THE DIMINISHING BIRTH RATE 77 



rate mentioned by a man of such extensive medical and statistical ex- 

 perience as Dr. John S. Billings " is the diffusion of information with 

 regard to the subject of generation by means of popular and school 

 treatises on physiology and hygiene, which diffusion began between 

 thirty and forty years ago. Girls of twenty years of age at the present 

 day know much more about anatomy and physiology than did their 

 grandmothers at the same age, and the married women are much better 

 informed as to the means by which the number of children may be 

 limited than were those of thirty years ago." 5 



In a footnote of an article on " The Declining Birth Bate/' Pro- 

 fessor John B. Phillips says : 



There is certainly developing there (in Germany) the desire to reduce the 

 size of the family. The large number of pamphlets treating of methods of 

 preventing conception which have recently appeared and are offered for sale 

 at the bookstores is an indication of the desire for smaller families. There is 

 no law against the public sale of such literature in Germany. In the window 

 of one large bookstore I counted five such pamphlets conspicuously displayed. 

 The price of most of them was below fifty cents. 8 



Another fact which corroborates the position of the economist 

 merits attention, namely, the birth rate is usually low at the points 

 where we should expect. For example, a low birth rate commonly 

 coheres with a low death rate. This holds not only between the dif- 

 ferent portions of the population of the same country, but also 

 between the populations of different countries. Where sanitary con- 

 ditions are good and the knowledge of preventive medicine most widely 

 diffused, where the spirit of caution is most prevalent and the number- 

 less little attentions that economize life are most unstintedly bestowed, 

 both the birth rate and the death rate are low. On the other hand, 

 where the reverse of these conditions obtain, both the birth rate and 

 the death rate are high. Apparently, the same forethought safeguards 

 both. Again, so long as the American people were mainly a nation 

 of frontiersmen, the birth rate was high. For on the frontier the man 

 without a wife was at an economic disadvantage and children much 

 more than repaid for their bringing up by the time they became of age. 

 Under these circumstances early marriages and large families were 

 both dictated by prudence. But with the passing of the frontier and 

 the massing of men in cities where a wife and children are often a 

 handicap, and where the opportunities for employment open to the 

 unmarried woman are especially attractive, the postponement of mar- 

 riage and the small family become increasingly common. Under ex- 

 isting conditions, the highly emotional who lack self control and who 

 are frequently without property or devoid of ambition usually marry 

 young and have numerous children, while those in whom the deliberative 



'Forum, Vol. 15, 1893, p. 475. 



• University of Colorado Studies, March, 1910, p. 161. 



