DECREASING POPULATION OF FRANCE 253 



represented 18 per cent, of all cases treated in such institutions. In 

 Paris the number of abortions is estimated to exceed the number of 

 births and fully two thirds of these are said to be provoked. Dr. 

 Georges Bertillon estimates that the annual number of such cases is not 

 less than 50,000 for all France, and Premier Barthou in the course of 

 the discussion during the past summer of a proposed law to restrain 

 the practises of the Malthusians asserted that the number of abortions 

 was probably as high as 100,000 per year. 



One undoubted reason for the voluntary limitation of the number 

 of births is to be found in the small incomes of the laboring classes and 

 the petty employes of the state. That a laborer who receives but 80 

 cents a day or a letter carrier whose salary is only 200 or 250 dollars a 

 year can not rear a family, especially in a city like Paris, however much 

 he may desire to do so, is a proposition which is scarcely controvertible. 

 Consequently they feel under an economic necessity of limiting the size 

 of their families. It is notorious that the number of functionaries in 

 France is excessive (nearly one million, or one fortieth of the total pop- 

 ulation) and that they are miserably paid, their average salary being 

 scarcely more than 500 dollars per year. This explains why the birth- 

 rate among them is lower than that of any other class except the rich, 

 the average number of children per family being but one and a half. 



Students of the depopulation problem are all agreed that another 

 important cause of the voluntary limitation of births is the excessive 

 spirit of economy and the passion for saving which prevails among all 

 classes in France and especially among peasants, shopkeepers and small 

 proprietors. Statistics show that in those communities where the num- 

 ber of certificates of deposit in the savings banks is the largest, the 

 birth-rate is the lowest. Every father feels under the necessity of pro- 

 viding a dot for his daughter and it is one of his chief ambitions to 

 leave an inheritance for his sons. Among the poorer classes this am- 

 bition can be realized only when the number of children is limited. 

 There is also among the French an extreme reluctance to see their 

 fortune divided through the operation of inheritance laws. As the 

 existing law does not permit free testamentary disposition, but allows 

 each child an equal share of the inheritance, the only way by which the 

 father can prevent the division of his estate after his death is to leave 

 but a single child to inherit it. The French peasant loves his land 

 more than he loves children, and his ideal is, therefore, a single heir 

 married to a single heiress. He is willing to have his name disappear 

 with his death if his heir is a girl, rather than see his estate divided, 

 which must necessarily be the case if he leaves several children. There- 

 fore he leaves only one. M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, who since the death 

 of M. Levasseur is probably the highest authority in France on matters 

 relating to population, attributes the low birth-rate to the new demo- 

 cratic conception of the family — a view which regards children as a 



