21G THE CONTROL OF LIFE 



has also to be remembered that all measures implying 

 increased control of life work from the more thoughtful 

 to the less thoughtful. 



It cannot be denied, however, that there are facts 

 which warn us to watch with anxious attention the 

 differential decline of the birth-rate. Among the 

 miners of Rhondda Valley, who are said to be vigorous 

 people, the birth-rate is still about 40 per 1,000, twice as 

 much as in a residential suburb of London. The crucial 

 question is how far this disparity of the birth-rate in 

 different sections of the community will go. 



In his inquiry into the birth-rate in different districts 

 in London, Dr. Heron was led to the following con- 

 clusion : — "In those districts where the professional 

 classes are most numerous, and where many domestic ser- 

 vants are kept, there the married have fewest children. 

 In districts where there is overcrowding, where there is 

 a superabundance of the lowest type of labour, where 

 child-employment is most prevalent, where infant 

 mortality is greatest, where pauperism is general, and 

 pauper lunatics are plentiful, where signs of bad environ- 

 ment like phthisis are prevalent — ^there the birth-rate 

 is highest." 



Few will regard with misgivings the notoriously 

 low birth-rate among millionaires, but what about this 

 sort of fact ? In the eighteenth century, Benjamin 

 Franklin declared that the average number of children 

 in a family in North America was 8 ; at the end of the 

 eighteenth century, it seems to have been about 6 ; 



