THE DECLINING BIRTHRATE 1 67 



cause smaller families. Individual progress and advancement are expen- 

 sive. The expense of living is increasing rapidly and there is every 

 reason to think that this expense will continue to increase. It is not 

 wholly due to the temporary increase in the gold supply. Science has 

 taught us the sources of many diseases. Bacteria are partly understood ; 

 the danger of infectious disease has to be guarded against; pure food 

 must be provided. While we have learned to prevent many of the dis- 

 eases that were fatal to our ancestors, and while our food is better and 

 will likely tend to improve greatly in the future, it is also true that we 

 have to pay for the prevention and pure food which we enjoy. We must 

 have our sanitary homes; modern plumbing has become a necessity 

 but it is very expensive. A good home represents more wealth than the 

 ordinary man accumulates during a lifetime. Thoreau thought it a 

 shame that a man should be obliged to toil so many years in order to 

 secure a place in which to rest his head, and pleaded for more simple 

 homes. Regrettable as it is, it is true that the expensiveness of the home 

 necessary to insure health has increased since Thoreau' s day. 



The increase in the convenience and sanitation of the home is some- 

 thing that must needs be striven for by all the population. Each strives 

 to have the same comforts that others have, and when there is added 

 to this the thought that a home with these improvements is necessary 

 to health, it is idle to expect that there will not be intense striving to 

 secure it. 



The growth in the finer sentiments is also important in this connec- 

 tion. The progress of civilization is marked by an increase of what are 

 variously classed as humane sentiments, artistic sense and refinement. 

 We are a less brutal people than were our forebears of a few generations 

 ago. Our culture is superior, our lives are smoother and our tastes are 

 more refined. The use of tobacco by women we class as coarse. Bear- 

 baiting, the pleasure of our English ancestors, would arouse in us only 

 sentiments of disgust. The pleasures of a century ago have no place 

 in the more refined and cultured civilization of today. 



But the newer ideals of taste and refinement that have become a 

 part of the lives of modern peoples are not to be realized without effort. 

 To live in tasteful homes and to become refined and cultured costs time 



