The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-04-15
Deaths Exceeding Births Foreseen

New England and in every section of the country.
 We have swung abruptly from a period of overproduction of human life to one that threatens shortly to cause a serious underproduction. The cause is chiefly economic, and like every economic question in wolves mostly the great middle class. The wealthy are too intelligent to kill themselves of. If one will look up the second and third genera tions of the tycoons he will find they have had or are having babies as fast as they can. The poor, despite the compassion and teachings of the Sangers and Hepburns, are also hav- ing babies. They may be chased as not intelligent enough to stop having them or may we say too natural and human to avail them selves of the art of prevention long enough to stop having them. As a trial of existing birth control meth ods in 1881 and 1892 fifty women from the charity clinics in Wa terbury-each woman with from 6 to 10 children, were carefully taught the best methods of prevention of pregnancy at considerable labor to physicians and at no cost to them selves. To date forty-fiva of these women have had one more baby and several have had two. They practised their lessons for a short time and then grew tired of them. So the prophecy. that "the poor you will always have with you" will de- feat all the sales talks of modern science.
 This is not an argument for ani- nal proliferation but it may be gathered that it is an argument against the one and two child fam lilies of today.
 We thus arrive at the great apa- thetic middle class. All these people have watched the economic suffer ing of their fathers and mothers with large families. The lure of ma terial benefits of childlessnesS is great and the psychological effect on the children is, one of rational ization. Instead of a happy home with three or four children to spur them on. to accomplishment the idea is to get all the material com forts and then have the children more or less. By this method the incidence of late marriages is be- coming more and more an accom- plished fact and the natural bar- riers to conception more pro- nounced. Add the artificial barriers, which are included, to this, and we have the modern set-up in mar riage which is producing an alarm ing decrease in the birthrate in social class which could be just af little more prolific without having to give up too many of the good things in life. The result may yet be that someone in the future may be offering an automobile to young couples for having children, instead of the automobile being the mspi- ration for not having them. Other countries have come to such pro- cedure due to the depredations Of war and the fear of future wars. It is another rationaliZatiOn to say that an increase in the population would only be more, fodder for the cannons of tomorrow. The thing at stake is the material comfort oi today. Perhaps this all had to come, but there are some of us who believe that when the pit of the birth depression is reached society will realize what mistake 1t has made in trying to provide economic assurance for old age without m spring anything but contraception' abortion and despair for the young generations who are to replace and inspire the men and women of the future.
 Then when we review these peo- ple before they eventually mhabit the surroundings we now grace. It is we'll to remember that they are becoming q rarer and more valuable specie. The happy medium Tor maintenance of their continuity rests between the number and 5 and not the or which. though W0 all admit Is g better number than none at all, win some day be more desirable than all the products and comforts of civilization which we now possess. God grant that they may be spared the barbarity ot modern human conflict, but that ii they need to defend themselves they may be here in suficieat numbers to assure that the bene- Its of their strange new c0mbina- kiosas and limitations of racial and