THE EARLY MARRIAGE QUESTION 



IT IS important," Galton remarked 

 in ISSv?, "to obtain a just idea of 

 the relative cfFects of early and 

 late marriaj^es." He attempted 

 to do this in several ways, one of the 

 most striking of which was that pub- 

 lished in his "Inquiries into Human 

 Faculty," and based on Duncan's statis- 

 tics from a maternity hospital. Divid- 

 ing the mothers into five-year grou])S, 

 according to their age, and stating the 

 medium age of the grou]:), for the sake 

 of simplicity, instead of giving the 

 limits, he arrived at the following table: 



Age of Mother at Her 

 Marriage 



17 

 22 

 27 



32 



Approximate Average 

 Ferti'ity 



0.00— 6 X 1.5 

 7.50—5 X 1.5 

 6.00—4 X 1.5 

 4.50—3 X 1.5 



"which shows that the relative fertility 

 of mothers married at the ages of 17, 22, 

 27 and M respectively is as 6, 5, 4 and 

 3 ajjproximately. 



"The increase in population by a 

 habit of early marriages," he adds, "is 

 further augmented by the greater 

 rajjidity with which the generations 

 follow each other. By the joint effect 

 of these two causes, a large effect is in 

 time jjroduced." 



R. H. Johnson considered this ])hase 

 of the question gra]>hically in the 

 Journal of Heredity for March, 1914. 

 He said: "Suppose a generation to be 

 25 years or 33y^ years res])ectively in 

 two different stocks, and that all 

 persons marry and each coujjIc have 

 four surviving children, or two for each 

 jiarent. The result is that the 25-year 

 stock constitvites two-thirds of the 

 population at the end of a century." 



By a combination of these two causes 

 (to which might be added the lower 

 death-rate claimed among the children 

 of young parents), the result is, as 

 Galton says, that "if the races best 



' Results of liar! y Marria^jt-, by Casper L. Rcdfiekl. Journal of Heredity, V', 7, p. 316, jtily, 

 1914. Mr. Rfdfield's m-iu-ral position on the qiu-stion of early marriage is set forth fully in liis 

 book "The Control of Heredity" (1903), and summarily in his more recent work "Dynamic 

 Evolution" (New York and London, (). V. Putnam's Sons, 1914). 



92 



fitted to occupy the land are encouraged 

 to marry early, they will breed down 

 the others in a very few generations." 



Something similar has happened in 

 New England and many other regions, 

 where a fertile foreign stock, marr>'ing 

 early, has nearly supi)lanted the earlier 

 stock. The fact has frequently been a 

 text for eugenic sermons. 



But other eugenists have flatly denied 

 the desirability of this sort of selective 

 breeding, as ap]jlied to the htiman race. 

 They have alleged that early child- 

 bearing had a bad physical effect on the 

 mother, and both a bad i^hysical and a 

 bad mental effect on the offspring. 

 The latter charge was made in an 

 emj)hatic form by Casper L. Redfield 

 of Chicago, as an answer' to Professor 

 Johnson's article above cited. After 

 quoting Johnson's illustration, he wrote: 



ADVANTAGES CHALLENGED. 



"The object of reproducing at the 

 rate of four generations to the century 

 is, of course, to produce superior 

 indi\'iduals and increase the relative 

 number of them in the entire pojDula- 

 tion. Well, I will donate SI 00 to the 

 treasury of the American Genetic As- 

 sociation if it can be shown that any 

 su]X'rior in(li\-idual was e\-er produced 

 by breeding human beings as rajjidly 

 as four generations to the century. It 

 is only necessary to find some superior 

 individual from the intellectual stand- 

 l^oint whose date of birth is not more 

 than 100 years after the average date 

 of ])irth of his 16 grcat-great-grand- 

 l)arents. Any one of the 2000 or 3000 

 intellectually eminent men known to 

 history, who comes in the fotir-genera- 

 ti()ns-lo-a-centur\- class, will draw the 

 SIOO. 



"To make the matter interesting and 

 easy, I will be satisfied to give the SIOO 

 if there can be found more than three 



