The Fertile Farmers

In the hustle-bustle of the H-bomb age, the North American Hutterites* are remarkable for their ascetic isolation and puritanical dress. Scattered in some 100 farm settlements across the Dakotas, Montana and western Canada, 8,000 Hutterites live under a strict religious communism: no member may hold public office; all property is jointly owned.

Last week the Bulletin of the Population Reference Bureau reported that the Hutterites are notable in another respect: they may be the world's most prolific people. Their annual birth rate, 45.9 per 1,000, is almost double that of the U.S. (24.1). Thanks to modern medical care, the death rate is less than half as high as the U.S. rate. By 1970 the Hutterite population, continuing at its present rate, will more than double its size.

Why are the Hutterites so fertile? Their religious doctrine encourages large families, and they shun contraceptives. In the prosperous Hutterite communities, even the shiftless are cared for; no father wor ries about supporting nine or ten children or keeping up with the Joneses. Moreover, most Hutterites marry for keeps; since 1875 there has been only one Hutterite divorce.

Ironically, the Hutterites' own fertility may end their way of life. To support its booming population, the sect must enlarge its settlements, increase farm holdings by 500,000 acres. As the sect expands, many younger Hutterites may inevitably drift away to "the outside world" that their elders have so long avoided.

*A Protestant Anabaptist sect founded in 1528 by Jacob Hutter in the Swiss Tyrol.

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