172 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDUCATION NOT THE CAUSE OF EACE DECLINE. 



By GEORGE J. ENGELMANN, M.D., 



BOSTON. 



"'VT'ALE graduate families have been growing steadily smaller, says 

 -*- Mr. Clarence Deming in an interesting review (Yale Alumni 

 Weekly, March 4, 1903) based upon class returns which show a 

 gradually decreasing fecundity from 1810 to 1880: this statement 

 together with the small size of the Harvard family as revealed by the 

 report of President Eliot, has justly directed attention to the ap- 

 parently sad family condition prevalent among college graduates, 

 or, as it has been expressed, among 'the highly educated portion of 

 our population'; and it is generally assumed that this small family 

 size pertains mainly to the highly educated, that conditions are 

 better among the — let us say — less highly educated. It has been in- 

 ferred that college graduates' families stand alone in not reproducing 

 themselves and 'not adding to the increase of the population,' and 

 that other portions of the population do so reproduce and add to the 

 increase. Accepting this, it naturally follows that education, which 

 has caused the mischief, must be suitably regulated. One suggestion 

 is to shorten the term of study. But are the premises correct? 



Speculation has been rife, and the small size of the graduate 

 family is discussed far and wide without ever a thought as to what the 

 conditions among the great mass of our native population may be, 

 and yet it would be well to establish the facts in the case, and to de- 

 termine the existence of an exceptionally low fecundity among college 

 graduate families before deciding on cause and cure. 



True, the average graduate family does not reproduce itself, but no 

 more does that of any other group of our native American population, 

 and the surviving family, the net family of the college graduate is 

 not smaller, but actually larger than that of his less highly educated 

 brother. This points to an unusually low rate of reproduction for the 

 entire native-born element of our population; in fact the conditions 

 now existing among the American people are worse than those found 

 in any other country. They are those of a decadent race, those of 

 Greece and Rome in the period of decline ; and again and again, within 

 the past few years, have I urged that the attention of thinking men 

 be seriously given to a consideration of the alarming status attained. 



