The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-07-12
England Should
 Be Good Field
 For Mormonism Statistics Show that Women in Wales and England Predominate by One
 Million

since 1851, the number of females In, England and Wales has increased Iaster than the number of males. For
 more than a century the females have outnumbered the other sex, in 1901 the proportion being 1,057 to 1000. During the half century following l801, however, the men gained or1 the women, the preponderence of the lat ter In 1851 being represented by the ratio of 1,042 to 1000. What hap pened after that to turn the tenden- cy the other way no one knows, but rom 1851 to 1911 the women have steadily gained on the men. There are now, according to the census talk en in April last, 1,17S,317 more fe-
 males, the ratio being 1,0eS to 900 In total population of 36,075,269. The ratio was the same 10 years ago,
 but the census of 1901 was taken during the Boer war, when in South Africa on military service, so that there has actually been, mo doubt, a continuation during the past decade or the tendency observed since the middle of the preceding century.
 IT the ideal is one man for every Wonan, or one female child for every male, in the population of a country, 1t is evident that for long time ob- scure forces have been at work in England to upset the ideal balance of the sexes. The drain of war upon the male sex does not account for the situation, so far as England is con cerned, inasmuch as there has been no civil war in the kingdom for 25O years while the country's foreign wars, even during the Napoleonic era. have not involved land fighting by English soldiers on great scale. Elm igration would account for the excess of female population, to some extent, since a stream of emigrants has trickled over the sea from the British Isles since the settlement of Virginia and New England and among emil grants men have usually predomi- mated.
 But the most potent cause of the excess of women in Europe today is probably not so easily discerned. If it is connected with advancing indus trialism and the massing of the pop ulation into large towns and cities the fact confronts one that English industrial and manufacturing centers grew rapidly from 1901 to 1851, when the ratio of the excess of females de- clined steadily. If it were true that the average male infant perishes more easily than the female, espec- ally under the slum conditions of city Tiff, we might have a ciew, since the process of urban concentration has been intenser in the later period but there is evidently nothing substantial in the theory that the female child is the more easily reared.
 Causes aside. it is certain that the million or more excess of females over males in England and Wales has very interesting and important effect upon society, business and politics. These women make the modern wom- an problem. They enter the profes- sion and trades and compete with men. Many of them get radical views on the marriage question and so provide a market for the books and plays of George Bernard Shaw. They are, as a mass, forcing the question of equal suffrage into party politics. The more militant decline to emigrate to Rhodesia or Saskatchewan. The conservative, old fashioned ruling class in society and politics is almost witless trying to find out what to do with them. Bishops pray for them, politicians damn them. What Eng land will be 50 years from now, If the million becomes twice or thrice it's present number, offers an interest ing field for speculation.-Springfie1d Union.s