DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE 191 



be certain of obtaining for many of their sons posts 

 in which, at all events, a living wage was secure. 

 Now the posts are filled by competitive examination 

 from a much larger field. Hence, one of the difficulties 

 in past years of finding suitable occupations for large 

 families of normal sons ; hence, possibly, a motive for 

 the present almost entire absence of the said large 

 families of normal sons. But the process has now 

 gone so far that, even with the enlargement of the 

 area of selection, suitable men cannot always be found 

 to fill rhe posts available. 



As a means of re-sorting the elements of our 

 population into more efficient combinations, the system 

 of competitive examinations has dangers not always 

 recognized. Examinations may be used to pick out 

 an individual in early life, and transplant him into 

 a sphere for which his ancestral history, his boyhood, 

 and his home surroundings have not prepared him. 



A man who rises too young and too fast is apt to 

 marry late or not at all. He has often considerable 

 difficulty at first in finding a wife who will assure his 

 position in the class to which he has attained. A 

 study of such data as are available indicates that, 

 if he does marry above his original station, he 

 carries to an extreme the present fashion, and has 

 very few children. Hence it follows that an efficient 

 system of catching ability from all classes, and making 

 it too easy for its possessor to rise, means an 

 efficient method of sterilizing ability, and of slowly or 

 quickly breeding it out of the nation. Better that an 

 able carpenter should develop slowly into a small 

 builder, leaving six tall sons to play their part manfully, 



