The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1903-02-13
Small Families.

At first glance it seems strange that a
nation that is putting on between 1s0O0,-
COO and 20,o0o,00O people in a decade as
the United States is, and that doubles it's
population every thirty years, should be
at all troubled over the question of natural
increase. Yet alongside the most rapid
population growth the world has ever seen
there is the depressing fact that among
us, as among all other nations unless it be
the Germans, the highly educated, Guilt
vat>d and prosperous portion Of the COM
munity,@d does not contribute its share to
the numbers of posterity. AS comforts
and luxuries become more widely diffused
and people are in circumstances that ena-
BILE them to raise large families in such
surroundings that the children will not
suffer from their numbers, the number of
children decreases: The poor farmer
father whose whole life is a fight for
bare existence brings up family of from
five to ten. These children, say, become
rich and prosperous and able to raise in
comfort and with the best of training and
preparation families as large as their
fathers, but really give us small families
of two or three children. Indeed, the
number of well-to-do families with no
children is startling.
If there is anything in human breeding
and training comparable to the results that
may be obtained with animals, we may
say that civilization, after giving at great
cost to itself, wealth and careful educa-
ton and opportunities to a comparatively
few, finds that they add but little to the
improvement of the race. And so civiliz-
alton must begin over in each generation
the work of race improvement. In a
sense the worlds polite people, it's men
of letters, it's millionaires, it's great law
yers, it's leading doctors, it's captains of
industry, indeed, all Of it's successful and
fortunate and. cultivated people, are the
fine flowers Of the tree, but alas, too many
Of them in no degree contribute to the
growth or future of the tree.
It is this selfshness, for that is the root
of the trouble, that called from President
Roosevelt the other day these burning
words:
But the man or woman who deliberately
avoids marriage, and has a heart SO cold
as to know no passion, and brain SO
shallow and selfish as to dislike having
children, is in effect a criminal against the
race, and should be an object Of contemp-
tuous adherence by all healthy people.
Our 'best people are too selfish to di
vide the good things Of their world with
children. - President Eliot of Harvard
showed the other day that of six Harvard
classes now more than twenty five years
out of college only II per cent have mar
RED. and that Of these the average num-
Der of children is two. If half the chill
clren are boys, 1t follows that Harvard's
graduates do not give to the next gcner-
alton as many men as themselves by IS
per cent.
These small families are doubtless, as
President Eliot holds, partly due to the
| extended period of training which does
not permit college men to get into active
life much before so, but they are still more
largely due to the selfshness of the people
who come into the good things of life.
They are careless of the future. They
know they have but one life to live, and
they purpose to shape it with a view to
their own pleasure. People cannot raise
large families of children and raise them
properly and yet indulge in all the pleas
ures and luxuries that modern life holds
out to those of taste and wealth. The
college man has other objects in view than
spending his income on other people, that
| is, children; and the college woman is, as
! the statistics show, most averse to mar
riage. She is fitted for other careers in
life than maternity, and she prefers them
Much as we may mourn these things,
/ there is little hope for improvement. The
stationary population Of France, the most
intellectual nation in the world. and the
rapid decease in the birth rate of England,
: with increasing wealth and the diffusion