t84 popular science MONTHLY. 



In view of the data here presented the college graduate does more 

 towards reproducing the population than does the native American of 

 other classes — this is true even of Bowdoin alumni but not of those 

 of Harvard with a lower marriage rate. 



I am well aware that this statement must cause surprise. It is 

 contrary to all tradition, but in harmony with the conditions known 

 to exist in all countries of the old world where recent statistical study 

 has enabled us to make such comparisons. 



Resume. — The data now available indicate that the highly edu- 

 cated male element does more towards reproducing itself than any 

 other large grouj) of our native population. The marriage rate is the 

 same, and the number of surviving children to the family is greater 

 than it is for the native population at large, so that we can no longer 

 accuse the college graduate or, if I may say, 'the highly educated 

 male portion of our pojDulation, ' of having an exceptionally small 

 family, and of doing less than other groups towards reproducing the 

 population; nor must we lay the blame for the low fecundity of the 

 native American family on higher education. Shortening the term 

 of college study will effect no change. Wealth, luxury and social 

 ambition are cause of the diminishing size of the family and of race 

 decline. The factors are the same which have been active in earlier 

 civilizations as they are to-day : increasing wealth and the introduction 

 of foreign manners are pointed out as causing in ancient Eome the 

 lessening fertility among the better classes which preceded political 

 disruption. Cause and effect were the same and even the methods 

 employed to thwart the tendencies of nature were the same: "Few 

 children are born in the gilded bed, to the wealthy dame, so many 

 artifices has she, and so many drugs, to render women sterile and 

 destroy life within the womb" (Juvenal Sat. VI., 11. 594). 



The assumption of a false social position, the struggle for the 

 attainment of luxury even more than its possession, leads to the limita- 

 tion of the family, by 'the increased amount of restraint exercised,' as 

 one author delicately expresses it, but to speak without circumlocution, 

 by often ruinous measures for the prevention of conception, and by 

 criminal means for the destruction of the product of such conception 

 if it does accidentally occur. Such, in plain words, are the causes 

 which lead to tlie small size of the American familv of all classes. 



