DR. CAROLINE HEDGER'S PAPER 293 



year, gave her inaugural address on the Making of 

 Citizens. She stated that colleges had nothing to 

 do with parenthood, and the figures from her own 

 college bear her out to quite an alarming extent. 

 There are two or three possibilities on the lack of 

 surviving children from this large institution. It 

 is true that the College is in New England, where 

 the women in the population outnumber the men, 

 but the census of 1890 gives roughly for New 

 England the proportion of seven unmarried women 

 to every ten married ones, while the Wellesley 

 proportion is almost one to one. Did their intellectual 

 acumen make them impatient with the limitations 

 of the minds of men less well educated, less alert ? 

 Did their high moral plane forbid their mating with 

 the unfit, and did they have difficulty in finding men 

 with similar standards? The 1,001 families with 

 no children speak eloquently of four possibilities : 

 one, they could not reproduce ; two, they could not 

 bring about the survival of their children ; three, 

 they were unwilling to undergo the sacrifice, the 

 fatigue, the limitation of intellectual and social pursuits, 

 all necessary for the working out of the vast plan 

 of evolution ; four, they could not withstand the 

 economic pressure. 



CONCLUSION. 



We have to study thoroughly breast-feeding in 

 relation to the educational stresses and child-bearing 

 in relation to menstruation. We have to adjust 

 consistently our schools to the maternal possibility 

 of the girl. If she can really develop with stair- 

 climbing, examinations, music, and multitudinous 

 social distractions, all well and good. If she cannot 

 come to full development under this kind of treatment, 

 we must know it and relieve the strain. 



Few schools show constructive ideas on the con- 

 servation of the girl's reproductive life. Few schools 



