Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/446

442 of adults of marriageable ages. If statistics of the number of marriages per 1,000 Jews over fifteen years of age, and especially of unmarried adults, were obtainable, the rates for the Jews as compared with the christians in Europe would show that they are yet less apt to marry than the figures in the above table indicate. Thus it was found in Berlin during the census of 1900 that of all persons over twenty years of age the following percentage were married:

These low marriage rates, which are only a recent social phenomenon among the Jews, are not confined to western Europe. Even in Russia, where the bulk of the 5,000,000 Jews live to-day under strict adherence to their faith and traditions, early marriages are less frequent than among the christians. The poor muscular development of the eastern European Jews, which has in part been attributed to early marriages, will have to be explained by some other causes. The following figures, from the census of Russia of 1897, give the percentage of persons who married at certain ages, both among the Jews and among the general population of the so-called 'Pale of Settlement.'

It appears from this table that the Jews in Russia marry later in life than the christians in that country. Only 5.95 per cent, of all the Jews who married in 1897 were less than twenty years of age, while about five times as many christians married at this youthful age. Even among the Jewesses only 27.76 per cent, married before reaching twenty, as against double that number, 55.01 per cent., among christian women. Marriages between twenty and thirty, on the other hand, are more frequent among the Jews—77.78 per cent, as against only 54.58 per cent, among christians, and 63.91 per cent, among the Jewesses, and 38.53 per cent, among the christian women. Finally, marriages among persons at advanced ages, over thirty, are contracted in about the same proportions in both groups. In general, Russia has an extraordinarily large number of youthful marriages. Nowhere in