n the matter of
this degeneration, and the city of Edinburgh has outstripped even
France. And though this policy of the silent nursery and the empty
cradle is a policy of racial doom, the land of the Covenanters and the
capital of Presbyterianism have made it their own. They have
out-Heroded Herod.

III

It is only when this disease, which is threatening the life of the
body-politic, is probed, that the full extent of its ravages is
manifest. For it is the educated, the cultured, and the rich who are
eluding the responsibility of parentage, while the poor and the
diseased are still continuing to multiply. In inverse ratio to the
income and the size of house is the number of the children. It is the
same sad story in every city. In London, the birthrate of Hampstead, a
suburb mainly inhabited {9} by the rich, fell from 30.01 in 1881 to
17.55 in 1911, while that of Shoreditch, a working-class district, only
fell in the same period from 31.32 to 30.16. In his evidence before
the Birthrate Commission, Dr. Chalmers, the Medical Officer of Health
for the city of Glasgow, contrasted the birthrate in two of the poor
districts of the city with that in two of the best districts. In the
two worst wards the birthrate was equal to 161 per thousand married
women between the ages of 15 and 45 years, whereas in the two
well-to-do wards it was only 34.[2] In the city of Aberdeen, the
birthrate in the poor and congested district of Greyfriars is almost
double that of Rubislaw which includes the best housing in the city.
In no city is this grim contrast more marked than in the city of
Edinburgh.

When the different districts of Edinburgh are considered, it is
apparent that in the poor districts the birthrate maintains still some
vitality, but among the {10} well-to-do and the rich it is rapidly
diminishing. In the Canongate district there is a birthrate per
thousand of 24; in Gorgie, 23.9; in St. Leonard's, 22.4; in Merchiston,
12.6; in Haymarket, 11.5; and in Morningside, 10.9. In the three
districts of Edinburgh where the wealthy, the cultured, and the
well-to-do abound, there the birthrate is but half of those districts
where the poor, the miserable, and the criminal are congregated in
noisome slums. In Morningside and Haymarket the birthrate is only a
third of what it was in Scotland in 1871. These districts of the city
have sacrificed two-thirds of their children to their ease. It is
among the terraces and squares