132 THE TREND OF THE RACE 
proportion of these girls drift into immoral lives. They fre- 
quently return to the workhouse to have their children who, after 
being raised at public expense, are then liberated to repeat much 
the same performance. 
The relation between fertility and social status has been studied 
by a number of investigators. Heron found in London that the 
districts which afford evidence of prosperity have a low birth rate, 
while districts in which indications of poverty are common have a 
high birth rate. It was estimated that while the death rates in the 
latter districts were higher than in the former, the difference was 
not great enough to counteract the greater fecundity of the poorer 
classes. Moreover, Heron showed that sixty years ago the 
relative fecundity of the classes dealt with was the reverse of what 
it is at the present time. Bertillon? gives the following tabulation 
of the birth rates per thousand women between 15 and 50 years of 
age in various sections of four European cities: 
Fertility of Women in Different Districts of Large Cities 
Paris Berlin Vienna London 
Very Poor Districts....} 108 157 200 147 
Poor Be sy 95 129 164 140 
Comfortable “  .... 72 114 155 107 
Very ‘“ FEY Ages 65 96 153 107 
Rich Re eae 53 63 107 87 
Very Rich Be tated 34 47 71 63 
While the figures given may not exactly represent the birth 
rates of these districts, they doubtless form a fairly close approxi- 
mation of them. The birth rate of Paris and Berlin measured 
by the number of annual births per thousand married women is 
shown in the following table: 
1 Bull. Inst. Internat. Stat., 11, 163-176, 1899. 
