Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/29

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CHAPTER ONE

notice that when, as in the higher economic stages, the arts of production on the one hand are improving, and the habits and so on of any people are on the other hand constantly altering, the most desirable density is in consequence frequently changing. In the lower stages, when progress in skill is slow and social conditions more or less stationary, the optimum number may remain about the same over long periods of time. . . This idea of an optimum density of population is wholly different to that put forward by Malthus. To him the problem was one of the relative increase of population and of food; with us it is one of the density of population and of the productiveness of industry."

Killick Millard, in a general consideration of the various aspects of birth-control, very truly concluded that "The fall of the birth-rate is not a symptom of national decadence, but a mark of advancing civilization."[1]

In the course of its history every civilization, every community, has been faced at different times both by excess of population and by the lack of certain elements in the

  1. ↑ Killick Millard, M.D.: "Population and Birth Control." Presidential Address to Leicester Lit. and Philos. Soc., 1917.

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