THE SIGNIFICANCE OF A FALLING BIRTH-RATE

factors that operate to raise or lower the fertility of a community. It is far, indeed, from being prosperity which produces a high fertility, for the most wretched communities are the most prolific, but, on the other hand, it is by no means the mere absence of prosperity which produces fertility, for we constantly observe that the on-coming of a wave of prosperity elevates the birth-rate. In both cases alike it is the absence of social-economic restraints which conduces to high fertility. In the simple, primitive community of savages, serfs, or slaves, there is no restraint on either nutritive or reproductive enjoyments; there is no adequate motive for restraint; there are no claims of future wants to inhibit the gratification of present wants; there are no high standards, no ideals. Supposing, again, that such restraints have been established by a certain amount of forethought as regards the future, or a certain calculation as to social advantages to be gained by limiting the number of children, a check on natural fertility is established. But a sudden accession of prosperity—a sudden excess of work and wages and food—sweeps away this check by apparently rendering it unnecessary; the natural reproductive impulse is liberated by this rising wave, and we here see whatever truth there is in the statement that prosperity means a high birth-rate. In reality, however, prosperity in such a case merely increases fertility because its sudden affluence reduces a community to the same careless indifference in regard to the future, the same hasty snatching at the pleasures of the moment, as we find among the most hopeless and least prosperous communities. It is a significant fact, as shown by Beveridge, that the years when the people of Great Britain marry most are the years when they drink most. It is in the absence of social-economic restraints—the absence of the perception of such restraints, or the absence of the ability to act in accordance with such perception—that the birth-rate is high.