176 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



degree a conflict of interest between the individual and the community 

 in the matter of the increase of the population. It would also seem to 

 be clear that there is a pronounced conflict between a high birthrate and 

 a democratic, ambitious and highly competitive people. As long as 

 society is based upon personal competition, and as long as competition 

 takes the form of the pecuniary culture, that is, by personal and social 

 display of wealth in forms of conspicuous wastefulness as a means of 

 showing ability to pay, so long will the birthrate tend to decline. It was 

 long ago pointed out that society based upon competition cannot avoid 

 an increasing rivalry and hence an increasing energy must be spent in 

 that direction. The mad rush to surpass others which is the inevitable 

 result of our religiously inculcating in the minds of the young the duty 

 to "make something of themselves" interferes with the high birthrate 

 of former decades. The family becomes smaller and the decline in the 

 increase of the native stock leaves the country a prey to the swarming 

 millions of the more fecund races. It is in this way that intense personal 

 competition may modify the racial stock. 



This phenomenon is apparent in France where the birthrate has been 

 stationary for some time. The beaten races, driven into the more inac- 

 cessible regions by the ancient Franks and eking out an existence on the 

 margin of cultivation, are beginning to return to the better soils which 

 are gradually being abandoned because of the decline in the natural 

 increase of the original conquering race. That they are amalgamating 

 with the superior race is shown by the measurements of the skull. The 

 conquering race was of the long skull or dolichocephalic type; the con- 

 quered race was brachy cephalic. Skull-measurements extending over 

 a period of several decades apparently show a slight increase of brachy- 

 cephaly among the French people. 1 



That such will be the case with the more highly civilized nations of 

 the present time is possible but it is not likely to occur for a long series 

 of generations. It is true, nations rise and fall, but the present condition 

 of the birthrate and its relation to the deathrate do not indicate a speedy 

 decline in the population anywhere, not even in France where the birth- 

 rate is but slightly in excess of the deathrate. The birthrate of civilized 



1 Ross, Foundations of Sociology, pp. 216, 344, 1905. 



