i8o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



luxurious existence, to the ever-increasing desire for the luxuries of 

 life and the morbid craving for social dissipation and advancement. 

 It is due, as plainly expressed and openly advocated by many, to the 

 desire to have no children or only such a number as husband and wife 

 believe in their wisdom suitable and adapted to their ideals of com- 

 fort, and to their sujjposed financial possibilities; the most important 

 factor is the "deliberate and voluntary avoidance, the prevention of 

 child-bearing on the part of a steadily increasing number of married 

 couples,* who not only prefer to have but few children, but who 'know 

 how to obtain their wish' " (Dr. John S. Billings). Professional ob- 

 servation and the plainly expressed ideas of men and women who do 

 not hesitate to make known their views substantiate the above, as 

 does the startling decrease of fecundity and the corresponding increase 

 in sterility in the face of the scientific progress of the day in all that 

 pertains to the physical well-being and health of woman. This de- 

 crease of fecundity in the face of advance in obstetrical and gynecolog- 

 ical science, which should lead to a healthier condition of the child- 

 bearing organs — a decrease confined to one element of the community, 

 the native American — clearly proves the condition to be one determined 

 by the volition of that element. Families are small among all classes 

 of the native-born, large among all classes of the foreign-born popula- 

 tion, showing that the cause of this low fecundity is not universal but 

 it is one confined to the native element only; this limiting of the 

 small family to the native of all classes in itself would prove that 

 education is not that cause, were such proof not made needless by 

 the fact that the family of the educated man is actually larger than 

 that of the native male throughout the state. 



Let us no longer beat about the bush and attribute the low fecundity 

 now prevailing to later marriages and higher education. This ex- 

 planation has been accepted because it is a tradition and universally 

 credited; it is not so in other countries, and it has never been proved 

 to be so for the United States. Theoretically later marriage must, it 

 would seem, lead to the lowering of the birth rate. Facts plainly dis- 

 prove this, and why should higher education lessen the size of the 



* I liave used the word couples intentionally, though in the original it is 

 icoiiicn; Dr. Billings says tliat the cause of declining fecundity is in the "vol- 

 untary prevention of child-bearing on the part of a steadily increasing number 

 of married women,' indicating that the wife is mainly at fault, whilst in truth 

 it is the husband to an equal and even a greater extent, according to my ob- 

 servation. 



]n defense of the American woman it is but right to call attention to this 

 fact and to correct the false impressions which are prevalent. This assertion 

 is substantiated by experience and by the carefully prepared Michigan registra- 

 tion reports. 



