Show wic 1 ass A 7 t 1 r I 1 sr 1 t 1 k ak I 1 1 b POM pronounced isimal a to boree Xo ree itte atie uluas A 1 11 tvan tte ot lT AM Amerle ia r from the washington stav star soro auly auit a frenchman nan ought to be lecog I 1 blaed as 23 an the question of a declining birthrate birth rate prance france te ft the one nation where when the birth th rate has steadily decreased until at last int pe deaths outnumber the births since 1890 UN there has been be en an annual loss of at something ine population tn in prance FM it is a frenchman ot f science arsell ahsene 6 dumont who predicts the destruction st of the american people in the journal mf jot the paris Statis statistical dW society ciu he reports the result of his bis study of the vital statistics of massachusetts in spite of the efforts made in new york and other states it is an exasperating pe fact that massachusetts alone collects trustworthy and com pre acus ave vital statistics and it is 13 on these that foreign sfa statisticians rely fur for information as to the tendencies of Aerl american can life yet massachusetts la is hardly representative she has an uncommon proportion of foreign born bora people and they are more absorbed in the manufactures than the people of other states the proportion of the two sexes in that state is unlike the proportion of the west and south and important conditions are peculiar mr Du monts study of the birth rate in massachusetts is not encouraging as to the future of americans he I 1 says that marriages among american erl cn erlan born bom reveal a steady dami diminution ut or of f the birth rate the cause of this he be finds la in the principle of democracy this develops individualism the desire of each person to live his bis own life for himself to obtain all the pleasure there Is in life IM whether intellectual or material he maintains that as they do not propose to miss the chances of vers personal onal de development Velo pent americans or i any republic ad people will not burden themselves with children he says there is a poison in republican civilization civil iza and the more imore intense republicanism becomes the more acute individualism Is eventually he be asserts as serta this I 1 must destroy the race and its culture he says republics might escape this tate fate it if they would submit to the rule of science perhaps it is this determination not to sacrifice any of the pleasures of at life for the pleasure of hildren that Is the cause of the decline of the birth rate in prance france it is more reasonable than the explanation commonly given that in the absence of a law of entail french parents are led to limit the number of their children the code napoleon does not allow a man to leave the bulk of his fortune to his oldest child as in england it is hardly reasonable to tol hink think hat in order to bestow an estate on a single child a man would de deny ny himself the pleasure of rearing a number of children but in order to find a larger amount of liberty and pleasure tor for himself he might be willing to go childless it Is strange that a french sc scientist aless should dwell on the declining birth rate of massachusetts and make no reference to that of his own country at the beginning of the century there were thirty three births for each I 1 1000 of population in prance france in 1850 1950 it had bad declined to twenty seven and in 1895 1995 to twenty two at the same time the birth rate of germany and austria remained at thirty eight that of england at thirty three and that of italy had increased from thirty seven to thirty eight the decrease is general throughout france and mr bernillon Ber tillon says it means the disappearance of tte the french people |