Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/509

Rh characteristic of our age, the number of mixed marriages has increased among persons belonging to all creeds, including the Jews.

Besides the religious and sentimental objections which are being made against intermarriage by Jews and christians, many other arguments were brought forward against them. Some have stated that mixed marriages are infertile, that a large proportion remain sterile and that the average number of children born to each marriage is much below the average of pure marriages. It has also been asserted that intermarriage of different races leads to physical, moral and intellectual deterioration. Only few of the virtues of each are inherited, but most of the vices are transmitted to the progeny.

The fertility of mixed marriages has especially been discussed by Joseph Jacobs, who calculated that even if one tenth of all the Jews and Jewesses married outside of their faith, only a little over two per cent, would be left of the original ten per cent, within six generations or 200 years. This idea prevailed, until recently Arthur Ruppin, after a thorough study of Prussian statistics, showed conclusively that there is no real basis for any such assertion. The fertility of mixed marriages in Prussia is not much below that of pure Jewish marriages.

Superficially, statistics would seem to indicate a lower birth rate of Jews married to non-Jews, as can be seen from the following figures, calculated by J. Thon, showing that in Bavaria the fecundity of the various classes of marriages was as follows:

In Prussia and Hungary the same is shown to be the case, while in the city of Berlin the fertility of mixed marriages appears even lower. The percentage of complete sterility is also stated to be higher among mixed than among pure Jewish couples. In New South Wales 13.41 per cent, of all the Jews married to Jewesses were sterile, while among Jews married to christians 30.55 per cent, were sterile. The average number of children was 3.48 among the general population, 4.06 among the Jews and only 2.01 among Jews married to christians.

All these figures are no safe criterion as to the fertility of mixed marriages, because the usual method applied in calculating the material