Our normal child spends its infancy at home. It does not begin life motherless or fatherless, nor does its mother leave it on a door-step or in the turning cradle of a hospitable institution on her first day out of the maternity ward. Motherless and fatherless babies are not a part of our normal scheme, and there will be fewer and fewer individ uals thus handicapped at the outset of life as sound social policies become effective. There may always be a few orphans, but under normal conditions they will be individual problems,—for aunts and grand mothers and older sisters, mainly,—not social problems for the city department of charities. Provision for foundlings, like the routine adminis tering of silver nitrate at birth, is a present neces sity on account of the existence of abnormal con ditions, which we must use every effort to elimi nate. As long as it is a necessity, however, we must see that it is done in such a way as to mitigate the handicap of the individual child. There is no reason why the infant mortality rate of foundlings should be one hundred per cent, as it is in some in stitutions. There seems to be an immense ad vantage for the baby, and consequently for the state, in small, simple, inexpensive cottages, each in charge of a nurse. There are still greater ad vantages in persuading unmarried mothers not to relinquish their babies, and in finding them posi tions where they can work out their own rehabilita tion.
THE We can hardly leave this review of the social problems surrounding the beginnings of the in dividual life without taking into consideration the phenomenon of the declining birth-rate.
Whether it is an individual duty to marry and beget children; whether it is a social duty to modify our marriage and courtship traditions so that all of either sex who have the power of fecundity and the desire for children shall have a better oppor tunity to have them; whether in the married state the practice of race suicide is an ominous danger; whether it is unfortunate for the race that, gen erally speaking, an economic line separates the families that have automobiles from those that have perambulators—these are perplexing ques tions. Some are no doubt accused of race suicide who are really only punished by the sterility of a present or a past disease. Some shrink from pa renthood because of a false standard of living which, before middle life is past, they may bitterly repent. But, generally speaking again, the heart of man still responds healthily to the words of the Psalmist: Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As ar rows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that
hath his quiver full of them.
Still, as in primeval times, the normal man longs to see his children's children. That means an over lapping of the generations which is for the good of all. Just how many children there should be in a "full" quiver is another question. In the good old colonial days families of eight or ten or twelve were common ; and the New England and Virginia churchyards are full of graves of babies and of women worn out by motherhood before they had reached forty. Dr. Alice Hamilton found in Chi cago, a few years ago, in a study of fifteen hundred families, that the infant death-rate in the large families (of six children or more) was two and a half times as high as it was in the families of moderate size (four children or less) in similar economic cir cumstances. The recent Johnstown study bears the same testimony; and Sir Arthur Newsholme, in the report already quoted, presents an interest ing table of "fertility rates" and infant mortality rates for the principal economic classes of England and Wales, which shows that a high fertility rate is accompanied by a high mortality, and vice versa, except among the textile workers, where relatively few babies are born and a large proportion die.
There are problems both of race suicide and of overpopulation. It is not desirable that the fami lies of successful achievement should die out; nor is it desirable that the human race should be per petuated in the wasteful fashion of fishes and the lower animals. The solution of the problem of race suicide lies in such educational propaganda as we have seen in our generation; in the exaltation of simpler, healthier ideals; in controlling the dis eases which produce sterility; in economic re adjustment of the sexes, following the gradual emancipation of woman from antiquated restric tions. There is no need of organized agitation to prevent an excessive birth-rate. Economic forces are quite as effective in this direction as the welfare of society demands. Private property, family responsibility, educational standards, the adoption by immigrants of the standard of living of their neighbors, and other institutional checks, seem likely to keep population well within the means of subsistence, even within the boundaries of a nor mal life. The present obstacles to the enjoyment of a normal life which primarily concern us are far within the boundaries of that ultimate pressure of population which justly gave concern to our an cestors and may, under new conditions, again per plex future generations.