The Fallacious Propaganda for Birth Control

THERE has never been a time when the problem of population has received more attention than now. It is on everyone’s tongue. In one phase or another, it is constantly the subject for discussion among individuals, for legislative consideration by Congress, and even for international interchange and agreement between nations. Largely in response to this increasing popular interest, a succession of scholarly and stimulating books on population have recently followed one another in England and the United States, all of them urging upon intelligent people the necessity for constructive thinking on a population programme.

It is not difficult to explain the current vogue. The Great War itself was, in a sense, an expression of the population problem as it confronted the nations of Europe eleven years ago. The crowding of the peoples of Germany and Austria was undoubtedly one of the underlying causes of the war. Each country believed it needed more room for expansion, and desired additional markets and colonies where its surplus people could be accommodated and food raised for the use of the homeland. During the war, and in the succeeding years, a flood of nationalist feeling was unloosed in each belligerent country, stimulated by a type of population propaganda which glorifies one’s own people, but always at the expense of the enemy and even of the neutrals. Even at this time the population problem transcends all others; but the consideration it is receiving is not particularly sound or conducive to the happiness or prosperity of the nations or the peace of the world.

I

In our own country, intense nationalist feeling has fairly run away with us and has been particularly misdirected. It has expressed itself primarily in two movements: first, the Ku Klux Klan; second, the new immigration policy. Both appeal to a great number of native Americans in all parts of the country and may be summed up in the slogan, ‘America for Americans.’ What underlies these phenomena is, first of all, a distrust of the newcomer, resentment at his success, and the fear engendered by his greater fertility and rapid increase in numbers after his arrival. The adherents of the Klan see themselves losing control of the country. Their formation of an organized group, then, is really the expression of a defense reaction to the passing away of power from their hands and its concentration in those of aliens whom they consider inferior, or, in any case, unable to conduct properly the affairs of the country. Essentially the same reasoning is at the bottom of the new immigration law, which admits into the country only a limited number of aliens selected from the few countries whose peoples and standards of life most closely resemble our own. The stream of papers and books in recent years which has centred around and supported the Nordic myth is simply an effort to give the appearance of science to what is fundamentally an expression of unreasoned prejudice.

Such sentiments and passions, however, may be allowed to run their course. They will soon give way to better judgment. The extravagances of the Ku Klux Klan propaganda have already abated, and we are probably through with the worst phases of this queer phenomenon. The immigration restrictions, on the other hand, are of a different nature. These appear to have been based upon a scientific assumption — namely, that the country was rapidly reaching the saturation point. More than one writer has been sounding an alarm that America is rapidly becoming overpopulated and that, if we are to maintain our high standards of living and avoid the troubles of the rest of the world, we must keep our population down. They have been fearful lest the future growth of the country keep pace with the increase of past decades and tax our natural resources to the limit. They have, therefore, urged the most drastic limitation of immigration and have encouraged even a further restriction of our own fecundity. Such an assumption must be subjected to examination and criticism.

The fact upon which these fears are grounded is that we are increasing at the rate of a little over one per cent a year. Our birth-rates are still running as high as twenty-three per thousand per annum and our death-rates only about twelve, leaving a natural increase of eleven per thousand. If this rate were continued without let-up, our population would double in about sixty years even without any further additions from immigration. A population of more than two hundred millions by 1980 is too much, and all the horrors of overcrowding, of lower living-standards, and even of war with our neighbors, are conjured up to warn us against this horrible adventure. Careful study has convinced me, however, that there is really very little justification for this point of view. In spite of the crude figures of increase in recent decades, the American population has not been running wild, nor even approximately approaching the limit of its resources. We are to-day supporting only ninety persons per productive square mile of land, as against two hundred for France. If the density of the latter country per productive square mile prevailed in the United States, the population would be two hundred and fifty millions. Yet France gives no impression of overpopulation. She is very well able to take care of herself, to supply her necessities of life, and even to export large quantities of goods to the outside world. To-day France has no unemployment problem and has, in fact, welcomed several million workers, especially from Italy and Poland, to her fields and factories. With our superior soil and incomparably richer natural resources in forests, coal, oil, and other minerals, we are as yet nowhere near the situation in which the quantity of our population need give us concern. The quality of our population is another question, and to that I shall refer later.

But I should point out that there is little, if any, immediate danger of our increasing our population to the density of that of France or of the other Western European countries. The time of rapid multiplication of our population has been left behind for good. Professor Willcox of Cornell University, from a critical analysis of American population statistics, infers that a natural decline in the native American birthrate began as early as 1810 and that it has continued since that time. The decrease has been much more pronounced in recent decades. But this has received very little attention because its effects have been covered up, partly by an improvement in mortality and partly by the increases resulting from recent immigration. The increase in our numbers in the last half-century has been due in a large measure to immigration and to the results of immigration. In 1920, the foreign whites and their native offspring constituted 34.4 per cent of the population. Since 1900, over sixteen million foreigners have entered the country. These people are of fertile stock, accustomed for centuries to large families. They arrived here during their reproductive years, and they produced large numbers of offspring soon after their arrival. It is this which has given the appearance of rapid and healthy increase to our population figures, but few have analyzed them to their source or have attempted to understand the implications which are involved in them.

II

To-day the picture is on the way to being completely changed. The recent restrictions on immigration will take good care that our future increase of population, if there is one, shall not come from that alien source. More and more it will depend upon the excess of births over deaths in the native population. If present indications are any guide, the phenomenal growth of the past will never again be repeated. Already in 1920 the native stock residing in the urban areas was scarcely reproducing itself. The birth-rate of native Americans in our cities is among the lowest in the world. There are also clear indications that among the foreign stock the families become smaller in successive generations reared in the United States. With immigration restricted, and with the spread of American ideas and standards of life among the newcomers and their children, the birth-rate will decline to new minima. Professors Baber and Ross, investigating this subject among middle-class families of the present generation in the Middle West, found a shrinkage in family size from 5.4 to 3.3 children in the course of one generation. This is equivalent to a drop of 38 per cent in the number of offspring in the space of only a relatively few years. Others have found exactly the same situation in other localities. The tendency toward small families has apparently become a fixed habit among the American people. Every population forecast that I know must, therefore, be revised with due regard to the declining fecundity of stocks now composing the American population. We must be prepared at a comparatively early date for a stationary population unless we completely change our present attitude toward the foreigner and his further entry into the country, and modify our approval of small families. Such a reversal is not likely to take place, because restriction in the number of children apparently offers many personal advantages and appeals to the average family, which is much more concerned with the immediate increase of its comfort than with abstract principles of obligation to country or to mankind in general.

It will clarify our discussion at this point if we consider the number of births that it requires, under present conditions of mortality, to keep our population stationary. According to the mortality and marital conditions prevailing in 1920, out of every thousand females born only 788 will eventually marry. In other words, we must count on 788 married women to give birth to a thousand daughters in order to replace the thousand from which they sprang. To put it another way, a thousand married women must have 1268 daughters to replace themselves and their unmarried sisters under present mortality conditions. Likewise, it can be shown that a thousand married men must be the fathers of 1350 sons in order to replace themselves. Combining our figures, we find that one thousand families, on the average, must have 2618 children, which means that each family must, on the average, during the reproductive period, produce 2.6 children to replace the original quota from which the parents sprang. Not all families have children, however; for, at the present time, about one marriage in six is either sterile or does not lead to live issue. The burden of childbearing, therefore, falls on the remaining wives, who must bring into the world an average of not 2.6, but 3.1 children. The family unit must, therefore, average 5.1 persons (including all the children born to fertile mothers, not merely the children living at any given moment). All groups of urban American families recently studied have shown that the average number of children born to a completed marriage is barely sufficient to maintain a stationary population. Only when the rural areas of the country are included do the figures show a substantial natural increase.

But even more disturbing is the fact that the rate of natural increase which we now have — namely, eleven per thousand per annum — is in the very nature of the case spurious and entirely temporary as an index of our true rate of growth. Our current methods of computing birth-rates, death-rates, and rates of natural increase on gross population are faulty and lead to grave error. Obviously such rates depend upon the character of the age distribution, and this is a shifting base. Dr. Lotka, the distinguished mathematician, and I have recently made an excursion into this field and have uncovered a number of highly interesting and even surprising situations. As the result of the higher birth-rates of past generations there is at the present time an abnormally large number of persons at the reproductive ages of life, and this tends to increase the current birth-rate. We have calculated what the present birth-rate would be if the age distribution at the reproductive ages were the result of a prolonged continuation of our present rate of procreation. The effect would be to reduce the figure from 23.4 per thousand, the present figure, to 20.9. In other words, what for the time being maintains our birth-rate is not our inherently high reproductive vitality, but rather the fact that the surviving descendants of a more highly reproductive generation are to-day swelling the ranks of middle life and participating in parenthood. They thus lend a spurious appearance of vigorous growth to an otherwise meagrely reproducing population. At the same time a second result of this padding is to reduce the death-rate disproportionately, because the ages of early adult life have very low mortality rates. If the correction were made for an age distribution on the basis of the present life-table and the present rate of procreation, the death-rate, instead of being 12.4, as it is now, would become 15.3. The effect of these two corrections would be to reduce the rate of natural increase from 11 per thousand to only 5.5 per thousand per annum — that is, to reduce it to one half of its present value. This means that, aside from the transitory benefits of past high birth-rates which for a while we are still enjoying, we are actually increasing at the rate of only 5.5 per thousand per annum, instead of at a rate of 11 per thousand per annum.

Equally interesting is the result of our investigation into the effect of the recent improvement in mortality. The last five or ten years have seen a marked diminution in mortality rates, which has had the effect of increasing the rate of natural increase. If we should calculate the rate of natural increase of our population at our present rate of procreation and at the mortality rate of 1910, the result would be a rate of natural increase of only 3.6 per thousand per annum; and if we should go back to the mortality conditions of 1901 the present rate of procreation would barely keep us from the downgrade. The rate of natural increase would then be reduced virtually to zero. We should then have a condition of a stationary population. These figures bring home clearly how close to the danger line we are now going.

We must exercise particular care, as we approach the point of a stationary population, not to weaken its internal composition by increasing the proportion of defective and dependent stock. This is all the more important because a stationary population inevitably contains a relatively greater number of older persons than a growing population. The support of these more advanced age groups falls in part upon the young people, who must, therefore, face the prospect, in coming years, of carrying a greater burden than has fallen to their share in the past. The proportion of persons sixty-five years of age and over has been increasing in recent decades and is still going on. In 1900, persons at these ages constituted 4 per cent of the total population; in 1920, the proportion was 4.6. When the age distribution of our population settles down to that compatible with outexisting powers of reproduction and of survival, the proportion of such older persons will then be 9.4 per cent. If in the course of time the population is reduced to a stationary state, the proportion of persons over sixty-five years of age will be 10.5 per cent. We are thus confronted with a vicious circle; for the greater the burden placed on young people, the fewer will be their children, and this will mean still fewer young people at the reproductive period in the next generation. If a population can increase in a geometric ratio, it can also decrease in the same ratio. This is the real danger.

III

In the light of this situation, we can see how misdirected at this time is the propaganda for birth control which is so active all over the country. Its advocates seem altogether to have missed the true state of affairs in our national economy. They have certainly erred in their assumption of a too rapid increase in our numbers and of a crowding on our natural resources. I am confident that they have based their recommendations on an emotional reaction and not on a careful scientific analysis of the facts. They have observed that there are poverty-stricken and diseased people, especially among unadjusted immigrants, whose families are far too large for their own good or for the good of the community in which they live. They have generalized on such observations, forgetting apparently that only a very small fraction of our people are in such wretched condition and that the great mass are normal, self-respecting folk who do not assume obligations beyond their ability to carry them out effectively. Nor do they appear to realize that even now the practice of contraception is very widespread. There is no other reasonable way to explain the rapid decline in the birth-rate in recent decades. Accurate figures are not at hand, but the most reliable indicate that the drop has been one third in about twenty years. Yet certain persons seem to look upon birth control as a new force which need only be generally applied to solve most of our presentday troubles. They forget that in one form or another birth control has been practised for a long time and has had an increasing vogue in all civilized countries — and, what makes it most unfortunate, especially among those who need it least. The studies of Katharine B. Davis, Professor Cattell, and others, demonstrate this fully. The reduction of the number of children through contraception is an established practice among city dwellers belonging to the salaried class and among those who are economically best off. Such activity is distinctly antisocial, for it enables selfish people to escape their responsibility, ultimately to their own detriment and to the injury of the State.

One would think from reading the literature of the Birth Control League that the matter of parenthood was entirely an individual affair. As one gentleman recently put it, ‘I suit myself with regard to the number of my children. I owe the State nothing.’ This attitude is obviously shortsighted and indefensible. It serves, however, to focus attention on the conflict between the immediate interests of the individual and the more permanent interests of the State. The average man or woman generally determines his or her personal conduct without much consideration for the good of the community. It is often pleasanter and always easier to keep the number of our dependents down to a minimum. But the logical consequence of such an attitude is nothing short of a challenge to the permanence of the State, and this is generally recognized. Society seeks to protect itself against such a contingency by expressing general disapproval of celibacy and proscribing the dissemination of birth-control practices. On the other hand, it recognizes the dignity of parenthood and, as a crudely constructive measure, it has recently begun to take into consideration the number of children in the family as an item in fixing the amount of taxes. This is but an initial step that the State must later extend to make more attractive to its people the obligation of parenthood. The State must insist on its perpetuation, and cannot condone or argue its own suicide. We may express our freedom as individuals only within the limitation that the continued existence of the State is assured.

The real trouble with the birth-control propagandists is that their solution is altogether too simple. They have made the snap judgment that our present population contains too many people. Certainly they have not made a sound population analysis that would attempt to relate our present population structure to the natural resources of the country and to the efficiency with which we utilize our resources. These are highly technical matters that cannot be decided out of hand, not even by generous and high-minded people. The problem is, in fact, one of the most complex which confront the social scientist. Variety of opinion still prevails among serious students on virtually every aspect of the population question. There can, therefore, be no ready panacea. But, if there is no consensus of opinion on details, there is at least general agreement that the population problem can be attacked only through long and intensive study of our present composition, with due regard to the natural resources of the country, to our future immigration policy, to the organization of industry, the improvement of our channels of distribution, the training and direction of our labor supply, and a host of other factors which will determine the limits of our future population. How different is the attitude of the advocates of birth control, who, without any hesitation, have ascribed most of our social and economic troubles to overpopulation and have proceeded forthwith to remedy them by striking at the very root of our national life.

It is to be observed, by the way, that the birth-control propaganda has proceeded without much effort to prove the efficacy and the safety of the measures that have been urged on the public. The best medical opinion is still very uncertain as to the procedures recommended. The activity of the birth-control clinics has as yet resulted in very little data of a trustworthy character. Those who have studied the work of the birth-control clinics abroad have been unable to discover definitely approved methods in general use. But more vital is the question of safety. Are contraceptive practices, in fact, without hazard to those who indulge in them? Gynecologists and obstetricians of the highest standing have been very suspicious of some of the devices in use and have traced serious affections back to them. There is also the very strong possibility that such practices result in permanent sterility of young married women. I know nothing so tragic as the case of young people who avoid children in the first years of their married life only to find later that they cannot have them when they want them. The number of childless marriages is rapidly increasing to the point of becoming a prime social problem. Contraceptive practices among young people may have a good deal to do with it. And what is the usual effect on the spiritual life of those who, through continued control, keep their families down to a miserly minimum? This is probably the most serious single consequence of the current fashion: that it robs those who indulge in it of the greatest of all blessings and the source of deepest inspiration — namely, a family to provide for and to live for. They sacrifice their birthright, the greatest influence in character development, for what usually turns out to be a mess of pottage.

Those who engage in this propaganda should be urged to follow a more constructive programme. One should expect from such people a well-balanced theory of parenthood. Instead of limiting themselves entirely to arousing sympathy for those who have suffered from overlarge families, they should take up the other side of the picture and help to arouse public sentiment in favor of fairly good-sized families among the rank and file of normal people. They should help to set the fashion, not for large families, — the day for that is over, — but for families of at least three children and as many more as can be readily and effectively taken care of.

The organization that is now, in my judgment, doing much harm can shift its emphasis from the dissemination of propaganda to the propagation of scientific research; and it would thereby greatly increase its usefulness. We need to-day more light on the problem of population. An organization dedicated to this subject could do no better than to encourage study and investigation of the various aspects of the problem in the spirit of science. Only through this means will a sound population policy be developed.

IV

Probably nothing that we can do will alter the tendency among the great mass of Americans to reduce the size of their families. Reproduction will, hereafter, be more and more determined by intelligence and restraint. Excessive breeding should receive scant approval anywhere. We must not aim, at this time, for numbers at the expense of quality, but rather seek to develop a well-organized and happy society. That is the objective which should animate every student of population, every statesman, and every thoughtful citizen. We must be careful, however, about the way we take to arrive at this goal. Merely wiping out our natural increase by the first means at hand will not do it. We must not substitute real and serious troubles of a new sort for minor and even imaginary old ones. We must not, above all, forget that population mistakes are not easily remedied; that when they are once made, and their effects have become visible, it is usually too late to correct them.

Thus far we have considered the quantitative aspect of the population problem. When we turn to the qualitative side of the question, there are just as many misconceptions rife in our current thinking. It has been fashionable in recent years to lament the nonfertility of the native stock and the fecundity of the newcomer. It has been assumed that those who arrived here earlier, and especially those of Nordic origin, are innately superior. A warning should be sounded against too ready acceptance of a theory that establishes sharp class-distinctions without sufficient scientific proof. Evidence is hardly sufficient at the present time to warrant the sweeping conclusion that certain racial elements in our national life are vastly superior to others.

Reflecting very much the same aristocratic bias is the current view, especially pronounced among biological writers on population, that the country is headed for disaster because of the greater fertility of the ‘masses’ as contrasted with that of the ‘classes.’ The literature associated with the eugenic movement has overstressed the dangers implied in the differential birth-rate. ‘Beware of reproducing from mediocrity,’ is the warning. There is often a thinly disguised plea for a race of supermen who, presumably, could spring only from the upper social and economic strata. The common man has little place in this scheme of things, although he does, after all, make up the bulk of the population.

This basic assumption should be thoroughly tested, even though its acceptance does flatter our self-esteem and reflect the paganism of our times. I seriously question its validity and consider this attitude a very crude and unjustified application of biological jargon to human life. Its chief defect lies in its almost total disregard of the influence of environment and tradition on our conduct and achievement. It is, moreover, a direct challenge to our best ideals of democracy and religion. When we have eliminated the upper and the lower ten per cent of our population, there is not sufficient indication of serious differences in innate ability among the remaining eighty per cent to justify the current fears and warnings against their deliberate participation in parenthood. They are neither spectacularly able nor do they abound in defects. If they lack the brilliance that would single them out for special distinction, they have usually other compensating, valuable, and attractive qualities. They are just plain folk carrying on the world’s work. We see on all sides clear evidence of the ability of ordinary people to give birth to children capable of the highest achievements, as opportunity and environment release their power. Our social organization, by its very complexities and the perfection of its mechanical foundations, is conducive to stimulating in men from all walks of life the innate abilities that in a less wellorganized society might go to waste. Throughout all ages, the leaders of mankind have come predominantly from homes that at first sight seemed most unpromising and commonplace. Will not the leadership of the next generation come, as it always has in the past, from that source?

For these reasons I consider some of the newer tendencies in the development of the American population far from inimical to our institutions and to the best traditions of the country. The rather free fertility still prevailing among those who have recently arrived is not to be deplored. If we can be careful to control — or, better yet, entirely check — the reproduction of the unfit, we are in no danger of racial deterioration. There has always been a differential birth-rate, and a replacement of one group of people above by another equally good from below. In all ages men have raised themselves above their inherited station in life and have occupied the seats of the mighty left vacant by those considered their superiors, who have neglected or have been incapable of performing their highest obligation to society — namely, parenthood. We must in all fairness examine critically the current point of view and shift the emphasis in our population discussion from a glorification of the upper strata to a more generous recognition of the inherent worth of the great mass of mankind; and especially so if we, who consider ourselves superior, persist in celibacy or in virtual or approximate sterility.