WiLLCox: Differential Fecundity 



147 



larly. So the tendency is to a reduction 

 in the size of families rather than to a 

 larger proportion of sterile unions. 



fewer births in the city. 



The influence of rural conditions upon 

 fecundity is best measured by the state- 

 ment that among wives born in this 

 country of native parents and married 

 between 10 and 20 years, 10 living in 

 urban districts have had on the average 

 24 or 25 children, while 10 living in 

 rural districts have had on the average 

 34 children, indicating that the fecun- 

 dity of wives of a given nativity class 

 living in the country is about two-fifths 

 greater than it is in the city. 



Perhaps the most important body of 

 information regarding differential fecun- 

 dity or comparative rates of natural 

 increase in the United States has been 

 secured as an immediate or remote 

 result of the addition to the Massa- 

 chusetts census schedule of 1875 of the 

 question, "Number of children borne 

 by women," the object of which "was 

 to ascertain the relative fecundity of 

 women of different nationalities and to 

 settle . . . the question which con- 

 tinually arises concerning the growth 

 of our native population as compared 

 with that of our foreign bom."' Ten 

 years later similar information was 

 sought in fuller detail by asking of each 

 married woman two questions : ' ' Mother 

 of how many children" and "Number 

 of those children now living." The 

 results of tabiilating the answers to 

 these questions were careftilly analyzed 

 in the state census and were also of 

 importance to Dr. Kuczynski in the 

 preparation of his articles. The interest 

 aroused in these questions and their 

 answers was so great that five years 

 later, in 1890, the same questions were 

 placed on the schedules of the United 

 States census, but unfortunately no 

 tabulation of the results was ever made. 

 In 1900, after much consideration by 

 the office, the same questions were asked 

 again, and again, after much prelimi- 

 nary work had been done upon the 

 answers, the work was discontinued and 



no results ever reached the public except 

 for the fragmentary tabulation made by 

 the Immigration Commission and apply- 

 ing to about 4% of the popiilation. ' 



VALUABLE DATA NEGLECTED. 



Yet again at the census in 1910 these 

 questions were repeated a third time 

 and in the Report of the Director of the 

 Census to the Secretary of Commerce 

 and Labor for that year one may read 

 the following passage: "It is also pro- 

 posed ... to work out from the 

 returns on the schedules statistics with 

 regard to fecundity as indicated by the 

 number of children born and the num- 

 ber living for women of different classes 

 in comparison with their age and the 

 duration of marriage. ... A con- 

 siderable amount of preliminary work 

 on this subject was undertaken at the 

 census of 1900 but the results were never 

 tabulated or published. It is respect- 

 fully suggested that the vSecretary 

 recommend to Congress that the Director 

 of the Census be authorized to tabulate 

 the more important information on this 

 subject for the 1900 census as well as 

 that for 1910. . . . This subject is 

 one of profound importance and the 

 census schedules furnish data by which 

 conclusions of the utmost value can be 

 readily drawn. A plan has been devised 

 by which the expense of . . . tabu- 

 lating the results on this subject for the 

 census of 1910 will be much less than 

 would have been necessary to complete 

 the work on the lines begun in 1900."^ 



At the present time no funds are avail- 

 able for completing this work and there 

 is danger that for the third time the 

 inquiry will suffer shipwreck. This 

 investigation has been imitated abroad, 

 some of the most interesting and sig- 

 nificant results of the last French census 

 and also of the last British census 

 being derived from the answers to 

 similar questions. In my opinion the 

 failure to utilize the answers to these 

 questions was one of the main defects 

 of the census of 1890, was the most 

 serious defect of the census of 1900 and 

 now bids fair to be the most serious 



'Mass. Census of 1875, Vol. 1, p. xli. 

 8Re[)ort of the Director for 1909-10, pp. 45-6. 



