2.—Decline of the Birthrate.

Marriage, in order to realize the purpose of nature, should be a union founded on mutual love. But this motive is rarely met with unalloyed under present conditions. To the great majority of women, marriage is a means of livelihood that they must obtain at any cost. On the other hand, a great many men regard marriage from a purely commercial point of view, weighing and considering its material advantages and disadvantages. Even those marriages that are not based on selfish, sordid motives, are frequently marred and broken up by the harsh realities of life. Only rarely those hopes are realized that were held by a man and woman prior to their marriage. That is only natural. For in order to lead a contented married life not only mutual love and respect are required, but economic security as well; that is, a certain measure of the necessities and comforts of life in order to satisfy the needs of man and wife and their children. Material cares and the cruel struggle for existence are destructive to marital contentment and happiness. But these material cares increase with the increasing number of offspring; in other words, the better marriage fulfills its natural object, the greater become these cares. The peasant, for instance, takes pleasure in every new calf that his cow brings forth, he cheerfully counts his suckling pigs and relates the good news of their arrival to his neighbors. But he looks somber when a new baby is added to the number of children that he feels able to support without care—not a large number, forsooth—and he looks doubly somber if the newly-born babe has the ill fortune of being a girl.

We may say then that both marriages and births are controlled by economic conditions. This is especially evident in France where agriculture is carried on by a division of the land into small lots, the products of which are not sufficient to support a large family. The famous, or notorious, French system of having no more than two children, a system that has developed into a social institution in France, is the result. In many provinces the population is accordingly almost stationary, while in others there has been a marked decline. The same results that the methods of farming have produced in the rural districts, have been produced in the cities by industry. In fact, the birthrate is declining even more rapidly in the cities.

The number of births is constantly decreasing in France, in spite of the fact that the number of marriages is increasing. This is true not only of France, but of the majority of civilized countries. This fact points to a development produced by our social conditions that should make the ruling classes think. In 1881, 937,057 children were born in France; in 1906, 806,847, and in 1907, only 773,969. In 1907, 163,088 fewer children were born than in 1881. It is a noteworthy fact that the number of illegitimate births did not decrease. There were 70,079 of these in 1881; during the period from 1881 to 1890 they attained their highest figure, 75,754, and in 1906 there still were 70,866. The decline of the birthrate then was confined entirely to the legitimate births. During the entire century a decline of the birthrate was noticeable. The following table shows the number of births for every thousand inhabitants of France during more than a century:

This represents a decline of 135 births for every thousand inhabitants from 1801 to 1907. It is natural that this symptom is a cause of much concern to French statesmen and economists. But the problem is not confined to France. Since a long time the same phenomenon may be observed in Germany, especially in Saxony, where the decline of the birthrate has been even more rapid. In Germany there were the following number of births for every thousand inhabitants:

The majority of the other European countries present a similar condition, as the following table shows:

The decline of the birthrate then is a general one, and though France and Ireland show the lowest figures, the decline is most rapid in England, Germany and Scotland. We meet with the same phenomenon in the United States and Australia. The fact presents itself still more strikingly if we proceed to compare the number of births with the number of married women between the 15th and 49th year of age:

The above enumerated facts go to prove that the birth of a human being, “God’s image,” as religious persons say, is, on an average, estimated below the value of a newly-born domestic animal.

In many respects our views differ but slightly from those of barbarian people. Among the latter, newly-born children were often killed. This fate especially befell the girls. Among some living savages the same custom still prevails. We do not kill the girls; we are too civilized for that, but frequently we treat them as parias. Man, being the stronger, everywhere represses woman in the struggle for existence, and if she still persists in the struggle, she is often persecuted by the stronger sex as an undesirable competitor. Men of the upper classes are especially bitter against female competition. Among workingmen the demand to exclude women from the trades is voiced only rarely. When a resolution formulating such a demand was presented at a congress of French workingmen in 1876, it was voted down by a large majority. Since that time the conviction that the working woman is a fellow being entitled to equal rights and privileges, has grown among the class-conscious workingmen of all countries. The resolutions passed by international workingmen’s congresses prove this. The class-conscious workingman knows that present industrial conditions compel woman to enter into competition with man. He also knows, that an attempt to exclude woman from industry would be as futile as an attempt to forbid the use of machinery. Therefore he endeavors to instruct woman in regard to her position in society and to enlist her aid in the struggle for freedom of the proletariat against capitalism.