Decembeb 12, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



533 



progress since accomplished, not only in 

 biology, but in all the physical sciences. 



It is good fortune for a research establish- 

 ment to have been founded during the course 

 of this progress and to be able to take part in 

 it; and although the publications of the insti- 

 tution are not restricted to any domain of 

 learning, a considerable number of them bear 

 directly or indirectly on this profoundly in- 

 teresting and increasingly important problem 

 of " the physical basis of life." The past 

 year has been unusually productive in this 

 line, for no less than a dozen volumes have 

 been added to the institution's series of con- 

 tributions to evolution, heredity, and the ap- 

 plication of thermodynamics to the interpre- 

 tation of metabolism in man. These contri- 

 butions are particularly noteworthy also for 

 the extent to which cooperation has been re- 

 quired, since more than twenty authors and 

 more than twice that number of collaborators 

 are represented in the dozen volumes re- 

 ferred to. 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE 



DECLINING BIRTH-RATE 



—A REPLYi 



Members of Section I in attendance at the 

 meeting last year will recall the address of 

 the retiring vice-president and chairman of 

 the section. This meeting offers a suitable 

 opportunity to present at least one of the 

 replies which such an address might be ex- 

 pected to call forth. 



Seventy per cent, of Mr. Dublin's paper 

 was occupied with statistics, and these we 

 may accept as coming from an expert statis- 

 tician. It is the remaining thirty per cent. — 

 embodying the author's view of the signifi- 

 cance of the declining birth-rate — that in- 

 vites attention. 



To begin with, I hardly need point out the 

 necessity of recognizing the prevalence of 

 multiple and compound causes in all fields of 

 social phenomena. When a compound cause 

 has been disentangled from a mass of obser- 

 vations its individual factors must be care- 



1 Eead before Section I (Social and Economic 

 Science) of the American Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science, Baltimore, December 27, 

 1918. 



fully weighted in order to give proper prom- 

 inence to the chief one. Mr. Dublin arraigns 

 the women and their education for the 

 declining birth-rate. In so doing he involves 

 himself in a significant concession; and one 

 wonders how, with so much of a clue, he has 

 failed to perceive the true interpretation of 

 the social feature which he deplores. He lias 

 fixed his attention on vei-y minor and limited 

 causes only to lose sight of the great generic 

 cause. 



JTor we are to-day in the midst of a revolu- 

 tion quite imparalleled in the history of the 

 human race — whether it be viewed as regards 

 the number of persons concerned, or the 

 length of its preparatory prelude, or the im- 

 portance of the consequences which will un- 

 doubtedly follow it. I refer to the movement 

 connected with the discovery that women, in 

 spite of being females, are primarily human 

 beings, with the same desires for freedom and 

 self-direction, the same ranges in tastes and 

 abilities and ambitions, that men have. This 

 discovery is due to woman's recently acquired 

 opportunity for knowledge and opportunity 

 for economic self-dependence. These oppor- 

 tunities themselves seem to be involved first 

 as effects and then as causes in modern 

 human progress. The evolution of society — 

 civilization itself — had proceeded as far as it 

 could, with the archaic status of woman un- 

 modified. 



Folklore and literature from earliest times 

 to very recent days have been charged with 

 positive expressions of the place and duty of 

 the female. Radical writers and conservative 

 ones alike, teachers, philosophers, statesmen 

 and poets, have — with few exceptions — been 

 agreed that that place was home and that 

 duty the care of the home and the rearing of 

 children. Very naturally all schemes of gov- 

 ernment and all systems of theology have 

 been in harmony with this popular conviction. 

 To cook a thousand meals a year, to make 

 beds and wash dishes a thousand times a 

 year, to bear children — always to bear chil- 

 dren — in meekness and resignation, has been 

 held to be the woman's lot as ordered by 

 Providence or at least by Nature. What else 

 could a normal woman want to do? 



