48o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



earlier than they otherwise could, and perhaps have more children. 

 In England, at any rate, the birth rate is highest in those counties where 

 we find the largest proportion of women employed in factories ; namely, 

 in the urban, industrial counties of ISTottingham, Staffordshire and 

 Durham. Here we also find large numbers of married women, who are 

 under age — in Durham over 23 per cent. — and the highest infant mor- 

 tality. The infants born to these working girls have the highest mor- 

 tality from premature birth, deficient vitality and all congenital defects; 

 and all these working mothers have such a high death rate from all 

 causes among their neglected children, that the increase of births, which 

 results from this employment of young women, is wholly undesirable 

 and results in deterioration of the population. 



The last factor in my list was the increased demand for luxuries. 

 A great many young men of marriageable age in the business and pro- 

 fessional classes postpone marriage year after year, and perhaps renounce 

 it altogether, because of the false idea that they must provide a wife 

 with a six-room house, two servants, cut glass, fine furniture, fine 

 clothes, and all the other luxuries which she or her richer friends enjoy. 

 In short he " must have at least five thousand a year." The same selfish 

 refusal to give up any unnecessary creature comforts after marriage 

 makes many women stifle their maternal instinct and spend their sub- 

 stance on automobiles instead of on children. Mr. Roosevelt's well- 

 known sermons against race suicide as a selfish, unpatriotic shirking by 

 modern women of their highest duty to the state indeed applies with 

 fairness only to wealthy women, who deliberately barter their unborn 

 children for luxury and freedom from maternal suffering and cares; 

 " but these rich women and their husbands, who are equally to blame, 

 well deserve our ex-presidenf s stern reproofs. In this modem growth 

 of luxury the most dangerous feature from the eugenic point of view 

 is the superfluity of things demanded for children by middle-class 

 parents "in order to keep up with the procession," as the phrase is. 

 This "keeping up with the procession" has an interesting sociological 

 basis, which deserves mention here. 



The phrase really means the attempt to equal one's neighbors and 

 business acquaintances in all the externals of life, particularly in dress, 

 in order to maintain or better one's social position. And the economic 

 basis of this well-nigh universal endeavor to dress better than one can 

 afford is the class struggle. The upper classes always feel that they 

 must show their superiority by dressing more expensively or in ?onie new 

 style; while the lower classes as continually attempt to obliterate this 

 class distinction by imitating their dress and manners. 



The following quotation from a recent article in the Ix)S Angeles 

 Times shows what the modern standard of expenditure for boys and 

 girls is in the middle class. 



