92 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ably not an exaggeration to say that to the average cost of each girl's 

 education through the high school must be added one unborn child. 



Our system of coeducation is favorable to conventional morality, 

 but not to romantic love. A man is no more a hero to his girl chums 

 than to his valet; a certain distance is necessary before the halo about 

 a girl's head becomes visible. Small doses confer immunity to the 

 larger passions. The 40,000 girls now in our colleges are putting off 

 marriage beyond the age when impulse is dominant. This is regarded 

 as one of the merits of the system; but it means that half of them 

 will not marry and that the other half will have families of the average 

 size of two children. Women of this sort ask too much of the men. 

 They want a kind of education and a kind of interests that can not 

 be universal ; they are not content to begin with the simple servantless 

 menage that satisfied their parents. It is well for family happiness 

 when husband and wife have interests in common; a university pro- 

 fessor can have to advantage a college-bred wife. But the superficial 

 culture of the American woman, the reading of the monthly magazines 

 and best-selling novels, the frequenting of those theaters, art exhibi- 

 tions and women's clubs, for which the husband has no time or taste, 

 are not conducive to harmony and homogeneity in family life. 



The economic employment of women in sedentary work and work 

 away from home, which is such a marked development of modern and 

 especially of American conditions, obviously tends to prevent marriage, 

 to limit the number of children and to break up the family. When 

 spinsters can support themselves with more physical comforts and 

 larger leisure than they would have as wives; when married women 

 may prefer the money they can earn and the excitement they can find 

 in outside employment to the bearing and rearing of children; when 

 they can conveniently leave their husbands should it so suit their fancy 

 — the conditions are clearly unfavorable to marriage and the family. 

 It is further an important consideration that men who must compete 

 in the market with women can not afford to marry and support a 

 family. Here again the school and the employment of female teachers 

 are dominant factors. 



There are in the United States about 400,000 women employed as 

 teachers, and the numbers are continually increasing. In our cities 

 there were at the time of the last census 76,348 female and 6,302 male 

 teachers, and the proportion of females has since increased, so that now 

 probably not more than one teacher in fifteen is a man. In one Ohio 

 town there are about 200 female teachers without a single man. In 

 the graduating class of a California normal school this year there were 

 272 girls and one man. In Germany, on the other hand, about two 

 thirds of the teachers are men. 



This vast horde of female teachers in the United States tends to 



