this has lately been questioned. The smaller number of children when the fathers marry late may be due to other causes. It seems true that the women of the so-called upper groups marry later than those of the working classes, so there is doubtless some real influence exerted. Civilized women certainly marry later than those in more primitive societies.

2. Child-bearing appears to be more difficult for civilized woman than for her ancestors and harder for the women in the upper classes. Certain it is, whatever the cause, that instrumental delivery has become increasingly common in the last century. Medical skill saves a good many lives today which would have been sacrificed a generation or two ago. In earlier years, the woman would have died, the man would probably have remarried and had more children. Now the family is preserved, but the number of children is decreased. The records of old New England families strikingly confirm this inference.

3. Celibacy, however caused, plays an important part in so far as the groups affected are concerned. The withdrawal of so many of the best men and women into the priesthood or the nunneries, the growth of prostitution with its sterility-producing diseases, compulsory military service extending over years at just the period when men ordinarily think of marriage, world-wide commerce which may develop the roving spirit at the expense of the desire for individual homes, all play their part.

4. What we may term selfish ideals growing out of a desire for an easier life for either parents or children have bad as well as good influence. On the one hand, they may lead to better care and training of fewer children; on the other, to a disinclination to work and compete with others for the rewards of life. Either affects the rate of

reproduction. We may say without exaggeration that large families are no longer in style.

5. Immigration is held by many to be an important factor particularly in America. A generation or more ago, Walker and others argued that the population of the country would be as large as it is today had there been no immigration on the assumption that the colonial birthrate would have remained had it not been for the incomers with whom the older groups did not care to compete. This assumption seems very doubtful. England with no immigration for centuries until the recent advent of the Russian-Jew and with a great loss through emigration has shown a marked decline in birth-rate, while France with no immigration has actually lost in aggregate population. Underlying Walker's idea was also the assumption, which we need not discuss, that the older stock was better than the newer.

ence.

6. Religious beliefs and institutions have great influThe Jewish emphasis on large families, the desire of the Chinese to maintain ancestor worship, the Mormon emphasis on the duty of incorporating as many as possible of the unborn spirits, all tend to keep up the birth-rate. That religious leaders are less insistent than formerly on this question is not to be doubted.

7. Increasing divorce doubtless has some influence, but just what or how much it is hard to say. In spite of divorce a larger percentage of the population appears to be living in marital relations than formerly. If this is true, it is easy to overemphasize the importance of divorce.

8. Diseases and accidents, most of which are preventable, are also to be considered. The lowering of the standard of living affects the desirability of children quite as directly as does the accidental death of one parent. The

elimination of needless suffering and loss would tend to increase the birth-rate.

9. More important than many of the foregoing would appear to be the changed industrial conditions, particularly the opening of new avenues of employment to women. This makes them more independent, more judicious in their choice of life partners, and tends, therefore, to later marriage as well as to celibacy. This is accentuated by such stupid decisions as the refusal to employ married women as teachers, or by their discharge if they become mothers.

So far the causes considered have worked indirectly in the main. There are others, however, of more immediate effect.

1. Disease plays a rôle often underestimated. Gonorrhea alone is held by physicians responsible for one-half of the involuntarily childless marriages. When both parents are syphilitic at time of conception no child, probably, is born alive. Even where one only is a victim of this disease, the results are terrific. A Chicago physician saw 1,700 cases of syphilitic mothers. Five hundred and seventy-eight or 34 per cent resulted in miscarriages or still births. Nine hundred and fifty-six living children were born who died within 12 months after birth, a combined total of 1,534 of the 1,700 or 90 per cent who did not reach the age of one year. A large part of the remainder were crippled by the disease. Other diseases probably have considerable influence on child-bearing.

2. Vice, like alcoholism, particularly on the part of pregnant women, decidedly affects the unborn child and the mother's ability to nurse it.

3. Abortion, though prohibited by law, still exists and

there is probably no large town or city where some one will not perform it if the financial inducement is large enough.

4. By common consent the most important factor in limiting the birth-rate is the prevention of conception either by the exercise of self-control or by direct contraceptive measures. In the educated groups of all Western civilizations this is seemingly almost universal. The evidence for it is not to be reduced to statistical tables unless one is willing to accept the different birth-rates of the different economic levels of the same race stock as satisfactory. Society is by no means agreed as to the righteousness of the practice nor is its attitude on the subject wholly free from hypocrisy. Direct teaching and the sale of publications or contraceptive instruments are usually prohibited. Holland, however, has for some years openly taught the poorer classes how to prevent conception and with good results, so it is claimed. In all countries there are those who believe in small families rather than large and who argue that it is foolish to permit ignorance to be responsible for the birth of large numbers of children for whom the parents cannot provide proper care and training. Others advocate large families even if society at large must assume parental responsibility.

5. It has been suggested that the conditions of life of the upper classes called for such nervous expenditure in many directions that the physical strength was sapped and reproduction automatically checked. For this there seems to be little direct evidence.

The most interesting diagram that I have seen in this field is that by Dr. J. McKeen Cattell, published in the New York Independent which is here reproduced.

THE FAMILIES OF 461 LEADING AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC MEN The figures at the bottom indicate the number of children to a family; those at the left the number of families of equal size. The chart shows for each size of family of 461 American men of science in how many cases the limitation was involuntary and in how many cases it was voluntary. The shaded areas, showing the number in which it was voluntary, are subdivided to indicate the causes. Thus, when the marriage was childless, this condition was involuntary in 67 cases and voluntary in 35 cases. The reasons assigned were health in 25 cases, expense in 5 cases and other causes in 5 cases. In the family of two, the limitation was voluntary in 84 out of 98 marriages. The reasons assigned were health in 44 cases, expense in 29 cases and inconvenience or other causes in 11 cases.7

7 CATTELL, J. MCKEEN. Independent, September 27, 1915.

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