290 THE EEGULATION OF NUMBERS 



conscious understanding of what is involved. In the main we 

 have to think of this determination as achieving its end by an 

 unconscious adaptation of social habits and practices to the needs 

 of the time. There have been other factors at work tending in 

 the same direction. The influence of factory legislation in restrict- 

 ing the employment of children has been to render large families 

 of less economic advantage. Again among more highly paid 

 sections of the wage-earning classes certain influences, which are 

 not economic at all but rather social, have also tended towards 

 reduction in fertility. 



It may be observed that, where the determination to maintain 

 the standard of hving is not strongly manifested, there over- 

 ' population may occur. Thus in England, and in all industrial 

 countries, there is at the bottom of the social scale a thriftless, 

 unskilled, and casually employed class in which the limitation of 

 families is little, if at all, practised. Among this class the desire 

 to improve conditions is seldom shown and in consequence the 

 birth-rate is not Hmited. If the members of this class ' restricted 

 considerably their rate of growth, there is ', says Hobson, ' reason- 

 able ground for holding that they would make a double economic 

 gain, being paid at a higher rate, for more efiicient and more 

 regular work.' ^ 



The conditions among the professional classes need not detain 

 us. In addition to feeling, as do the working classes, the benefit 

 in a general way of restriction, there are many other factors 

 which come in. Of these perhaps the most important is the 

 question of the age at which the maximum income is attained. 

 As these classes form only a small proportion of the population, 

 and as we shall have to discuss in the following chapter the 

 causes of the lower rate of increase in these classes than among 

 the wage-earning class — having in view the possible bearing 

 upon certain problems of qualitative change — we can omit any 

 further discussion here, merely observing that no question of 

 over-population arises. Possibly there may be relative under- 

 population in something the same way as there is over-population 

 in the lowest grade — whether this is so or not depending largely 

 upon the ease with which the professional classes are recruited 

 from below. 



1 Hobson, ' Evidence before the National Birtb-Rate Commission ', The Declining 

 Birth-rate, p. 289, 



