Are We Due To Disappear?
Walsh, James J.
ARE WE DUE TO DISAPPEAR? By JAMES J. WALSH WHEN ex-President Roosevelt returned from his trip around the world some twenty years ago, most of the people in this country were very much...
...The United States Bureau of Education announces, for the first time in our history, an actual decrease in school attendance...
...They are as ardent for the policy of America for the Americans as Australians are for a white Australia...
...It took only another year to bring it well below that...
...Very probably the expression that there would be no white people in Australia by the end of the twentieth century struck most people as something of an exaggeration...
...Their slogan is "America for the Americans...
...But what is the use of it all if there are to be no native Americans in the course of a century to inherit the precious privileges of democracy...
...Most of us sympathized with the idea of a "white Australia," but here was a startling and unforeseen consequence of that movement which gave us serious cause to think...
...President Roosevelt suggested the year 2000 as a limit for Australia...
...If that success continues, and above all if their policy becomes even more popular than it has been, as seems probable from recent figures, it is very probable that a visiting Australian statesman who would come to us toward the end of the present decade might very well go back to his southern continent and tell his constituents that by the year 2000, unless there was a very definite change in the social policy of the people, the United States would be a disappearing element in world politics...
...Murphy, the chief statistician of the Bureau of Vital Statistics...
...The advocates of birth control have succeeded in their purpose of reducing the population...
...But we have other evidence for that eventuality besides the declaration of the Bureau of Vital Statistics...
...A great deal would depend on how much lower the birth rate is going to go in the course of the years just ahead of us...
...As the result, I believe that last year there was not only a cessation of the continued diminution in the population, but actually a net increase of a few thousands...
...Less than five years later, in 1927, it had dropped 2.5 more, to 20 per thousand...
...Not a few of these are the very ones who refuse to take their share of the burden of race in begetting and raising children...
...By JAMES J. WALSH WHEN ex-President Roosevelt returned from his trip around the world some twenty years ago, most of the people in this country were very much interested in his opinions on foreign countries and their problems...
...He had been in intimate relations with the men who were closest to the heart of affairs and his observations carried weight...
...Only those who are willing to take things as they are will see their children rise up to call them blessed, to be a consolation to them in their declining years and the heirs of whatever they have tried to get together to make life happier for those who come after them...
...It certainly is not increasing at anything like its earlier rate, and the falling off in enrolment has been noticed not only in cities of more or less stationary population but also in those that are growing rather rapidly...
...The outlook, then, is that by 1935 the death rate will be higher than the birth rate and we shall be a disappearing people...
...Race suicide was a favorite topic \/ith Mr...
...Very serious efforts have been made to change this condition of affairs, appeals have been directed to patriotism and offers have been made by the government to help in the support of children...
...T. F. Murphy, chief statistician for the United States Bureau of Vital Statistics, estimates the birth rate for 1929 as scarcely more than 19...
...How long before actual disappearance could be looked for would not be hard to calculate...
...Children begin to go to school at the age of about six, and the decline in the birth rate has been so rapid during the past fifteen years, and particularly since the war, that the Bureau of Education thinks it doubtful if the number of children about to begin their schooling is increasing from year to year...
...The American birth rate has been going down rather rapidly during this generation...
...There would seem to be a rather striking exemplification of that in this present state of affairs...
...The whole affair as thus presented seemed to be a striking illustration of the well-known fact that, while figures do not lie, they can be made to say almost anything that one who is interested in certain conclusions is looking for in them...
...The reasons for this state of affairs are discussed very frankly by Dr...
...In France for some years they have actually faced depopulation, for the estimates have shown an annual decrease in the number of inhabitants...
...But here we arei twenty years after in our own country, not only faced with the possibility but threatened with the actuality of a decrease in population unless we admit immigrants to fill up the gaps made by lack of births...
...One thing is perfectly sure: they will not possess the land...
...In the five years following 1920, though the population of the country increased some 10 percent, the school population decreased nearly 10 percent...
...By the end of the great war it had dropped to under 25 per thousand...
...Long ago it was said, "Blessed are the meek for they shall possess the land...
...Twenty years ago any question of a similar state of affairs developing here in America seemed utterly absurd and altogether negligible, but manifestly we shall have to face it, and also that other question of whether life is enough worth the living to justify taking the trouble to perpetuate it...
...Most people knew of the determined effort on the part of the Australians to keep out the brown and yellow races and maintain Australia for the whites...
...They were more than half inclined to attribute it to a certain tendency which some thought they had noted in our worthy ex-President even during his administration: a tendency to overstate things in order to ensure attention to the announcement being put forward at the moment...
...Doubtless at the present time any such expression as this will appear even more exaggerated than did President Roosevelt's at first blush with regard to the Australians twenty years ago...
...Forty years ago it was 33 per thousand of population...
...Our 120,000,000 of population could not be disposed of quite as soon as that, but the beginning of the end is already in sight...
...Roosevelt and this apparently was an occasion to exploit it...
...It is manifestly still on the descent, and the head of the Bureau of Vital Statistics calls attention to the fact that when it sinks to 18, the population of the country will automatically stop growing unless, of course, through accessions from other countries by immigration...
...It seems almost preposterous that, with over 120,000,000 of us enumerated in the census, we should be on the verge of disappearing...
...for its population would be so reduced as to make it a negligible factor in world affairs...
...Undoubtedly one of his declarations that attracted most attention was that if the current death and birth rates in Australia continued, there would be no white inhabitants in that great island continent by the year 2000...
...There are now enough facts available from the recent census to make it clear that in less than three years, if the present decline in the birth rate continues in this country, there will begin a drop in the population because the number of deaths will be higher than the number of births...
...Germany has nearly double the population of France, in spite of war losses and peace-treaty segregations from her population...
...Five years later it had dropped to nearly 22.5 per thousand...
...Chicago reports a decrease of more than 6,000 children attending school in the past five years...
...He states the first as the increase of residence in apartments where of course children are not welcomed and where, in many cases, they are actually taboo...
...Similar reports come in from the rest of the world...
...Next to this is the delay in marrying, which is growing more and more noticeable...
...It is clear now that other peoples are under the same threat of depopulation...
...A great many people in this country clamor for the prevention or the strict limitation of immigration...
...This might seem to be an accidental circumstance, and Chicago might be anomalous in this regard as in so many others, but something of the same sort is reported for the whole country...
...But the German birth rate is now also falling—faster, as a matter of fact, than the French, and the teeming millions that were adding to the military prestige of Germany are no longer the factor they used to be...
...People are so occupied with themselves and their own pleasures and comforts and conveniences, that they are not willing to bear the burdens of life, and so they simply wipe themselves out...
...Many could not persuade themselves that it was possible that at this climax of evolution, when we are the heirs of all the ages in the foremost files of time, modern educated people intent on the development of humanity and the happiness of the race could literally wipe themselves out...
...Murphy emphasizes also the legislation which lessens immigration and particularly excludes the more prolific races...
...It seemed almost incredible that the Australians should give up their heritage of a great island continent because they were not willing to have children enough to keep up the population...
...and the fact that, in many of these late marriages, husbands and wives arrange both to continue as wage earners, which means almost inevitably no children...
Vol. 12 • October 1930 • No. 22
