Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/266

262 however, is the ratio of births with reference to the number of women of child-bearing age present, viz., those between 15 and 49 years of age, inclusive. This rate was found to be 72.87 per 1,000, as against 82.9 in Massachusetts, and 86 in Rhode Island. During the six years in which this investigation was made by the census officials, the rates among the Jews were decreasing perceptibly, showing the same tendency as is observed among the Jews in Europe. Physicians who practise their profession among the immigrant Jewish population of New York City all agree that its fertility is decidedly decreasing. Those who have been a longer time in the United States are always inquiring about the best means of limiting the size of the family, while the native Jews are hardly to be distinguished in this respect from the average American city population.

In no country in the civilized world is there to be seen such formidable decline in fertility as among the Jews in western Europe. In Germany the rates among the christians have remained about the same since the beginning of the nineteenth century; since 1840 the rates have been about 36, and remained so at the beginning of the twentieth century. In some provinces it has only slightly decreased, as in Prussia from 37.8 in 1841 to 36.5 in 1900. The most striking decline in procreative capacity is said to be observed in France. But even there it was 27.3 in 1841-50, and it sank to 22 in 1900. This is considered the most appalling decline. But among the Jews racial self-effacement is much more pronounced; in Prussia the birth rate sank from 35.46 in 1822-40 to 18.71 in 1904; in Bohemia, Bavaria, etc., the rates are lower, only 17 per 1,000 population; in large cities like Berlin, it is even lower, almost on the verge of reaching a vanishing point. The effects of this violent race suicide are evident to every one: the number of native Jews in those countries is decreasing in rapid strides to an extent unknown in the history of any civilized people.

It has been stated that, notwithstanding the low birth rate, the Jews have a higher marriage fecundity or fruitfulness than the christians. This is not borne out by facts. In the following table it is seen that in Russia, Prussia and Bavaria the average number of children to a marriage is smaller than among their non-Jewish neighbors.

That this low fecundity has not always been observed among the Jews is shown from figures about the Bavarian Jews collected by J. Thon.