210 



'J'he Journal uf Heredity 



The next subject is of special interest 

 as viewing from a new anj^le that 

 perennial question whether the co- 

 educational institution fosters matri- 

 monial tendencies. This question takes 

 the form, what ])ercentaj.je of the 

 students of either sex who marry have 

 presumably made the acquaintance of 

 their future consorts throuj^h the in- 

 fluence of the college associations, or, 

 as expressed in the talole, have "married 

 within the college." In view of the 

 opinion so largely prevalent, esijccially 

 in the early days of coeducation, which 

 led the oj^ponents of that mo\'ement 

 to the use of the derogatory term 

 "match factory," it is surprising to find 

 that less than one-fourth of the marry- 

 ing men (less than one-fifth of all male 

 graduates) married women of the col- 

 lege. In the earlier days the projjortion 

 was far less. It is interesting to note 

 that the percentage of men marrying 

 fellow-students steadily increases with 

 each decade. This appears to be ac- 

 counted for in part by the fact that 

 there is a constantly increasing groujj 

 of women available for selection. But, 

 as we shall see ]:)rcsently, this conclusion 

 must be drawn with some caution. 



Turning our attention to the statistics 

 for the women we meet with a suri)rising 

 contrast. First, there is the mucli 

 larger jjerccntage of women than of 

 men who marry fellow-students. Ilie 

 difference is even greater than ajDpcars 

 from the returns, for not only are there 

 women who marry and fail to graduate, 

 but also we must remember there was a 

 considerable body of women in the fine 

 arts college, es]jecially in the last two 

 decades, who are excluded from our 

 statistics for the women but, being 

 members of a common social groujj, 

 marriages with these are accounted in 

 the table for men as "within the col- 

 lege." The explanation most readily 

 offered for this contrast is that the 

 total number of women in the institu- 

 tion is much less than that of the men, 

 hence affording a smaller field of selec- 

 tion for the one sex than for the other. 

 This may be an imi)ortant factor in the 

 earlier decades and, combined with the 



small total attendance then, may be a 

 sufficient explanation. But it seems 

 hardl\' adequate to account for the high 

 ]:)ercentages in the later decades when 

 the total attendance of women, includ- 

 ing the fine arts school, was not only 

 large but equaled or exceeded that of 

 the men. In 1872 there were in the 

 college 26 women and 82 men; in 1882. 

 129 women and 154 men; in 1892. 321 

 women and 247 men; and in lOOO, 500 

 women and 506 men.- 



WOMKX'S .M.\RRIAGi:S DIXKKASIi: 



The second sur])rising feature in this 

 ])art of the table is the fact that in the 

 last four decades there is a steady de- 

 cline in the percentages for the w^omen. 

 If the increase of marriage within the 

 college grou]j on the jjart of the men 

 seemed accounted for by the increased 

 size of the social grou]j and consequent 

 larger field for marriage selection, how 

 shall we account for this precisely re- 

 versed result on the part of the women 

 under the same condition? It is not 

 clear that this is at all correlated with 

 the general decline in per cent of mar- 

 riages, for these last figures are the i^er 

 cent of married women, not of all 

 women. It may be suggested that 

 while the absolute munber in the social 

 group is increasing the ratio of men to 

 women is decreasing, thus rendering 

 the field of selection for the women re- 

 latively smaller though absolutely larger. 

 In this case the explanation of the 

 phenomenon is chiefly statistical. With- 

 out corrcsjjonding data froin other co- 

 educational schools further discussion of 

 the matter would seem to be i)rofitlcss. 



We now come to the last six colimins 

 of the tables which have to do sjjccific- 

 ally with the fecundity of the graduates 

 and survival of offs])ring. Children 

 were accovnited as surviving unless 

 known to have died under the age of 

 twent\'. This age was selected as 

 aiJi)roximating independence of ];arcntal 

 care. Since there is no unifoim i)ractice 

 as to what constitutes " survival,"' com- 

 ])arison on this i)oint with the findings of 

 others is impracticable. In the original 

 tables the i)ro])ortion of the sexes in the 



■ Annual Catalogue, vSyracusc University, 



