The death-rate may be reduced, then, without detrimental effects upon
the birth-rate.

"What can the factor be which influences both the tuberculosis
incidence and the birth-rate? We know that the prevalence of
tuberculosis is conditioned principally by poverty and ignorance of
hygiene. The Parisian statistics, as compiled by Dr. Bertillon and
recently by Professor L. Hersch, show a much higher birth-rate in the
poor wards than in the richer districts, and the high birth-rates may
be furnished largely by the poorer elements of the population. A
comfortable degree of wealth does not imply a low birth-rate, as is
abundantly shown elsewhere, and one of the important questions which
suggest themselves to the French statistician and sociologist is
evidently the following: How can the intellectual and economic standard
of the masses be raised without detriment to the natality?

"We believe that the time is opportune for solving this question. The
past half-century has been lived under the shadow of defeat and with a
sense of limitations, and of impotence against fate. This nightmare is
now thrown off, and, the doors to the world being open and development
free, the French people will learn that new initiative has its full
recompense and that a living and a useful activity can be found for all
the sons and daughters they may get. The habit of home-staying is
broken by the war, and new and great undertakings are developing in the
ruined north-east as well as in the sunny south." [34]

[Footnote 25: _The Lancet_, 1879, vol. ii, p. 703.]

[Footnote 26: Poverty is a term of wide import admitting many degrees
according as the victim is deprived more or less completely of the ordinary