134 THE TREND OF THE RACE j 



I 

 continually rise out of the ranks of poverty, but those of shiftless ■ 

 habits, dull mentality, and little ambition constitute the kind of , 

 poor who are always with us. i 



A cooperative study made by Pearson and several collaborators i 

 (Elderton, Barrington, Lammotte and DeLaski) throws consid- ; 

 erable light on the relation between fecundity and the possession ; 

 of qualities of a socially valuable kind. Several of Pearson's ; 

 colleagues found in the laboring population of English towns \ 

 that there was a fairly high correlation between large families and \ 

 dirty homes (.41), low rent (.31), poor food {.;^s), insufficient ' 

 food (.35), low wages of father (.32) and irregularity of employ- i 

 ment. We may explain the low rent and the poor and insufficient | 

 food of large families as, in part at least, a consequence of their i 

 large size. There seems, however, no good reason to suppose that j 

 the possession of a large family would have any effect in lowering j 

 the wages of the father. Wages are at least a rough measure of | 

 the efficiency of the individual worker, and the fact that the men ! 

 who are poorly paid have a larger number of children than those ' 

 who receive better wages indicates that the less efiicient types I 

 have the highest degree of fecundity.^ Miss Elderton in her ^ 

 elaborate report on the English birth rate says of the artisan I 

 classes: "The poorest classes of all, those who cannot provide ; 

 for themselves but seek public dispensaries and maternity char- ' 

 ities for attendance, do not appear to limit their families, for very ! 

 many have large families running up to thirteen or more." > 



Dunlop gives data from Scotland based on the number of \ 



children per marriage lasting for 15 years, and in which the wives j 



were between 22 and 27 years of age at the time of marriage. ; 



■'1 



' Mr. S. Johnson in studying the fecundity of British workmen found that those ! 



with regular employment had on the average in 1908, 2.86 and in 1909-10, 2.71 ] 



children, while those with irregular employment had in these years 3.12 and 3.26 ! 



children. Jour. Roy. Stat. Soc. 75, 534-550, 1911-1912. .' 



