The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1894-02-09
THE DECLINE OF MARRIAGE.
Grant Allen Ascribes Ii to the Cumu-
Infixe Effect of Nerxnus Excitement.


Mr.. Grant Allen, In what he is pleased to
call "a Philosophic View OF the Marriage
Question" undertakes TO explain why mar
rage Is less common to-day than 1t YVES a
century ago.
Thirty or forty years ago." he says,
young men used TO rush by blind instinct
couldn't help themselves. To-day they. shily-
shally, they pick and choose, they discuss,
they cridcise, they say foolish things about
Ing. They believe in Nautilus. Fancy a
young man who believes in Nautilus. But
they, don't marry. and 1t is because they
ere less or young men than formerly. Wild
animals in confinement seldom propagate
their kind: Only a few Gagged birds will con-
tinue their species. Whatever. upsets the
balance of the organism In an individual or
a race tends first of all to affect the rate
of reproduction. CiviliZe a red man and he
begins to decrease at once in numbers.
ization and its works lave come too quick
ly upon us. The strain ana stress of cor
relating and co~-ordinating the world We
live in are getting too much for us. Rail-
ways, telegraphs, the latest edition., have
played havoc at last with our nervous syS-
TENS. We are always on the stretch. rush.
breakfast, we catch the train or bus by the
skin of our teeth The tape clicks perpet-
ually in our ears the last quotation in
Fries. the telephone rings us up at incon-
venient moments. Something is always
happening somewhere to disturb our equa-
and hustle. Financially, it's a series of
dissolving views; personally, tits a rush;
socially, tbs a mosaic of deftly fitted en-
gagements. Drop out one piece and you
can never replace it. You are full next
week from Monday to Saturday-business
all day, what calls itself pleasure (save the
markD all evening. Poor old Leisure is
dead. We hurry. and scurry, and furry
~eternally. One whirl of work from morning
till night: then dress and dine; one whirl
of excitement from nightfall till morning.
a snap of troubled sleep, and again da
capo. Not an hour, not a minute we can
call our own
The first generation after Stephenson
and the Rocket pulled through with ii
somehow. They inherited the sound consti-
tutions of the men who sat on rustic seats
In the gardens OF the twenties The second
strain of it more severely. New machines
had come In to make life still more COM
plicated; kilograms, Bell and Edison, sub
marine cables, evening paper, perturbat1ons
pouring in from all sides necessarily; the
suburb growing, the hubbub increasing,
metropolitan always, trans, bicycles in
numerable; but we still endured, and pre-
generation. That third generation-ah, me!
There comes the pity of 1t. One fancies
the impulse TO marry and rear a family has
wholly died out of Ii. 1t seems to have
died out most In the class where the strain
and stress are greatest L don't think
young men of that class to-day have the
same feelings towards women of their sort
as formerly. With certain classes and in
certain places a primitive instinct of our
race has weakened. The present crisis in
the marriage market is due, not to clubs
or the comfort of bachelor quarters, but 10
the cumulative effect of nervous overeX-
element"