The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-05-14
A FALSE THEORY.

President Roosevelt. in one of his frequent monologues on his favorite theme of race suicide used this lan- guage: The greatest problem of civilization is to be found in the fact that the well-to-do families tend to die out, there results, In consequence, a tendency to the elimination instead of the survival of the fittest." Some comments of The Indianapolis Star are so appropriate that we feel justified in this liberal quotation:
 If this, with its context, means any thing 1t means that 1t Is better Tor large families to be with the rich than with the poor. But our history shoWs that the strongest and most enectlve forces in civilization are those that were not born to the purple, but came up from poverty to power. The life of ease does not produce efficiency so much as the life of struggle and de- privation The child that has comforts and education provided to Its hand IS not so well fitted to do the world 5 and sacrifice for what it gets and in that strenuous exercise gains strength for the battle of life. Many of our wealthy families have too many Ghil, dren. such as they are. The gilaed youth of Fifth avenue and Pfttsburg are numerous enough for all legitimate purposes of society.
 But If we were to grant that high birth rate is more desirable among the rich than among the poor, such a con against the plain rule and purpose or nature. The human race in all ages and civilizations has presented the uni form spectacle of procession mov- x..A., | l. ing from power again to poverty Ethnology has no better attested phe- nomenon than the decline of procrea- tive power as the family or the tribe ascends in the scale of civilization. Not only the enjoyment of wealth but the devotion to intellectual and artis- tic pursuits always goes hand In hand with loss of fecundity. The ranks or efficiency are always recruited from the large-familied masses. The upper they have are likely to be. pushed aside in the contest by the child of the farm or the factory.
 What does nature mean by this cur ious law? Perhaps there is no mean ing in it. intelligible to the finite mind. any more than in the inclination of the earth's orbit to it's axis or in the equivalehces with which hydrogen and oxygen unite in water. We only know that the high birth rate goes along with physicalI activity and that physi- cal ease and intellectual activity go along with the low birth rate The optimist has to assume that 1t is bet ter so, the pessimist finds in it fresh cause for depression. At least one prac- tical advantage we can plainly see Is economic. For 1t Is obviously salu- tary that the wealth a generation of nabobs accumulates falls from the sons into the hands of the more nu- merous and more virile children of the soil, instead of being monopolized and multiplied by a small and exclusive ariStocracy.
 The theory of the President that 1t is better for humanity and for our civilization that the very rich should produce large families and the poor should not Is false one. It is true that fin the lowest ranks of humanity many children are born into the world whose lives must end or be prolonged in misery. if not in evil and crime. but that Is one of the penalties of our human nature. The fact remains, as The Star argues, that In all ages Of the world the greatest good and the great est achievements have not as rule come from those who were horn in wealth and luxury but from those who have found 1t necessary to struggle for place and existence. It is certain- ly true, also, that there is tendency among the very rich to ignore the pleasures and the duties of parent hood but we do not admit that the world is any the worse for 1t.