THE PROBLEM OF THE FAMILY
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SLR,—It is to be regretted that your contributor, Mr. F. A. Mackenzie, should repeat the quite inaccurate assertion that the beginning of the decline in fertility in this country coincided with the Bradlaugh-Besant prosecution for selling the Knowlton Pamphlet. It is true that this trial took place in May, 1877, and that the birthrate began to decline in the same year, but there is an Interval of nine months between conception and birth, and this means that the fall in fertility really began in 1876, and in many parts of the country the decline commenced some years earlier. As the Bradlaugh- Besant trial took place during the second quarter it was obviously too late to affect the birthrate even of the last quarter of 1877.
The birthrates of those countries whose rate began to decline in 1877 show that in every case the decline in fertility really commenced in 1876, and merely became apparent in 1877, because of the interval of nine months between conception and birth. Moreover the decline commenced in Sweden in 1860, in Australia in 1868, and in France at the end of the eighteenth century.i.
There had been 0 vigorous campaign in this country in favour of birth Uontrol ever since the early days of last century, led by area of such eminence as John Stuart Mill.
The Knowlton Pamphlet itself was sold for forty years without hindrance before the Bradlaugh-Besant trial, and at that trial the Solicitor-General mentioned that over 100,000 copies had already been sold, but no effect was produced upon the birthrate until the deathrate began to decline. The decline of the birthrate was initiated by the same com- bination of causes as that which brought about the decline in the deathrate. The commencement of the decline in the deathrate in this country was due to the passing of the Public Health Act of 1875. That act gave us for the first time a sweeping and comprehensive system for the promotion of public hygiene. It suppressed open drains, sewers, cesspools, and a myriad similar disease-spreading agencies, and the deathrate began to fall in the very next year, or in 1876. The degree of fertility began to fall simultaneously, and this .became apparent in the birthrate of 1877. That is what happens all the world over, whether in Protestant or Roman Catholic countries, whether in England, India, or Egypt. This connexion between the fall of the deathrate and the fall of the birthrate is so invariable and so irrefutable that birth controllers have been driven to the extravagant expedient of asserting that it is the fall of the birthrate, as the result of birth control, which causes the fall of the deathrate, and not such obsolete and exploded notions as public hygiene. Hygienic sanitary arrangements are superfluous trifles where birth control is practised, according to these latest " scientific " developments. But I challenge Mr. Mackenzie to point to one instance in the whole range of human vital statistics where the fall in the birthrate has not been initiated by a fall in the deathrate, and where the fall in the deathrate has not been due to a corresponding improvement in the hygienic conditions of the people. There is no birth control propaganda in New Zealand, but fertility declines as swiftly there as in this country. There were neither propaganda nor contraceptives available in France at the end of the eighteenthcentury, yet the birthrate began to fall immediately the deathrate began to fall as the result of the improvement in the condition of the peasantry. The birthrate of Bengal has fallen 25 per cent. in recent years in the complete absence of birth control propaganda and in spite of the fact that such practices are opposed to all the religious and social conceptions of the people. When Dr. Halford Ross initiated a drastic hygienic campaign in the Suez Canal Zone from 1901 to 1910 the fall in the deathrate which resulted was immediately followed by a corresponding fall in the birthrate, and Dr. Ross was driven to the conclusion that the fluctuations of the birthrate are due to natural causes. What other conclusion is possible unless we are to adopt the extravagant belief that the people immediately took to birth control when the deathrate fell, although they had never practised it before ?
If the birth control hypothesis were true there would be a wholesale and disproportionate cutting down of large families, and only a comparatively small increase in childless marriages, since the vast majority of married couples desire a child or two. But the British Census of Fertility of 1911 shows that the decrease of the larger and the increase of the smaller families has been strictly proportional to the general decline of fertility. The increase of childless marriages has also been strictly proportional. Moreover, if the decline of the birthrate be due to birth control, perhaps Mr. Mackenzie will explain the completely proved fact that those people who do not practise birth control have families no larger than those who do, whether in England, France, or America.— I am, Sir, &c., CHARLES EDWARD PELL.
Birkdale," Barton Seagrave, Nr. Kettering.
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