RACE SUICIDE 81 



" PACE SUICIDE " VS. OVERPOPULATION" 



By SCOTT NEARIXG, B.S., Ph.D. 



IXSTBUCTOB IX ECONOMICS, UXIVEBSITX OF PEXXSXLVAXIA 



AJsY conscious restriction in the birth rate is popularly referred to 

 as "race suicide.'"' It is in this sense that Theodore Eoosevelt 

 employed the term when he wrote to Mrs. Van Vorst concerning " race 

 suicide, complete or partial." The prevalence of a conscious restric- 

 tion in the birth rate on the part of the vast majority of American fam- 

 ilies has been established beyond question, while the facts from which 

 this conclusion is drawn form a basis for the anathema and ridicule 

 which the opponents of a declining birth rate have heaped upon those 

 anti-social individuals convicted of " race suicide." Paradoxical as it 

 may seem, however, these " race murders " are in reality race saviors, 

 for, acting in accord with the dominant evolutionary tendency of mod- 

 ern civilization, they are disregarding quantity and seeking to insure 

 quality. 



A continuance of the rate of increase in population which pre- 

 vailed in the early nineteenth century would have resulted, in the near 

 future of the western world, in an over-population problem as serious 

 as that now confronting China or India. Consider, for example, the 

 problem as it appeared in the United States. In 1800 the population 

 of the United States was doubling itself, by natural increase, every 25 

 years. Had this ratio of increase continued the native-born popula- 

 tion of 1900 would have numbered about 100,000,000, that of a.d. 2000 

 would have numbered 800,000,000, while the population of a.d. 2100 

 would have increased to 12,800,000,000 souls, or eight times the 

 entire population of the world in 1900. The argument is thus re- 

 duced to the absurd. Such a vast population could not be adequately 

 cared for, and some reduction of the birth rate of 1800 was therefore 

 inevitable. 



The reduction undoubtedly took place, for instead of the 100,000,- 

 000 descendants of native-born population predicted for 1900, there 

 were but 41,000,000 in existence. The advent of the other 59,000,000 

 was prevented by a conscious restriction in the birth rate, made inevi- 

 table by the abnormal growth of population at the end of the eighteenth 

 and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. 



The reduction in birth rate is clearly shown by a comparison of the 

 United States census figures from decade to decade. Prom 1790 to 

 1800, there was little immigration, yet the population of the United 

 States increased 35 per cent. ; from 1810 to 1820 the increase was 33 per 

 cent.; 1830 to 1840, 35 per cent.; 1850 to 1860, 35 per cent.; 1870 to 

 1880, 30 per cent. ; and 1890 to 1900, 20 per cent. Between 1890 and 

 1900 the net immigration to the United States was about 2,000,000. 

 voL.Lxxvni. — 6. 



