(a) There are several studies which throw light on the current ideals. Physical Culture magazine lately invited its women readers to send in the specifications of an ideal husband, and the results are worth considering because the readers of that publication are probably less swayed by purely conventional ideas than are most accessible groups of women whom one might question. The ideal husband was held by these women to be made up of the following qualities in the proportions given:

Per cent.

Health 20 Financial success 19 Paternity 18 Appearance 11 Disposition 8 Education 8 Character 6 Housekeeping 7 Dress 3 —- 100

Without laying weight on the exact figures, and recognizing that each woman may have defined the qualities differently, yet one must admit aside from a low concern for mental ability that this is a fairly good eugenic specification. Appearance, it is stated, meant not so much facial beauty as intelligent expression and manly form. Financial success is correlated with intelligence and efficiency, and probably is not rated too high. The importance attached to paternity—which, it is explained, means a clean sex life as well as interest in children—is worth noticing.

For comparison there is another census of the preferences of 115 young women at Brigham Young College, Logan, Utah. This is a "Mormon" institution and the students, mostly farmers' daughters, are probably expressing ideals which have been very little affected by the demoralizing influences of modern city life. The editor of the college paper relates that:

Eighty-six per cent of the girls specifically stated that the young man must be morally pure; 14% did not specifically state.

Ninety-nine per cent specifically stated that he must be mentally and physically strong.

Ninety-three per cent stated that he must absolutely not smoke, chew, or drink; 7% did not state.

Twenty per cent named an occupation they would like the young man to follow, and these fell into three different classes, that of farmer, doctor and business.

Four and seven-tenths per cent of the 20% named farmer; 2.7% named doctor, and 1.7% named business man; 80% did not state any profession.

Thirty-three and one-third per cent specifically stated that he must be ambitious; 66-2/3% did not state.

Eight per cent stated specifically that he must have high ideals.

Fifty-two per cent demanded that he be of the same religious conviction; 48% said nothing about religion.

Seventy-two per cent said nothing regarding money matters; 28% stated what his financial condition must be, but none named a specific amount. One-half of the 28% stated that he must be rich, and three-fourths of these were under twenty years of age; the other half of the 28% said that he must have a moderate income and two-thirds of these were under twenty years of age.

Forty-five per cent stated that the young man must be taller than they; 55% did not state.

Twenty per cent stated that the young man must be older, and from two to eight years older; 80% did not state.

Fifty per cent stated that he must have a good education; one-fourth of the 50% stated that he must have a college education; 95% of these were under twenty-one years of age; 50% did not state his intellectual attainments.

Ninety-one per cent of all the ideals handed in were written by persons under twenty years of age; the other 8-1/2% were over twenty years of age.

Physical Culture, on another occasion, invited its male readers to express their requirements of an ideal wife. The proportions of the various elements desired are given as follows:

Per cent

Health 23 "Looks" 14 Housekeeping 12 Disposition 11 Maternity 11 Education 10 Management 7 Dress 7 Character 5 —- 100

One might feel some surprise at the low valuation placed on "character," but it is really covered by other points. On the whole, one can not be dissatisfied with these specifications aside from its slight concern about mental ability.

Such wholesome ideals are probably rather widespread in the less sophisticated part of the population. In other strata, social and financial criteria of selection hold much importance. As a family ascends in economic position, its standards of sexual selection are likely to change. And in large sections of the population, there is a fluctuation in the standards from generation to generation. There is reason to suspect that the standards of sexual selection among educated young women in the United States to-day are higher than they were a quarter of a century, or even a decade, ago. They are demanding a higher degree of physical fitness and morality in their suitors. Men, in turn, are beginning to demand that the girls they marry shall be fitted for the duties of home-maker, wife and mother,—qualifications which were essential in the colonial period but little insisted on in the immediate past.

(b) It is evident, then, that the standards of sexual selection do change; there is therefore reason to suppose that they can change still further. This is an important point, for it is often alleged as an objection to eugenics that human affections are capricious and can not be influenced by rational considerations. Such an objection will be seen, on reflection, to be ill-founded.

As to the extent of change possible, the psychologist must have the final word. The ingenious Mr. Diffloth,[97] who reduced love to a series of algebraical formulae and geometrical curves, and proposed that every young man should find a girl whose curve was congruent to his own, and at once lead her to the altar, is not likely to gain many adherents. But the psychologist declares without hesitation that it is possible to influence the course of love in its earlier, though rarely in its later, stages. Francis Galton pointed this out with his usual clearness, showing that in the past the "incidence" of love, to borrow a technical term, had been frequently and sometimes narrowly limited by custom—by those unwritten laws which are sometimes as effective as the written ones. Monogamy, endogamy, exogamy, Australian marriages, tabu, prohibited degrees and sacerdotal celibacy all furnished him with historical arguments to show that society could bring about almost any restriction it chose; and a glance around at the present day will show that the barriers set up by religion, race and social position are frequently of almost prohibitive effect.

There is, therefore, from a psychological point of view, no reason why the ideals of eugenics should not become a part of the mores or unwritten laws of the race, and why the selection of life partners should not be unconsciously influenced to a very large extent by them. As a necessary preliminary to such a condition, intelligent people must cultivate the attitude of conscious selection, and get away from the crude, fatalistic viewpoint which is to-day so widespread, and which is exploited ad nauseam on the stage and in fiction. It must be remembered that there are two well-marked stages preceding a betrothal: the first is that of mere attraction, when reason is still operative, and the second is that of actual love, when reason is relegated to the background. During the later stage, it is notorious that good counsel is of little avail, but during the preliminary period direction of the affections is still possible, not only by active interference of friends or relatives, but much more easily and usefully by the tremendous influence of the mores.

Eugenic mores will exist only when many intelligent people become so convinced of the ethical value of eugenics that that conviction sinks into their subconscious minds. The general eugenics campaign can be expected to bring that result about in due time. Care must be taken to prevent highly conscientious people from being too critical, and letting a trivial defect outweigh a large number of good qualities. Moreover, changes in the standards of sexual selection should not be too rapid, as that results in the permanent celibacy of some excellent but hyper-critical individuals. The ideal is an advance of standards as rapidly as will yet keep all the superior persons married. This is accomplished if all superior individuals marry as well as possible, yet with advancing years gradually reduce the standard so that celibacy may not result.

Having decided that there is room for improvement in the standards of sexual selection, and that such improvement is psychologically feasible, we come to point (c): in what particular ways is this improvement needed? Any discussion of this large subject must necessarily be only suggestive, not exhaustive.

If sexual selection is to be taken seriously, it is imperative that there be some improvement in the general attitude of public sentiment toward love itself. It is difficult for the student to acquire sound knowledge[98] of the normal manifestations of love: the psychology of sex has been studied too largely from the abnormal and pathological side; while the popular idea is based too much on fiction and drama which emphasize the high lights and make love solely an affair of emotion. We are not arguing for a rationalization of love, for the terms are almost contradictory; but we believe that more common sense could profitably be used in considering the subject.

If a typical "love affair" be examined, it is found that propinquity and a common basis for sympathy in some probably trivial matter lead to the development of the sex instinct; the parental instinct begins to make itself felt, particularly among women; the instincts of curiosity, acquisitiveness, and various others play their part, and there then appears a well-developed case of "love." Such love may satisfy a purely biological definition, but it is incomplete. Love that is worthy of the name must be a function of the will as well as of the emotions. There must be a feeling on the part of each which finds strong satisfaction in service rendered to the other. If the existence of this constituent of love could be more widely recognized and watched for, it would probably prevent many a sensible young man or woman from being stampeded into a marriage of passion, where the real community of interest is slight;[99] and sexual selection would be improved in a way that would count immensely for the future of the race. Moreover, there would be much more real love in the world. Eugenics, as Havelock Ellis has well pointed out,[100] is not plotting against love but against those influences that do violence to love, particularly: (1) reckless yielding to mere momentary desire; and (2) still more fatal influences of wealth and position and worldly convenience which give a factitious value to persons who would never appear attractive partners in life were love and eugenic ideals left to go hand in hand.

"The eugenic ideal," Dr. Ellis foresees, "will have to struggle with the criminal and still more resolutely with the rich; it will have few serious quarrels with normal and well-constituted lovers."

The point is an important one. To "rationalize" marriage, is out of the question. Marriage must be mainly a matter of the emotions; but it is important that the emotions be exerted in the right direction. The eugenist seeks to remove the obstacles that are now driving the emotions into wrong channels. If the emotions can only be headed in the right direction, then the more emotions the better, for they are the source of energy which are responsible for almost everything that is done in the world.

There is in the world plenty of that love which is a matter of mutual service and of emotions unswayed by any petty or sordid influences; but it ought not only to be common, it ought to be universal. It is not likely to be in the present century; but at least, thinking people can consciously adopt an attitude of respect toward love, and consciously abandon as far as possible the attitude of jocular cynicism with which they too often treat it,—an attitude which is reflected so disgustingly in current vaudeville and musical comedy.

It is the custom to smile at the extravagantly romantic idea of love which the boarding-school girl holds; but unrealizable as it may be, hers is a nobler conception than that which the majority of adults voice. Very properly, one does not care to make one's deepest feelings public; but if such subjects as love and motherhood can not be discussed naturally and without affectation, they ought to be left alone. If intelligent men and women will set the example, this attitude of mind will spread, and cultured families at least will rid themselves of such deplorable habits as that of plaguing children, not yet out of the nursery, about their "sweethearts."

No sane man would deny the desirability of beauty in a wife, particularly when it is remembered that beauty, especially as determined by good complexion, good teeth and medium weight, is correlated with good health in some degree, and likewise with intelligence. Nevertheless, we are strongly of the opinion that beauty of face is now too highly valued, as a standard of sexual selection.[101]

Good health in a mate is a qualification which any sensible man or woman will require, and for which a "marriage certificate" is in most cases quite unnecessary.[102] What other physical standard is there that should be given weight?

Alexander Graham Bell has lately been emphasizing the importance of longevity in this connection, and in our judgment he has thereby opened up a very fruitful field for education. It goes without saying that anyone would prefer to marry a partner with a good constitution. "How can we find a test of a good, sound constitution?" Dr. Bell asked in a recent lecture. "I think we could find it in the duration of life in a family. Take a family in which a large proportion live to old age with unimpaired faculties. There you know is a good constitution in an inheritable form. On the other hand, you will find a family in which a large proportion die at birth and in which there are relatively few people who live to extreme old age. There has developed an hereditary weakness of constitution. Longevity is a guide to constitution." Not only does it show that one's vital organs are in good running order, but it is probably the only means now available of indicating strains which are resistant to zymotic disease. Early death is not necessarily an evidence of physical weakness; but long life is a pretty good proof of constitutional strength.

Dr. Bell has elsewhere called attention to the fact that, longevity being a characteristic which is universally considered creditable in a family, there is no tendency on the part of families to conceal its existence, as there is in the case of unfavorable characters—cancer, tuberculosis, insanity, and the like. This gives it a great advantage as a criterion for sexual selection, since there will be little difficulty in finding whether or not the ancestors of a young man or woman were long-lived.[103]

Karl Pearson and his associates have shown that there is a tendency to assortative mating for longevity: that people from long-lived stocks actually do marry people from similar stocks, more frequently than would be the case if the matings were at random. An increase of this tendency would be eugenically desirable.[104] So much for the physique.

Though eugenics is popularly supposed to be concerned almost wholly with the physical, properly it gives most attention to mental traits, recognizing that these are the ones which most frequently make races stand or fall, and that attention to the physique is worth while mainly to furnish a sound body in which the sound mind may function. Now men and women may excel mentally in very many different ways, and eugenics, which seeks not to produce a uniform good type, but excellence in all desirable types, is not concerned to pick out any particular sort of mental superiority and exalt it as a standard for sexual selection. But the tendency, shown in Miss Gilmore's study, for men to prefer the more intelligent girls in secondary schools, is gratifying to the eugenist, since high mental endowment is principally a matter of heredity. From a eugenic point of view it would be well could such intellectual accomplishments weigh even more heavily with the average young man, and less weight be put on such superficial characteristics as "flashiness," ability to use the latest slang freely, and other "smart" traits which are usually considered attractive in a girl, but which have no real value and soon become tiresome. They are not wholly bad in themselves, but certainly should not influence a young man very seriously in his choice of a wife, nor a young woman in her choice of a husband. It is to be feared that such standards are largely promoted by the stage, the popular song, and popular fiction.

In a sense, the education which a young woman has received is no concern of the eugenist, since it can not be transmitted to her children. Yet when, as often happens, children die because their mother was not properly trained to bring them up, this feature of education does become a concern of eugenics. Young men are more and more coming to demand that their wives know something about woman's work, and this demand must not only increase, but must be adequately met. Woman's education is treated in more detail in another chapter.

It is proper to point out here, however, that in many cases woman's education gives no great opportunity to judge of her real intellectual ability. Her natural endowment in this respect should be judged also by that of her sisters, brothers, parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents. If a girl comes of an intellectual ancestry, it is likely that she herself will carry such traits germinally, even if she has never had an opportunity to develop them. She can, then, pass them on to her own children. Francis Galton long ago pointed out the good results of a custom obtaining in Germany, whereby college professors tended to marry the daughters or sisters of college professors. A tendency for men of science to marry women of scientific attainments or training is marked among biologists, at least, in the United States; and the number of cases in which musicians intermarry is striking. Such assortative mating means that the offspring will usually be well endowed with a talent.

Finally, young people should be taught a greater appreciation of the lasting qualities of comradeship, for which the purely emotional factors that make up mere sexual attraction are far from offering a satisfactory substitute.

It will not be out of place here to point out that a change in the social valuation of reputability and honor is greatly needed for the better working of sexual selection. The conspicuous waste and leisure that Thorstein Veblen points out as the chief criterion of reputability at present have a dubious relation to high mental or moral endowment, far less than has wealth. There is much left to be done to achieve a meritorious distribution of wealth. The fact that the insignia of success are too often awarded to trickery, callousness and luck does not argue for the abolition altogether of the financial success element in reputability, in favor of a "dead level" of equality such as would result from the application of certain communistic ideals. Distinctions, rightly awarded, are an aid, not a hindrance to sexual selection, and effort should be directed, from the eugenic point of view, no less to the proper recognition of true superiority than to the elimination of unjustified differentiations of reputability.

This leads to the consideration of moral standards, and here again details are complex but the broad outlines clear. It seems probable that morality is to a considerable extent a matter of heredity, and the care of the eugenist should be to work with every force that makes for a clear understanding of the moral factors of the world, and to work against every force that tends to confuse the issues. When the issue is clear cut, most people will by instinct tend to marry into moral rather than immoral stocks.

True quality, then, should be emphasized at the expense of false standards. Money, social status, family alignment, though indicators to some degree, must not be taken too much at their face value. Emphasis is to be placed on real merit as shown by achievement, or on descent from the meritoriously eminent, whether or not such eminence has led to the accumulation of a family fortune and inclusion in an exclusive social set. In this respect, it is important that the value of a high average of ancestry should be realized. A single case of eminence in a pedigree should not weigh too heavily. When it is remembered that statistically one grandparent counts for less than one-sixteenth in the heredity of an individual, it will be obvious that the individual whose sole claim to consideration is a distinguished grandfather, is not necessarily a matrimonial prize. A general high level of morality and mentality in a family is much more advantageous, from the eugenic point of view, than one "lion" several generations back.

While we desire very strongly to emphasize the importance of breeding and the great value of a good ancestry, it is only fair to utter a word of warning in this connection. Good ancestry does not necessarily make a man or woman a desirable partner. What stockmen know as the "pure-bred scrub" is a recognized evil in animal breeding, and not altogether absent from human society. Due to any one or more of a number of causes, it is possible for a germinal degenerate to appear in a good family; discrimination should certainly be made against such an individual. Furthermore, it is possible that there occasionally arises what may be called a mutant of very desirable character from a eugenic point of view. Furthermore a stock in general below mediocrity will occasionally, due to some fortuitous but fortunate combination of traits, give rise to an individual of marked ability or even eminence, who will be able to transmit in some degree that valuable new combination of traits to his or her own progeny. Persons of this character are to be regarded by eugenists as distinctly desirable husbands or wives.

The desirability of selecting a wife (or husband) from a family of more than one or two children was emphasized by Benjamin Franklin, and is also one of the time-honored traditions of the Arabs, who have always looked at eugenics in a very practical, if somewhat cold-blooded way. It has two advantages: in the first place, one can get a better idea of what the individual really is, by examining sisters and brothers; and in the second place, there will be less danger of a childless marriage, since it is already proved that the individual comes of a fertile stock. Francis Galton showed clearly the havoc wrought in the English peerage, by marriages with heiresses (an heiress there being nearly always an only child). Such women were childless in a much larger proportion than ordinary women.

"Marrying a man to reform him" is a speculation in which many women have indulged and usually—it may be said without fear of contradiction—with unfortunate results. It is always likely that she will fail to reform him; it is certain that she can not reform his germ-plasm. Psychologists agree that the character of a man or woman undergoes little radical change after the age of 25; and the eugenist knows that it is largely determined, potentially, when the individual is born. It is, therefore, in most cases the height of folly to select a partner with any marked undesirable trait, with the idea that it will change after a few years.

All these suggestions have in general been directed at the young man or woman, but it is admitted that if they reach their target at all, it is likely to be by an indirect route. No rules or devices can take the place, in influencing sexual selection, of that lofty and rational ideal of marriage which must be brought about by the uplifting of public opinion. It is difficult to bring under the control of reason a subject that has so long been left to caprice and impulse; yet much can unquestionably be done, in an age of growing social responsibility, to put marriage in a truer perspective. Much is already being done, but not in every case of change is the future biological welfare of the race sufficiently borne in mind. The interests of the individual are too often regarded to the exclusion of posterity. The eugenist would not sacrifice the individual, but he would add the welfare of posterity to that of the individual, when the standards of sexual selection are being fixed. It is only necessary to make the young person remember that he will marry, not merely an individual, but a family; and that not only his own happiness but to some extent the quality of future generations is being determined by his choice.

We must have (1) the proper ideals of mating but (2) these ideals must be realized. It is known that many young people have the highest kind of ideals of sexual selection, and find themselves quite unable to act on them. The college woman may have a definite idea of the kind of husband she wants; but if he never seeks her, she often dies celibate. The young man of science may have an ideal bride in his mind, but if he never finds her, he may finally marry his landlady's daughter. Opportunity for sexual selection must be given, as well as suitable standards; and while education is perhaps improving the standards each year, it is to be feared that modern social conditions, especially in the large cities, tend steadily to decrease the opportunity.

Statistical evidence, as well as common observation, indicates that the upper classes have a much wider range of choice in marriage than the lower classes. The figures given by Karl Pearson for the degree of resemblance between husband and wife with regard to phthisis are so remarkable as to be worth quoting in this connection:

All poor +.01 Prosperous poor +.16 Middle classes +.24 Professional classes +.28

It can hardly be argued that infection between husband and wife would vary like this, even if infection, in general, could be proved. Moreover, the least resemblance is among the poor, where infection should be greatest. Professor Pearson thinks, as seems reasonable, that this series of figures indicates principally assortative mating, and shows that among the poor there is less choice, the selection of a husband or wife being more largely due to propinquity or some other more or less random factor. With a rise in the social scale, opportunity for choice of one from a number of possible mates becomes greater and greater; the tendency for an unconscious selection of likeness then has a chance to appear, as the coefficients graphically show.

If such a class as the peerage of Great Britain be considered, it is evident that the range of choice in marriage is almost unlimited. There are few girls who can resist the glamor of a title. The hereditary peer can therefore marry almost anyone he likes and if he does not marry one of his own class he can select and (until recently) usually has selected the daughter of some man who by distinguished ability has risen from a lower social or financial position. Thus the hereditary nobilities of Europe have been able to maintain themselves; and a similar process is undoubtedly taking place among the idle rich who occupy an analogous position in the United States.

But it is the desire of eugenics to raise the average ability of the whole population, as well as to encourage the production of leaders. To fulfill this desire, it is obvious that one of the necessary means is to extend to all desirable classes that range of choice which is now possessed only by those near the top of the social ladder. It is hardly necessary to urge young people to widen the range of their acquaintance, for they will do it without urging if the opportunity is presented to them. It is highly necessary for parents, and for organizations and municipalities, deliberately to seek to further every means which will bring unmarried young people together under proper supervision. Social workers have already perceived the need of institutional as well as municipal action on these lines, although they have not in every case recognized the eugenic aspect, and from their efforts it is probable that suitable institutions, such as social centers and recreation piers, and municipal dance halls, will be greatly multiplied.

It is an encouraging sign to see such items as this from a Washington newspaper: "The Modern Dancing Club of the Margaret Wilson Social Center gave a masquerade ball at the Grover Cleveland school last night, which was attended by about 100 couples." Still more promising are such institutions as the self-supporting Inkowa camp for young women, at Greenwood Lake, N. J., conducted by a committee of which Miss Anne Morgan is president, and directed by Miss Grace Parker. Near it is a similar camp, Kechuka, for young men, and during the summer both are full of young people from New York City. A newspaper account says:

There is no charity, no philanthropy, no subsidy connected with Camp Inkowa. Its members are successful business women, who earn from $15 to $25 a week. Board in the camp is $9 a week. So every girl who goes there for a vacation has the comfortable feeling that she pays her way fully. This rate includes all the activities of camp life.

Architects, doctors, lawyers, bookkeepers, bank clerks, young business men of many kinds are the guests of Kechuka. Next week 28 young men from the National City Bank will begin their vacations there.

Inkowa includes young women teachers, stenographers, librarians, private secretaries and girls doing clerical work for insurance companies and other similar business institutions.

Saturday and Sunday are "at home" days at Camp Inkowa and the young men from Kechuka may come to call on the Inkowa girls, participate with them in the day's "hike" or go on the moonlight cruise around the lake if there happens to be one.

"Young men and women need clean, healthy association with each other," Miss Parker told me yesterday, when I spent the day at Camp Inkowa. "Social workers in New York city ask me sometimes, 'How dare you put young men and women in camps so near to each other?'

"How dare you not do it? No plan of recreation or out-of-door life which does not include the healthy association of men and woman can be a success. Young men and women need each other's society. And if you get the right kind they won't abuse their freedom."

The churches have been important instruments in this connection, and the worth of their services can hardly be over-estimated, as they tend to bring together young people of similar tastes and, in general, of a superior character. Such organizations as the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor serve the eugenic end in a satisfactory way; it is almost the unanimous opinion of competent observers that matches "made in the church" turn out well. Some idea of the importance of the churches may be gathered from a census which F. O. George of the University of Pittsburgh made of 75 married couples of his acquaintance, asking them where they first met each other. The answers were:

Church 32 School (only 3 at college) 19 Private home 17 Dance 7 — 75

These results need not be thought typical of more than a small part of the country's population, yet they show how far-reaching the influence of the church may be on sexual selection. Quite apart from altruistic motives, the churches might well encourage social affairs where the young people could meet, because to do so is one of the surest way of perpetuating the church.

An increase in the number of non-sectarian bisexual societies, clubs and similar organizations, and a diminution of the number of those limited to men or to women alone is greatly to be desired. It is doubtful whether the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. are, while separated, as useful to society as they might be. Each of them tends to create a celibate community, where the chance for meeting possible mates is practically nil. The men's organization has made, so far as we are aware, little organized attempt to meet this problem. The women's organization in some cities has made the attempt, but apparently with indifferent success. The idea of a merger of the two organizations with reasonable differentiation as well would probably meet with little approval from their directors just now, but is worth considering as an answer to the urgent problem of providing social contacts for young people in large cities.

It is encouraging that thoughtful people in all walks of life are beginning to realize the seriousness of this problem of contacts for the young, and the necessity of finding some solution. The novelist Miss Maria Thompson Davies of Sweetbriar Farm, Madison, Tenn., is quoted in a recent newspaper interview as saying:

"I'm a Wellesley woman, but one reason why I'm dead against women's colleges is because they shut girls up with women, at the most impressionable period of the girls' lives, when they should be meeting members of the opposite sex continually, learning to tolerate their little weaknesses and getting ready to marry them."

"The city should make arrangements to chaperon the meetings of its young citizens. There ought to be municipal gathering places where, under the supervision of tactful, warm-hearted women—themselves successfully married—girls and young men might get introduced to each other and might get acquainted."

If it is thought that the time has not yet come for such municipal action, there is certainly plenty of opportunity for action by the parents, relatives and friends of young persons. The match-making proclivities of some mothers are matters of current jest: where subtly and wisely done they might better be taken seriously and held up as examples worthy of imitation. Formal "full dress" social functions for young people, where acquaintance is likely to be too perfunctory, should be discouraged, and should give place to informal dances, beach parties, house parties and the like, where boys and girls will have a chance to come to know each other, and, at the proper age, to fall in love. Let social stratification be not too rigid, yet maintained on the basis of intrinsic worth rather than solely on financial or social position. If parents will make it a matter of concern to give their boys and girls as many desirable acquaintances of the opposite sex as possible, and to give them opportunity for ripening these acquaintances, the problem of the improvement of sexual selection will be greatly helped. Young people from homes where such social advantages can not be given, or in large cities where home life is for most of them non-existent, must become the concern of the municipality, the churches, and every institution and organization that has the welfare of the community and the race at heart.

To sum up this chapter, we have pointed out the importance of sexual selection, and shown that its eugenic action depends on young people having the proper ideals, and being able to live up to these ideals. Eugenists have in the past devoted themselves perhaps too exclusively to the inculcation of sound ideals, without giving adequate attention to the possibility of these high standards being acted upon. One of the greatest problems confronting eugenics is that of giving young people of marriageable age a greater range of choice. Much could be done by organized action; but it is one of the hopeful features of the problem that it can be handled in large part by intelligent individual action. If older people would make a conscious effort to help young people widen their circles of suitable acquaintances, they would make a valuable contribution to race betterment.



CHAPTER XII

INCREASING THE MARRIAGE RATE OF THE SUPERIOR

No race can long survive unless it conforms to the principles of eugenics, and indisputably the chief requirement for race survival is that the superior part of the race should equal or surpass the inferior part in fecundity.

It follows that the superior members of the community must marry, and at a reasonably early age. If in the best elements of the community celibacy increases, or if marriage is postponed far into the reproductive period, the racial contribution of the superior will necessarily fall, and after a few generations the race will consist mainly of the descendants of inferior people, its eugenic average being thereby much lowered.

In a survey of vital statistics, to ascertain whether marriages are as frequent and as early as national welfare requires, the eugenist finds at first no particularly alarming figures.

In France, to whose vital statistics one naturally turns whenever race suicide is suggested (and usually with a holier-than-thou attitude which the Frenchman might much more correctly assume toward America), it appears that there has been a very slight decrease in the proportion of persons under 20 who are married, but that between the ages of 20 and 30 the proportion of those married has risen during recent years. The same condition exists all over Europe, according to F. H. Hankins,[105] except in England and Scotland. "Moreover on the whole marriages take place earlier in France than in England, Germany or America. Nor is this all, for a larger proportion of the French population is married than in any of these countries. Thus the birth-rate in France has continued to fall in spite of those very conditions which should have sustained it or even caused it to increase."

In America, conditions are not dissimilar. Although it is generally believed that young persons are marrying at a later age than they did formerly, the census figures show that for the population as a whole the reverse is the case. Marriages are not only more numerous, but are contracted at earlier ages than they were a quarter of a century ago. Comparison of census returns for 1890, 1900 and 1910, reveals that for both sexes the percentage of married has steadily increased and the percentage listed as single has as steadily decreased. The census classifies young men, for this purpose, in three age-groups: 15-19, 20-24, and 25-34; and in every one of these groups, a larger proportion was married in 1910 than in 1900 or 1890. Conditions are the same for women. So far as the United States as a whole is concerned, therefore, marriage is neither being avoided altogether, nor postponed unduly,—in fact, conditions in both respects seem to be improving every year.

So far the findings should gratify every eugenist. But the census returns permit further analysis of the figures. They classify the population under four headings: Native White of Native Parentage, Native White of Foreign Parentage or of Mixed Parentage, Foreign-born White, and Negro. Except among Foreign-born Whites, who are standing still, the returns for 1910 show that in every one of these groups the marriage rate has steadily increased during the past three decades; and that the age of marriage is steadily declining in all groups during the same period, with a slight irregularity of no real importance in the statistics for foreign-born males.

On the whole, then, the marriage statistics of the United States are reassuring. Even if examination is limited to the Native Whites of Native Parentage, who are probably of greater eugenic worth, as a group, than any of the other three, the marriage rate is found to be moving in the right direction.

But going a step farther, one finds that within this group there are great irregularities, which do not appear when the group is considered as a whole. And these irregularities are of a nature to give the eugenist grave concern.

If one sought, for example, to find a group of women distinctly superior to the average, he might safely take the college graduates. Their superior quality as a class lies in the facts that:

(a) They have survived the weeding-out process of grammar and high school, and the repeated elimination by examinations in college.

(b) They have persevered, after those with less mental ability have grown tired of the strain and have voluntarily dropped out.

(c) Some have even forced their way to college against great obstacles, because attracted by the opportunities it offers them for mental activity.

(d) Some have gone to college because their excellence has been discovered by teachers or others who have strongly urged it.

All these attributes can not be merely acquired, but must be in some degree inherent. Furthermore, these girls are not only superior in themselves, but are ordinarily from superior parents, because

(a) Their parents have in most cases cooeperated by desiring this higher education for their daughters.

(b) The parents have in most cases had sufficient economic efficiency to be able to afford a college course for their daughters.

Therefore, although the number of college women in the United States is not great, their value eugenically is wholly disproportionate to their numbers. If marriage within such a selected class as this is being avoided, or greatly postponed, the eugenist can not help feeling concerned.

And the first glance at the statistics gives adequate ground for uneasiness. Take the figures for Wellesley College, for instance:

Status in fall of 1912 Graduates All students

Per cent married (graduated 1879-1888) 55% 60% Per cent married in: 10 years from graduation 35% 37% 20 years from graduation 48% 49%

From a racial standpoint, the significant marriage rate of any group of women is the percentage that have married before the end of the child-bearing period. Classes graduating later than 1888 are therefore not included, and the record shows the marital status in the fall of 1912. In compiling these data deceased members and the few lost from record are of course omitted.

In the foregoing study care was taken to distinguish as to when the marriage took place. Obviously marriages with the women at 45 or over being sterile must not be counted where it is the fecundity of the marriage that is being studied. The reader is warned therefore to make any necessary correction for this factor in the studies to follow in some of which unfortunately care has not been taken to make the necessary distinction.

Turn to Mount Holyoke College, the oldest of the great institutions for the higher education of women in this country. Professor Amy Hewes has collected the following data:

Decade of graduation Per cent remaining single Per cent marrying

1842-1849 14.6 85.4 1850-1859 24.5 75.5 1860-1869 39.1 60.9 1870-1879 40.6 59.4 1880-1889 42.4 57.6 1890-1892 50.0 50.0

Bryn Mawr College, between 1888 and 1900, graduated 376 girls, of whom 165, or 43.9%, had married up to January 1, 1913.

Studying the Vassar College graduates between 1867 and 1892, Robert J. Sprague found that 509 of the total of 959 had married, leaving 47% celibate. Adding the classes up to 1900, it was found that less than half of the total number of graduates of the institution had married.

Remembering what a selected group of young women go to college, the eugenist can hardly help suspecting that the women's colleges of the United States, as at present conducted, are from his point of view doing great harm to the race. This suspicion becomes a certainty, as one investigation after another shows the same results. Statistics compiled on marriages among college women (1901) showed that:

45% of college women marry before the age of 40. 90% of all United States women marry before the age of 40. 96% of Arkansas women marry before the age of 40. 80% of Massachusetts women marry before the age of 40.

In Massachusetts, it is further to be noted, 30% of all women have married at the age when college women are just graduating.

It has, moreover, been demonstrated that the women who belong to Phi Beta Kappa and other honor societies, and therefore represent a second selection from an already selected class, have a lower marriage rate than college women in general.

In reply to such facts, the eugenist is often told that the college graduates marry as often and as early as the other members of their families. We are comparing conditions that can not properly be compared, we are informed, when we match the college woman's marriage rate with that of a non-college woman who comes from a lower level of society.

But the facts will not bear out this apology. Miss M. R. Smith's statistics[106] from the data of the Collegiate Alumnae show the true situation. The average age at marriage was found to be for

Years College women 26.3 Their sisters 24.2 Their cousins 24.7 Their friends 24.2

and the age distribution of those married was as follows:

Equivalent Percentage of married College non-college Under 23 years 8.6 30.1 23-32 years 83.2 64.9 33 and over 8.0 5.0



If these differences did not bring about any change in the birth-rate, they could be neglected. A slight sacrifice might even be made, for the sake of having mothers better prepared. But taken in connection with the birth-rate figures which we shall present in the next chapter, they form a serious indictment against the women's colleges of the United States.

Such conditions are not wholly confined to women's colleges, or to any one geographical area. Miss Helen D. Murphey has compiled the statistics for Washington Seminary, in Washington, Pennsylvania, a secondary school for women, founded in 1837. The marriage rate among the graduates of this institution has steadily declined, as is shown in the following table where the records are considered by decades:

'45 '55 '65 '75 '85 '95 '00 Per cent. married 78 74 67 72 59 57 55 Per cent. who have gone into 20 13 12 19 30 30 39 other occupations than home-making

A graph, plotted to show how soon after graduation these girls have married, demonstrates that the greatest number of them wed five or six years after receiving their diplomas, but that the number of those marrying 10 years afterward is not very much less than that of the girls who become brides in the first or second year after graduation (see Fig. 35).

C. S. Castle's investigation[107] of the ages at which eminent women of various periods have married, is interesting in this connection, in spite of the small number of individuals with which it deals:

Century Average age Range Number of cases 12 16.2 8-30 5 13 16.6 12-29 5 14 13.8 6-18 11 15 17.6 13-26 20 16 21.7 12-50 28 17 20.0 13-43 30 18 23.1 13-53 127 19 26.2 15-67 189

Women in coeducational colleges, particularly the great universities of the west, can not be compared without corrections with the women of the eastern separate colleges, because they represent different family and environmental selection. Their record none the less deserves careful study. Miss Shinn[108] calculated the marriage rate of college women as follows, assuming graduation at the age of 22:

Women over Coeducated Separate 25 38.1 29.6 30 49.1 40.1 35 53.6 46.6 40 56.9 51.8

She has shown that only a part of this discrepancy is attributable to the geographic difference, some of it is the effect of lack of co-education. Some of it is also attributable to the type of education.

The marriage rate of women graduates of Iowa State College[109] is as follows:

1872-81 95.8 1882-91 62.5 1892-01 71.2 1902-06 69.0

Study of the alumni register of Oberlin,[110] one of the oldest coeducational institutions, shows that the marriage rate of women graduates, 1884-1905, was 65.2%, only 34.8% of them remaining unmarried. If the later period, 1890-1905, alone is taken, only 55.2% of the girls have married. The figures for the last few classes in this period are probably not complete.

At Kansas State Agricultural College, 1885-1905, 67.6% of the women graduates have married. At Ohio State University in the same period, the percentage is only 54.0. Wisconsin University, 1870-1905, shows a percentage of 51.8, the figures for the last five years of that period being:

1901 33.9 1902 52.9 1903 45.1 1904 32.3 1905 37.4

From alumni records of the University of Illinois, 54% of the women, 1880-1905, are found to be married.

It is difficult to discuss these figures without extensive study of each case. But that only 53% of the women graduates of three great universities like Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin, should be married, 10 years after graduation, indicates that something is wrong.

In most cases it is not possible to tell, from the alumni records of the above colleges, whether the male graduates are or are not married. But the class lists of Harvard and Yale have recently been carefully studied by John C. Phillips,[111] who finds that in the period 1851-1890 74% of the Harvard graduates and 78% of the Yale graduates married. In that period, he found, the age of marriage has advanced only about 1 year, from a little over 30 to just about 31. This is a much higher rate than that of college women.

Statistics from Stanford University[112] offer an interesting comparison because they are available for both men and women. Of 670 male graduates, classes 1892 to 1900, inclusive, 490 or 73.2% were reported as married in 1910. Of 330 women, 160 or 48.5% were married. These figures are not complete, as some of the graduates in the later classes must have married since 1910.

The conditions existing at Stanford are likewise found at Syracuse, on the opposite side of the continent. Here, as H. J. Banker has shown,[113] the men graduates marry most frequently 4.5 years after taking their degrees, and the women 4.7 years. Of the women 57% marry, of the men 81%. The women marry at the average age of 27.7 years and the men at 28.8. Less than one-fourth of the marrying men married women within the college. The last five decades he studied show a steady decrease in the number of women graduates who marry, while the men are much more constant. His figures are:

Per cent of men Per cent of women Decade graduates graduates married married

1852-61 81 87 1862-71 87 87 1872-81 90 81 1882-91 84 55 1892-01 73 48

C. B. Davenport, looking at the record of his own classmates at Harvard, found[114] in 1909 that among the 328 original members there were 287 surviving, of whom nearly a third (31%) had never married.

"Of these (287)," he continues, "26 were in 'Who's Who in America?' We should expect, were success in professional life promoted by bachelorship, to find something over a third of those in Who's Who to be unmarried. Actually all but two, or less than 8%, were married, and one of these has since married. The only still unmarried man was a temporary member of the class and is an artist who has resided for a large part of the time in Europe. There is, therefore, no reason to believe that bachelorship favors professional success."

Particularly pernicious in tending to prevent marriage is the influence of certain professional schools, some of which have come to require a college degree for entrance. In such a case the aspiring physician, for example, can hardly hope to obtain a license to practice until he has reached the age of 27 since 4 years are required in Medical College and 1 year in a hospital. His marriage must in almost every case be postponed until a number of years after that of the young men of his own class who have followed business careers.

This brief survey is enough to prove that the best educated young women (and to a less extent young men) of the United States, who for many reasons may be considered superior, are in many cases avoiding marriage altogether, and in other cases postponing it longer than is desirable. The women in the separate colleges of the East have the worst record in this respect, but that of the women graduates of some of the coeducational schools leaves much to be desired.

It is difficult to separate the causes which result in a postponement of marriage, from those that result in a total avoidance of marriage. To a large extent the causes are the same, and the result differs only in degree. The effect of absolute celibacy of superior people, from a eugenic point of view, is of course obvious to all, but the racial effect of postponement of marriage, even for a few years, is not always so clearly realized. The diagram in Fig. 36 may give a clearer appreciation of this situation.

Francis Galton clearly perceived the importance of this point, and attempted in several ways to arrive at a just idea of it. One of the most striking of his investigations is based on Dr. Duncan's statistics from a maternity hospital. Dividing the mothers into five-year groups, according to their age, and stating the median age of the group for the sake of simplicity, instead of giving the limits, he arrived at the following table:

Age of mother at Approximate average her marriage fertility 17 9.00—6 x 1.5 22 7.50—5 x 1.5 27 6.00—4 x 1.5 32 4.50—3 x 1.5

which shows that the relative fertility of mothers married at the ages of 17, 22, 27 and 32, respectively, is as 6, 5, 4, and 3 approximately.

"The increase in population by a habit of early marriages," he adds, "is further augmented by the greater rapidity with which the generations follow each other. By the joint effect of these two causes, a large effect is in time produced."

Certainly the object of eugenics is not to merely increase human numbers. Quality is more important than quantity in a birth-rate. But it must be evident that other things being equal, a group which marries early will, after a number of generations, supplant a group which marries even a few years later. And there is abundant evidence to show that some of the best elements of the old, white, American race are being rapidly eliminated from the population of America, because of postponement or avoidance of marriage.

Taking the men alone, we find that failure to marry may often be ascribed to one of the following reasons:

1. The cultivation of a taste for sexual variety and a consequent unwillingness to submit to the restraints of marriage.

2. Pessimism in regard to women from premature or unfortunate sex experiences.

3. Infection by venereal disease.

4. Deficiency in normal sexual feeling, or perversion.

5. Deficiency of one kind or another, physical or mental, causing difficulty in getting an acceptable mate.

The persons in groups 4 and 5 certainly and in groups 1, 2, and 3 probably to a less extent, are inferior, and their celibacy is an advantage to the race, rather than a disadvantage, from a eugenic point of view. Their inferiority is in part the result of bad environment. But since innate inferiority is so frequently a large factor, the bad environment often being experienced only because the nature was inferior to start with, the average of the group as a whole must be considered innately inferior.

Then there are among celibate men two other classes, largely superior by nature:

6. Those who seek some other end so ardently that they will not make the necessary sacrifice in money and freedom, in order to marry.

7. Those whose likelihood of early marriage is reduced by a prolonged education and apprenticeship. Prolongation of the celibate period often results in life-long celibacy.

Some of the most important means of remedying the above conditions, in so far as they are dysgenic, can be grouped under three general heads:

1. Try to lead all young men to avoid a loose sexual life and venereal disease. A general effort will be heeded more by the superior than by the inferior.

2. Hold up the role of husband and father as particularly honorable, and proclaim its shirking, without adequate cause, as dishonorable. Depict it as a happier and healthier state than celibacy or pseudo-celibacy. For a man to say he has never met a girl he can love simply means he has not diligently sought one, or else he has a deficient emotional equipment; for there are many, surprisingly many, estimable, attractive, unmarried women.

3. Cease prolonging the educational period past the early twenties. It is time to call a halt on the schools and universities, whose constant lengthening of the educational period will result in a serious loss to the race. External circumstances of an educational nature should not be allowed to force a young man to postpone his marriage past the age of 25. This means that students must be allowed to specialize earlier. If there is need of limiting the number of candidates, competitive entrance examinations may be arranged on some rational basis. Superior young men should marry, even at some cost to their early efficiency. The high efficiency of any profession can be more safely kept up by demanding a minimum amount of continuation work in afternoon, evening, or seasonal classes, laboratories, or clinics. No more graduate fellowships should be established until those now existing carry a stipend adequate for marriage. Those which already carry larger stipends should not be limited to bachelors, as are the most valuable awards at Princeton, the ten yearly Proctor fellowships of $1,000 each.

The causes of the remarkable failure of college women to marry can not be exhaustively investigated here, but for the purposes of eugenics they may be roughly classified as unavoidable and avoidable. Under the first heading must be placed those girls who are inherently unmarriageable, either because of physical defect or, more frequently, mental defect,—most often an over-development of intellect at the expense of the emotions, which makes a girl either unattractive to men, or inclines her toward a celibate career and away from marriage and motherhood. Opinions differ as to the proportion of college girls who are inherently unmarriageable. Anyone who has been much among them will testify that a large proportion of them are not inherently unmarriageable, however, and their celibacy for the most part must be classified as avoidable. Their failure to marry may be because

(1) They desire not to marry, due to a preference for a career, or development of a cynical attitude toward men and matrimony, due to a faulty education, or

(2) They desire to marry, but do not, for a variety of reasons such as:

(a) They are educated for careers, such as school-teaching, where they have little opportunity to meet men.

(b) Their education makes them less desirable mates than girls who have had some training along the lines of home-making and mothercraft.

(c) They have remained in partial segregation until past the age when they are physically most attractive, and when the other girls of their age are marrying.

(d) Due to their own education, they demand on the part of suitors a higher degree of education than the young men of their acquaintance possess. A girl of this type wants to marry but desires a man who is educationally her equal or superior. As men of such type are relatively rare, her chances of marriage are reduced.

(e) Their experience in college makes them desire a standard of living higher than that of their own families or of the men among whom they were brought up. They become resistant to the suit of men who are of ordinary economic status. While waiting for the appearance of a suitor who is above the average in both intelligence and wealth, they pass the marriageable age.

(f) They are better educated than the young men of their acquaintance, and the latter are afraid of them. Some young men dislike to marry girls who know more than they do, except in the distinctively feminine fields.

These and various similar causes help to lower the marriage-rate of college women and to account for the large number of alumnae who desire to marry but are unable to do so. In the interest of eugenics, the various difficulties must be met in appropriate ways.

Marriage is not desirable for those who are eugenically inferior, from weak constitutions, defective sexuality, or inherent mental deficiency. But beyond these groups of women are the much larger groups of celibates who are distinctly superior, and whose chances of marriage have been reduced for one of the reasons mentioned above or through living in cities with an undue proportion of female residents. Then there are, besides these, superior women who, because they are brought up in families without brothers or brothers' friends, are so unnaturally shy that they are unable to become friendly with men, however much they may care to. It is evident that life in a separate college for women often intensifies this defect. There are still other women who repel men by a manner of extreme self-repression and coldness, sometimes the result of parents' or teachers' over-zealous efforts to inculcate modesty and reserve, traits valuable in due degree but harmful in excess.

When will educators learn that the education of the emotions is as important as that of the intellect? When will the schools awake to the fact that a large part of life consists in relations with other human beings, and that much of their educational effort is absolutely valueless, or detrimental, to success in the fundamentally necessary practice of dealing with other individuals which is imposed on every one? Many a college girl of the finest innate qualities, who sincerely desires to enter matrimony, is unable to find a husband of her own class, simply because she has been rendered so cold and unattractive, so over-stuffed intellectually and starved emotionally, that a typical man does not desire to spend the rest of his life in her company. The same indictment applies in a less degree to men. It is generally believed that an only child is frequently to be found in this class.

On the other hand, it is equally true—perhaps more important—that many innately superior young men are rejected, because of their manner of life. Superior young men should be induced to keep their physical records clean, in order that they may not suffer the severe depreciation which they would otherwise sustain in the eyes of superior women.

But in efforts to teach chastity, sex itself must not be made to appear an evil thing. This is a grave mistake and all too common since the rise of the sex-hygiene movement. Undoubtedly a considerable amount of the celibacy in sensitive women may be traced to ill-balanced mothers and teachers who, in word and attitude, build up an impression that sex is indecent and bestial, and engender in general a damaging suspicion of men.[115]

Level heads are necessary in the sex ethics campaign. Whereas the venereal diseases will probably, with a continuation of present progress in treatment and prophylaxis, be brought under control in the course of a century, the problem of differential mating will exist as long as the race does, which can hardly be less than tens of millions of years. Lurid presentation, by drama, novel, or magazine-story, of dramatic and highly-colored individual sex histories, is to be avoided. These often impress an abnormal situation on sensitive girls so strongly that aversion to marriage, or sex antagonism, is aroused. Every effort should be made to permeate art—dramatic, plastic, or literary—with the highest ideals of sex and parenthood. A glorification of motherhood and fatherhood in these ways would have a portentous influence on public opinion.

"The true, intimate chronicle of an everyday married life has not been written. Here is a theme for genius; for only genius can divine and reveal the beauty, the pathos, and the wonder of the normal or the commonplace. A felicitous marriage has its comedy, its complexities, its element, too, of tragedy and grief, as well as its serenity and fealty. Matrimony, whether the pair fare well or ill, is always a great adventure, a play of deep instincts and powerful emotions, a drama of two psyches. Every marriage provides a theme for the literary artist. No lives are free from enigmas."[116]

More "temperance" in work would probably promote marriage of able and ambitious young people. Walter Gallichan complains that "we do not even recognize love as a finer passion than money greed. It is a kind of luxury, or pleasant pastime, for the sentimentally minded. Love is so undervalued as a source of happiness, a means of grace, and a completion of being, that many men would sooner work to keep a motor car than to marry."

Men should be taught greater respect for the individuality of women, so that no high-minded girl will shrink from marriage with the idea that it means a surrender of her personality and a state of domestic servitude. A more discriminating idea of sex-equality is desirable, and a recognition by men that women are not necessarily creatures of inferior mentality. It would be an advantage if men's education included some instruction along these lines. It would be a great gain, also if intelligent women had more knowledge of domestic economy and mothercraft, because one of the reasons why the well-educated girl is handicapped in seeking a mate is the belief all too frequently well founded of many young men that she is a luxury which he can not afford.

Higher education in general needs to be reoriented. It has too much glorified individualism, and put a premium on "white collar" work. The trend toward industrial education will help to correct this situation.

Professor Sprague[117] points out another very important fault, when he says: "More strong men are needed on the staffs of public schools and women's colleges, and in all of these institutions more married instructors of both sexes are desirable. The catalogue of one of the [women's] colleges referred to above shows 114 professors and instructors, of whom 100 are women, of whom only two have ever married. Is it to be expected that the curriculum created by such a staff would idealize and prepare for family and home life as the greatest work of the world and the highest goal of woman, and teach race survival as a patriotic duty? Or, would it be expected that these bachelor staffs would glorify the independent vocation and life for women and create employment bureaus to enable their graduates to get into the offices, schools and other lucrative jobs? The latter seems to be what occurs."

Increase of opportunity for superior young people to meet each other, as discussed in our chapter on sexual selection, will play a very large part in raising the marriage rate. And finally, the delayed or avoided marriage of the intellectual classes is in large part a reflection of public opinion, which has wrongly represented other things as being more worth while than marriage.

"The promotion of marriage in early adult life, as a part of social hygiene, must begin with a new canonization of marriage," Mr. Gallichan declares. "This is equally the task of the fervent poet and the scientific thinker, whose respective labors for humanity are never at variance in essentials.... The sentiment for marriage can be deepened by a rational understanding of the passion that attracts and unites the sexes. We need an apotheosis of conjugal love as a basis for a new appreciation of marriage. Reverence for love should be fostered from the outset of the adolescent period by parents and pedagogues."

If, in addition to this "diffusion of healthier views of the conjugal relation," some of the economic changes suggested in later chapters are put in effect, it seems probable that the present racially disastrous tendency of the most superior young men and women to postpone or avoid marriage would be checked.



CHAPTER XIII

INCREASE OF THE BIRTH-RATE OF THE SUPERIOR

Imagine 200 babies born to parents of native stock in the United States. On the average, 103 of them will be boys and 97 girls. By the time the girls reach a marriageable age (say 20 years), at least 19 will have died, leaving 78 possible wives, on whom the duty of perpetuating that section of the race depends.

We said "Possible" wives, not probable; for not all will marry. It is difficult to say just how many will become wives, but Robert J. Sprague has reported on several investigations that illuminate the point.

In a selected New England village in 1890, he says, "there were forty marriageable girls between the ages of 20 and 35. To-day thirty-two of these are married, 20 per cent. are spinsters.

"An investigation of 260 families of the Massachusetts Agricultural College students shows that out of 832 women over 40 years of age 755 or 91 per cent. have married, leaving only 9 per cent. spinsters. This and other observations indicate that the daughters of farmers marry more generally than those of some other classes.

"In sixty-nine (reporting) families represented by the freshman class of Amherst College (1914) there are 229 mothers and aunts over 40 years of age, of whom 186 or 81 per cent. have already married.

"It would seem safe to conclude that about 15 per cent. of native women in general American society do not marry during the child-bearing period." Deducting 15 per cent. from the 78 possible wives leaves sixty-six probable wives. Now among the native wives of Massachusetts 20 per cent. do not produce children, and deducting these thirteen childless ones from the sixty-six probable wives leaves fifty-three probable, married, child-bearing women, who must be depended on to reproduce the original 200 individuals with whom we began this chapter. That means that each woman who demonstrates ability to bear offspring must bear 3.7 children. This it must be noted, is a minimum number, for no account has been taken of those who, through some defect or disease developed late in life, become unmarriageable. In general, unless every married woman brings three children to maturity, the race will not even hold its own in numbers. And this means that each woman must bear four children, since not all the children born will live. If the married women of the country bear fewer than nearly four children each, the race is in danger of losing ground.

Such a statement ought to strike the reader as one of grave importance; but we labor under no delusion that it will do so. For we are painfully aware that the bugaboo of the declining birth-rate of superior people has been raised so often in late years, that it has become stale by repetition. It no longer causes any alarm. The country is filled with sincere but mentally short-sighted individuals, who are constantly ready to vociferate that numbers are no very desirable thing in a birth-rate; that quality is wanted, not quantity; that a few children given ideal care are of much more value to the state and the race than are many children, who can not receive this attention.

And this attitude toward the subject, we venture to assert, is a graver peril to the race than is the declining birth-rate itself. For there is enough truth in it to make it plausible, and to separate the truth from the dangerous untruth it contains, and to make the bulk of the population see the distinction, is a task which will tax every energy of the eugenist.

Unfortunately, this is not a case of mere difference of opinion between men; it is a case of antagonism between men and nature. If a race hypnotize itself into thinking that its views about race suicide are superior to nature's views, it may make its own end a little less painful; but it will not postpone that end for a single minute. The contest is to the strong, and although numbers are not the most important element in strength, it is very certain that a race made up of families containing one child each will not be the survivor in the struggle for existence.

The idea, therefore, that race suicide and general limitation of births to the irreducible minimum, can be effectively justified by any conceivable appeal to economic or sociological factors, is a mistake which will eventually bring about the extinction of the people making it.

This statement must not be interpreted wrongly. Certainly we would not argue that a high birth-rate in itself is necessarily a desirable thing. It is not the object of eugenics to achieve as big a population as possible, regardless of quality. But in the last analysis, the only wealth of a nation is its people; moreover some people, are as national assets, worth more than others. The goal, then, might be said to be: a population adjusted in respect to its numbers to the resources of the country, and that number of the very best quality possible. Great diversity of people is required in modern society, but of each desirable kind the best obtainable representatives are to be desired.

It is at once evident that a decline, rather than an increase, in the birth-rate of some sections of the population, is wanted. There are some strata at the bottom that are a source of weakness rather than of strength to the race, and a source of unhappiness rather than of happiness to themselves and those around them. These should be reduced in number, as we have shown at some length earlier in this book.

The other parts of the population should be perpetuated by the best, rather than the worst. In no other way can the necessary leaders be secured, without whom, in commerce, industry, politics, science, the nation is at a great disadvantage. The task of eugenics is by no means what it is sometimes supposed to be: to breed a superior caste. But a very important part of its task is certainly to increase the number of leaders in the race. And it is this part of its task, in particular, which is menaced by the declining birth-rate in the United States.

As every one knows, race suicide is proceeding more rapidly among the native whites than among any other large section of the population; and it is exactly this part of the population which has in the past furnished most of the eminent men of the country.

It has been shown in previous chapters that eminent men do not appear wholly by chance in the population. The production of eminence is largely a family affair; and in America, "the land of opportunity" as well as in older countries, people of eminence are much more interrelated than chance would allow. It has been shown, indeed, that in America it is at least a 500 to 1 bet that an eminent person will be rather closely related to some other eminent person, and will not be a sporadic appearance in the population.[118]

Taken with other considerations advanced in earlier chapters, this means that a falling off in the reproduction of the old American best strains means a falling off in the number of eminent men which the United States will produce. No improvement in education can prevent a serious loss, for the strong minds get more from education.

The old American stock has produced a vastly greater proportion of eminence, has accomplished a great deal more proportionately, in modern times, than has other any stock whose representatives have been coming in large numbers as immigrants to these shores during the last generation. It is, therefore, likely to continue to surpass them, unless it declines too greatly in numbers. For this reason, we feel justified in concluding that the decline of the birth-rate in the old American stock represents a decline in the birth-rate of a superior element.

There is another way of looking at this point. The stock under discussion has been, on the whole, economically ahead of such stocks as are now immigrating. In competition with them under equal conditions, it appears to remain pretty consistently ahead, economically. Now, although we would not insist on this point too strongly, it can hardly be questioned that eugenic value is to some extent correlated with economic success in life, as all desirable qualities tend to be correlated together. Within reasonable limits, it is justifiable to treat the economically superior sections of the nation as the eugenically superior. And it is among these economically superior sections of the nation that the birth-rate has most rapidly and dangerously fallen.

The constant influx of highly fecund immigrant women tends to obscure the fact that the birth-rate of the older residents is falling below par, and analysis of the birth-rate in various sections of the community is necessary to give an understanding of what is actually taking place.

In Rhode Island, F. L. Hoffmann found the average number of children for each foreign-born woman to be 3.35, and for each native-born woman to be 2.06. There were wide racial differences among the foreign born; the various elements were represented by the following average number of children per wife:

French-Canadians 4.42 Russians 3.51 Italians 3.49 Irish 3.45 Scotch and Welsh 3.09 English 2.89 Germans 2.84 Swedes 2.58 English-Canadians 2.56 Poles 2.31

In short, the native-born whites in this investigation fell below every one of the foreign nationalities.

The Massachusetts censuses for 1875 and 1884 showed similar results: the foreign-born women had 4.5 children each, and the native-born women 2.7 each.

Frederick S. Crum's careful investigation[119] of New England genealogies, including 12,722 wives, has thrown a great deal of light on the steady decline in their birth-rate. He found the average number of children to be:

1750-1799 6.43 1800-1849 4.94 1850-1869 3.47 1870-1879 2.77

There, in four lines, is the story of the decline of the old American stock. At present, it is barely reproducing itself, probably not even that, for there is reason to believe that 1879 does not mark the lowest point reached. Before 1700, less than 2% of the wives in this investigation had only one child, now 20% of them have only one. With the emigration of old New England families to the west, and the constant immigration of foreign-born people to take their places, it is no cause for surprise that New England no longer exercises the intellectual leadership that she once held.

For Massachusetts as a whole, the birth-rate among the native-born population was 12.7 per 1,000 in 1890, 14.9 in 1910, while in the foreign-born population it was 38.6 in 1890 and 49.1 in 1910. After excluding all old women and young women, the birth-rate of the foreign-born women in Massachusetts is still found to be 3/4 greater than that of the native-born.[120]

In short, the birth-rate of the old American stock is now so low that that stock is dying out and being supplanted by immigrants. In order that the stock might even hold its own, we have shown that each married woman should bear three to four children. At present the married women of the old white American race in New England appear to be bringing two or less to maturity.

It will be profitable to digress for a moment to consider farther what this disappearance of the ancient population of Massachusetts means to the country. When all the distinguished men of the United States are graded, in accordance with their distinction, it is regularly found, as Frederick Adams Woods says, that "Some states in the union, some sections of the country, have produced more eminence than others, far beyond the expectation from their respective white populations. In this regard Massachusetts always leads, and Connecticut is always second, and certain southern states are always behind and fail to render their expected quota." The accurate methods used by Dr. Woods in this investigation leave no room for doubt that in almost every way Massachusetts has regularly produced twice as many eminent men as its population would lead one to expect, and has for some ranks and types of achievement produced about four times the expectation.

Scott Nearing's studies[121] confirm those of Dr. Woods. Taking the most distinguished men and women America has produced, he found that the number produced in New England, per 100,000 population, was much larger than that produced by any other part of the country. Rhode Island, the poorest New England state in this respect, was yet 30% above New York, the best state outside New England.

The advantage of New England, however, he found to be rapidly decreasing. Of the eminent persons born before 1850, 30% were New Englanders although the population of New England in 1850 was only 11.8% of that of the whole country. But of the eminent younger men,—those born between 1880 and 1889, New England, with 7.5% of the country's population, could claim only 12% of the genius. Cambridge, Mass., has produced more eminent younger men of the present time than any other city, he discovered, but the cities which come next in order are Nashville, Tenn., Columbus, Ohio, Lynn, Mass., Washington, D. C., Portland, Ore., Hartford, Conn., Boston, Mass., New Haven, Conn., Kansas City, Mo., and Chicago, Ill.

There is reason to believe that some of the old New England stock, which emigrated to the West, retains a higher fecundity than does that part of the stock which remains on the Atlantic seaboard. This fact, while a gratifying one, of course does not compensate for the low fertility of the families which still live in New England.

Within this section of the population, the decline is undoubtedly taking place faster in some parts than in others. Statistical evidence is not available, to tell a great deal about this, but the birth-rate for the graduates of some of the leading women's colleges is known, and their student bodies are made up largely of girls of superior stork. At Wellesley, the graph in Fig. 36 shows at a glance just what is happening. Briefly, the graduates of that college contribute less than one child apiece to the race. The classes do not even reproduce their own numbers. Instead of the 3.7 children which, according to Sprague's calculation, they ought to bear, they are bearing .86 of a child.

The foregoing study is one of the few to carefully distinguish between families which were complete at the time of study and those families where additional children may yet be born. In the studies to follow this distinction may in some cases be made by the reader in interpreting the data while in other cases families having some years of possible productiveness ahead are included with others and the relative proportion of the types is not indicated. The error in these cases is therefore important and the reader is warned to accept them only with a mental allowance for this factor.

The best students make an even worse showing in this respect. The Wellesley alumnae who are members of Phi Beta Kappa,—that is, the superior scholars—have not .86 of a child each, but only .65 of a child; while the holders of the Durant and Wellesley scholarships, awarded for intellectual superiority,[122] make the following pathetic showing in comparison with the whole class.

WELLESLEY COLLEGE

Graduates of '01, '02, '03, '04, Status of Fall of 1912

All Durant or Wellesley scholars Per cent married 44 35

Number of children: Per graduate .37 .20 Per wife .87 .57

It must not be thought that Wellesley's record is an exception, for most of the large women's colleges furnish deplorable figures. Mount Holyoke's record is:

Children per Children per Decade of graduation married graduate graduate

1842-1849 2.77 2.37 1850-1859 3.38 2.55 1860-1869 2.64 1.60 1870-1879 2.75 1.63 1880-1889 2.54 1.46 1890-1892 1.91 0.95

Nor can graduation from Bryn Mawr College be said to favor motherhood. By the 376 alumnae graduated there between 1888 and 1900, only 138 children had been produced up to Jan. 1, 1913. This makes .84 of a child per married alumna, or .37 of a child per graduate, since less than half of the graduates marry. These are the figures published by the college administration.

Professor Sprague's tabulation of the careers of Vassar college graduates, made from official records of the college, is worth quoting in full, for the light it throws on the histories of college girls, after they leave college:

CLASSES FROM 1867 TO 1892

Number of graduates 959 Number that taught 431 (45%) Number that married 509 (53%) Number that did not marry 450 (47%) Number that taught and afterward married 166 (39% of all who taught) Number that taught, married and had children 112 (67% of all who taught and married) Number that taught, married and were childless 54 (33%) Number of children of those who taught and had children 287 (1.73 children per family) Number of children of those who married but did not teach 686 (2 per married graduate that did not teach) Total number of children of all graduates 973 (1 child per graduate) Average number of children per married graduate 1.91 Average number of children per graduate 1.00

CLASSES FROM 1867 TO 1900

Number of graduates 1739 Number that taught 800 (46%) Number that married 854 (49%) Number that did not marry 885 (51%) Number that taught and afterward married 294 (31%) Number that taught, married and had children 203 (69% of all who taught and married) Number that taught, married and were childless 91 (31%) Number of children of those who taught and had children 463 (1.57 children per family) Number of children of those who married but did not teach 1025 (2 each) Total number of children of all graduates 1488 (.8 child per graduate) Average number of children per married graduate 1.74 (per married graduate) Average number of children per graduate 0.8

If the women's colleges were fulfilling what the writers consider to be their duty toward their students, their graduates would have a higher marriage and birth-rate than that of their sisters, cousins and friends who do not go to college. But the reverse is the case. M. R. Smith's investigation showed the comparison between college girls and girls of equivalent social position and of the same or similar families, as follows:

Number of Per cent childless children at time

College 1.65 25.36 Equivalent Non-College 1.874 17.89

Now if education is tending toward race suicide, then the writers believe there is something wrong with modern educational methods. And certainly all statistics available point to the fact that girls who have been in such an atmosphere as that of some colleges for four years, are, from a eugenic point of view, of diminished value to the race. This is not an argument against higher education for women, but it is a potent argument for a different kind of higher education than many of the colleges of America are now giving them.

This is one of the causes for the decline of the birth-rate in the old American stock. But of course it is only one. A very large number of causes are unquestionably at work to the same end, and the result can be adequately changed only if it is analyzed into as many of its component parts as possible, and each one of these dealt with separately. The writers have emphasized the shortcoming of women's colleges, because it is easily demonstrated and, they believe, relatively easily mitigated. But the record of men's colleges is not beyond criticism.

Miss Smith found that among the college graduates of the 18th century in New England, only 2% remained unmarried, while in the Yale classes of 1861-1879, 21% never married, and of the Harvard graduates from 1870-1879 26% remained single. The average number of children per Harvard graduate of the earlier period was found to be 3.44, for the latest period studied 1.92. Among the Yale graduates it was found that the number of children per father had declined from 5.16 to 2.55.



Figures were obtained from some other colleges, which are incomplete and should be taken with reservation. Their incompleteness probably led the number of children to be considerably underestimated. At Amherst, 1872-1879, it was found that 44 of the 440 graduates of the period remained unmarried. The average number of children per married man was 1.72. At Wesleyan it was found that 20 of the 208 graduates, from 1863 to 1870, remained single; the average number of children per married man was 2.31.

The only satisfactory study of the birth-rate of graduates of men's colleges is that recently made by John C. Phillips from the class lists of Harvard and Yale, 1850-1890, summarized in the accompanying graph (Fig. 37). In discussing his findings, Dr. Phillips writes:

"Roughly, the number of children born per capita per married graduate has fallen from about 3.25 in the first decade to 2.50 in the last decade. The per cent of graduates marrying has remained about the same for forty years, and is a trifle higher for Yale; but the low figure, 68% for the first decade of Harvard, is probably due to faulty records, and must not be taken as significant.

"The next most interesting figure is the 'Children Surviving per Capita per Graduate.' This has fallen from over 2.50 to about 1.9. The per cent of childless marriages increased very markedly during the first two decades and held nearly level for the last two decades. For the last decade at Yale it has even dropped slightly, an encouraging sign. It is worthy of note that the number of children born to Yale graduates is almost constantly a trifle higher than that for Harvard, while the number of childless marriages is slightly less." This is probably owing to the larger proportion of Harvard students living in a large city.

If the birth-rate of graduates both of separate men's colleges and of separate women's colleges is alarmingly low, that of graduates of coeducational institutions is not always satisfactory, either. To some extent the low birth-rate is a characteristic of educated people, without regard to the precise nature of their education. In a study of the graduates of Syracuse University, one of the oldest coeducational colleges of the eastern United States, H. J. Banker found[123] that the number of children declined with each decade. Thus married women graduates prior to the Civil War had 2 surviving children each; in the last decade of the nineteenth century they had only one. For married men graduates, the number of surviving children had fallen in the same length of time from 2.62 to 1.38. When all graduates, married or not, are counted in the decade 1892-1901, it is found that the men of Syracuse have contributed to the next generation one surviving child each, the women only half a child apiece.

Dr. Cattell's investigation of the families of 1,000 contemporary American men of science all of which were probably not complete however, shows that they leave, on the average, less than two surviving children. Only one family in 75 is larger than six, and 22% of them are childless. Obviously, as far as those families are concerned, there will be fewer men of inherent scientific eminence in the next generation than in this.

The decline in the birth-rate is sometimes attributed to the fact that people as a whole are marrying later than they used to; we have already shown that this idea is, on the whole, false. The idea that people as a whole are marrying less than they used to is also, as we have shown, mistaken. The decline in the general birth-rate can be attributed to only one fact, and that is that married people are having fewer children.

The percentage of childless wives in the American stock is steadily increasing. Dr. Crum's figures show the following percentage of childless wives, in the New England genealogies with which he worked:

1750-1799 1.88 1800-1849 4.07 1850-1869 5.91 1870-1879 8.10

J. A. Hill[124] found, from the 1910 census figures, that one in eight of the native-born wives is childless, as compared with one in five among the Negroes, one in nineteen among the foreign born. Childlessness of American wives is therefore a considerable, although not a preponderant factor, in this decline of the birth rate.

Dr. Hill further found that from 10 marriages, in various stocks, the following numbers of children could be expected:

Native-born women 27 Negro-born women 31 English-born women 34 Russian-born women 54 French Canada-born women 56 Polish-born women 62

The women of the old American stock are on the whole more sterile or, if not sterile, less fecund, than other women in the United States. Why?

In answer, various physiological causes are often alleged. It is said that the dissemination of venereal diseases has caused an increase of sterility; that luxurious living lowers fecundity, and so on. It is impossible to take the time to analyze the many explanations of this sort which have been offered, and which are familiar to the reader; we must content ourselves with saying that evidence of a great many kinds, largely statistical and, in our opinion, reliable, indicates that physiological causes play a minor part in the decrease of the birth-rate.[125]

Or, plainly, women no longer bear as many children, because they don't want to.

This accords with Dr. Cattel's inquiry of 461 American men of science; in 285 cases it was stated that the family was voluntarily limited, the cause being given as health in 133 cases, expense in 98 cases, and various in 54 cases. Sidney Webb's investigation among "intellectuals" in London showed an even greater proportion of voluntary limitation. The exhaustive investigation of the Galton Laboratory of National Eugenics leaves little room for doubt that in England the decline in the birth-rate began about 1876-78, when the trial of Charles Bradlaugh and the Theosophist leader, Mrs. Annie Besant, on the charge of circulating "neo-Malthusian" literature, focused public attention on the possibility of birth control, and gradually brought a knowledge of the means of contraception within reach of many. In the United States statistics are lacking, but medical men and others in a position to form opinions generally agree that the limitation of births has been steadily increasing for the last few decades; and with the propaganda at present going on, it is pretty sure to increase much more rapidly during the next decade or two.

Some instructive results can be drawn, in this connection, from a study of the families of Methodist clergymen in the United States.[126] Although 98 out of every hundred of them marry, and they marry early, the birth-rate is not high. Its distribution is presented in the accompanying graph (Fig. 38). It is evident that they have tended to standardize the two-child family which is so much in evidence among college professors and educated classes generally, all over the world. The presence of a considerable number of large families raises the average number of surviving children of prominent Methodists to 3.12.

And in so explaining the cause of the declining birth-rate among native-born Americans, we have also found the principal reason for the differential nature of the decline in the nation at large, which is the feature that alarms the eugenist. The more intelligent and well-to-do part of the population has been able to get and use the needed information, and limit its birth-rate; the poor and ignorant has been less able to do so, and their rate of increase has therefore been more natural in a large percentage of cases.

It is not surprising, therefore, that many eugenists should have advocated wider dissemination of the knowledge of means of limiting births, with the idea that if this practice were extended to the lower classes, their birth-rate would decrease just the same as has that of the upper classes, and the alarming differential rate would therefore be abolished.

[Illustration: FAMILIES OF PROMINENT METHODISTS

FIG. 38.—The heavy line shows the distribution of families of prominent Methodists (mostly clergymen) who married only once. Eleven percent had no surviving children and nearly half of the families consisted of two children or less. The dotted line shows the families of those who were twice married. It would naturally be expected that two women would bear considerably more children than one woman, but as an average fact it appears that a second wife means the addition of only half a child to the minister's family. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the birth-rate in these families is determined more by the desire of the parents (based on economic grounds) than on the natural fecundity of the women. In other words, the number of children is limited to the number whom the minister can afford to bring up on his inadequate salary.]