The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-05-18
Proved by the Census
Economic Conditions and
 Lower Birth Rate
Effect of Employment Con- alterations on the Num- Der of Children in a Single Family Significant Com- parison Between the City and the Farm.
Brooklyn Eagle.)


 If there was any lingering doubt that the decreasing birth rate was the re- suit of economic conditions, the tabu- latlOn made from the last census by the Census Bureau at Washing gton ought to Set it at rest forever.
 The introduction of machinery has greatly reduced the demand for un> Skilled labor throughout the civilized world. The disappearance of pesti- fences and the decreasing frequency of wars have reduced the demand for human beings as food for powder and disease germs, and have thrown extra pressure upon the market for unskill- ed labor. AS a result, it is no longer profitable to raise sons unless you can train them to be something better than hewers of wood and drawers of water.
 Of course, the demand for unskilled labor has been reduced in different de- grees in different countries, according to the nature of the labor performed there. In a farming country the chance for a boy with nothing but elementary school teaching is better than In a city. In the countries of Europe from which we are now draw ing most of our immigration, the use of machinery is less general than here and in those countries the birth rate has fallen less than in France Or here.
 
 show the effect of those conditions in this country. Cleveland and rural Ohio, Minneapolis and rural Minneso> ta and Rhode Island were the terri tories selected for examination. The figures show what everybody knows in a general way-that the birth rate is far lower among the women of long American antecedents than it is among immigrant women, and that the women born in this country of im- migrant mothers have smaller fami- lies than their mothers did.
 The decline In the demand for un- skilled hand labor began in this coun- families have adjusted themselves to it. The conditions are entirely new to the immigrants, and they raise Old World families. But the daughters of immigrants, being brought up amid the hardships which big family en- tails in this country, begin to adapt themselves to American conditions when they have homes of their own. If there is any doubt that it is the labor market which creates the con- ditions which so powerfully modify the birth rate, that is set at rest by the figures from Ohio and Minnesota. In Cleveland and Minneapolis the mar ried women of American antecedents average 24 children to a family, while
 
 which contain those cities the aver age is 3.4 children for mothers of the same antecedents. A child is more useful. and so more profitable, on a farm than in city, so the families are larger. The figures are less uni form among daughters of immigrants, although their families are much larg- CT in rural Minnesota than in Minne- apolis, Cleveland or Rhode Island. The families of negro women in the North where the race congregates in towns are much smaller than in the South, showing that the law of demand and supply shows very slight discrimina- tions of race or color in it's influence upon the birth rate.
 The effect of these figures ought to be highly stimulating to the back to the farm movement. Surely the chances for support being equal, large family is more healthful, both for it's members and for the country, than a small one. Ben Franklin's advice to pick a wife from bunch," applies quite as forcibly to boys. whether they are picked as husbands or for work. If the conditions of farm life tend to larger families, as these west ern figures show, then the more farm ing families we have the better.