RACE SUICIDE OR A NATURAL LAW? 35 



demand for children for adoption is symptomatic of a 

 much larger desire for children, since for every couple 

 who are prepared to adopt the children of strangers 

 there will be hundreds of couples who keenly desire 

 children of their own, but hesitate to adopt children of 

 doubtful heredity. 



An account of a similar and much larger demand for 

 children for adoption in the United States appeared in 

 the Cosmopolitan Magazine for September 1910. It was 

 even stated that the demand exceeded the supply ; but 

 as I have not been able to confirm these statements, I 

 do not insist upon them. Yet it stands on historical 

 record that there was a decline in the birthrate of Ancient 

 Rome and Greece similar to that which we are witnessing 

 to-day, and the practice of adopting children sprang up 

 among the childless then even as it is doing now. Then 

 also the current explanation was that the people were 

 deliberately evading child-bearing, and that, out of "pure 

 cussedness " and wrongheadedness apparently, they pre- 

 ferred to adopt the children of strangers rather than have 

 children of their own. Are a few thousand more years 

 to pass before the world will consent to make the common- 

 sense recognition of the fact that these things are governed 

 by natural laws not yet under our control ? 



The statesmen of Ancient Rome were not blind to 

 the dangers which threatened their country as the result 

 of the declining birthrate. The Emperor Augustus chased 

 the red herring of " race suicide " to far greater lengths 

 than the statesmen of to-day have done, and offered the 

 most lavish privileges to the parents of large families. 

 But it was all in vain. The matter was not within the 

 parents' control. In spite of all efforts to check the 

 decline, the ancient Roman race practically died out, and 

 was replaced -by a miscellaneous collection of aliens. The 



