well below the average general death rate of registration cities for many years.1

The point now to be considered is the English experience in regard to the employment of married women in extradomestic occupations. It has been repeatedly emphasized that for the cities of Massachusetts accurate figures are not available, and in lieu of them the proportion of women of ten years and over industrially employed has been taken as an index of the significance of this factor.

It was clearly shown that the statistics for the 32 cities of Massachusetts considered in detail in the preceding pages in no wise bear out the frequent assumption that the employment of married women is a major factor in determining the infant death rate. A detailed study of the infant mortality in Fall River, to which reference has been made,2 likewise fails to support this contention.

In Great Britain the statement of Sir John Simon, already quoted, of that assumed relationship has been generally accepted without question until of late years. The Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, however, which reported in 1904, although it cited much evidence which maintained its accuracy was, on the whole, rather noncommittal in its report, which stated that "though the facts seem to point to a strong presumption that it [excessive infant mortality] is also connected with the employment of mothers, the information is not so complete as might be desired. In 1908, in commenting upon Doctor Simon's statements, Doctor Newman qualified them slightly: "We cannot now, with the new facts and experience of half a century behind us, wholly subscribe to these conclusions." He admitted also that certain towns with a high infant mortality showed a low proportion of occupied women, and pointed out the complexity of the supposed relationship:

1 See Massachusetts State Board of Health Report for 1908, p. 812, and Twelfth Census, Vol. III, Part I, pp. 292-554.

2 See Part II of this volume (61st Cong. 2d Session, Sen. Doc. No. 645).

3 Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration,

Vol. I, p. 45.

4 Newman, Infant Mortality, p. 98.

But the mere fact of extensive employment of women, and particularly of mothers in factories, cannot be regarded as significant of itself. To gauge the effect of such employment on the children of such women, reference must be made to some of the following factors which play a part in the problem, namely, (a) the character and condition of the work, (b) the length of hours, (c) employment before and after childbirth, and (d) the sanitation of factories and workshops. To these also should be added the variations in the birth rate prevalent in different trades, the effect of certain industries upon maternity in the way of raising (if such be possible) or reducing the standard and practice of mothers as to the care of infants, and, lastly, the causes of the mothers' employment.

Doctor Newsholme, in a detailed analysis of the infant mortality statistics of England and Wales, has found that a study of the industries involved confirms the conclusion that the employment of married women is not a dominant factor, but reaches the reasonable conclusion that because it is not the greatest cause it does not follow that it is to be ignored.

It will thus be seen that this study, in indicating that the employment of women is not a controlling factor in determining the infant death rates of the cities of Massachusetts, is in exact agreement with the results of a careful analysis of English statistics through a long period.

CHAPTER VI

THE ETHICS OF POPULATION POLICIES;

NEO-MALTHUSIANISM

Population or prosperity, 219. — American views on population, 220. Rapid settlement and disappearance of the frontier, 221.- Estimates of future population, 223.- Consequences of further increase, 223.— Need of a conservation policy, 225. — Conditions of progress, 226. — Neo-Malthusianism, 228 — Bearing of the Malthusian law of population on morality, 228.—The desire to restrict fertility, 234. The need of Neo-Malthusianism, 236.

18. POPULATION OR PROSPERITY 1

The question posed by Malthus refuses to be ignored. Again and again the nations are forced to give ear to it. The celebrated essay in 1798 marked the boundary between two eras of thought on this question. Before that a large and increasing population was generally favored; since that date it has never ceased to be looked upon by some with doubt and with fear.

The contrast between the two eras, however, is less in respect to the judgment of results than in respect to the criterion by which those results are to be measured. Before Malthus the criterion was the prosperity of the sovereign and of the ruling classes; thereafter it became the welfare of the increasing masses. Unwittingly, but none the less truly, Malthus set before the eyes of men a new picture of the humble unit of population. Instead of the man with the hoe, patient taxpayer and soldier of the king, frugal workman contributing with his teeming fellows to swell the rents of landlords and the profits of employers, Malthus helped the world to see the human individual, striving to maintain a family and to win the joys of life, but finding the very number

1 By Frank A. Fetter. Adapted from The American Economic Review Supplement, Vol. III, No. 1 (March, 1913), pp. 1-12, 17-19. This was the presidential address at the 1912 meeting of the American Economic Association.

of his fellows an obstacle in the way toward these ends. Before Malthus population was a question either of political or of commercial economy; with him it began to be a question of social economy.

These statements appear paradoxical when one recalls that the first purpose of Malthus was to dispel the illusory hopes of social perfection. His proposition that population has a fateful tendency to outstrip the production of food was used to condone the patent evils of existing society. His doctrine became the stock argument to discourage plans of social betterment. This may all be granted. Our purpose is not to praise Malthus but to appreciate him. In the perspective of more than a century neither the conscious purposes of men nor the immediate applications of their teachings are usually seen to have determined their real influence. Malthus had in some ways a narrow outlook, and his often confused thought gave false implications to the main truth he brought to public attention. Yet he was a man of gentle spirit, far from harsh and unsympathetic. Approaching the question solely with the purpose of the student without political or commercial bias, he became the agent in advancing, if not in originating, the humanitarian and democratic treatment of the population problem. That problem is to determine the best proportion between the number of inhabitants and the area and resources of a land, judged with reference to the abiding welfare of the great mass of the people of the nation.

American views on population were from the first unfriendly to the Malthusian doctrine. It appeared in the earlier textbooks of English origin or written under English influence, and as a mere classroom abstraction it was given a small measure of curious attention. But in any of its forms it involved an opinion adverse to an unrestrained increase of population, whereas the conditions in America made such an idea appear false as theory and harmful in practice. A growing population was favorable to the interests alike of landowners, of active business men, of the rival sections, and of the national government. There resulted from this economic situation a peculiarly American optimism on the subject. Density of population as an influence favorable to the

division of labor and to the economies of production in manufacture was looked upon as in itself an efficient cause in increasing the per capita income. One type of this optimism, exemplified by Henry George, denied on principle that population ever could increase too much. Another type, represented by Henry Carey, held that population in fact was not likely to increase too much in America. The national bias often led to crediting to American character all of the benefits resulting from exceptional natural resources combined with relative scarcity of population. This bias and this reasoning still survive among us to-day.

Students of American economic conditions are familiar with the series of shaded charts in the Census volumes on population showing by decades the extension of the settled area since 1790 and its gradually increasing density. As one studies the earlier of these charts one can see how the blank spaces on the maps of that day must have aroused the imagination and the hopes of men. There lay whole empires of land almost untenanted and calling to be used. Decade by decade for a hundred years the frontier extended at a hardly slackening rate while the density increased on the settled area, until abruptly, about 1890, the process ended or changed its nature. The chart for 1900 shows little alteration in its outline from that for a decade earlier. The increase of population in the decade had been 13,000,000, but of these, 8,000,000 had been added to the urban and only 5,000,000 to the rural population. In the following decade, from 1900 to 1910, the increase was 16,000,000, of which 12,000,000 were added to the urban and but 4,000,000 to the rural population. Dividing our national history since 1790 into four periods, each of thirty years, it is seen that in the first the density per mile increased .7 of an inhabitant, in the second 2.4 inhabitants, in the third 9, and in the fourth 14. Thus the increase in the number per square mile has gone on at an accelerating rate, and was twenty times as fast in the last as in the first period. As an index of the demands which increasing population makes upon resources, these figures are more truly significant than are the absolute numbers of people or the percentage of increase by decades; for they show how many additional inhabitants must