Banker: Coeducation and Eugenics 



211 



offsj^ring was determined, but as there 

 appeared to be nothing of significance 

 in the results they are not reproduced 

 here. It is not necessary to enter into 

 further discussion of the details of this 

 ])art of the tables as the figures are 

 sufficiently clear. By \vhate\xT method 

 the facts are measured it is evident that 

 for both sexes there is a steady decline 

 in fecundity from the earlier to the later 

 years. This is in strict conformity 

 with the findings of others as to other 

 institutions, coeducational and non- 

 coeducational, for men or for women, 

 and has been shown to be true also of 

 non-college poijulations.^ There ap- 

 pears no reason to believe that this de- 

 cline is induced b}' any influence within 

 the college. The factor or factors are 

 more broadly social and the college, 

 any college, is only a phase of the larger 

 problem. It is, however, to be noted 

 from the tables that the married 

 college women under precisely the same 

 educational conditions as the men are 

 reproducing in a distinctly less degree, 

 and this, combined with the lower mar- 

 riage rate of the last decades, gives a to- 

 tal reproductive rate for all the women 

 graduates of only about half that for 

 the men. It seems conclusive that col- 

 lege-bred women under the same en- 

 vironmental influences are much less 

 reproductive than college-bred men, 

 and by inference are much less re- 

 productive than non-college-bred women 

 of the same social rank, i.e., the wives 

 of college men; for since some college 

 men marry college graduates the task 

 of maintaining the higher average for 

 the men falls chiefly on the non- 

 graduate wives. 



INFLUENCE OF COEDUCATION 



In view of the facts presented it seems 

 highly probable that Johnson and 

 Stutzmann'* have erred in their explana- 

 tion of the low birth rate revealed by 

 their studies of Wellesley College. The 

 conditions at Svracuse seem to have 



provided nearly everything which these 

 authors found lacking at Wellesley and 

 the figures for the two institutions con- 

 form with most surprising closeness. 

 The data for Wellesley are for the classes 

 1879-188cS. The period in our tables 

 most nearly approximating this is the 

 decade 18821891. To show the re- 

 markable conformity we reproduce them. 



Wellesley Syracuse 

 No. of children per graduate .86 .88 



No. of children per married 

 graduate 1.56 1 . 60 



We do not, however, lay great stress 

 upon the closeness of these figures, 

 which are doubtless in some degree 

 a coincidence, but our whole table 

 clearly shows that there prevails at 

 Syracuse the same low birth rate that 

 was found at Wellesley. The results 

 suggest very strongly that we have to 

 deal here with a cause that is not 

 peculiar to this or that college but is in 

 fact ver}' general. Like the decline in 

 birth rate already noted it perhaps per- 

 tains to a social group of which the 

 college life is only a phase. Neverthe- 

 less, the fact that the college woman in 

 the same educational environment dis- 

 plays such a decidedly and persistently 

 lower reproductive tendency than her 

 brother suggests that there is some 

 special sex reaction to the college en- 

 vironment. Is it not probable that the 

 college curriculum of the past as pre- 

 sented to the women, whether in the co- 

 educational or separate college, has had 

 the effect of segregating from the general 

 population on the average the non- 

 reproductive type of woman? In other 

 words the college environment, whether 

 social or intellectual, whether in its 

 ideals or its discipline, has not so much 

 perverted or suppressed the distinc- 

 tively female instincts as it has failed 

 stifficiently to appeal to them. As a 

 consequence the women who enter upon 

 the regular college course and carry it to 

 completion are on the average — for 

 there are many exceptions — ^more or 



^ Smith, Mary Roberts. Statistics of College and Non-college Women. American Sta- 

 tistical Association Publications, 7:1. 



Engelmann, George J. Education not the Cause of Race Decline. Popular Science Monthly, 

 June, 1903. 



■"Johnson, Roswell H., and Stutzmann, Bertha ]. Welleslev's Birth Rate. Jourxal of 

 Heredity, 6: 250-253, 1915. 



