infantile death-rate. Thus in Victoria, we have the striking
fact that while the birth-rate has declined 24 per cent the infantile
death-rate has declined approximately to the still greater extent of 27
per cent.

No doubt the chief cause of the reduction of the birth-rate has been its
voluntary restriction by preventive methods due to the growth of
intelligence, knowledge, and foresight. In all the countries where a
marked decline in the birth-rate has occurred there is good reason to
believe that Neo-Malthusian methods are generally known and practised.
So far as England is concerned this is certainly the case. A few years
ago Mr. Sidney Webb made inquiries among middle-class people in all
parts of the country, and found that in 316 marriages 242 were thus
limited and only 74 unlimited, while for the ten years 1890-9 out of 120
marriages 107 were limited and only 13 unlimited, but as five of these
13 were childless there were only 8 unlimited fertile marriages out of
120. As to the causes assigned for limiting the number of children, in
73 out of 128 cases in which particulars were given under this head the
poverty of the parents in relation to their standard of comfort was a
factor; sexual ill-health--that is, generally, the disturbing effect of
child-bearing--in 24; and other forms of ill-health of the parents in 38
cases; in 24 cases the disinclination of the wife was a factor, and the
death of a parent had in 8 cases terminated the marriage.[118] In the
skilled artisan class there is also good reason to believe that the
voluntary limitation of families is constantly becoming more usual, and
the statistics of benefit societies show a marked decline in the
fertility of superior working-class people during recent years; thus it
is stated by Sidney Webb that the Hearts of Oak Friendly Society paid
benefits on child-birth to 2472 per 10,000 members in 1880; by 1904 the
proportion had fallen to 1165 per 10,000, a much greater fall than
occurred in England generally.

The voluntary adoption of preventive precautions may not be, however,
the only method by which the birth-rate has declined; we may have also
to recognize a concomitant physiological sterility, induced by delayed
marriage and its various consequences; we have also to recognize
pathological sterility due to the impaired vitality and greater
liability to venereal disease of an increasingly urban life; and we may
have to recognize that stocks differ from one