The Fertility of the Unfit | Page 2

people. I may add that I discussed your views with competent critics, and they share the opinion which I have expressed in this letter. I sincerely hope that the volume will be published, and need not add that my friends and myself will be subscribers for copies.
Yours sincerely,
J.G. FINDLAY.
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FROM MALCOLM ROSS, ESQ.
DEAR DR. CHAPPLE,--
I am pleased to hear that your MS. is to be published. The subject is one that must attract an increasing amount of attention on the part of all who have the true interests of the state at heart. There can be no doubt that the Parliamentary machine has failed, lamentably, to grapple with the problems you have referred to. At the present time, when some of our most earnest statesmen and greatest thinkers are discussing the supposed commercial decadence of the nation, the publication of such a treatise as you have prepared is opportune, and a perusal of it prompts the thought that the main remedy lies deeper, and may be found in sociological even more than in economic reform.
I do not profess myself competent to express any opinion regarding the remedy you propose. That is a matter for a carefully selected expert Royal Commission. The whole question, however, is one that might with advantage be discussed, both in the Press and the Parliament, at the present time, and I feel sure your book will be welcomed as a valuable contribution on the subject.
Yours sincerely,
MALCOLM ROSS.
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FROM SIR ROBERT STOUT, K.C.M.G., CHIEF JUSTICE.
MY DEAR DR. CHAPPLE,--
I have read your MSS., and am much pleased with it. It puts the problem of our times very plainly, and I think should be published in England. I have a friend in England who would, I think, be glad to help, and he is engaged by one of the large publishing firms in England. If you decide on sending it to England I shall be glad to write to him, and ask his assistance. The subject is one that certainly required ventilation, and whether your remedy is the proper one or not, it ought certainly to be discussed.
Yours truly,
ROBERT STOUT.

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.

CHAPTER IV.
--MEANS ADOPTED p. 32
Family responsibility--Natural fertility undiminished.--Voluntary prevention and physiological knowledge.--New Zealand experience.--Diminishing influence of delayed marriage.--Practice of abortion.--Popular sympathy in criminal cases.--Absence of complicating issues in New Zealand.--Colonial desire for comfort and happiness.

CHAPTER V.
--CAUSES OF DECLINING BIRTH-RATE p. 36
Influence of self-restraint without continence.--Desire to limit families in New Zealand not due to poverty.--Offspring cannot be limited without self-restraint.--New Zealand's economic condition.--High standard of general education.--Tendency to migrate within the colony.--Diffusion of ideas.--Free social migration between all classes.--Desire to migrate upwards.--Desire to raise the standard of ease and comfort.--Social status the measure of financial status.--Social attraction of one class to next below.--Each conscious of his limitation.--Large families confirm this limitation.--The cost of the family.--The cost of maternity.--The craving for ease and luxury. Parents' desire for their children's social success.--Humble homes bear distinguished sons.--Large number with University education in New Zealand.--No child labour except in hop and dairy districts.--Hopeless poverty a cause of high birth-rates.--High birth-rates a cause of poverty.--Fecundity depends on capacity of the female to bear children.

CHAPTER VI.
--ETHICS OF PREVENTION p. 31
Fertility the law of life.--Man interprets and controls this law.--Marriage law necessary to fix paternal responsibility.--Malthus's high ideal.--If prudence the motive, continence and celibacy violate no law.--Post-nuptial intermittent restraint.--Ethics of prevention judged by consequences.--When procreation is a good