The Fertility Of The Unfit

CONTENTS.


INTRODUCTION


CHAPTER I.--THE PROBLEM STATED p. 1

The spread of moral restraint as a check.--Predicted by Malthus.--The
declining Birth-rate.--Its Universality.--Most conspicuous in New
Zealand. Great increase in production of food.--With rising food
rate falling birth-rate.--Malthus's checks.--His use of the term
"moral restraint."--The growing desire to evade family
obligations.--Spread of physiological knowledge.--All limitation
involves self-restraint.--Motives for limitation.--Those who do and
those who do not limit.--Poverty and the Birth-rate.--Defectives
prolific and propagate their kind.--Moral restraint held to include
all sexual interference designed to limit families.--Power of
self-control an attribute of the best citizens.--Its absence an
attribute of the worst.--Humanitarianism increases the number and
protects the lives of defectives.--The ratio of the unfit to the
fit.--Its dangers to the State.--Antiquity of the problem.--The
teaching of the ancients.--Surgical methods already advocated.

CHAPTER II.--THE POPULATION QUESTION p. 10

The teaching of Aristotle and Plato.--The teaching of Malthus.--His
assailants.--Their illogical position.--Bonar on Malthus and his
work.--The increase of food supplies held by Nitti to refute Malthus.--The
increase of food and the decrease of births.--Mr. Spencer's biological
theory--Maximum birth-rate determined by female capacity to bear
children.--The pessimism of Spencer's law.--Wider definition of moral
restraint.--Where Malthus failed to anticipate the future.--Economic law
operative only through biological law.

CHAPTER III.--DECLINING BIRTH-RATE p. 26

Declining birth-rates rapid and persistent.--Food cost in New
Zealand.--Relation of birth-rate to prosperity before and after
1877.--Neo-Malthusian propaganda.--Marriage rates and fecundity of
marriage.--Statistics of Hearts of Oak Friendly Society.--Deliberate
desire of parents to limit family increase.