Chapter XXIV: Section 3: The United States of America

As was proved by the census of religions in 1906, the United States of America is becoming a great stronghold of the Faith. In Massachusetts the Catholic Church numbered 1,100,000 members, whereas the total membership of all the Protestant Churches was 450,000. In Illinois there were about 300,000 Methodists and 1,000,000 Catholics. There were 2,300,000 Catholics in the State of New York, and about 300,000 Methodists, while no other Protestant Church numbered more than 200,000. The New England States, once the home of American Puritanism, are now great centres of Catholicism.

Professor Meyrick Booth [40] explains this remarkable change as being due to two causes: (1) The influx of large numbers of European Catholics, who cling tenaciously to their religion; (2) the greater fertility of these stocks as compared with the native population. Moreover, he has tabulated the following statistics:

TABLE IV

State. Population Chief Religious Bodies Births & Birth
(1906) Deaths rate per
(b. and d.) 1,000

Indiana 2,700,000 Methodist 233,000 b. 36,000 13.0
Prot. Episcopalian 102,000 d. 36,500
Disciples 118,000
R.C. 175,000
Iowa. 2,224,000 Methodist 164,000 b. 36,000 16.0
Lutheran 117,000 d. 20,000
Presbyterian 60,000
R.C. 207,000
Maryland. 1,295,000 Methodist 137,000 b. 19,000 15.0
Prot. Episcopalian 35,000 d. 20,000
Baptist & smaller,
about 100,000
R.C. 167,000
California. 2,377,000 R.C. 354,000 b. 32,100 14.0
Prot. bodies about d. 32,400
(All Churches weak) 250,000
Kentucky 2,290,000 Baptist 312,000 b. 35,000 15.0
Methodist 156,000 d. 18,000
R.C. 166,000

In these States the birth-rate is low; in three there are actually more deaths than births; and in all five the proportion of Catholics is comparatively small. These States may be compared with five others, in which the Catholic and the foreign elements are well represented:

TABLE V

State. Population Chief Religious Birth and Birthrate
(1910) Bodies Deaths per 1000

New York. 9,113,000 R.C. 2,280,000 b. 213,000 22.0
Jews (?) 1,000,000 d. 147,000
Methodist 300,000
Presbyterian 200,000

Rhode Island 540,000 R.C. 160,000 b. 13,000 24.0
Baptist 20,000 d. 8,000
Prot.
Episcopalian 15,000

Massachusetts 3,336,000 R.C. 1,080,000 b. 84,000 25.0
Congregational 120,000 d. 51,000
Baptist 80,000
All Protestants
together 450,000

Michigan 2,800,000 R.C. 490,000 b. 64,000 23.0
Methodist 128,000 d. 36,000
Lutheran 105,000

Connecticut 1,114,000 R.C. 300,000 b. 27,000 24.0
Congregational 66,000 d. 17,000
Prot.
Episcopalian 37,000

In these States the birth-rate is very much higher than in the former. Furthermore, a New York paper [40] investigated the birth-rate in that city with special reference to religious belief, and concluded that the different bodies could be graded as follows with respect to the number of children per marriage: (1) Jews, (2) Catholics, (3) Protestants (Orthodox), (4) Protestants (Liberal), and (5) Agnostic. Professor Meyrick Booth, who is himself a Protestant, concludes his survey of the evidence as follows:

"looking at the situation as a whole, there is good reason to think
that the Protestant Anglo-Saxons are not only losing ground
_relatively_, but must, at any rate in the East and middle East, be
suffering an actual decrease on a large scale. For it has been shown by
more than one sociologist (see, for example, the statement in _The
Family and the Nation_) that no stock can maintain itself with an
average of less than about four children per marriage, and from all
available data (it has not been found possible to obtain definite
figures for most of the Western and Southern States) we must see that
the average fertility of each marriage in this section of the American
people falls far short of the requisite four children. Judging by all
the figures at hand, the modern Anglo-Saxon American, with his high
standard of comfort, his intensely individualistic outlook on life, and
his intellectual and emancipated but child-refusing wife, is being
gradually thrust aside by the upgrowth of new masses of people of
simpler tastes and hardier and more natural habits. And, what is of
peculiar interest to us, this new population will carry into ascendancy
those religious and moral beliefs which have moulded its type of life.

"The victory will be, not to those religious beliefs which most closely
correspond to certain requirements of the abstract intellect, but to
those which give rise, in practice, to a mode of life that is simple,
natural, unselfish, and adequately prolific--in other words, to a mode
of life that _works_, that is _Lebensfähig_." [41]

As things are, the original Protestant stock of America is being swamped by the growth of the Catholic, the Jewish, and the Negro population. Moreover, the United States is faced by the grave problem of a rapidly increasing coloured race. Despite this fact the American Malthusians are now demanding that a National Bureau should be established to disseminate information regarding contraceptives throughout their country! And what of the other reformers? They also are very busy. They have already abolished those cheering beverages from grapes and grain, or rather they have made alcohol one of the surreptitious privileges of the rich. They are seeking to enforce the Sabbath as a day of absolute rest, not for the glory of God but in order that tired wage-slaves may have their strength renewed for another week of toil in the factories and the mills. Again, they would uproot from the homely earth that pleasant weed whose leaves have made slaves of millions since the days of Sir Walter Raleigh. All these things would they do. There are some things the reformers have not done, and these things are recounted by an American writer, Dr. Anthony M. Benedik:

"The divorce peril, the race-suicide evil, the greed for ill-gotten
gold, things like these the reformers touch not. And these things it is
which harm the soul. Abolishing the use of alcoholic drinks and of
tobacco, putting the blue laws into effect, suppressing all rough
sports, may make a cleaner, more sanitary, more hygienic, a quieter
world. And yet there keep recurring to mind those words of the Master
of mankind, 'What doth it profit a man if he gain the world and suffer
the loss of his soul?' What worthy exchange can a man make for his
soul?" [42]

On the other hand, it is good to read that the Governor of New York has recently signed a bill making it a misdemeanour for landlords to refuse to rent apartments to families in which there are children. In that State children thus regain equal rights with dogs, cats, and canaries. Is it too much to ask of the House of Commons that they should pass a similar law? We shall see.

The dangers of birth control were apparent to that great American, Theodore Roosevelt, when he said:

"The greatest of all curses is the curse of sterility, and the severest
of all condemnations should be that visited upon wilful sterility. The
first essential in any civilisation is that the man and the woman shall
be the father and the mother of healthy children, so that the race
shall increase and not decrease." [43]