THE CAUSES OF THE DECLINING BIRTH RATE 179 



all married couples rather than to keep it under the ban of legal 

 prohibition. There is a considerable amount of sincere moral 

 feeling, and a larger amount of purely hj^ocritical protest against 

 such a procedure.^ The question cannot be decided by ecclesias- 

 tical authority, or by any sort of a priori deduction, but only on 

 the ground of what is most conducive to the welfare of the race. 

 What we need is a judicious combination of the preachments of 

 Dr. Drysdale and Mr. Roosevelt, — family limitation where such 

 is needed, and greater fecundity among those whose inheritance 

 is of superior quality. 



1 Mr. H. Gachte has somewhat ironically pointed out that among the members of 

 the National Committee on the Increase of the Population in France, there were 

 only 578 children to 445 members, or an average of one and a third children per 

 family ! 



On the pros and cons of birth control the reader may be referred, in addition 

 to the books and periodicals mentioned above, to Beale's Racial Decay, a rather 

 rambling, disorganized work, strongly condemnatory of birth control. This work 

 formed the occasion of Mr. Roosevelt's famous article on Race Suicide {Outlook, 

 Vol. 97, p. 763) which should be read by everyone interested in the subject. Of 

 purely historical interest is Knowlton's, Fruits of Philosophy (a rather sorry pro- 

 duction by the way) whose repubHcation in England in 1878 brought about the 

 celebrated trial of Chas. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Annie Besant. Mention may also be 

 made of Mrs. Besant's pamphlet. The Law of Population, which ran through many 

 editions amounting in all to several hundred thousand copies. A strong attack on 

 birth restriction is contained in the Rev. R. Ussher's, Neo-Malthusianism (Methuen 

 and Co., London, 1897). On the Neo-Malthusian side attention may be called to 

 Uncontrolled Breeding, by A. More; Small or Large Families, by C. V. Drysdale, 

 H. Ellis, W. J. Robinson and A. Grotjahn; W. J. Robinson's books, Eugenics, 

 Marriage and Birth Control, Fewer and Better Babies, The Limitation of Offspring; 

 A. Grotjahn's, Gehurtenrikkgang und Gebnrtenregehmg (Marcus, Berlin, 1914). H. 

 Ellis has discussed the subject in his Task of Social Hygiene, Essays in War Time, 

 and in the Eugenics Review for 191 7. An interesting series of articles by M. A. 

 Hopkins runs through Harper's Weekly for 1915. A useful bibliography of several 

 hundred references has been compiled by Th. Schroeder (H. W. Wilson Co., N. Y., 

 1918, 35 cents). 



