THE REGULATION OF NUMBERS 289 



high level of their earnings (and the fact that they are received 

 in money, not in kind), and because, for the greater part, as 

 stated earlier, they attain no better position by waiting — are 

 married as journeymen or labourers.' ^ We have now to ask 

 why the wage earners should, if they do not limit fertility by 

 postponing marriage, limit fertility by conscious restriction of 

 their families. 



This is not an easy question to answer. As there are no 

 barriers to marriage, so to the production of a large family there 

 are no barriers in the form of social conditions or customs which 

 must be conformed to. There is apparently no hindrance to the 

 production of as many children as can be fed — that is to say, to 

 the increase of population to the level at which life can just be 

 supported. Such an increase, however, does not take place. To 

 understand why it is so we must first realize how powerful the 

 desire to better the social conditions and to raise the standard of 

 living has been among the wage earners. Mr. and Mrs. Hammond 

 have lately described the conditions under which the village 

 labourer existed in the earlier years of the last century.^ During 

 the agricultural depression which followed the Napoleonic Wars 

 the most determined effort was made by the governing classes to 

 induce the labourer to lower his standard of living in the very 

 mistaken hope that such a change would ease the position. Above 

 all things the labourers were urged to abandon the use of wheaten 

 bread and to accept some substitute. All kinds of arguments and 

 many forms of pressure were employed. The labourers, however, 

 were obstinate. They clung to their standard of living and in 

 England, at least since the Industrial Revolution, this determina- 

 tion to maintain, and if possible to raise, the standard has been 

 powerfully manifested by the wage-earning class.^ Returning now 

 to the question we have to answer, we may say that this deter- 

 mination becomes translated into a system of family limitation, 

 and that the decline in the birth-rate which is due to conscious 

 limitation has been in correspondence with changing economic 

 conditions. The previous rate of increase was no longer desirable 

 in the interest of the wage-earning classes, and it has been checked. 

 Nevertheless it has not been checked by a fully conscious realiza- 

 tion of the position. At the most there has only been a semi- 



' Rubin, loc. cit., p. 606. '^ Hammond, Village Labourer, ch. vii. » See 



Pigou, Wealth avd Welfare, p. 28. 



2498 m 



