Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/185

Rh family as all seem to assume? Because the years of marriage are less? This is a hasty assumption as will appear when we recall that all children are born on an average within 7$1/2$ years after marriage, some authorities even say within 5 years. Accepting the longer term of 7$1/2$ years, this leaves the alumnus who marries 7 years after graduating in his thirtieth year, at 37$1/2$, and his wife, who marries at the latest at 26.4, in her thirty-four year. The end of the average child-bearing period falls accordingly for both the late marrying graduate and his spouse, still in the most vigorous period of life, 37$1/2$ for the educated male, 34 for the female, not so late as to interfere in any way with the family prospects. This is true for the college graduate; for the entire highly educated portion of our population I have no data and make no assertions. No figures are available for a group such as this, and this must be noted as the family size of this class has of late been considered. It is too comprehensive a term, and has been somewhat indiscriminately used in recent discussions of race decline; even far-reaching conclusions bearing upon this large group of the highly educated have been based upon data derived from the graduates of a single institution. Not even from those of several institutions if under similar conditions or even if of the same sex are we warranted in judging of the entire highly educated part of our population. The female college graduate must be classed among the highly educated, and the number of children in her family is below that of the native population; it is lower than that of any other group, whilst that of the average male graduate family is higher. Then again the college alumnus can not without further investigation be accepted as a standard, for even the highly educated male, as appears from the facts presented by Professor Dexter in his recent study of 'High Grade Men: in College and Out.' He shows that hardly more than one third, 37 per cent, of the 8,603 supposedly successful and prominent Americans mentioned in 'Who's Who' are college graduates, and only 2.2 per cent, of all now living alumni are included among these 8,000 supposedly higher type and most representative of living Americans. Regardless of this the variation in marriage and birth rate of the different elements of this group of the highly educated make it impossible to consider them jointly.

These facts, together with the limited data on hand, make it impossible as yet to reach conclusions of any kind as to the part taken by the highly educated portion of our population as a class in race reproduction; it is the male college graduate whom we here consider and compare, not with the male of the entire population, but with the native-born American only. I emphasize this as the two groups, the native-and foreign-born of our citizens differ widely as to the part they