§ 3. Class differences in volitional control. No wonder then that volitional control is effective in very different de grees in different families and industrial classes. The pos session of property is both a sign of forethought and an in centive to it. Concern for the welfare of children is one of the most powerful motives, especially after social distinctions become marked. It may become abnormally strong, leading parents to sacrifice their own welfare or their own lives fool ishly for their children, as is done often in the accumulation of property. Among the classes with property the provision for the children depends not only upon the amount of wealth, but upon the number among whom it is to be divided. It is simple division: wealth the dividend, number of children the divisor.
Among the poorer classes very different motives operate. After the first few years of the children's lives the parents' incomes are increased by the earnings of the children, both on the farm and in the factory districts if the laws do not prohibit child labor. Moreover, when the children are grown, their incomes (wages) will depend on the general labor mar ket, not on the number of their brothers and sisters. So ac cording as the family income is mainly from capital or from labor, the motives of the parents differ.
This view is supported not only by general observation but by many statistical studies wherein the marriage rates, birth rates and survival rates of different states, districts, terri torial divisions of cities, and industrial classes have been compared with the economic forethought as indicated by some phenomenon such as per capita wealth, taxes, savings, edu cation, etc. The correlation between volitional control and the economic factor is remarkable when large numbers are involved. Those detailed studies have shown that volitional control is not as clearly dependent on the amount of accumu lated riches as it is on frugality, prudence, or abstinence, as one may prefer to call it. The middle class of shopkeepers, artists, professional workers, and small capitalists, striving to get ahead, and to give their children a good education and a start in life, show as a class the maximum of restraint of population, having smaller families than either the richest classes or the poorest.
§ 4. The standard of life. The phrase, "standard of life," expresses the complex thought of that measure of necessities, comforts, and luxuries considered by any indi vidual to be indispensable for himself and his children ; that measure which he will make great sacrifices to secure. This standard differs from land to land, from class to class, and from time to time. In the Asiatic countries it is so low that it touches in large classes the minimum of subsistence. Despite adverse influences and a remarkable series of famines, the population of India in the last century under English rule increased from two hundred millions to three hundred millions. Such a population "lets out all the slack" of income, and never takes up any. The great public works of irrigation, forestry, and transportation, and the develop ment of industry under English rule increased production, made it more regular, and gave an opportunity for a higher standard of living; but much of this opportunity was used instead to permit the existence of a greater number of men in the same old misery. These facts have a bearing upon
the question of Oriental immigration to America. The emi gration of millions of the lower class laborers of China and of India from their native lands would leave no void in their numbers. Those races, while peopling their own lands con stantly down to their own standard of living, have the power, if they are tempted hither in great numbers, to people this continent also to the same density. On the other hand, a people accustomed to a goodly income and to a large measure of comfort of surroundings is restrained from early mar riage and large families by far different motives than the fear of starvation. When the increase of population ceases to be actually limited by objective restraints and is limited by psychic means, there is no telling how strong the new forces will become or where they will cease to operate.
The desire to maintain and raise the standard of life is the most effective motive limiting population in our society. The American standard of living, while it differs in different classes, is on the whole the highest found anywhere in the world. The increasing appeal to individual selfishness, the greater ease of travel and taste for it, the multiplied and costly pleasures and pastimes, make children a greater and greater burden. The conditions of city life call for greater sacrifice to support children, and give less value to their services in the home. In the greater cities are large areas where no family with a child can rent an apartment. De spite the increasing incomes of the masses of the population, the number of childless homes is increasing, and while the standard of comfort grows, the size of the average family § 5. The quality of population. The quality of popula tion is of quite as great import as its quantity, alike in its economic, its social, and its ethical results. The productive force of a population is not measured merely by numbers. "Who" make up the population at any moment is no more a matter of indifference than "how many." One new-born child, unintelligent, incapable, foredoomed to become a bur den, represents a negative addition to society; another, with energy, thrift, inventive genius, comes to enrich and uplift his fellow men. Quality counts for much. Social progress is not necessarily the biological betterment of the native ability of men. The education of the average member of society is becoming yearly better; it is doubtful whether the innate capacity of a new-born babe in Europe and America to-day is greater than it was among our Germanic ancestors in Roman times. Indeed, the progress of the past two thou sand years has been in social organization, in the enlargement and simplifying of the mass of knowledge which has to be reappropriated by each new individual, rather than in race breeding and in quality.