ECONOMIC FACTORS IN EUGENICS 473 



among the native ])0|)ulation, l)y means of the disastrous competition 

 introduced. Indeed the arrival during the years from 1830 to 1840, of 

 large numbers of Irisli and Gorman peasants who had a much lower 

 standard of living, and so lowered the general level of wages, was 

 nothing less than an economic disaster for our old American stock. 

 They shrank from the inferior competition, and were naturally loth to 

 bear children, who must compete in the labor market with these un- 

 welcome invaders. There is overwhelming evidence that the birth rate 

 in all countries has always been much affected by economic changes. 

 Professor Richmond Mayo Smith, for example, says in his "Statistics 

 and Sociology " that a sudden fall in the birth rate is the result of war 

 or of commercial distress or of economic disaster. We have seen that 

 the rapid immigration of European peasants about 1830 was truly an 

 economic disaster for the native New Englanders; and there is no 

 reason to doubt that these unfavorable economic conditions were respon- 

 sible for the great fall in their birth rate. Benjamin Kidd has said in 

 this connection: "The unwillingness of men to marry and bring up 

 families in a state of life lower than that into which they themselves 

 were born is one of the most powerful of known influences working 

 to restrict the birth rate." The causal connection between this immi- 

 gration into New England and the decline in the native birth rate is 

 deduced especially from the fact that this decline appeared first and 

 most markedly in those verv states and counties into which the immi- 

 grants chiefly went. 



This check in the increase of the native population was so effect- 

 ive that in 1850, in spite of the immigration of nearly two million 

 persons during the preceding decade, our total population was only O.Oi 

 per cent, more than it would have been from natural increase alone at 

 the former birth rate. This check on the native increase has persisted, 

 indeed strengthened, with the passing decades and the ever-increasing 

 immigration of poorer and poorer stock from Europe and Asia; so 

 that in the Report of the Industrial Commission in 1901 Mr. Walker 

 maintained that " if there had been no immigration into this country 

 during the past ninety years, the native element would long have filled 

 the place the foreigners have usurped." 



I shall consider the method of action of economic conditions on 

 the birth rate during the latter half of the last centur)', togther with 

 their action at the present time. But I must explain at the outset that 

 there is this important distinction between the two periods with regard 

 to the operation of economic forces: namely, during the former period, 

 when modern methods of limiting families were generally unknown, 

 economic pressure produced an involuntary reduction of the number 

 of children by postponing the age of marriage and by preventing many 

 marriages altogether; while during recent years, as Neo-malthusianism 



