72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



paired by the furious rate of our business and social life. According to 

 this view, the diminishing birth rate is not due to the under-nutrition of 

 the reproductive organs, but rather to a breakdown in the machinery 

 which normally controls their functioning. 



In further support of his position, the biologist rests his case upon 

 an inference. Observing that the higher animals are less prolific than 

 the lower, he concludes that fecundity among the more advanced types 

 of the human race is necessarily smaller than among the less advanced. 

 Or taking his clue from the fact that wild animals when made captive 

 become less fertile, he asserts that the industrial and social changes of 

 the last fifty years have had a similar effect upon the human race. 



Finally, the explanation of the biologist is occasionally supple- 

 mented by that of the medical expert who emphasizes the amount of 

 involuntary sterility induced by sexual diseases. Modern transporta- 

 tion and the growing density of population, together with the increase 

 of wealth and leisure, are said to spread the taint of sexual disorders 

 by making possible more promiscuous relations between the sexes. The 

 immoral relations which wages insufficient for self-support or for an 

 attractive manner of dress tempt some young women to sustain are 

 now and then mentioned as a contributory factor. 



II 



While conceding a certain force to the position of the biologist and 

 the medical expert, the economist insists that it offers a far from satis- 

 factory explanation of the phenomenon in question. Doubtless sexual 

 diseases account for a good deal of involuntary sterility. Some au- 

 thorities hold venereal diseases responsible for fully twenty-five per 

 cent. " of the inability to procreate in man," and for more than fifty 

 per cent. " of enforced sterility in woman, to say nothing of the one- 

 child sterility where the conceptional capacity is absolutely extin- 

 guished with the birth of the first child." This leaves us quite in the 

 dark, however, concerning the proportion which sterility that is in- 

 voluntary is of the sum total of all kinds. More important still, there 

 is little evidence that incapacity due to sexual diseases has become more 

 common. The fact that existing conditions afford greater opportunity 

 for the spread of such diseases no more proves that this has actually 

 occurred than the increase of positions of trust proves the increase of 

 theft. For the achievements of modern civilization are scarcely recon- 

 cilable with either the increase of dishonesty or with growing laxity in 

 the sexual relations. Nor do the temptations incident to low wages 

 prove that an increasing proportion of women lead lives that are im- 

 pure. Certain it is that economic independence was never so consist- 

 ent with chastity among women as to-day. Moreover, it is not clear 

 that venereal diseases are most common in that portion of the popu- 



