As to prices, it is not easy to come to a definite conclusion, as some articles have risen and some fallen in price; but there seems good ground for believing that the cost of living has risen comparatively little in Holland, and that real wages have therefore risen very materially during the period when they have been declining in this and other countries. It is certainly difficult in any case to see how the undoubtedly great advance in health and physique experienced by the Dutch population could have taken place without a great increase in real wages.
According to a diagram given in the Manchester Guardian of August 16th last the cost of living in Holland had gone up by 23 per cent. in 1912. An examination of detailed prices, however, showed a relatively small rise up to 1909.
These facts, together with many others which could be adduced, make it clear that in Holland, the only country in which the population problem has been realised and facilities for family limitation been extended to the poor, the expectations of the Neo-Malthusians have been completely justified, and their doctrines have received the confirmation of experience. Amsterdam, in which the first lady doctor in Holland opened a gratuitous clinic for the instruction of poor women in preventive methods, has now the lowest deathrate and infantile mortality of any European capital. And this is in no way attributable to any extension of State help either of a socialistic type, or of that familiar to us in this country, as Holland has been distinguished for its adherence to individualism, and has apparently adopted hardly any measure of State assistance.
_DR. S. ADOLPHUS KNOPF IN THE SURVEY, quoting Dr. J. Rutgers, Honorable Secretary to Neo-Malthusian League of Holland._
“All children you now see are suitably dressed, they look now as neat as formerly only the children of the village clergyman did. In the families of the laborers there is now a better personal and general hygiene, a finer moral and intellectual development. All this has become possible by limitation in the number of children in these families. It may be that now and then this preventive teaching has caused illicit intercourse, but on the whole morality is now on a much higher level, and mercenary prostitution with its demoralizing consequences and propagation of contagious diseases is on the decline.