Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/476

472 in a problem, I do not mean thereby that these factors are the only ones, not always indeed that they are the most important ones. I shall often take it for granted that the reader is familiar with the other factors of a biological or ethical nature.

I shall begin my presentation with a discussion of birth rates. The falling birth rate in all civilized countries is one of the chief anxieties of social students and statesmen. In France it has sunk so low that, in spite of the low death rate of 22, the births from 1893 to 1902 exceeded the deaths by only 1.2 per thousand annually. Even in 185060 France had the low birth rate of 26, and it has fallen steadily ever since, until it has now reached the figure 21, and in some departments there are three deaths for every two births. Whereas a century ago the population of France formed one quarter of that of the world's civilized powers, and she lorded it over the Germanic nations, now her population has fallen to seven per cent., and she has almost lost her place among the great powers of Europe. Between the two ten-year periods mentioned above the birth rate has also fallen in England from 33 to 30, in Italy from 38 to 35, while in Austria it has risen from 37 to 38. The birth rate has also fallen greatly in the United States in recent decades, especially in New England among the native population. Whereas at the beginning of the nineteenth century the population of the United States was doubling every 22 to 23 5'ears, in the last 20 years it has increased only a trifle over 40 per cent., and the increase of 21 per cent, for the last decade was the smallest on record.!Most striking is the stationary population of the great agricultural states of the middle west; here the increase for the whole decade was only 6 to 7 per cent., and Iowa showed an actual decrease. The three rural New England states showed a gain of but 5 per cent. Only in the sparsely settled far-western states was the increase over 50 per cent., undoubtedly due chiefly to immigration. California, for instance, increased her population in the last decade by 60 per cent., but the birth rate for recent years has hardly exceeded the low death rate of 15 by a larger margin than that in France herself. In the New England states also the death rate for 1900 among the native whites actually exceeded the birth rate by 1.5 per thousand. Here race suicide was even worse than in France. The birth rate of the foreign-born whites in New England, however, was nearly 45. This means nothing less than that the native American stock is dying out in New England, and is being replaced by foreign races from southern Europe.

Now is it merely a coincidence that the high birth rate among the native New Englanders began to fall rapidly after the years 1820-30, at the same time that large numbers of immigrants came from Europe? The late Francis A. Walker, superintendent of the census in 1870 and 1880, maintained that the great immigration during the last seventy years had undoubtedly boon a direct cause of tho fall in birth rate