THE DECLINING BIRTHRATE 165 



ability to pay is a determining factor in modern life, the greater will be 

 the struggle to secure financial power, and as early marriages and large 

 families are serious hindrances in this struggle, it is clear that the 

 economic forces of society will tend of themselves both to delay marriage 

 till a later period and to limit the size of the family on the part of those 

 that constitute the most aggressive section of the community. 



This movement is strengthened by the growth of democracy and the 

 doctrine of equality. During the past hundred years the whole world 

 seems to have adopted the philosophy that the highest achievement of 

 the individual is self-realization. This is the culmination of the philoso- 

 phy taught in the higher institutions of learning. The result is an enor- 

 mous emphasis on the individual, and upon his opportunities for devel- 

 opment and growth. Hence, the increase of education and culture. 

 Hence, also, the demand for regulation of industries to give equality of 

 opportunity to the young man beginning in life. The increase of oppor- 

 tunities for individual growth has increased personal competition. 

 Democracy has stimulated everyone to strive harder to win the race than 

 at any previous time in the history of the world. Modern education 

 has raised the general level of intelligence and the differences in this 

 respect between the various classes of society are not as wide as in the 

 early times when education was a luxury of the rich. Universal educa- 

 tion such as prevails in the United States tends also to increase the energy 

 spent in the endeavor to secure material comforts. Cultivating the mind 

 brings about a keener realization of the comforts and luxuries obtainable 

 as the result of labor and study. As the unsubdued lands disappear 

 expansion toward the West is checked, and competition increases. This 

 is conspicuously apparent in the United States and must in some degree 

 be the effect of the system of education so long in force here. James 

 Bryce, perhaps the keenest observer of American conditions, after an 

 absence of twenty years remarked that one of the most striking changes 

 here was the fact that every young man seemed to have a "larger head 

 of steam on" than had his father who started active business life two or 

 three decades ago 1 This is only another way of saying that competition 

 is much keener now than in the earlier period. 



1 Bryce, "America Revisited," Outlook, Vol. LXXTX, p. 734, March 25, 1905. 



