MANIFESTED IN HUMAN SOCIETY 111 



the United States. Scarcely another race has multiplied 

 as rapidly, doubling every twenty-five years. The con- 

 trast with the same race in France, where population is 

 actually declining, is most suggestive. French Canada 

 is, as it were, a bit of medieval France, picked out and 

 preserved for the student of social evolution. No French 

 Revolution broke down its old institutions, and the English 

 conquest changed little else than the oath of allegiance. 

 Language, customs, laws and property rights remained 

 unaltered. The only State Church in North America is 

 the Roman Catholic Church of Quebec, with its great 

 wealth, its control of education, and its right to levy tithes 

 and other church dues. With a standard of living lower 

 than that of the Irish or Italians, and a population in- 

 creasing even more rapidly, the French from Canada 

 for a time seemed destined to displace other races in the 

 textile mills of New England." 1 



Thus the race which is in France perhaps the least 

 fertile in the world becomes in Canada, " with a standard 

 of living lower than that of the Irish or Italians, " one 

 of the most fertile races in the world. They are a race of 

 backward peasant farmers, living in a country which is 

 under snow for some five months in the year, and earning 

 their living by hard physical labour in which their wives, 

 no doubt, take a substantial share. Throughout the world 

 all races of mankind tell the same story, with one or two 

 doubtful exceptions. 



Most observers seem to agree that many of the more 

 backward races of the world, such as the Hottentots 

 and Bushmen of South Africa, generally have small 

 families. Spencer quotes Barrow as writing a century 

 ago of the Hottentots that they were poor and ill-fed, 

 and had to do all the work for the idle Boers. He added 

 1 Races and Immigrants in America, John R. Common. 



