320 MODERN PROBLEMS 



differences between the elements in the population to be due to 

 inherited characters or to varying social traditions — a question 

 to be discussed later — a change in the proportion of the different 

 elements will be of great importance. According to Hill, who 

 has investigated this matter in America, the percentage of white 

 women of native parentage under 45 years of age bearing no 

 children is 13-1, while the percentage of foreign women is 5-7. 

 The average number of children for white married women of 

 native parentage is 2-7, and for similar women of foreign parentage 

 4-4. Among the foreign women the average number of children 

 for a married English woman is 3-4, for a German 4-3, for an 

 Itahan 4-9, for a Pole 6-2.i The above is only one example of 

 conditions which obtain in many countries raising difficult 

 problems. 



The same problem arises in an even more important form when 

 there are in the same country races as different as the white and 

 the negro. In the United States and in South Africa the problem 

 assumes greater importance than elsewhere. In the latter country 

 the negroes are increasing faster than the white element of the 

 population. In America this has not been the case in the last 

 hundred years ; but the fact that the white element has main- 

 tained its relative position is due to the fact that in addition to 

 the increase in the native-born white population there has been 

 an increase due to immigration.^ 



8. The question of the relative rate of increase of the population 

 of different countries is a somewhat different matter. It is due 

 to many factors, one of the less important of which is that the 

 population of various countries does not approach equally closely 

 to the number desirable in each country. The chief factor is the 

 variation in the arts of production in use in each country. It 

 is only an extension of this fact that the natural resources of 

 different countries have been more exploited in some cases than 

 in others. In Russia the arts of production in use are less advanced 

 than in more western countries. The introduction of western 

 methods into such a country enables a rapid increase of population 

 to take place. During the same period the increase can only be 



' Hill, Am. Stat. Ass., vol. xiii, p. 590. An allied problem is that connected with 

 the proportion of various racial elements among the immigrants into a new coimtry. 

 Thus between 1900 and 1913 Great Britain contributed roughly one-third and the 

 United States and continental Europe two-thirds of the immigrants into Canada. 



' Tucker, Progress of the U.S.A., p. 98. 



