172 THE TREND OF THE RACE 



from wholesale dealers and expense is no consideration; they use 

 mechanical more frequently than drug preventives. In the case 

 of abortion, there is no connivance with the medical profession, 

 but women apply for a medicine on the ground of some slight 

 irregularity and then take such large doses as to produce the 

 desired effect. The middle class also as a rule adopts Neo-Mal- 

 thusian practices; appliances are purchased in chemists' shops, 

 but they are also obtained from various barbers and tobacconists. 

 Among the very poor, although the desire to limit the family is 

 filtering down to them, more natural lives are led ; they cannot in 

 fact afford drugs, etc., but they are less 'sophisticated' and act 

 more instinctively. There is no doubt that the habit of artificial 

 limitation is growing rapidly in both the upper and middle classes, 

 but our correspondent's experience brought him more closely in 

 touch with skilled artisans, clerks, small shopkeepers, with from 

 £2 a week income upwards. Those with more than £250 a year 

 tend to a proportionally larger use of mechanical preventives. 

 Voluntary self-restraint, or cohabitation at certain times only 

 has hardly anything to do with the decline in the birth rate in this 

 class. The current tone in the matter may be illustrated by two 

 stories, the one told by a married woman with wide experience, 

 namely, that if you hear a knot of young married women of this 

 class talking together, the chances are that the topic will be the 

 means of prevention, and the second the words of a male acquaint- 

 ance to our correspondent himself 'on the arrival of one of my 

 youngsters': 'Well, you are a fool, — and you in a chemist's 

 shop!' " 



That family limitation was not more prevalent earlier may be 

 in part ascribed to the fact that such a possibility never occurred 

 to the majority of parents. The perpetuation of the race simply 

 went on in a natural way as it does among the lower animals, and 

 however undesirable may have been the results of unrestricted 

 multiplication, relatively little effort was made to check the 

 number of births. The surplus humanity was taken care of by a 

 high death rate, assisted occasionally by war, pestilence, famine, 

 and here and there by infanticide. 



