THE DECLINING BIRTHRATE 



J 75 



great numbers of them made unhappy marriages as there was then no 

 other alternative. Now many of those to whom a desirable opportunity 

 does not present itself do not marry at all. Hence, the increasing pro- 

 portion of unmarried women between the ages of 20 and 35 in the United 

 States. 



Unmarried Females in the United States — Number and Percentage of 

 Females in Each Group Unmarried in 1890 and 1900* 



* Census 1900, Population, Part II, p. lxxxix 



When married women work in factories there is also a tendency to 

 lower the birthrate. Witness the following from Sydney Webb concern- 

 ing conditions in the mill towns of England: 



The decline in the birthrate is exceptionally marked where the inconvenience of 



having children is specially felt Where married women habitually go to work 



in factories, and where their earnings form an important element in the weekly income 

 of the family, the interruption caused by maternity is probably most acutely felt. 

 The enforcement by the Factory and Workshops Acts of 1891 and 1901 of four weeks' 

 absence from employment after childbirth comes as an additional objection. More- 

 over, in the factory districts the later age at which children can now become produc- 

 tive wage-earners has certainly rendered large families less economically desirable 

 than of yore. It is, therefore, of some significance that the ten towns in all England 

 in which the relative fall in the birthrate between 1881 and 1901 is most startlingly 

 great are Northampton, Halifax, Burnley, Blackburn, Derby, Leicester, Bradford, 

 Oldham, Huddersfield, and Bolton — all towns in which an exceptionally large pro- 

 portion of married women are engaged in factory work, in textiles, hosiery or boots. 



He was unable to furnish any statistics of the decline in the birthrate 

 among the married women teaching in the schools, but stated that it 

 was known to be great. 1 



The conclusion of this study would seem to be that there is in some 



1 Webb, Sydney, Fabian Tract, No. 131. [Mass. Labor Bulletin, Vol. XII, No. 3, p. 157, October, 1907.] 



