WILBUR ON VITAL STATISTICS OF MICHIGAN. 105 



parison would be even more disadvantageous to the natives if pure 

 native stock were included only under that term. By "native-born 

 women," the descendants of foreigners in the first generation are in- 

 cluded in part, and it is probable that the birth-rate of this class is 

 higher than that of the Americans of longer residence in this country. 

 The fact that the present fecundity of the native population of the 

 state is insufficient to maintain it intact, will also appear from direct 

 consideration of the figures. Two individuals are merged in the family, 

 and in time are removed by death, their places being made good by their 

 children. It is evident that the average number of children per marriage 

 must be sufficiently great to enable at least two children to survive to 

 maturity in order to maintain the population in a stationary condition. 

 The losses by death of infants and children before reaching reproductive 

 vears are verv large. Moreover, under our social conditions, very many 



t/ ft/ C t' ft/ 



adults, and perhaps an increasing number, refrain from marriage. The 

 ratio given in the table, 3.0 children per marriage, may be slightly 

 understated on account of the prevalence of divorce, whereby the same 

 woman may appear in the records of marriages several times, but on 

 The whole it seems clear that the margin of one child per marriage is 

 insufficient to repair the losses indicated and leave the native popula- 

 tion of the state infarct. 



It will be noted that the decline in fecundity through the four 

 quinquennial periods is comparatively slight, being only from 3.6 children 

 per marriage to native women in ls7.~)-79 to 3.0 in 1890-94. I believe, 

 although I have no statistics to prove it for Michigan as our registra- 

 tion records began in 1867, that the great decline in the fecundity of 

 native marriages took place in the preceding generation. Xot the 

 fathers but the grandfathers of the present generation of Americans 

 were men of large families. 



The native American race, comprising largely the descendants of 

 settlers from New England and New York, has played a large and im- 

 portant part in the development of the state, and has impressed upon 

 its institutions those characteristics that stamp it as one of the states 

 in the union most typically representative of true American ideas. 

 Even today nearly ten per cent of the population of the state were born 

 in New York. The splendid school system of Michigan, her courts of 

 justice and public institutions, her magnificent record in the civil war, 

 — all these speak in emphatic tones of the worth of that "population and 

 breed of men," 1 the native American citizens of the state, which is now 

 giving way, so our statistics indicate, to the recent immigrants and 

 their descendants. 



About three-fifths of the present population of Michigan are either 

 foreign-born or the children in the first generation of foreign-born par- 

 ents. And our cities are even to a greater degree so constituted, nearly 

 four-fifths of the inhabitants of Detroit being of foreign birth or parent- 

 age. 



The present paper has not been presented from the standpoint of an 

 alarmist, but simply that the attention of the members of the Academy 

 might be called to the data bearing upon the important social changes 

 now proceeding in the state. No consideration will be paid to the causes 

 and probable consequences of the variations in the constitution of the 

 14 



