THE KEGULATION OF NUMBEKS 287 



regular in their operation ; epidemics of disease are rare and war 

 does not now, as so often formerly, indirectly cause a large death- 

 rate. The methods of limiting increase are confined to those 

 which reduce fertility with the exception of the practice of 

 abortion, which is still of some importance in the lower social 

 classes. It is important to observe that, although the postpone- 

 ment of marriage has throughout the period had an important 

 bearing upon fertility, it has not been, as in the former sub-group, 

 by raising or reducing the age of marriage that the change in 

 fertility has been chiefly due. 1 This change has been due to 

 diminished fertility which is to be chiefly accounted for by the 

 conscious limitation of fertility in the form either of abstention 

 from intercourse between married persons or of the use of con- 

 traceptive practices. We are not able to measure the prevalence 

 of the different forms of conscious limitation and thus definitely 

 to associate them with the declining birth-rate. We do not find, 

 however, any such increase in other factors, such as venereal 

 disease, which diminish fertility, as will account for the facts. 

 We have no reason for supposing that fecundity has diminished, 

 and as we have strong reasons for thinking that conscious limi- 

 tation has been increasingly practised, we must attribute the 

 changes to this cause. 2 



14. In this sub-group we may roughly distinguish between 

 property owners, professional classes, peasant proprietors, and 

 wage earners. The distinguishing feature has been the rise of 

 a very large wage-earning class not possessed of property. The 

 peasant proprietor, who, though a property owner, is to be dis- 

 tinguished from other property owners, is of little importance in 

 England. In other countries, however, the class of peasant 

 proprietors is of importance, and we may first ask how the 

 desirability of limiting increase is brought home to them. 



As we have seen, wherever men owe their living to the produce 

 of a definite area of land, whether ownership is vested in families 

 or in village communities, the situation is in the main always 

 much the same. That more than a certain number cannot 



1 Thus the mean age for marriage of all husbands in England only increased 

 from 28-43 years in 1896 to 28-88 years in 1909, while the mean age for all wives 

 only increased from 26-21 in 1896 to 26-69 in 1909. 



2 For evidence that the decrease in fertility is due to artificial restraint see 

 Stevenson, J. R. S. S., vol. Ixxxiii, p. 431. There are reasons for thinking that contra- 

 ceptive methods play a smaller, and restraint from intercourse a larger, part than 

 is generally supposed (see Dr. Greenwood's remarks on the paper quoted above, 

 p. 440, and also Dudfield, J. It. 8. 8., vol. Ixxi, 1908, p. 25). 



