on in the struggle for
existence, they are anxious for their own pecuniary and social
stability, and even more anxious that the children, for whose birth they
are responsible, should be provided with the necessities and comforts of
life which health and development require. They are eager, too, that
their children should be equipped with a good education, and thus be
given a fair advantage in the race of life.

To the great mass of people this is possible only when the numbers of
the family are limited. As the numbers of the family increase, the
difficulties of clothing and feeding and educating increase, and each
member is the poorer for every birth, and in this sense an increasing
birth-rate is a cause of poverty. The sense in which poverty causes a
high birth-rate will be dealt with later on.

It will be readily conceded, that those actuated by the motives just
considered, those with the keenest sense of responsibility in life,
those capable of exercising the self-restraint which family limitation
requires, constitute the best type of citizens in any community. From
such the State has good reason to expect the best stock.

It is one purpose of this work to show that this class, which can and
should produce the best in the largest numbers, is being overwhelmed
with the burden of supporting an ever-increasing number of incapables,
and, largely in consequence of this increasing burden and
responsibility, are unwilling to produce, because they are unable
adequately to support their own kind.

There is a class in every large community, whose sense of responsibility
in life is at zero, whose self-control is substituted by the law and its
sanctions, and whose modes and habits of life are little better than
those of the lower animals. Their appetites are stronger, their desires,
though fewer, are more intense, and their self-control less easily and
less frequently exerted than those in the highest planes of life.

In the first place then they have less desire to limit their families,
and less power to exercise the self-restraint that is necessary to do
so. Less sense of responsibility is attached to the rearing of a family,
whilst the education of their children gives them little or no concern.
They entertain no ambition that members of their family should compete
in the struggle for social status. Their instincts and their impulses
are their guide in all things. They marry early, and procreation is
unrestrained except