A high
birth-rate is no sign of a high civilisation. But we are beginning to
feel that a high infantile death-rate is a sign of a very inferior
civilisation. A low birth-rate with a low infant death-rate not only
produces the same increase in the population as a high birth-rate with
the high death-rate, which always accompanies it (for there are no
examples of, a high birth-rate with a low death-rate), but it produces
it in a way which is far more worthy of our admiration in this matter
than the way of Russia and China where opposite conditions prevail.[1]
It used to be thought that small families were immoral. We now begin to
see that it was the large families of old which were immoral. The
excessive birth-rate of the early industrial period was directly
stimulated by selfishness. There were no laws against child-labour;
children were produced that they might be sent out, when little more
than babies, to the factories and the mines to increase their parents'
incomes. The diminished birth-rate has accompanied higher moral
transformation. It has introduced a finer economy into life, diminished
death, disease, and misery. It is indirectly, and even directly,
improving the quality of the race. The very fact that children are born
at longer intervals is not only beneficial to the mother's health, and
therefore to the children's general welfare, but it has been proved to
have a marked and prolonged influence on the physical development of
children.
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