erage American family is very small.

"As I sat writing this an evening or two ago, I jotted down the names of
twenty-five families of my acquaintance in Los Angeles, taking them as
fast as I thought of them. The list was composed entirely of
professional and business men ranging in age from thirty-five to fifty.
All had been married quite a number of years. The result of my
memorandum was that in these twenty-five families there were but
eighteen children. These families were wholly unselected, and are about
the average Protestant American families outside the rank of laborers.

"What are the causes of this small proportion of children? Disease,
preventives of conception, and abortion form the trinity of
responsibility in this grave condition. It is true that the first cause
(disease) results in many women being barren, but I believe that you
will agree with me that the last two causes, preventives of conception
and abortion, are the two chief causes.

"The A. P. A. might find food for thought by investigating the
infrequency of criminal abortion in Catholic families in the United
States. It is the Protestant or agnostic American who too often uses one
of the preventives of conception." (Here the Doctor refers to a
foot-note in which he says: "I write this opinion as a Protestant, and
should be glad to learn that it is not well founded.") He continues:
"If, through inadvertence, pregnancy should occur, then an abortion is
in order. Disease and poverty and war and accident all work together to
keep down the population, but we are overcoming these. Plagues and
pestilences are rare. The number who die of starvation in California is
very small, while war has played but a small part. Through the diffusion
of the laws of sanitation, improved dietary, and advanced therapeutics,
the longevity of man is increasing, but the American woman's aversion to
child-bearing is blighting our civilization, and can be well named the
twentieth-century curse. In this aversion the woman frequently echoes
the wish of the husband.

"A large proportion of the American young women who marry do so with the
determination that they will have no children. They are abetted in this
notion by many elderly women. The cure for this terrible sentiment is
education. The home, the press, the schoolroom, and the pulpit should
be centres for reviving the ancient idea of the nobility of motherhood.
The physician should not underestimate his influence.

"By