338 ANNUAL. REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1935 



sum of the numbers of persons under 15 and of those over 50, is 

 almost exactly equal to the number of those between 15 and 50 years 

 of age. But over and above this burden, that may fairly be called 

 a normal biological one, the world's workers are now called upon to 

 support the unemployed. A considerable part of the unemployed 

 are so because they are unemployable — not sufficiently fit and able 

 in a biological sense to make an honest living in a world organized 

 as this one is. These unfit organisms are kept alive by the rest of 

 society for no realistically demonstrable reason other than that they 

 were once born, and by being born somehow placed upon the rest 

 of mankind what has gradually come to be regarded as a perma- 

 nently binding obligation to see that they do not die. The remainder 

 of the unemployed are so because there are too many fit, able, and 

 employable people in the world to do the necessary world's work, 

 the aggregate amount of which has been, is being, and will continue 

 to be steadily reduced by discoveries and improvements in the 

 sciences and arts. 



Mankind is trying in several ways to meet this situation. The 

 first and in the long run perhaps the most important way is by 

 reducing its reproductive rate through the practice of contracep- 

 tion — birth control. It has been seriously alleged and with at least 

 some justification, that even the admittedlj'^ imperfect techniques of 

 contraception as they are now known constitute the most important 

 biological discovery ever made. While historians of the subject 

 attempt to show that the practice of contraception is almost if not 

 quite as ancient as man's recorded history, actually the birth rates 

 of large population aggregates did not begin to be sensibly affected 

 by it until roughly the last quarter of the nineteenth century ; that 

 is to say, since the beginning of the rapid development of the highly 

 organized, integrated, and urbanized industrial type of civilization. 

 At the present time the effects of contraception on the birth rate 

 are plainly apparent over large and leading parts of the world's 

 population, and are growing at a rather rapid rate. 



The practice of birth control is a thoroughly sound, sensible, and 

 in the long rim effective method of meeting the problem consequent 

 upon the biological urge to reproduction operating in a universe of 

 definitely limited size. The only objection of importance that can be 

 urged against it is that it has led to an unfavorable differential fer- 

 tility. The socially and economically more fortunate classes of man- 

 kind have practiced contraception more regularly, frequently, and 

 effectively than the less fortunate social and economic classes, with 

 consequently reduced reproductive rates. It is contended that this 

 has brought about a steady deterioration and degeneration of man 

 as a species and will continue to do so until all progress is stopped. 



