This early short film probably won't make sense to most modern audiences. Its title "The Strenuous Life; or, Anti-Race Suicide" may help some acquainted with early 20th Century American history to understand it, but most viewers today would probably need some background. Audiences in 1904 would've presumably been familiar with the phrases "the strenuous life" and "race suicide"; additionally, exhibitors often provided lecturers at screenings to further explain films to audiences back then. "The strenuous life" was a phrase then-US President Teddy Roosevelt often used and for various causes, including promoting his athletic and outdoorsy way of life or to advocate his imperialistic foreign policies. The second part of this film's title "Anti-Race Suicide" makes clear the specific view of Roosevelt's that it's parodying. Roosevelt encouraged Americans of Northern European decent to have more children, as he and others feared that affluent white America was otherwise committing "race suicide". This became a popular view supported by the pseudoscience of eugenics in the early 20th Century, which in its most negative sense led to forced sterilization of mentally-ill persons, as well as racist immigration restrictions and marriage regulations in the US and elsewhere. Eugenics eventually fell out of favor after the Nazis found it as inspiration for the Holocaust.
Thus, in this film of six shots, a man arrives home with a doctor. We discover that it's because his wife is pregnant and in delivery after a nurse brings the man a newborn child. The man is excited and weighs the child. Shot five is a match-on-action cut to a medium shot; the filmmaker here Edwin S. Porter had previously employed this technique in "The Gay Shoe Clerk" (1903), which he learned from the films of George Albert Smith, such as "As Seen Through a Telescope" (1900), "The Little Doctors" (1901) and "Mary Jane's Mishap" (1903). The climactic gag comes when the man is presented three more children. He and his wife have suddenly fulfilled President Roosevelt's call, but the man in the film finds that to be much too strenuous.
Thus, in this film of six shots, a man arrives home with a doctor. We discover that it's because his wife is pregnant and in delivery after a nurse brings the man a newborn child. The man is excited and weighs the child. Shot five is a match-on-action cut to a medium shot; the filmmaker here Edwin S. Porter had previously employed this technique in "The Gay Shoe Clerk" (1903), which he learned from the films of George Albert Smith, such as "As Seen Through a Telescope" (1900), "The Little Doctors" (1901) and "Mary Jane's Mishap" (1903). The climactic gag comes when the man is presented three more children. He and his wife have suddenly fulfilled President Roosevelt's call, but the man in the film finds that to be much too strenuous.