Few people would. agree that the factors actermining the birth-rate trend and the root Gauses which led us into this: battie for existence are intimately related phenomena, Most people would dismiss the suggestion that a Sinty-year decline in reproductivity and the Sccurfenee of two internecine ware between Slightly diferent environmental types of the human species are twin expressions of one and he same thing, Hardly anyone would. sub~ Scribe fo the idea that there is a correlation Between the growth of monopoly capitalism and the production and sale of contraceptive Govices,~ "Admittedly these are strange' fel-Sows, Their "apparent incongruity may be because no one has yet placed them together the same bed, Or perhaps we are too Glose to the. war and too. casual about the Girth-rate fo connect them. Whatever the Feason. we may note that there are only two euges under Human control which can Tea {ovithe extinction "of homo sapient. One is the apparent. aptitude for, and effectiveness of mass sulelde; the other Is the failure to Seproduce, writes Richard M. 'Titmuss in the "New. Statesman and Nation'
During the past century "man has, had placed in his Nands—but hot in his head _he*mneans of. controlling his" environment and his stay on earth. The growth in the ower file enki has been crlously but Uignificantly paralleled by a continuous Invthe use and effllency of the two "extine Hon" forces. The greater the power to con~ trol the more mechanically destructive docs War become The higher the standard of ving the lower the rate of human replace= mone. "The more man gets away from primi five he becomes and the less willing to bring into the world his own kind. "In the violent Mistory. of the human race this isthe Arst dime two great concentrations of population "Buitain Gnd. Germany—have fought and Hallea white failing Both entered the war with a net fion rate below unity, Whatever Hitler may' Glam for his New Order, at no time since he sumed. power has the German birth-rate seen sume lent. to replace existing numbers. Europe, as an entity, fell below unity years ago, This. War must mean either tremendous speed up (in terms of reproduce tivity) In the process of the dying out of the human race, or a. complete reversal in our way. of life. so. that an_environment will emerge In which parents will desire children, For thousands of years man had no control over his bittherate and mo control over his death-rate, At the end of the nineteenth ontiry, when the world was a, wretchedly poor and miserable place, two controls began
ives, first because Its advantages were easily Tovemarge, Sanitation receded contracep-Tecogmlzable and, second, because capitalism edded that hygiene spelt. dividends. At about the same time the masses began to dis~ Cover the means of controlling their birth-Yale. This" discovery" was frst utilized by the' highest "economic class and has since filtered down the social structure unt today. to a far Jarger extent than the last one (which involved a net loss of over 500,000 unborn) the knowledge and use of control. Since the birth-rate trend changed it has fallen by half in sixty years and before the war net reproductivity in England and Wales was 25 per cent, below replacement level. The same trend—in different stoges of development—ts discernible not only in Europe, but in America, the Dominions and Japan; in fact, wherever we have a reliable register of statistics covering a sufficiently long period. Owing to the inadequacy of the data (particularly for the past) it is not possible to dis cern the probable trend of the birth-rate for the masses of the U.S.SR., China and India ut we do, know that, whatever course it takes; the already vast' populations of these countries are bound to rise within the next Atty years by hundreds of millions, The effect of an enormously increasing Asiatic Population on the future of man raises the most fundamental questions, which cannot, however, be discussed in this article.
We are concerned here with the trend in the highly industrialized capitalist societies and In studying the development of their "placement rates we are led to ask why has man persistently and to an ever-increasing degree used this control? The causes are multiple and closely interwoven, but the fundamental factor is, 1 suggest,' the psychological atmosphere' of a society which places acquisitiveness before children, Man's desire to serve the community—and one way In which he can best do this ig by consclous~ Jy and deliberately desiring the continuance of his own kind—has been increasingly nega-ived by a society which tells him to seek his own interests, individually and nationally; to Yegard wealth as an index of biological success; to attain power through wealth; and to relegate morals to a two-hour session of platitude on the seventh day. For a century we have preached the value of morals and practised the immorality of acquisitiveness, To sustain this cultural pattern it was necessary for captains of industry and statesmen foster. the illusion of mobility in a socially static, unequal and caste-ridden society. In this atmosphere frustrated man was forced to decide that "he travels the tactest who travels alone." In the competi-yet (relatively wealthy, suburbia Eastern England the Tudor cloisters ability, the lowest birth-rate in the contro} barracks return What is, in this is mot mere chance. Urban
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.