182 THE LAW OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS 



unwilling to listen to a writer who would have urged 

 upon them the necessity of social reform, instead of laying 

 the blame for the evils from which society suffers at the 

 door of Providence. It will be no more than justice if 

 we divert a little of the attention which is bestowed upon 

 the work of the man who was wrong to the work of the 

 man whom time has substantially justified. The present 

 belief that the birthrate is regulated by the use of contra- 

 ceptives would have been meaningless to Doubleday. 

 He was dealing with an increase. The only way in which 

 the race-suicide theory could be applied to such facts 

 would be to assume that the people were formerly in 

 the habit of limiting the size of their families by the use 

 of contraceptives, but were now giving up the practice, 

 or rather were now content to rear substantially larger 

 families than before for no better reason than that they 

 were less able to support them. 



Unlike his opponents, Doubleday could not ignore the 

 increase or assume it to be an effect without a cause. 

 To him, seeing that the increase accompanied a lowering 

 of the standard of comfort which resulted from the in- 

 troduction of the factory system, it was an obvious in- 

 ference that the best way to cause a decrease was to 

 reverse tlie conditions which brought about the increase. 

 He illustrated this by many historical facts, showing 

 that exceptionally prosperous periods were accompanied, 

 not by over-population, but by de-population. Time has 

 justified his view. A reversal of the conditions which 

 brought about the increased birthrate has caused a 

 decrease. And a further accentuation of the causes 

 which have brought about the decrease should produce 

 a further decline. 



