THE POPULATION PROBLEM.

Evening Star, Issue 11451, 19 January 1901, Page 3

THE POPULATION PROBLEM.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF WOMEN. In vacating the presidential chair of the Medical Society of Victoria at the annual meeting of that body the other day, Dr J. W. Barrett delivered a highly interesting address, in which he dealt chiefly with the population problem. With the aid of diagrams and comparative tables of figure? Dr Barrett showed that nowhere in the world was found the sudden and enormous drop in the birth rate during the last fifteen years which was found in Australasia, and he agreed with Mr Coghlan that the trade depression had not only had the effect on the marriage rate, and through the marriage rate on the birth rate, but had in many cases led to the adoption of artificial checks. The cosmic process of development had been followed by a gradual decline in the birth rate, and had, since 1888, or thereabouts, been supplemented in Australasia by the voluntary restriction of families on an extensive scale. It was clear, then, if a reaction did not set in the increase of population would become a vanishing quantity. What, then, was the explanation of this sudden change? The immediate cause of the greater part of it was tolerably certain. Anglo-Saxon women had become acquainted with methods by which reproduction was placed more or less completely under voluntary control, and they had not hesitated to avail themselves of their use. Until recent times with us, and in most countries still, there had been a slow decline in the birth rate, consequent, probably, upon increasing civilisation and education. Why was it that when means became available for still further decreasing the birth rate, those means were eagerly made use of? The answer to that question was exceedingly difficult, because the subject must be surveyed from so many different points of view, and it was difficult

to rid oneself of prejudices and preconceived opinions. This, however, seemed definite; that the great movement which had take;* place in the last half-century, which aimed at what was euphemistically termed “ the emancipation of women,” had had for its end the opening of any career to any woman —the so-called equality of opportunity. That movement has progressed much further in Anglo-Saxon countries than in any other. Women had certainly been better educated in these countries, and practically all careers had been thrown open to them. Previously there was but one career open to a woman—viz., marriage. Now she might take her choice, and she might even marry and pursue her professional or business career by avoiding the pleasures and pangs of maternity. An ambitious highly-trained woman would, in those circumstances, be tempted to prefer the business career to the old-fashioned one, particularly when the personal advantages of the one were present, and the personal disadvantages of the other were obvious. But it required no considerable intelligence to realise that such a choice meant the extinction of her own particular race. It meant (hat certain intellectual ideas completely dominated and overpowered the primal and fundamental instincts on which the continuance of the race depended. Whilst making allowance for exceptional cases, for exceptional women, and for exceptional conditions, he thought a choice of that kind justified the deliberate conviction that, in her case, civilisation had been a failure. On anything like a large scale, it meant that women were being educated to do that which men could do, and were leaving undone the very thing which men could not do. That was the broad reason for this extraordinary movement, but there were a number of subordinate considerations, and in the course of his practice ho hud met cases in which well-to-do young people had deliberately avoided family life altogether. and in its absence the best individuals were likely to show mental and moral limitations or rather failure of development. If the pnmal and fundamental maternal instinct was not strong enough in the mind of woman, then no relatively superficial reason would produce its effect, and at this stag* it would be seen that Karl Pearson’s apparently farfetched scheme was not quite r-n far-fetchcd ax it might seem. Wc found a nation composed of women who took up this attitude. We could not put hack the hands of the clock ; we could not. if we, would, put an end to what was called “ the emancipation of women.’’ and we found that the nation was rapidly going to pieces for want of population. From the point of view of the* State, the matter was vital. But no woman, in bearing a. child, now thought of the State. She never regarded herself as having done a sen-ice to the. State. She did not resemble, the old Roman matron, who was never so happy as when she could point 1o fine male children, her progeny, who had become Roman citizens. In Franco, where the matter had developed furthest, tlm State was endeavoring to inculcate.this idea, into woman, to teach her that, by the production of children, she did France a service and an honor. The State provided, he was informed, for the maintenance and education of the seventh child in any family. The drift of Karl Pearson's theory would bo seen at once. Ho supposed that the education of women would continue; that there would be a greater and greater disinclination to hamper careers by child-bearing. He suggested that even married women would adop? a professional or business career, and would hesitate to give two years of working life for the sake, of producing one rliild to" tho State. It would., therefore, bo incumbent upon the State to see that her economic position at the end of tho two year- was no worse than at the- beginning. In other words, it would undertake to nay her business salary during the whole of this period* and so maintain the equality of opportunity with men. No doubt- this might, bo the logical deduction ; but bis own impression was that, by the time a community reached a, state of‘tilings in which fundamental instincts were regarded from that point of view, some other community less logical, but mors vigorous, would have cleaned the Augean stable out and stocked it with a now stud. - (Cheers.) Medical men wore concerned in this problem to a profound extent, and it was therefore necessary that they should fully understand it in all its.many-sided aspects, and be in a position to give advice. And if they asked what that advice was to be. it -was practically summed up in the statement that it was not possible to cheat God Almightv without paying a very heavy penalty, both personally and racially—personally, if the cases be few; racially, if tho eases be nnmorous. The penalty for the extreme practices indicated in this address was ant In be an old age, cramped mentally and morally, with its attendant train of minor neuroses; an old age in which the individual could not look back to a life fully spent, in which ho or she had “graduated in all the faculties of human relationships.”—(Cheers.)