Dwindling German Birth-rate.

New York Times 100 years ago today, August 27, 1913:
    We called attention recently to the fact that the rate of natural increase in the population of Prussia has been maintained for some thirty years by the decline of the death-rate, offsetting an equal decline in the birthrate. The excess of births over deaths remains at 13 per 1,000, but while the deaths have fallen from 26 to 16, the births have also fallen from 39 to 29.
    The statistics for the empire, as given in the Deutsche Tageszeitung, are interesting in connection with those of Prussia. They show that the number of births per 1,000 declined from 37 in 1901 to 33 in 1908 and to 30.7 in 1910. For the past two years the figures are given only for some of the larger cities, but they are even less favorable. They are as follows for the five cities cited:

        1901~1910~Decrease.
    Berlin 27.7~22.3~5.4
    Hamburg 30.0~23.9~6.1
    Leipsic 35.0~25.2~9.8
    Munich 37.0~24.0~13.0
    Stettin 38.0~25.1~12.9

    Here, in the chief cities of Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, and the free State of Hamburg, as well as in Pomerania, there is a decline in the birth-rate of from 20 per cent. to 37 per cent. within a single decade. At a Congress of the Anthropologic Society recently held in Nuremberg, Counselor Luscham discussed in no cheerful spirit the significance of these figures. Naturally, in German fashion, he dwelt most on the effect of the change now going on upon the human material for the German Army. He declared that the "system of two children" was making headway in Germany; that it already prevailed in Berlin and other large cities and that it was spreading to the farming districts. He estimated at a half million per year the number of abortions, and expressed the opinion that within no very long time Germany, which was borrowing from France the "two-child system," would be obliged also to borrow the plan of longer military service. While the excess of births over deaths remains at 13 in 1,000 and in France is nearly nil, this danger does not seem imminent, but if the present tendency continues its realization is a question of time only.