676 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the forester's business to find and remove. He would not tliink, 

 however, of stopping the cutting of the old trees, for that would 

 be to prevent the essential condition of the new growth's getting 

 a headway. The law of all living societies, in forests and in na- 

 tions, is the perpetual renewal of the stock. 



IV. Of Measures tkat will be Effective. — The evil must be 

 fought in its causes. These causes are detestable family customs, 

 dictated by pecuniary considerations. These being the things to 

 be reformed, and money being the cause of them, the beginning 

 should be made with money. We have a right to demand energetic 

 measures, severe if necessary, against the evil that is eating France. 

 Those which we shall ask for here are only equitable. They shall 

 fully respect individual liberty, and in some cases augment it. 

 Their purpose is to teach the French people who do not know it 

 the immense WTong which their mistaken selfishness is inflicting 

 upon the country. They aim especially to modify customs, and to 

 invoke for reasonably numerous families the profound respect and 

 protection that are due them. And they seek to harmonize gen- 

 eral with particular interests, a thing to which the present laws 

 have precisely the contrary effect. 



It is just as much every man^s duty to contribute to the perpe- 

 tuity of his country as it is to defend it. This is a moral truth 

 which the French have forgotten, and it will have to be inculcated in 

 them. The case is beyond the reach of the most eloquent sermons, 

 and will have to be met, if the mass of men are to be convinced, 

 by palpable facts that will touch all personally. This leads to the 

 principle, which seems, moreover, self-evident, that the fact of 

 bringing up a child should be considered a form of tax payment. 

 The payment of a tax is, in fact, the imposition of a pecuniary sac- 

 rifice for the profit of the whole nation. This is what the father 

 accepts who rears a child. 



A family, to he acquitted of the tax, should rear at least three 

 children. It takes two children to fill the place of the parents, 

 and there should be a third in addition, for one in three families, 

 on an average, will have no children. Hence the family which, 

 does not rear three children will fail of imposing sufficient sacri- 

 fices upon itself for the future of the nation. It is free to do this, 

 but should pay damages for it. He, on the other hand, who rears 

 more than three children imposes supplementary burdens upon 

 himself, for which he should be recompensed every time occasion 

 offers. The principle of a reduction of taxes proportioned to the 

 number of children was applied in June, 1898, at the instance of 

 the Alliance Nationale, by the city of Lyons. It has been adopted, 

 very timidly at first, and then a little more broadly, by the Min- 



