206 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
even in cities the country-born have larger families than the true urban 
population. The higher rate of child mortality in the towns increases 
this difference, so that there is no part of England where the rural areas 
are not more effectively fertile than the small towns and these than the 
county boroughs. Their greater numbers, however, ensure that the urban 
population makes the bigger actual contribution to future generations. 
The rate of increase of the population is dependent upon the fertility, the 
age of marriage, the proportion of married individuals and the death rate, 
especially in early life. Of these there is no reason to suppose fecundity 
as opposed to fertility has undergone any change, but the other factors 
have shown marked differences both from time to time and from one social 
class to another. 
Little seems to be known of the age of marriage or the extent to which 
any class remained celibate in early days; there were certainly restrictions 
on the marriage of serfs, while in the later medieval period the craft 
guilds opposed the marriage of apprentices, and until the nineteenth 
century subordinates in industries and handicrafts usually lived in and 
did not marry until they became master men. The less skilled workers 
soon attain to their maximum earning capacity and marry early, while 
the office worker and professional man has to wait to establish his position. 
The agricultural classes and skilled artisans also are noted to marry later 
than either the unskilled workers, the miners or the factory operatives. 
The census of England and Wales for 1911 * shows that the highest 
proportion of married men is to be found among the miners, who are 
followed at some little distance by the artisans and textile operatives ; 
while the agricultural labourers and the professional classes show the 
lowest marriage rate of all. The latter figures have a distinctly dysgenic 
significance which is accentuated by a consideration of the later age of 
marriage in these classes. Failure to mate is even more marked among 
the professional women than among the men and has steadily increased 
decade after decade. 
During recent years there has been a decline in fertility, a process 
which began in the higher classes, who have shown the phenomenon through- 
out the whole period in which registration data have been available. It 
is difficult to say what may have been the case in the past, but early 
genealogies usually record large families though relatively few survivors 
to maturity, so much so that the population was almost stationary between 
1700 and 1750. From the economic standpoint, Pearson,*® investigating 
the statistics of various parts of England, has suggested that the fall in 
the local birth rate became accentuated at certain dates which corre- 
sponded with local or general restrictions on the employment of children. 
Another view would ascribe the decline in fertility to a gradual subordi- 
nation of the sex instinct with the spread of culture and education. A 
comparison of the literature of different periods bears witness to a gradual 
disappearance of the idea that the only career for women was marriage, 
and that a girl should be reproached as an old maid at twenty. On this 
basis the decline would have spread from above downwards and would 
be delayed among certain classes. This factor involves both individual 
45 Vol. xiii., pt. ii. 
46 K. Pearson, The Scope and Importance to the State of the Science of National 
Eugenics. 
