 of employment. On the other hand, with factory acts and trade union 

 ' collective bargaining ' maintaining a deliberately fixed national mini- 

 mum, the limitation of numbers, however prudent it may be in indi- 

 vidual instances, is, from the national standpoint, seen to be economic- 

 ally as unnecessary as it is proved to be futile even for the purposes for 

 which McCulloch and Mill, Cairnes and Fawcett so ardently desired it. 



Nor can we look forward, even if we wished to do so, to the vacuum 

 remaining unfilled. It is, as all experience proves, impossible to ex- 

 clude the alien immigrant. Moreover, there are in Great Britain, as 

 in all other countries, a sufficient number of persons to whom the pru- 

 dential considerations affecting the others will not appeal, or will appeal 

 less strongly. In Great Britain at this moment, when half, or perhaps 

 two thirds, of all the married people are regulating their families, chil- 

 dren are being freely born to the Irish Eoman Catholics and the Polish, 

 Eussian and German Jews, on the one hand, and to the thriftless and 

 irresponsible — largely the casual laborers and the other denizens of the 

 one-roomed tenements of our great cities — on the other. This par- 

 ticular 25 per cent, of our population, as Professor Karl Pearson keeps 

 warning us, is producing 50 per cent, of our children. This can hardly 

 result in anything but national deterioration; or, as an alternative, in 

 this country gradually falling to the Irish and the Jews. Finally, 

 there are signs that even these races are becoming influenced. The 

 ultimate future of these islands may be to the Chinese. 



The conclusion which the present writer draws from the investiga- 

 tion is, however, one of hope, not of despair. It is something to dis- 

 cover the cause of the phenomenon. Moreover, the cause is one that 

 we can counteract. If the decline in the birth rate had been due to 

 physical degeneracy, whether brought about by ' urbanization ' or other- 

 wise, we should not have known how to cope with it. But a deliberately 

 volitional interference, due chiefly to economic motives, can at any 

 moment be influenced partly by a mere alteration of the economic con- 

 ditions, partly by the opportunity for the play of the other motives 

 which will be thereby afforded. 



What seems indispensable and urgent is to alter the economic inci- 

 dence of child-bearing. Under the present social conditions the birth 

 of children in households maintained on less than three pounds a week 

 (and these form four fifths of the nation) is attended by almost penal 

 consequences. The wife is incapacitated for some months from earn- 

 ing money. For a few weeks she is subject to a painful illness, with 

 some risk. The husband has to provide a lump sum for the necessary 

 medical attendance and domestic service. But this is not all. The 

 parents know that for the next fourteen years they will have to dock 

 themselves and their other children of luxuries and even of some of the 

 necessaries of life, just because there will be another mouth to feed. 



