The Eureka sentinel. [volume] (Eureka, Nev.) 1902-current, 1911-01-14
Why Fewer People Marry To-Day

Malthusianism is going out Of fashion and people are discover
ing other reasons than Nautilus gave why young people do not
should not, or can not marry. Nautilus taught that as social con-
ditions improved and salaries became higher there would be a cor
responding augmentation in the number of happy marriages. But
a writer in the readable Italian weekly, the Minerva Rome), shows
that the exact contrary is the case. He writes that according to
statistics from the year 1878, while salaries in industry, profess
sional life and labor have been gradually rising in value in such
civilized countries as England, the United States, Hungary, and
Italy, the number Of marriages has suffered a sensible diminution
He then launches out into an article in which he says men and
women are becoming tired of sexual love and domestic joys. The
stage and romances may have sophisticated them, but the fact re-
mains. The writer in the Minerva summarizes on this subject the
discussions OF Prof Brentano in the Economic Journal According
to this writer the rich and the aristocratc began with this aversion
to marriage, and gradually it spread and is spreading to the classes
below them in wealth and leisure. The causes of this change in
human nature which seems to contradict so much history, poetry,
and fiction are said by the Minerva to be five in number. First the
increasing difficulty in an age of growing luxury and self-indulgence
which young men find in obtaining a situation sufficiently remu-
nerative to support a family on The second cause is the increased
and increasing cost Of living, side by side with the craving for
greater comfort and even luxury. This makes it more and more diff
fcult to maintain a family in the style demanded by social conven-
ton. More profound and far-reaching is the third cause. Womans
position with regard to the man has recently undergone a striking
transformation. In former times the woman was the mere slave Of
her husband. To-day she is his companion and very frequently his
competitor The increasing economic independence of the woman
has diminished the force Of one at least of the motives which in
duced women to marry. She is beginning to feel a reluctance to
enter into the matrimonial relation which Bernard Shaw character
ICES IS "a prisonhouse for the woman"
Pretty faces, pleasant words, little gifts, and simple home as
sociations have lost their spell, we are told. This is the fourth
reason. The amusements and satisfacions of life have SO mar
velously increased that the traditional happiness of the home is
eclipsed. The surroundings of a home have lost both for the man
and the woman that preponderating interest and Importance which
they once possessed. Therefore in proportion as civilization and
refinement increase in a country marriages decrease.
The gravest cause is the most serious; it lies in the decline of
sexual passion and the moral despair and encouragement to be
met with some men and women. People of opposite sexes II not
SO mutually attractive as they were when the world was younger,
is the melancholy sentence of Professor Brentano The older a
man grows the more he becomes disillusioned as to the felicity oil
welded life.
The woman permits herself to hug her illusions much longer
than a man does, but she also, as represented by the whole sex, isl
growing to be less submissive to them than of yore.
cat the same time as the moral sense grows finer and more
discerning, the duties of conjugal life become heavier to undertake
and more difficult to lflL"-Iranslations made for The Literary
Digest.