THE LAW OF BIRTHS 

 AND DEATHS 



CHAPTER I 

 RACE SUICIDE OR A NATURAL LAW? 



So accustomed are we to the small families usual in 

 the more prosperous European countries, that we seldom 

 realise how vast is the gap which separates the full potential 

 fertility of the human race from its actual or realised 

 fertility. A family of five or six is looked upon as quite 

 large in England, while a family of ten or a dozen is 

 regarded as enormous. Yet the average family among 

 the French-Canadians is said to be over nine, and Dr. 

 C. E. Woodruff asserts that there are fifteen to twenty 

 births per family among the Philippinos even yet. 1 



The period of potential fertility among the women of 

 civilised communities is from fifteen to about fifty years. 

 A rate of even one child per annum would thus give a 

 potential fertility of about thirty children for a woman 

 who married before twenty and lived until past fifty 

 years of age. Nor is this the full story. " Aristotle 

 mentions a woman who had five children at a birth four 

 times successively ; Menage one who had twenty-one 

 children in seven years." 2 Mulhall also mentions one 



1 Expansion of Races, Woodruff, p. 177. 

 1 Dictionary of Statistics, Mulhall. 

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