COSMOPOLITAN AMERICA

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2711, 4 March 1916, Page 12

COSMOPOLITAN AMERICA

9 ; LARGE ALIEN BIRTH RATE. Not only Europe but the United States is "up against" the need for more peram- : bulators and fewer motor-cars. When Professor Conklin, of Princeton, deplored tlia£ "in Boston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere the old families are disappearing, he called attention to a little-noticed revolution which is taking place to-day in the United States," says the "Philadelphia Ledger." "During the past two centuries there has been a steady decrease in the size of the American family. Franklin guessed that the average number of children to a married couple in his day was eight. Genealogical records show that it was nearly seven in the seventeenth century, and that it was mere than six at the end of the eighteenth century. In the early, years of the nineteenth century there were from four to five children to eacii marriage; but by. tho end of the century the number of children had fallen to between four- and a little over one. "To-day it. is among the foreign-born / population, and among those of foreign parentage, that tho larger families are found in Massaehusets, 'for example, Kuezynski found that the average number of children to each married woman among the American-born of all social classes is '2.7, 'while among the\ bom of all social classes it is 4.5. "The net result," according to Havelock Ellis, "is-that the general natality o'.' the United States at the present day is about equal to that of Franco; but that, when we; analyse tho facts, the fertility of the native-born American population of main, ly Anglo-Saxon origin is found to be lower than that of France." "The majority of tho immigrants who maintain the level of our birth-rate come from Central, Southern, and Eastern European stocks. The physiological char-' actor of the people of the United States is suffering a revolution. The influence of the original American elements—AngloSaxon! Dutch, and French—is still domm-' (Hit; but it persists only because of the vower of a small aristocracy, maintained by intellect and character. • "Americans-of the old stock have,; indeed, involved themselves in a vicious circle tint threatens their continued dominance in the nation. They still desire to have few children,- but fit; and their desire is in accord with every higher aspiration of civilisation. But they do nothing whatever to stem the "fearful fecundity o£ tlje poorest portions of the immigrant classes. "Civilisation demands a low birth-iate and a low death-rate. . It demands that the cradles of all social classes shall be empty most o? the time. But so long as the 'cradles o£ t|ie slums are filled continually,..while the cradles of the old-stocK Americans are omntv, tho United States will become increasingly a nation of negroes. Teutons. Slav. Magyars, Armenians, Italians, end Hebrews. No one cm justly say'that it will be less a nation,'that when it was compessd of Britons. French, mid Di'tch; but it will be very, very different."