Now, this idea of the Endowment of Maternity—­or as it is frequently phrased, the Endowment of the Home—­is at present put forward by the modern Socialists as an integral part of their proposals, and it is interesting to note that there is this convergent possibility which may bring the feminist movement at last altogether into line with constructive Socialism.  Obviously, before anything in the direction of family endowment becomes practicable, public bodies and the State organisation will need to display far more integrity and efficiency than they do in America at the present time.  Still, that is the trend of things in all contemporary civilised communities, and it is a trend that will find a powerful reinforcement in men’s solicitudes as the increasing failure of the unsupported private family to produce offspring adequate to the needs of social development becomes more and more conspicuous.  The impassioned appeals of President Roosevelt have already brought home the race-suicide of the native-born to every American intelligence, but mere rhetoric will not in itself suffice to make people, insecurely employed and struggling to maintain a comfortable standard of life against great economic pressure, prolific.  Presented as a call to a particularly onerous and quite unpaid social duty the appeal for unrestricted parentage fails.  Husband and wife alike dread an excessive burthen.  Travel, leisure, freedom, comfort, property and increased ability for business competition are the rewards of abstinence from parentage, and even the disapproval of President Roosevelt and the pride of offspring are insufficient counterweights to these inducements.  Large families disappear from the States, and more and more couples are childless.  Those who have children restrict their number in order to afford those they have some reasonable advantage in life.  This, in the presence of the necessary knowledge, is as practically inevitable a consequence of individualist competition and the old American tradition as the appearance of slums and a class of millionaires.

These facts go to the very root of the American problem.  I have already pointed out that, in spite of a colossal immigration, the population of the United States was at the end of the nineteenth century over twenty millions short of what it should have been through its own native increase had the birth-rate of the opening of the century been maintained.  For a hundred years America has been “fed” by Europe.  That feeding process will not go on indefinitely.  The immigration came in waves as if reservoir after reservoir was tapped and exhausted.  Nowadays England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Scandinavia send hardly any more; they have no more to send.  Germany and Switzerland send only a few.  The South European and Austrian supply is not as abundant as it was.  There may come a time when Europe and Western Asia will have no more surplus population to send, when even Eastern Asia will have passed into a less fecund phase, and when America will have to look to its own natural increase for the continued development of its resources.