78 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



faculty is conspicuous and who are people of substance or are highly 

 ambitious commonly marry late and have few children. In other 

 words, the birth rate is usually low among those in whom prudence is 

 highly developed, and imprudence in the matter of marriage and off- 

 spring is frequently but a symptom of imprudence in other directions. 

 President Hadley says : 



It is true that as society exists at present, high comfort and low birth 

 rate are commonly associated, because comfort is made to depend upon prudence. 

 Let the comfort be made independent of prudence, as in the case of the pauper 

 or criminal, and the birth rate tends to increase rather than diminish. It may 

 not be exactly true, as some Malthusians would have us believe, that the low 

 birth rate is the cause of the comfort, but it is much farther from the truth to 

 assert that the comfort is the cause of the low birth rate. Both are the results of 

 a common cause — the exercise of prudence, which gives high comfort and low 

 birth rate to those who are capable of practising it, while those who are in- 

 capable of so doing have at once a higher birth rate and a lower level of 

 comfort.' 



IV 



We recur, then, to the question propounded at the beginning, 

 namely, is the diminishing birth rate for the most part voluntary or is 

 it involuntary ? The contention that the increasing stress of life causes 

 sterility by impoverishing the reproductive organs, or by disturbing 

 the involuntary regulatory system, while plausible, is open to doubt in 

 so many respects that it is not entitled to great weight. As an erpla- 

 nation it is clearly inadequate. It does not account for the wide- 

 spread character of the fall in the birth rate, nor does it make due 

 allowance for the various considerations that postpone marriage and 

 render a small family, or no family at all, desirable. Moreover, the 

 argument from analogy is so speculative that not much need be con- 

 ceded on that score. Unfortunately, the sterility due to sexual dis- 

 eases can not be so easily dismissed. Even some sociologists are dis- 

 posed to attribute no small part of the decreasing birth rate among the 

 negroes to this cause, on the ground that " emancipation removed the 

 strong economic motive of the master class to keep their slaves in good 

 physical condition." This explanation, however, does not apply to 

 whites. No one of course who pretends to be informed denies that 

 venereal diseases are a fruitful cause of sterility. But when we are 

 asked to believe that they have spread enough to account for the fall in 

 the birth rate, we may well ask for the facts in the case. Such a 

 supposition runs counter to progress in so many directions and to what 

 seems to be a marked increase in the moral sensitiveness of the race. 

 The opinion sometimes expressed that a majority of men contract vene- 

 real diseases prior to marriage may be an unwarranted generalLzation. 

 The error of arguing the increase of these diseases from their known 



» " Economics," p. 48. 



