luxurious existence, to the ever-increasing desire for the luxuries of life and the morbid craving for social dissipation and advancement. It is due, as plainly expressed and openly advocated by many, to the desire to have no children or only such a number as husband and wife believe in their wisdom suitable and adapted to their ideals of comfort, and to their supposed financial possibilities; the most important factor is the "deliberate and voluntary avoidance, the prevention of child-bearing on the part of a steadily increasing number of married couples,[1] who not only prefer to have but few children, but who 'know how to obtain their wish'" (Dr. John S. Billings). Professional observation and the plainly expressed ideas of men and women who do not hesitate to make known their views substantiate the above, as does the startling decrease of fecundity and the corresponding increase in sterility in the face of the scientific progress of the day in all that pertains to the physical well-being and health of woman. This decrease of fecundity in the face of advance in obstetrical and gynecological science, which should lead to a healthier condition of the childbearing organs—a decrease confined to one element of the community, the native American—clearly proves the condition to be one determined by the volition of that element. Families are small among all classes of the native-born, large among all classes of the foreign-born population, showing that the cause of this low fecundity is not universal but it is one confined to the native element only; this limiting of the small family to the native of all classes in itself would prove that education is not that cause, were such proof not made needless by the fact that the family of the educated man is actually larger than that of the native male throughout the state.
Let us no longer beat about the bush and attribute the low fecundity now prevailing to later marriages and higher education. This explanation has been accepted because it is a tradition and universally credited; it is not so in other countries, and it has never been proved to be so for the United States. Theoretically later marriage must, it would seem, lead to the lowering of the birth rate. Facts plainly disprove this, and why should higher education lessen the size of the
- ↑ I have used the word couples intentionally, though in the original it is women; Dr. Billings says that the cause of declining fecundity is in the "voluntary prevention of child-bearing on the part of a steadily increasing number of married women,' indicating that the wife is mainly at fault, whilst in truth it is the husband to an equal and even a greater extent, according to my observation. In defense of the American woman it is but right to call attention to this fact and to correct the false impressions which are prevalent. This assertion is substantiated by experience and by the carefully prepared Michigan registration reports.
