JOHN BURNS ON THE DECLINING BIRTH-RATE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5737, 4 November 1905, Page 9

JOHN BURNS ON THE DECLINING BIRTH-RATE.

Thor© is a shameless spirit of pessimism about everything abroad just now. Tho Jeremiahs have been on the rampjago; the dismal and the doleful wouldbe experts have all been regardmg other people as melancholy and things as decadent as themselves. M ith them everything is wrong, from latitude and longitude to the London County Council. Not content with their universal wailing at tho decay of homo lire, o! mere man, and all-conquering woman, they have started a crusade against the babies, actual, potential and to come. Now, babies aro what their mothers make thorn. A man’s reformation must begin with his grandmother. lam afraid, however, that tho transmitted defects of our -grandparents, past hard drinking, degrading toil, alternated by slothful unemployment, deficient nourishment, accompanied by their moral, mental and physical consequences, have temporarily weakened some sections ol our present raco and sterilised or impoverished tho fecundity and vitality of some of our women. BRITISH STOCK STILL SOUND. But these individual defects aro not irromediato in tho race. 'lhe sap is good, though branches wither and leaves decay.'. The exceptional .symptoms aro not ingrained, permanent or chronic. Like their cause they are transient, and will y.old to tho good treatment of sobriety, good food, reasonable work, cleanliness, good housing, fresh air, and the healthy body with the sound mind. Given these—and this is the duty of every reformer to secure—l believe the future of tho British race is ahead, not behind, and is not tiependent on either high or low birthrates, but other causes. Tho current standards of judgment of men—territory, and birth-rates—aro wrong. Megalomania is a disease. Now size is everything; numbers the supremo test. This is nonsense. Bigness is not greatness; numbers aro not quality (vide our present Cabinet); mere avoirdupois not strength—look at Russia. If so, tho tho Uoorkhas, and other small but virile people aro doom--cd, and in the megalomaniac’s balance are tried and found wanting.

With some people everything is wrong. I never wish to see better soldiers than tho Brigade of Guards, with whom I trudged 2UO miles two years ago. I never wish to see better navvies than I saw at Barking tho other day. Nor can there bo seen liner girls, women and men than now, whore the domestic means are- adequate to their substance and enjoyment. Yet I never saw two worse specimens of attenuated manhood, given their size, than two of tho self-same soldiers, who, having left the colours, had joined tho legion of tho lost in their fruitless search for work. In their case the social and economic conditions were to blame; adjust them, these two men would recover their social stride and become as good as ever. QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY. So it is in the eyes of tho jaundiced critic with the marriage-rate, the birthrate, the physique, and the intelligence of the nation. They cite tho defensive special ease, and give it general application. ’Tis the day of the chattel, web to weave, corn to grind; Tilings are in tho saddle, and ride mankind. And the fact that you have been discussing in “Tho Daily Chronicle’’ the consequences bt economic conditions and social circumstances winch affect births, marriages, and deaths, is a healthy and not a bad sign, and proof than mankind should dominate things, and by so doing help the race from tiio cradle onwards.

Personalty, I am not, under all circumstances, for a desolating flood of babies. Tho number of a family is to mo less than their quality. What is more, some regard should bo paid to tho mother, who too often pays needlessly for tho price of excessive maternity, either by her cnfeeblcmcnt, or, alas! often by her death. On tho other hand, every healthy marriageable woman ought to marry. Better a baby in her arms than a dog in her lap, bottles iu her boudoir, and vain regrets in her lonely childless after hie. Every married woman ought to have some children: but I disagree entirely that she ought to rear indiscriminately, and without regard to fitness, means, home, and environment, all tho children that, apart from choice, disposition, and sustainable capacity', sho is capable of being materially responsible tor. I knew an instance of a man whoso wife boro to him nine children in ton years. Tho mother died with tho arrival of tho ninth. He was a brute; sho was his victim. The fact is socially deplorable, and personally preventable.

On the other hand, there are too many women, and it is the eame, or worse, in other countries, to whom sacred, enviable, necessary maternity is a burden, a social handicap, a domestic inconvenience. Poor, silly, foolish creatures! As the years go inevitably they will find, to their loss, cost, illhealth, unhappiness and shame, that they who never gathered, never garnered, never will en.joy. There is no human joy on earth equal to the maternal instinct, duly satisfied, properly enjoyed. ' I never realise how much man has lost in perfect happiness than when I see, enjoy, and frankly envy the all-absorbing ecstasy of a happy mother fondling a healthy child. And this joy to the individual, this duty to tho race, this profitable investment for a healthy, middle, and happy feminine old-age, is thrown away for tho transient caprice of fashion, the doad-sca fruit of society, and to preserve for a few fleeting months tho mould of human form, the artificial symmetry of waist, and be the cynosure of silly eyes. But we must be careful in generalising about the birth-rate. Wo cannot dogmatise about the number there should be in a family—that is governed by'the individual case of mother. And wo cannot determine the number ot children a woman should rear—that is governed by many things, mostly impersonal. The cheerful thing to note is that tbe marriage-rate is either steady or slightly rising; and where it occasionally falls it is often duo to economic and commercial, rather than social or personal, reasons. The illegitimate births show a substantial decline, and there is a serious increase of births over deaths; and the fact is, as Mulhali pointed out, a falling birth-rate often indicates a rising increase of population. I believe that tho small reduction in birth-rate has .been exaggerated, attributed often to wrong causes, is not the evil “large family” advocates assert, is, under certain circumstances, as beneficial to individuals as it is prudent for nations. Tho decline is a consequence inseparable, from • the townward drift of the populations of tho world. I am afraid it cannot be resisted. I am doubtful, given the present urban conditions of many classes, whether it should be; and if a reduction in numbers means an improvement in quality, then it is to - be welcomed. * i

IVHT THE BIRTH-RATE DECLINES. Tho causes for this reduction are numerous, and difficult to define. Tho disproportionate growth of pleasure, properly disciplined, in itself is not bad. The economic emancipation of women, her entrance into work previously dona by men, mistaken views about matrimony, that wiser education will correct; in many cases young women do nob marry because they have their parents to inaintain. In those cases it is a social misfortune, as the great quality there displayed would, if diverted to maternity and motherhood, be a great gain to all children and tbe community. But it is foolish to blame those good women for a really generous act.

Tho neurotic tendency of some women, tho pernicious habit of drinking, among others, tho housing, and oilier restrictions inseparable from congested urban life, all these are contributory causes. Tho general raising of the standard o£ comfort is partly responsible, as "a rich man for luck and a poor man for children” expresses a social fact as well a.* a physiological law. It is not an accident, nor duo to personal regulation, that a wealthy London district, should have an infantile mortality ol 80 to 100 per 1000, and its poor district ranging from 27-1; to -I(X) per 1,000 per annum; and that a similar difference in the same districts at end of life at same ages should prevail betweenrich and poor. I believe that as tho poor in that district socially improve and approximate towards their wealthy follows, its infantile mortality will decrease, its age mortality lengthen; but its birth-rate will correspondingly diminish; and I believe tho three conditions go hand in hand, and on balance are nnmistak.ably good and desirable. Tho reduction in tho hirth-rato concerns mo less than tho salvation of tha babies that arrive. Tho regrettableand criminal infant mortality after tho lowering hirih-raio has been achieved, must ho stopped. It is a cruel, wasteful, and deplorable condition that isresponsiblo for poor people marrying more than tho rich, roaring up to a certain ago double tho children, ami then, after the risk and burden of maternity hns been incurred, having la lose from two to four times the number of their offspring up to tho age of live, as compared witli. their richer neighbours. But, bad though this is at the commencement of life, it is accentuated.' by tho shortening at tho other end. through premature death caused by all tho ills that poverty-stricken flesh n* heir to.

I hope that increased sobriety, bottei homes, bettor food, more regular work, wiser spending, a reversion to rural or semi-rural life, will correct a not yet too rapid decline in birth-rate ; and. that greater comfort for tho mother and increased care for the babies will roetify what is deplorable, and, better still, avert “tho massacre of the innocents” that now goes on in places like Blackburn, Burnley, and other industrial centres, where the infantile mortality, because women are doing men’s work, is two, three, and four times more than either the poor'rural or the rich town districts. It is tho bettor, safe, and sure rearing of the present limited arrivals that we have to make for, rather than increasing indiscriminately the “dlcsohir ting flood of babies” irrespective of th<v burden on mothers and means available for their subsequent maintenance. NATURE’S RECUPERATIVE POWER Tile most cheerful thing I have heard for years was told mo- by a hospital surgeon in London this year, as he took mo round his infants’ ward, and than was “that 90 to 95 per cent, of tho poor babies born, at birth were sound, strong, healthy young rascals, hut they cither went to tho had iu tho first sixmonths through bad or insufficient food or died within a year.” Tlio moral- of tliat was to keep, preserve, develop what are already bom and not merelyt to clamour for mere indefinite increase, as some of your correspondents have. Amongst a section of the very poor, where almost animal fecundity often prevails, a high birthrate is accompanied hy a relatively higher death-rate, and an infantile de-i terioration of life which in many way* is worse than death itself. A low birth-rate generally • registers a low" death-rate, a healthier life existence, and, over all, a rising increase of population, in every respect bettor for individual members and for tho whole community. Sufficient importance has. not been attached by your correspondents to tho sterilising consequences of military service, and tho relatively compulsory celibacy imposed thereby upon the presumably most physically fit of the population. A similar thing can bo said of celibate monies, priests, nuns, sisters, and fe--male servants, attendants, and others, thus throwing the burden of maternity on a smaller number of the total community than heretofore, and in many, cases those worse conditioned to discharge the onerous burden of maternity. France has not yet recovered tho masculine cxhausßon of the Napoleonic wars. The drain that Indian service causes through reasons known, huh which wo need not specify; tho effect, thereby upon tho physique of the subsequent parents, and through them onthe limited or anaemic families, has not yet been sufficiently realised. Tho havoc inflicted upon the Irish "race by emigration is reflected in a diminished birth-rate for a naturally fertile people, NET GAIN.

Tho reduction, from four children per family to three is not tho calamity alleged by some of your excitable correspondents. If the infantile death-raw*, over all classes and families is reduced by half, there is not only a net gain per family, there is also an actual in* crease in population, but, better than all, an improvement in tho standard and character of each and ail—the chief desiderata of a densely-populated, country like ours. Celibacy is tho crime, not tho lower birth-rato of a healthier, stronger, wiser, yet smaller family. Marriage is the virtue, not'the greatest progeny. Tho punishment for celibacy is exhaustion, and worse in the man. Tho penalty to the woman for loss of maternity is'loss of health, a diminished fund of dutiful enjoyment, a limitation o! that inherent power of sacrifice that maternity gives, but also takes, and in taking, perpetuates the race, ennobles the mother, and exalts her to tho highest, pinnacle of social admiration. To the bachelors of England my charitable pity. To tho spinsters, my commiseration and regrets. To tlie glorious mothers of not ovei largo families, ray compliments, re spccts, and ever-lasting homage. To the nation, a wish, that it will see that in raising wages, reducing hours, raising the level of life, creating homes, redistributing its wealth, avoiding war, a healthy home life will ba secured, but not an unlimited birthrate will be' obtained.—“ Daily Chronicle."