Note 111 — Chapter VII · THE EFFECT OF RELIGION AND NON-RELIGION ON POPULATION AND THE FUTURE OF THE RACE.

Among the secondary causes which tend to lower the French birth-rate, and which the law might counteract, let us notice that of abortion, which is practised in France not less commonly than in Germany, but bears much worse results here than there, because of the small number of children that are born in France. Paris positively enjoys a reputation for the art of miscarriage, and ladies come there from various parts of the world to be relieved of their children. “One of the professors of our schools said this year, in one of his courses, that a midwife had confessed to him that she produced on an average one hundred miscarriages a year.” (Dr. Verrier, Revue scientifique, June 21, 1884.) Pajot affirms that there are more miscarriages than births. Might not this state of things be remedied: 1. By the re-establishment of the revolving boxes (tours); 2. By a more constant inspection of the books and offices of midwives and accoucheurs, such as furnished lodgings in Paris are subject to.

Among the principal reasons which prevent marriage let us mention the preliminary formalities, which are too numerous even when both parties are French, and are simply numberless when one party is a foreigner. The law of marriages when both parties are French ought to be simplified to the utmost possible extent, so that an impatience of the preliminaries could in nowise influence engaged couples. More than that every effort should be made to facilitate marriages between French subjects and foreigners, unions the results of which are generally good for the race and which are hindered by all sorts of legal obstacles in certain countries; this last question is a subject to be dealt with by diplomacy. Still other causes that the law might modify operate in France, if not to diminish the birth-rate, at least—what amounts to the same thing—to increase the mortality among children. In the first place is to be reckoned the employment of wet-nurses, who should be subject to a much more rigorous surveillance than they are at present, under the Roussel law. In the second place, there is the deplorable condition of illegitimate children, the mortality among whom is greater in France than in any other country: some of them are reported as stillborn, who medical statistics would go to show are the victims of murder; others die of hunger in the second week of their birth owing to negligence or cruelty on the part of the mother. The re-establishment of the revolving boxes (tours) would here also be of prime service. In the third place, let us mention the exceptional mortality in France of adults from twenty to twenty-five years of age, which must result from bad administration in the army. Legislators and administrators should direct their attention simultaneously to all these points, if they are to check the current of depopulation in France.