250 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The English, it will be observed, never succeeded in doubling 

 themselves in any hundred years until 1780 to 1880, when they 

 almost quadrupled. 



Civilization, then, does not appear to be a very serious hin- 

 drance to rapidity of growth ; and the reason is evident. As com- 

 pared with barbarism, it produces a larger food supply, greater 

 variety of it, better houses, better sanitary arrangements, better 

 health, longer life, and stronger reasons for wanting to live and 

 wanting to enable others to live. The people of the middle ages 

 lacked skill in producing the comforts and necessaries of life, their 

 sanitary arrangements were shocking and their lives despondent. 

 They were visited with plagues and epidemics which have not 

 now been known for four hundred years. Their minds were 

 clouded with dreadful delusions, superstitions, and terrors which 

 produced the "dance of death " and the continual slaughter of 

 witches. A large proportion of their children died, and even 

 adult life was short. 



Long living and many who live long is as important an ele- 

 ment in the increase of population as numerous births. All the 

 children born in the United States in the year 1891, who die before 

 they are eight years old, will not increase the population either in 

 numbers or effective strength so much as one man born in that 

 year who lives to be thirty. The man, independently of his greater 

 usefulness, will be counted as an inhabitant in three censuses ; 

 the children will be counted in none. 



Paupers, savages, and other people of low life are often sup- 

 posed to multiply very fast because they seem to be so reckless in 

 the number of children that are born to them. But the same 

 shif tlessness which brings the children into the world surrounds 

 them with conditions that destroy them. Negroes are supposed 

 to be very prolific; but the death-rate among them in cities is 

 almost double the death-rate among whites ; and the death-rate 

 among negro children is more than double the death-rate among 

 white children. The woman of the slums, who was recently re- 

 ported to have said that she ought to know something about the 

 nurture of children because she had buried fourteen of her own, 

 was doubtless a person of excellent intentions ; but she has not 

 done so well for the republic as some less boastful mother who 

 has raised one son to maturity. 



It is often thoughtlessly asserted that modern city life de- 

 creases population. But, as compared with ancient city life, it 

 very much increases it. Previous to the year 1790, in all large 

 cities, the death-rate always exceeded the birth-rate. In London 

 the death-rate was often double the birth-rate. Immigration from 

 the rural districts and not their own power of reproduction kept 

 these cities from decay. Our modern cities contain certain dis- 



