Birth Control - Halliday G. Sutherland (summer reading list .TXT) 📗

was

227,500,000 cwts. in 1901, had risen to 399,700,000 cwts. in 1911, an

increase of 75 per cent_.

 

“The relative yield per acre in 1911 was as follows:”

 

Yield per acre.

 

Average for five

years, 1906-10. 1911.

Bushels. Bushels.

 

United Kingdom 32.88 32.96

Canada 17.56[86] 20.80[87]

Australia 11.74 9.65[88]

New Zealand 28.72 36.73

India

(including Native States) 11.44 12.02

The foregoing facts destroy the chief Neo-Malthusian argument, and, as birth control tends to extinguish the birthrate, this Neo-Malthusian propaganda is a menace to the Empire. In fact, the danger is very great for the simple reason that the proportion of white people within the Empire is very small.

 

“The British Empire’s share of the world’s people is very large, but it

mainly consists, it should be remembered, of Asiatics and African

natives. The Empire as a whole contains about 450 millions of the

world’s 1,800 millions, made up roundly as follows:

 

United Kingdom 47,000,000

Self-governing Dominions 22,000,000

Rest of the Empire (chiefly India,

319 millions) 378,000,000

Total 447,000,000

 

“Of the great aggregate Empire population of 447 millions, the white

people account for no more than 65 millions. That is to say, outside

the United Kingdom itself the Empire has only 18 million white people,

or less than four million families. That figure, of course, includes

Boers, French-Canadians, and others of foreign extraction. This fact is

clearly not realized by those present-day Malthusians who assure us

that too many Britons are being born.” [89]

It is also well to remember that depopulation in Italy preceded the disintegration of the Roman Empire. Historians have estimated that, while under the Republic, Italy could raise an army of 800,000 men, under Titus that number was halved.

Unfortunately there are some to whom this argument will not appeal, and wandering about in our midst are a few lost souls, so bemused by the doctrines of international finance that they see no virtue in patriotism or, in other words, in the love that a man has for his own home. They are unmoved by the story of sacrifice, of thrift, and of patient trust in God that is told for instance in the history of the Protestant manses of Scotland, where ministers on slender stipends brought up families of ten and twelve, where the boys won scholarships at the universities, and where women were the mothers of men.

These days have been recalled by Norman Macleod:

 

“The minister, like most of his brethren, soon took to himself a wife,

the daughter of a neighbouring ‘gentleman tacksman,’ and the

grand-daughter of a minister, well born and well bred; and never did

man find a help more meet for him. In that manse they lived for nearly

fifty years, and there were born to them sixteen children; yet neither

father nor mother could ever lay hand on a child and say, ‘We wish this

one had not been.’ They were all a source of unmingled joy….” [90]

 

“A ‘wise’ neighbour once remarked, ‘That minister with his large family

will ruin himself, and if he dies they will be beggars.’ Yet there has

never been a beggar among then to the fourth generation.” [91]

How did they manage to provide for their children? In this pagan, spoon-fed age, many people will laugh when they read the answer—in a family letter, written more than a hundred years ago by a man who was poor:

 

“But the thought—I cannot provide for these! Take care, minister, the

anxiety of your affection does not unhinge that confidence with which

the Christian ought to repose upon the wise and good providence of

God! What though you are to leave your children poor and friendless?

Is the arm of the Lord shortened, that He cannot help? Is His ear

heavy, that He cannot hear? You yourself have been no more than an

instrument in the hand of His goodness; and is His goodness, pray,

bound up in your feeble arm? Do you what you can; leave the rest to

God. Let them be good, and fear the Lord, and keep His commandments,

and He will provide for them in His own way and in His own time. Why,

then, wilt thou be cast down, O my soul; why disquieted within me?

Trust thou in the Lord! Under all the changes and the cares and the

troubles of this life, may the consolations of religion support our

spirits. In the multitude of thoughts within me, Thy comforts O my

God, delight my soul! But no more of this preaching-like harangue, of

which, I doubt not, you wish to be relieved. Let me rather reply to

your letter, and tell you my news.” [92]

That letter was written by Norman Macleod, ordained in 1774, and minister of the Church of Scotland in Morven for some forty years. His stipend was �40, afterwards raised to �80. He had a family of sixteen. One of his sons was minister in Campbelltown, and later in Glasgow. He had a family of eleven. His eldest son was Chaplain to Queen Victoria, and wrote the Reminiscences of a Highland Parish.

The birth controllers ask why we should bring up children at great cost and trouble to ourselves, and they have been well answered by a non-Catholic writer, Dr. W.E. Home. [93]

 

“One of my acquaintances refuses to have a second child because he

could not then play golf. Is there, then, no pleasure in children which

shall compensate for the troubles and expenses they bring upon you? I

notice that the penurious Roman Catholic French Canadian farmers are

spreading out of Quebec and occupying more and more of Ontario. I fancy

these hard-living parents would think their struggles to bring up their

large (ten to twenty) families worth while when they see how their

group is strengthening its position. If a race comes to find no

instinctive pleasure in children it will probably be swept away by

others more virile. One man will live where another will starve;

prudence and selfishness are not identical.

 

“In her book, The Strength of a People, Mrs. Bosanquet, who signed

the Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission, tells the story of two

girls in domestic service who became engaged. One was imprudent,

married at once, lived in lodgings, trusted to the Church and the

parish doctor to see her through her first confinement, had no

foresight or management, every succeeding child only added to her

worries, and her marriage was a failure. The other was prudent, did not

marry till, after six months, she and her fianc� had chosen a house and

its furniture. Then she married, and their house was their own careful

choice; every table and chair reminded them of the afternoon they had

had together when it was chosen; they were amusement enough to

themselves, and they saved their money for the expenses of her

confinement. He had not to seek amusement outside his home, did his

work with a high sanction and got promoted, and each child was only an

added pleasure. Idyllic; yes, but sometimes true. One of the happiest

men I have known was a Marine sergeant with ten children, and a bed in

his house for stray boys he thought he should help.

 

“One of my friends married young and had five children; this required

management. He certainly could not go trips, take courses and extra

qualifications, but he did his work all right, and his sons were there

to help in the war, and one of them has won a position of Imperial

usefulness far above that of his father or me. Is that no compensation

to his parents for old-time difficulties they have by now almost

forgotten? A bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit.”

Dr. W.E. Home is right, and the Neo-Malthusian golfer is wrong. Moreover, he is wrong as a golfer. Golf requires skill, a fine co-ordination of sight and touch, much patience and self-control: and many unfortunate people lack these qualities of mind and body, and are therefore unable to play this game with pleasure to themselves or to others. Consequently every golfer, no matter whether he accepts the hypothesis of Spencer or that of Weismann concerning the inheritance of acquired characteristics, should rejoice to see his large family in the links as a good omen for the future of this game, although there be some other reasons that also justify the existence of children.

(d) The Dangers of Small Families

In a Malthusian leaflet, written for the poor Dr. Binnie Dunlop states:

 

“You must at least admit that there would be nothing like the usual

poverty if married couples had only one child for every 20s. or so, a

week of wages. Yet the population would continue to increase rapidly,

because very few of the children of small families die or grow up

weakly; and it would become stronger, richer, and of course much

happier.” [94]

The false suggestion contained in his first sentence, namely that a high birthrate is the cause of poverty, has already been exposed (Chap. II), and apparently Dr. Binnie Dunlop has never considered why so many of the English people should be so poor as to enable him to make use of their very poverty in order to tempt them to adopt an evil method of birth control. Moreover, his second contention, that a small family produces a higher type of child, better fed, better trained, and healthier, than is found amongst the children of large families is contrary to the following facts, as stated by Professor Meyrick Booth:

 

“1. A civilisation cannot be maintained with an average of less than

about four children per marriage; a smaller number will lead to actual

extinction.

 

“2. Much information exists tending to show that heredity strongly

favours the third, fourth, fifth, and subsequent children born to a

given couple, rather than the first two, who are peculiarly apt to

inherit some of the commonest physical and mental defects (upon this

important point the records of the University of London Eugenics

Laboratory should be consulted). A population with a low birthrate

thus naturally tends to degenerate. _It is the normal, and not the

small family, that gives the best children_.

 

“3. The present differential birthrate—high amongst the less

intelligent classes and low amongst the most capable families—so far

from leading upwards, is causing the race to breed to a lower type.

 

“4. The small family encourages the growth of luxury and the

development of what M. Leroy-Beaulieu calls l’esprit arriviste.

 

“5. The popular idea that childbirth is injurious to a woman’s health

is probably quite erroneous. Where the _birth-rate is high the health

of the woman is apparently better_ than where it is artificially low.

 

“6. A study of history does not show that nations with low birthrates

have been able to attain to a higher level of civilisation. Such

nations have been thrust into the background by their hardier

neighbours.” [95]

Moreover, M. Leroy-Beaulieu, in La Question de la Population [96] states that those districts of France which show an exceptionally low birthrate are distinguished by a peculiar atmosphere of materialism, and that their inhabitants exhibit, in a high degree, an attitude of mind well named l’esprit arriviste—the desire to concentrate on outward success, to push on, to be climbers, to advance themselves and their children in fashionable society. This spirit means the willing sacrifice of all ideals of ethics or of patriotism to family egoism. To this mental attitude, and to the corresponding absence of religion, he attributes the decline of population. In conclusion the following evidence is quoted by Professor Meyrick Booth:

 

“The Revue des Deux Mondes for July 1911 contains a valuable account,

by a doctor resident in Gascony, of the state of things in that part of

France (where, it will be remembered,