The record-union., 1894-03-03
WHY MARRIAGE is DECLINING.
A Really Good Reason Is Given at Last
by Grant Alien.

by Grant Alien.
Grant Allen, in what he is pleased to
call "A Phllosophic View OF the Marriage
Question" undertakes to explain why
marriage is less common to-day than 1t
was century ago.
Thirty or forty years ago." he says.
young men used to rush by blind in
stinct into the tolls of matrimony-be-
cause they couldn't help themselves. To-
day, they shilly-shally, they pick and
choose, they discuss, they criticise. they
say foolish things about the club and the
flat and the cost Of living. They believe
in Malthus. Fancy young man who be-
lieves in Malthus! But they don't marry,
and II IS because they are less OF young
men than formerly. Wild animals in
confinement seldom propagate their kind.
Only few Gagged birds viii continue their
species. Whatever upsetS the balance of
the organism in an individual or a race
tends first of all to affect the rate of re-
production. Civilize the red man and he
begins to decrease at once i'll numbers.
us not the same thing true OF us?
Civilization and its works have come
too quickly upon us. The strain and
stress Of co-relating and co-Ordinating
the world we live III are getting too much
for US. Railways, telegraphs, the latest
edition. have played havoc at least with
our nervous systems. We are always
IL, IuSHlDR
petually. We bolt our breakfast, we
catch the train or bus by the skin of our
teeth. The tape clicks perpetually in our
ears the last quotation In Erles, the tele-
phone rings us up at inconvenient mo-
ments. Something is always happening
somewhere to disturb our equanlmity,
Life is one turmoil of excitement and
hustle. Financially, tits a series of dis
solving views; personally, It's a rush;
a n
engagements. 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 pleas
ure save the mark y all evening. Poor
old Leisure is dead. We hurry, and
scurry and furry eternally. one whirl
OF work from morning till night; then
from night till morning: a snatch of
troubled sleep, and again da capo. Not
an hour. not minute We can call our
own.
THE first generation after Stephenson
and the Rocket pulled through with it
somehow. They inherited the sound con-
Stitutions Of the men who sat on rustic
seats in the gardens OF the twenties. The
second generation-thaps you and me
felt the strain Of it more severely. New
machines had come in to make life more
complicated; kilograms, Bell and Edison,
submarine cables, evening papers, per-
turbations pouring in from all sides in
cessantly; the suburbs growing, the hub
bub increasing, metropolitan railways,
trans. bicycles innumerable; but we still
endured and presented the world all the
same third generation. That third gen
erauon-ah me! there comes the pity of
it! One fancies the impulse to marry
and rear a family has wholly died out OF
1t. 1t seems to have died out most III the
class where the strain and stress are great
est. [ don't think young men OF that
class to-day have the same feeling toward
women of their sort as formerly. With
certain classes and in certain places
primitive instinct of our race is weak
ened. The present crisis in the marriage
market is not due to clubs or the comfort
OF bachelor quarters, but to the cumu-
lative effect of nervous over-eXcitement." ;"