25 o TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



II. Causes 



A variety of causes, hygienic, social, economic and legal, have been 

 offered in explanation of the conditions described above in respect to 

 the state of the French population. First of all, an unnecessarily high 

 rate of mortality among the French people is said to be partly respon- 

 sible. For all France the number of deaths per 1,000 of population is 

 in the neighborhood of 20, whereas in England, Holland, the Scandi- 

 navian countries, Germany and Switzerland it is considerably lower, 

 the rate being as low as 14 in Norway and 17 in Sweden. Infantile 

 mortality is especially high in France, one third of all deaths occurring 

 before the end of the third year. The ravages of tuberculosis among 

 the French also contribute greatly to the elevation of the death rate. 

 M. Bourgeois recently stated before the Congress of Social Hygiene that 

 although the death-rate from tuberculosis had fallen in England and 

 Germany from 11 per 10,000 of the population, the rate in France was 

 22.5. The rate of mortality on account of this disease is especially 

 high in Paris, where in 1908 there were 13,600 deaths therefrom. 



Alcoholism was declared by the Klotz commission to be partly re- 

 sponsible for the high infantile mortality and to some extent also for 

 the small birth-rate. The commission produced statistics to show 

 that in those departments where there has been a large increase in the 

 consumption of alcohol, there has been a corresponding increase in the 

 rate of infantile mortality. Senator Eibot declares that alcoholism and 

 tuberculosis are fast obliterating the French race and this opinion is 

 supported by the testimony of a number of noted specialists in alcoholic 

 diseases. Statistics show that there has been an enormous increase in 

 the amount of alcohol consumed in France (the average per capita 

 consumption is about fourteen litres per year and in certain cities of 

 Normandy it is as high as twenty-nine) and they also show that a large 

 percentage of the inmates of the hospitals and insane asylums are alco- 

 holics. But as M. Bertillon has declared, while alcoholism is undoubt- 

 edly exerting a terrible effect upon the quality of the young and is con- 

 tributing to race degeneracy, it is not an immediate cause of sterility 

 and does not necessarily affect the number of births. Moreover, there 

 are other nations where the evil of alcoholism is equally great, for ex- 

 ample, England, Germany and Belgium, and yet those countries have 

 a relatively high birth-rate. 



The decline of religious faith and of traditional beliefs among the 

 French is regarded by many persons, among whom may be mentioned 

 the distinguished economist, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, as one of the con- 

 tributory causes for the small birth-rate. The scriptural injunction to 

 multiply and replenish the earth no longer has the moral influence upon 

 the French mind which it once had. The obligation to rear families 

 which has always been regarded as a religious duty naturally rests 



