258 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



public functionaries. This suggestion has been made by the commis- 

 sion on depopulation and by many writers and social reformers. Bills 

 embodying this idea have frequently been before parliament, and in 

 1908 the Chamber of Deputies adopted a resolution inviting the 

 government to introduce a projet for granting to the employes of the 

 state receiving small salaries an allocation in proportion to the size of 

 their families. Some of the administrative departments have in fact 

 already adopted such a policy. Thus in the department of indirect 

 taxes, every employe whose salary is less than $440 a year and who has 

 three or more children under eighteen years of age receives a subsidy of 

 $12 a year. Likewise in the post-office department and in the customs 

 service there is a similar grant of $9.00 per year. Somewhat similar 

 allowances are made by the state railroads and other branches of the 

 public service. Thus the principle has already been given an extended 

 application, though on a somewhat small scale. Not very different in 

 principle and without the objections which characterize punitive taxa- 

 tion of celibacy and infecundity is the proposal advocated by M. Leroy- 

 Beaulieu and others to take into account the size of the family in fixing 

 the amount of the personal tax, which, in France, is mainly a tax on 

 habitation and one which therefore weighs heavily upon renters having 

 large families. This principle has been embodied in the tax systems of 

 various continental states, notably in the German income tax law which 

 allows a reduction of $12.50 in the amount of the tax for every child 

 under fourteen years of age. The abolition of the tax on doors and 

 windows, letters patent, the octroi and others of a similar character 

 which are peculiarly burdensome to the poor would be, as has often 

 been asserted, conducive to the rearing of larger families. 



IV. Conclusions 



Such are some of the means that have been proposed for combatting 

 the conditions which threaten France with depopulation. Some of 

 them, like discriminating measures against celibates, the payment of 

 bounties for the production of children, the exemption of heads of 

 families from certain public impositions, and the partial confiscation of 

 inheritances where there is but a single child, were tried by the 

 Eomans, but they were largely illusory and of little effect. Of the 

 other measures proposed, some are impracticable, others are impossible 

 of execution and still others would be productive of but slight results. 

 The true remedy lies not in legislative, administrative o*r fiscal meas- 

 ures, though some of these may contribute toward the checking of the 

 evil, but in a reform of the morals and customs of the French people. 

 There must be a fundamental change in the attitude of French men and 

 women toward the obligation to rear families ; there must be an awaken- 

 ing to the duty which devolves upon the citizen to contribute to the 



