Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/447

Rh western Europe is there to be found more than four per cent, of bridegrooms under twenty years of age. This is of course due to the numerical predominance of agricultural workers with a communistic arrangement of the village community. The Jews in that country live mostly in cities, are either manufacturers, merchants, etc., or skilled mechanics. Marriage among such people must be postponed till business assures a secure income, or till the individual has attained skill in his trade or profession. The low birth rates of the Jews in Russia (compared with the non-Jewish population of that country) is here partly explained. The later an individual marries, the shorter is the period of the married state, and the number of children to be expected is smaller. In fact the census of 1897 showed that there were five per cent, more unmarried Jews than unmarried christians, as can be seen from the following figures:

In this connection it is interesting to note that the percentage of protogamous marriages is smaller among the Jews in Russia than among the general population. The marriages between bachelors and maids constituted 83.73 per cent, among the general population and only 80.72 per cent, among the Jews. Second marriages are more frequent among the Jews; and contrary to the almost general experience that widowers are more likely to marry maids than widows, the Jewish widowers in Russia more often marry widows. These peculiarities are explained by social customs.

We can find nothing in the above figures which would indicate any racial influence on the marriage rates of the Jews. In fact the evidence indicates that it is purely a social phenomenon. The Jews in eastern Europe marry earlier and have a smaller proportion of celibates than their coreligionists in western Europe, because the latter enjoy on the average a better social and economic prosperity. When compared with their non-Jewish neighbors in eastern Europe, the Jews have a lower marriage rate, because they have very few agricultural laborers, and have, on the other hand, a larger number of merchants, skilled workmen, etc., whose birth rate is lower among all peoples in Europe. In oriental countries, like Palestine, Turkey, Persia, Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, etc., where the Jews live under a primitive culture, and are entirely unaffected by any occidentialoccidental [sic] influences, the Jews to-day marry very early. Husbands at fourteen and