Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/481

Rh wage-level in the north. We then have $460 for the wage index in 1904 and $550 for the same in 1911; and find that this means a rise in average wages of 19 per cent, in the seven years. This rate would make an increase of 24.4 per cent, for the nine years, 1902-1911, in contrast to the increase of 44 per cent, for the cost of living in New York and 36 per cent, for the rise in average prices during the decade 1896 to 1906. I see no escape from the conclusion that the cost of living has increased since 1896 at least 50 per cent, more than wages have risen.

This great uncompensated rise in the cost of living means nothing less than progressive impoverishment of the mass of the American people; and is of the greatest possible injury to the welfare of the nation as well as to the racial qualities of its future citizens. Here we are only concerned with its effect upon the birth rate, which it tends strongly to reduce among the superior, foresighted part of the population, who feel the responsibility of bringing children into the world, and have the knowledge and self-restraint required for limiting offspring. The paupers, however, unless prevented by the state, will continue to breed as rapidly as ever; and the generally inferior, less industrious, ambitious, and provident part of the population will also restrict their births but little. The result is, for it is actually taking place now, that the percentage of the inferior and unfit steadily increases, while that of the superior and fit pari passu diminishes; and, if this process of degeneration is not checked, the nation as a whole will become unfit and will succumb, as most nations have done in history.

Dr. A. F. Tredgold in the Eugenics Review for April, 1911, gave the following fact in corroboration of the differential decline in the birth rate. He found the average number of children among 43 incompetent, parasitic working families was 7.4, while that among 91 thrifty, competent working-class families was 3.7 or just one half. Mr. Sidney Webb also found that among the members of the Hearts of Oak Benefit, which is composed of healthy, thrifty artisans of a superior type in England, the birth rate had declined by 52 per cent, from 1880 to 1904, which was nearly three times the decline for all England and Wales during this period. The same writer declares that both pauperism and degeneracy have undoubtedly increased in England since 1901. We have just reviewed the incontrovertible evidence that poverty has rapidly increased in America since 1896. Have we any reason for believing that degeneracy has not likewise increased for the same reasons as in England?

In regard to the ways in which this second economic factor works to reduce the birth rate it is only necessary to say that they are nearly the same that have been mentioned above for the first factor; namely, uncertainty of a livelihood. But the second is chiefly responsible for late marriages, sterile marriages resulting from venereal disease, failure