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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
Social Control of the Birth-rate
and
Endowment of Mothers.
BY
G. A. GASKELL.
“ The population question is the real riddle of the Sphinx, to which no politica
CEdipus has as yet found the answer. In view of the ravages of the terrible
monster, over-multiplication, all other riddles sink into insignificance.”—
Professor Huxley, “Nineteenth Century," J-an., 1890.
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT
63
PUBLISHING
FLEET
STREET,
1890.
PRICE
COMPANY,
E.C.
TWOPENCE.
�LONDON :
PRINTED BY A. BONNER,
34 BOUVERIE STREET, FLEET STREET, E.C.
�Social Control of the Birth-rate and
Endowment of Mothers.
Dr. William Ogle, an experienced statistician and
official of the Registrar-General’s office, read a paper
before the Statistical Society on March 18th, 1890.
In it he says : “ the population of England and Wales
is, as we all know, growing in a most formidable
manner; and though persons may differ in their
estimates of the time when that growth will have
reached its permissible limits, no one can doubt that, if
the present rate of increase be maintained the date of
that event cannot possibly be very remote.”
On the subject of emigration as a remedy, Dr. Ogle
states: “the facilities for successful emigration are
yearly diminishing, and the time must inevitably come
—sooner or later—when this means of reducing our
population will altogether fail us.” What is needed,
and what we must come to eventually, is an equal
isation of the birth-rate and death-rate, producing
a stationary state of population. “ This equalisation”,
he says, “ can clearly only be effected either by increase
of mortality or by diminution of the birth-rate ; and as
no one will advocate the former, the problem of problems
which even now is vexing the souls of those who can
�( 4 )
look beyond the immediate future is how the birth-rate
is to be reduced.”
Fresh light is thrown by Dr. Ogle on the subject of
conditions affecting the marriage-rate in England and
Wales. He conclusively proves the usual opinion of
economists — that the marriage-rate varies inversely
with the price of wheat—to be erroneous. No such
relation exists, indeed the opposite is more nearly the
case. “ The marriage-rate varies not inversely, but
directly, with the price of wheat.” Tables are given to
show the facts of this relation for the years between
1820 and 1888. It is not an invariable rule, but usually
when the price of wheat is high, the marriage-rate is
high ; when wheat is low, marriages are fewer in number*
Now exceptions indicate that other important causes
exist to affect the marriage-rate and Dr. Ogle asks if
changes in the cost of food will not explain the fluctua
tions in the marriage-rate, what better explanation can
we find ? He carefully examines the tables of annual
variations in British exports and there he discovers a
certain ruling relation with fewer exceptions. He says :
“ The marriage-rate goes up and down synchronously
with the value of exports. This can clearly only be
because the changes in these values are an indirect
indication of corresponding changes in the employment
and the wages of the labouring classes; and it would be
desirable to obtain if possible some more direct measure
of these latter changes. Hunting about for such a
measure, I lighted, in the labour statistics of the Board
of Trade, upon the annual returns made by certain
trade unions in which were given for a series of years
the number of members on the books at the end of each
year, and also the average monthly number of such
�( 5 )
members who were in receipt of benefit as being out of
employ.” Dr. Ogle finds that a very close relation
exists between the number of unemployed in these trade
unions and the marriage-rate, which shows conclusively
that the marriage-rate fluctuations follow the fluctua
tions in the amount of industrial employment. Respect
ing “ the apparent paradox of increased marriages with
dearer food, and diminished marriages with cheaper
food ” he offers this explanation : “ Men marry, as we
have seen, in greater numbers when trade is brisk and
when the value of exports increases, but when the
exports increase so also do freights, and this rise in
freights causes a corresponding rise in wheat, the largest
part of our wheat being imported from abroad.”
He then goes on to adduce arguments which show
that for some time past there has been a slight retarda
tion of marriage in consequence of “ the ever-increasing
standard of comfort among all classes which makes men
and women unwilling to burden themselves with a
family until they are assured of a much higher income
than they would in former days have held to be suffi
cient.”
Again, in considering marriage-rate variations in the
different English counties, it appears that wherever
young women easily earn money in industrial occupa
tions, there marriages are earlier and also more
numerous.
The age at which marriage takes place is next under
consideration, and this is “a subject of scarcely less
importance than the rate in its bearing upon the growth
of the population.” Dr. Ogle finds here that the lowest
average age at marriage for both bachelors and spinsters
viz : 25-6 and 24-2 respectively, was in 1873, the year in
�( 6 )
which the marriage-rate was highest; and from that
date to the present time the ages have gone up gradually
but progressively in harmony with the general decline
in the marriage-rate.
In 1888 the average age of bachelors at marriage was
26'3 years and of spinsters was 24-7.
The reduction for spinsters has therefore only been
about six months for the whole period of fifteen years.
Now it is the ages of women at marriage which are all
important in regard to increase of population. “ There
is no reason to believe that a man who marries at thirty
will have a smaller family than a man who marries at
twenty as long as the wives are of one and the same
age.” Dr. Ogle refers to the work of Dr. Duncan on
“Fecundity, Fertility, and Sterility” and concludes
that “ the average duration of fertile marriage life for
women within child-bearing ages is, with the present
ages at marriage, 7-53 years, and that if all these women
delayed their marriages for five years the average dura
tion of fertility would be reduced to 5-53 years or by
26-6 per cent. He allows for the illegitimate birth-rate,
and finally reaches this summary : 11 in the very improb
able event of all women retarding their marriages for
five years, we should have a birth-rate of 23-3 per 1,000
doubtlessly a very great diminution of the present rate,
but still far too small a diminution to produce anything
like an equalisation of births and deaths.”
Dr. Ogle has no hope of such an increase of celibacy
among women as would effect the desired result in
combination with a five years’ retardation of marriage,
and he concludes his paper thus : “ It is manifest that
if the growth of population is hereafter to be arrested,
and a stationary condition produced, either by emigra-
�( 7 )
tion, or by increase of permanent celibacy, or by
retardation of marriage, these remedies will have to be
applied on a scale so enormously in excess of any
experience, as to amount to a social revolution.”
We are now in a position to realise the gravity of the
population question and to form some conception of the
great self-control that would be necessary throughout
the nation in order to effectually reduce the ominously
high birth-rate. A social revolution is indeed required,
though Dr. Ogle gives no hint as to the nature of it.
The vast section of degraded populace at the base of
our society renders hopeless any thought of this
necessary self-control arising among the mass of the
people under actual social conditions. Mr. G. Bernard
Shaw has admirably put the case in words addressed to
the propertied and employing classes. “ Your slaves ,
he says, 11 are beyond caring for your cries (of over
population), they breed like rabbits; and their poverty
breeds filth, ugliness, dishonesty, disease, obscenity,
drunkenness, and murder. In the midst of the riches
which their labour piles up for you, their misery rises
up too and stifles you. You withdraw in disgust to the
other end of the town from them ; you appoint special
carriages upon your railways and special seats in your
churches and theatres for them; you set your life apart
from theirs by every class barrier you can devise; and
yet they swarm about you still; your face gets stamped
with your habitual loathing and suspicion of them ....
they poison your life as remorselessly as you have
sacrificed theirs heartlessly.”1
Under an industrial system requiring the existence of
1 “ Fabian Essays in Socialism ”, page 21.
�( 8 )
the two classes—propertied employers and dependent
employed, there is no possibility of an effective redudtion
of the birth-rate. The warning of Malthus has been
prominently before all thoughtful persons for nearly a
century, nevertheless, to the mass of the people, it re
mains unknown or unheeded. Moreover an intimate
knowledge of the working class gives conviction that
the vast majority will put no curb on their procreative
power out of regard to the welfare of society, and very
little out of regard to their own future domestic comfort.
I am personally acquainted with working men who not
only agree to the principle of Malthus, but know also
the easy neo-Malthusian restraints; yet the families of
these men have quickly increased to the number of six
or more children. Obviously so long as the wage-earn
ing system seems always to give a chance for each
individual to be employed, and a promise to parents
that any number of children may also be remunera
tively employed, there is literally no force bearing upon
ordinary humanity to induce it to prudential limitation
of offspring by celibacy or any other means whatever.
You may point to France for some evidence to the
contrary ; and I do not deny that certain conditions—
such as peasant proprietorship—lead to some degree of
parental prudence; but France offers nothing towards
a complete solution of the great question. The degree
of prudence there practised does not accomplish the
desired end. The wage-workers of France are in as
miserable a condition as the same class in this and
other civilised countries. We may rest assured that
whatever be the degree of reduction of the birth-rate
arrived at under the present economic system, it will
fall far short of the reduction necessary for the pre-
�( 9 )
vention of the pressure on available subsistence. It
represents merely a recoil from that pressure already
existing and privately felt.
If we ask what it is that prevents the average majority
from adopting restraints that are necessary to the well
being of the entire nation, we must remember that at
present the moral relation between society and its indi
vidual members is a pious opinion rather than a tangible
unmistakeable faffi. To the non-criminal the solidarity
of society and his relation to the whole are principally,
almost solely, felt through the payment of rates and
taxes and by his exercise of the political and municipal
votes. Society is to the worker, from his industrial
position, scarcely existent. It recognises no duty to
cherish its members and help them to an honourable and
sufficient livelihood. Its posture is that of neutrality,
of absolute indifference. It leaves them to sink or swim
as fortune or ability may determine, and in this irre
sponsible attitude it has no demand for and no right to
claim reponsibility on the part of its members towards
itself. But the absence of this relation is disastrous in
the sphere of domestic and parental life. The having
or not having a family is looked on as purely a personal
matter. The State offers no assistance and imposes no
restraints. The cares of a family devolve on parents
alone, and all considerations of prudence begin and end
with the individuals directly concerned. It follows in
natural course that the ordinary man resents the inter
ference with his liberty of having as many children as
he pleases. If he feels any restraints to parentage,
these lie within himself and his immediate circle. The
gain or loss following from prudence or imprudence
falls upon himself; consequently his choice is ample
�( IO )
justification of his conduit, whatever that may be.
Prudent men may limit their families, but these are
not the majority; and so long as the imprudent populate
recklessly, it does not promote the welfare of general
society that the prudent should diminish the rate of
increase of their superior stock. Legislative restrictions
would be of no avail under present social conditions.
As long as each man fights for his own hand and
against his fellows in the struggle for existence, so long
will each feel himself free from responsibility to that
society which disclaims all important duties to him, and
whose attitude is always threatening and unsympa
thetic.
Premising that enough has been said to make clear
the fact that no effective reduction of the birth-rate
will take place in society as at present constituted, I
pass on to indicate the nature of the evolution neces
sary to accomplish that end. The evolution must be
primarily one of industrial and family conditions.
First, the State or Community must become respon
sible for the welfare of each of its adult members in so
far as to provide opportunities of work for all and
equalised remuneration to all. Second, the State must
endow legitimate motherhood and take upon itself the
expense1 of the rearing and educating of children, thus
bringing parents into direct relation with the State and
causing them to become responsible to it in the matter
of procreation.
This revolution could not be other than gradual,
whether the time were long or short. When completed
the whole aspect of the case in relation to restriction of
the birth-rate is altered. The entire community will
1 This does not imply interference with family life. Individuals
would be free to retain the isolated home or form groups in unitary
homes, precisely as they wished.
�have brought home to it the knowledge of the amount
of available food resources for all, since the State1 is
compelled to keep exact account of supplies in view of
its responsibility for the remuneration of universal
labour. But with food forthcoming useful work is
limitless, and every able worker is a source of wealth
to the community.
Poverty, however, is not the only cause of degrada
tion ; another fruitful source is sex-inequality, and that
must be rendered socially innocuous. State supported
motherhood is essential to the emancipation of women
from dependence on individual men. In the bearing of
a child a woman suffers more or less incapacity for
work during eleven months or one year. If the Com
munity does not support her at that period she falls
into the hands of a man for sustenance, or depends on
her diminished powers for earning a living. In either
case she bears a penalty for maternity beyond its
natural pains and obligations. On the other hand,
there goes with paternity no natural penalty; therefore,
clearly, to bring about social equality between the sexes
society must make up to the woman her social maternal
loss. Evolutionists are agreed in tracing the subjection
of woman to her reproductive disabilities; it follows
that her subjection can only be put an end to by those
reproductive disabilities being counterbalanced by the
State. That this logical outcome is the inevitable end
of the modern 11 woman movement ” must, I think,
become more and more evident to thoughtful minds
aware of the principal social tendencies of the age.
I need say nothing here in reference to the exact
form of communal support of mothers and children.
1 It is convenient to use the terms “ State” and “ Community ”,
but no opinion is expressed about the amount of centralisation
necessary for organisation of labour.
�( 12 )
It suffices to establish the principle of social equality,
which must originate and guide the coming revolution.
. Dr. Ogle’s paper powerfully forces upon an unpreju
diced mind the existence of a vital relation between
child-birth and the State. In “ Scientific Meliorism ”x
also the author points to this vital relation. “ The
marriage union”, she says, “is essentially a private
matter, with which society has no call and no right to
interfere. Child-birth, on the contrary, is a public
event. It touches the interests of the whole nation.”
Nor is the production of new members of a com
munity important only in respect of quantity, but .also
in respect of quality. Weak constitutions are a burden
to society ; inferior types are less useful than strong,
healthy, superior types.
No sooner does the State begin to exercise control
over parentage than maternity becomes a social as well
as an individual function. But true social relations
imply reciprocal duties, and prominently before the
public mind there stand out the duties of prospective
mothers to society and the duties of society to all
mothers who rightly fulfil the healthful conditions of
maternity. Legitimate motherhood is invested with
attributes of public respect, and moral forces obtain in
the momentous, vital sphere of reproduction.
I have said it is legitimate motherhood that must be
State supported ; by legitimate I mean marked by con
ditions of well-being and sanctioned beforehand by the
community. Illegitimate—that is ill-conditioned mater
nity—will carry the penalty of unassisted parental
support, for individuals who fail in their duties to the
1 “ Scientific Meliorism.” J. H. Clapperton. Page 320. See
also to the same effect, “ The Law of Population : its Meaning and
its Menace
A lecture, by J. M. Robertson. Published by R.
Forder, 28 Stonecutter Street, E.C. Price twopence.
�( i3 )
community are rightly considered to forfeit the help of
the community. This negative penalty would assuredly
act as a powerful deterrent in the direction required;
moreover it could not involve the difficulties of applica
tion attaching to any direct penalties under the present
system.
What is impossible in an unorganised,
degraded society, becomes easy when all members of a
community are educated, well-housed, and well-cared
for, and where communal protection of the individual
demands, and has to be met by, a strict regard on the
part of individuals to communal well-being. We must
glance now shortly at the difficulties of transition.
I have said that the social revolution will be gradual.
A sudden abolition of poverty and establishment of ease
of life would eventuate in what ? The death-rate would
quickly be lessened, the birth-rate vastly accelerated.
Young people would marry more heedlessly than they
do now. Artificial checks to conception would be
ordinarily neglected and the general result would inevit
ably prove a letting out of the flood-gates of increase.
Later the reappearance of general poverty followed by
famine, pestilence, and appalling mortality would
culminate in reduction of population to the limits of
available subsistence. But that this irrational round of
social license, disaster, suffering, death, will be played
out in a scientific age is inconceivable.
Let us look at the social forces resting upon human
intelligence, supported by the scientific knowledge and
material wealth of the age, on which we may depend
for the counteracting and overcoming of the danger.
Already we have a widespread educated opinion in
favour of the necessity for a diminished birth-rate,
which, being a true opinion will increase year by year
and be powerful during the coming revolution. We
have also, what never existed before, a scientific
�( 14 )
knowledge of natural laws, of social conditions, and of
Humanity’s powers and limitations, with a philosophic
conception of the varied relations that interpenetrate
and control the whole. The accelerated birth-rate will
be foreseen and steps taken to meet its requirements
by increased production of food. It is well-known that
by better cultivation of the land the produce of this
country may be easily doubled. This then will be done,
and time gained for the generation which is degraded
by present evil social conditions to die out. Meanwhile,
education for the new generation will be generously,
lavishly, provided. The momentous issues of education
are no longer ignored. It is seen that to spend on our
Board Schools four times the amount we now do, to
give free breakfasts and dinners to the children, no
matter at what cost, is a policy incalculably beneficial
in the long run. The essential points to be gained are
that the young should revolt from surroundings that
degrade and should be morally and intellectually
quickened to such impressions as will render them
social and useful as members of a society rapidly
advancing to better and happier conditions of life.
In the earlier stages of transition, state support of
motherhood can only be broached, not enacted. When
enacted it cannot be general, because it would only
apply to authorised parentage. But all prospective
parents would seek for similar advantages if possible,
unauthorised maternity would be discountenanced, and
an intelligent adoption of checks preventive of conception
would become universal. From this must follow in
natural sequence the steady reduction of illegitimate
parentage, and the birth-rate.
In this connection, too, let it be remembered that
women, free from men’s domination and able to earn
their living as readily and easily as men, will assuredly
�( i5 )
refuse to be constantly bearing children, to the injury
of their health and the crippling of their lives by ex
cessive gestation and nursing. Parentage is mainly a
woman’s question.
The community would thus gradually obtain control
over the production of its own all-important social
material, without which control it is simply impossible
to get rid of the evils of over-population and racial
deterioration.
How the individualist who abjures the organisation
of society implied by Socialism can have any reasonable
hope of the painless equalisation of the birth-rate and
death-rate I am at a loss to conceive. Effective Social
ism will but establish conditions rendering possible that
thorough moral control over the individual which is
necessary in order to curb his liberty of evil aCtion. In
an improved society we seek socialised freedom—less
liberty for bad conduct, more liberty for good conduit
and harmless personal action. This is the ideal of
Socialism on its ethical side.
Now so far I have taken the measures proposed for
restriction of population to include the neo-Malthusian
method, viz., artificial checks to conception. It cannot
be denied that these checks must make limitation of
births much easier for the majority of people. I have
shown the futility of the application of even these
checks in our present degraded and unorganised society.
How much more futile, then, is the suggestion of ultra
moralists who enjoin sexual abstinence both within and
without marriage! It is difficult to understand their
conception of the strength of average human passion.
They appear to think it so weak that the widespread
illicit intercourse of the sexes and sexual crime must be
to their minds without any adequate motive. Such a
misconception of human nature renders valueless the
�(
)
opinions on social reform set forth by these moralists.
Professor Geddes and Mr. J. A. Thomson have lately
published a generally excellent treatise on “ The Evolution
of Sex ”, In it, however, at page 297, this passage occurs:
“We would urge, in fadt, the necessity of an ethical
rather than of a mechanical prudence after marriage,
of a temperance recognised to be as binding on husband
and wife as chastity on the unmarried.” What is
meant by the temperance here recommended ? Surely
it is well-known that the birth of a large family is quite
consistent with an extremely sparing and temperate
exercise of the procreative function. Temperance has
no bearing here. As to consistent celibacy and its
counterpart within marriage, these states do not imply
“temperance” but total abstinence which is a wholly
different matter. But this appeal to people generally
for total» abstinence from a natural function during all
but a very short period of adult life can be regarded
only as an ill-considered attempt to mould humanity to
an arbitrary pattern of morality which either disregards
the essentials of human nature or stigmatises an
inalienable function as in some degree unworthy and
personally injurious.
We live in an age of artificial methods both in the
matter of wresting from nature our sustenance and much
that conduces to such comfort as we enjoy, and in the
matter of protecting ourselves from the evils that nature
may bring upon us. It is true that self-control is
necessary to restriction of the birth-rate but this does
not involve an intolerable repression of one of the
strongest and most social impulses of our nature.
Artificial method has already come to our help, and in
this scientific age we are not likely to refuse that help,
on the contrary, we are sure to use artificial method
and make it as effective as possible.
�
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Social control of the birth-rate and endowment of mothers
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Gaskell, G.A.
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Printed by A. Bonner, Fleet Street. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Freethought Publishing Company
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1890
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N280
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Birth control
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Text
Language
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English
Birth Control
Motherhood-England
NSS
Population Increase