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, 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 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 coÖperated 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:
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:
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, 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:
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
and the age distribution of those married was as follows:
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:
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
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
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
Study of the alumni register of Oberlin, 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:
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, Statistics from Stanford University The conditions existing at Stanford are likewise found at Syracuse, on the opposite side of the continent. Here, as H. J. Banker has shown,
C. B. Davenport, looking at the record of his own classmates at Harvard, found "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 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:
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 rÔle 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 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 alumnÆ 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 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. 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." 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 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 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 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. |