Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/574

570 preceding day addresses were made by Dr. C. R. Van Hise, president of the University of Wisconsin, on 'Colorado as a field for scientific research'; by Dr. Samuel L. Bigelow, of the University of Michigan, on 'The growth and function of the modern laboratory'; by Dr. C. E. Bessey, of the University of Nebraska, on 'The possibilities of the botanical laboratory,' and by Dr. Henry Crew, of Northwestern University, on 'Recent advances in the teaching of physics.' The president of the college. Dr. William F. Slocum, said in his address: "We dedicate then to-day this building devoted to the high purposes which led to the founding of the college; to the cause of learning and scientific study, to the up-building of the educational movement throughout the state. It is an added contribution to what other similar institutions are accomplishing in Colorado and throughout our country. In all the years to come may it help to broaden and enlarge the scope of human knowledge and aid in bringing into this section of the United States such a love of the larger life of thought and accurate study, and that new meaning will come to many as they read over its entrance, 'Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.'"

statistics on the size of families of college graduates published last year in this magazine by Professor Thorndike and by Dr. Engelmann have been considerably amplified by President Stanley Hall and Mr. Theodate L. Smith, and form the subject of an article in the last number of The Pedagogical Seminary. It is pointed out that the decrease in the number of children per wife is less than per man, owing to the fact that the graduates of the last century so frequently remarried. The conditions for the wives of clergymen in colonial times appear to have been unfortunate, about forty per cent, dying under the age of fifty.

But the authors are scarcely justified in saying that 'on this biological blunder of estimating the increase of population per man instead of per woman and too narrow a study of statistics is based much of the alarmist outcry in regard to the future population of the United States.' As far as the increase of the population is concerned, it matters but little whether it is due to strict monogamy or to successive polygamy.

The figures given in the paper are substantially those with which we are familiar. The size of family of the married college graduate has decreased from about four in the first part of the last century to about two and a half in the second half, and at the same time the percentage of those unmarried has increased. Great care must, however, be taken in interpreting such statistics. For example, the members of the class of 1883 of Yale College are reported to have only five living children; but we find that the report relates to a period three years after graduation. Even when the period is as long as fifteen years the number of children will increase by about 50 per cent. The ominous fact stands, however, that college graduates do not now reproduce themselves. If the figures for Harvard College are correct, they are exterminated with startling rapidity, a hundred graduates produce only 68 boys in the next generation, and leave only 30 great-grandsons. It must, however, be remembered that the conditions in the race and class from which graduates come may be as bad. Thus the number of children living for every native Massachusetts woman, between the ages of forty and fifty, was, in 1885, only 1.80.

The statistics for the women graduates are of special interest, although they in most cases relate to such recent classes that they are difficult to interpret. They are also reported by diverse methods and are probably not very accurate. Thus when it is said that of 176 children only 11 have died,