444 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



wives at the same age are not uncommon. Their birth rate is also 

 above that of the non-Jewish population in those countries, as was 

 shown to be the case in Algeria. 



In western Europe and America, where the Jews have been in- 

 tensely influenced by the occidental social environment, their marriage 

 rates are low. But even here conditions have not always been the 

 same as we find them to-day. Statistics of marriage rates in the 

 beginning of the nineteenth century show conclusively that then the 

 Jews married earlier and had comparatively fewer celibates than the 

 christian population of Germany. Their economic, social and cultural 

 condition at that time was about the same as that of the Jews in eastern 

 Europe to-day. Even as late as 1861 to 1870 Austrian statistics show 

 that 34.3 per cent, of all the Jews who married were less than twenty- 

 four years of age, as against only 17.6 per cent, of christians who mar- 

 ried thus early; 23.5 per cent, of the Jewesses were married at this early 

 age, and only 15.1 of christian women. Conditions have changed 

 recently, as was shown above, going hand-in-hand with the change in 

 the sum total of the social, economic and intellectual conditions in 

 which the Jews find themselves at the beginning of the twentieth 

 century. 



Consanguineous Marriages 



The extraordinarily large number of physical and mental defectives 

 met with among the Jews in Europe has been in part attributed to the 

 frequency of marriage of near kin among them. All available statis- 

 tical evidence shows that consanguineous marriages are much more 

 often contracted among Jews than among others. Jacobs, adopting 

 Sir George H. Darwin's method, shows that in England 7.5 per cent, 

 of all Jewish marriages are between cousins, while among Englishmen 

 only two per cent, are of this class. Stieda found that in Lorraine the 

 proportion of consanguineous marriages is 1.86 per thousand ordinary 

 marriages among the protestants, 9.97 among catholics, and 23.02 

 among Jews. In Hungary marriage of near kin can only be con- 

 tracted after a special permission has been obtained from the civil 

 authorities. The data on the subject in that country are therefore 

 reliable. During 1901 such permission was granted 270 times to 

 Jews and 1,217 times to others. On a basis of the population, it 

 thus appears that the Jews obtained proportionately about five and one 

 half times as many permits as the christians. Among a thousand 

 christian marriages 5.8 were between cousins, while among a thousand 

 Jewish marriages there were 39.3. In Prussia the rates were in 

 1872-5, among the Jews 23.08 per thousand ordinary marriages; 

 protestants, 14.68, and catholics, 9.98. From figures collected by 

 Treitel in Berlin it appears that during 1900 the proportion of con- 



