Truth. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1901-1908, 1907-03-09
70 SUCH A THING AS RACE
SUICIDE.

y Two long letters recently appeared
Vim the London Times in which Mr..
$S:dney Webb, the well-known econ
n omist and professor i'll London Uni
Diversity. pointed out the dangers OF
Nthe decreasing birth-ratc, and stated
Ethat the superior fertility OF the Irish
lthe Jews. and even the Chinese might
Eventually result in their occupation
%of the present Anglo Saxon country.
aThesc letters attracted much attcn-
Elton and promoted much discussion.
N \ccording to James w. Barclay, who
S,writes in The Ninto nth Century and
', After Oondon). Il Ctc Is. however,
Emo such thing a, race suicide. Under
\ improved conditions OF life families
y always and everywhere have become
: smaller. In the poorer classes they
become larger. and the general po.u-
, lation suffers no dimiuution. As he
= says:
The inn Ortant question at issue.
which Mr.. Webb ignores, is not tic
brth-rate. but the rate at which the
oi.ulation is increasing, and that de-
rcnds as much on the deaths as on
the births ii Mr.. Webb and the
Fabian Society had examined the sta
tistics OF deaths. as well as of births,
in tie cgstrar-Generafs reports,
they would have found, that while
tle birth-ratc in fifteen European
nations eliminated about 1876 and,
with the exception of Russia, subsc
quently continuously declined, the
dcath-ratc began to ial off about the
same time and has continued to do so
almost as RAPIDLY as the birth-rate,
,,,;tl, tl,,c ros,lt that ti,n a.
Of population per 1000 is now about
as great as it formerly was Tie pre-
, valence of war and cholera among
Continental nationa interferes with
close comparisons between their birth
and death-ratcs. but the English sta
,istics--clearly demonstrate the fact.
that the ratio of the growth of our
population is now little less than it
was when the brth-rate was at its
maximum; and, if the death-ratc of
children under twelve months old had
{ decreased in the same proportion as
of those above that age, the rate of
increase would have been even
greater"
Vt, The so-called race suicide" is a
: mythical phenomenon. The law OF
nature is that races should increase
from DelOW, not from ABOVE. Dne OF
the best and most and obvious means
to prevent the dwnding of the Ang-
lo-Saxon race is to take more meas
ures to prevent infant mortality To
quote Mr.. Barclay:
Let us leave nature and the natu-
raj instincts of the English people to
regulate the birth-rate, and let us
take better care of the babies vouch-
safed to us The mortality among
infants is the great blot in our vital
statistics, and Mr.. Webb deserves our
best thanks for inviting public atten-
ton to the necessity of doing much
more than heretofore to help them
to live and to grow up, strong and
healthy members of society.
THE far reaching effects of nat
ure's law of fertility bear closely on
aspirations and opinions now preva-
lent. From the superior fertility OF
the poorer classes, it follows that
population is renewed from below
and not from above. Families of the
higher classes disappear by infcrtilty
or degeneration, and are replaced
from the lower classes, who then in
herit the advantages of their predcces-
sors. Nature thus, without injustice
or Partially, gives in turn 70 in
dividuals of every class a fair oppor-
e L. 80