Applied Eugenics Part 22

Remembering what a selected group of young women go to college, the eugenist can hardly help suspecting that the women's colleges of the United States, as at present conducted, are from his point of view doing great harm to the race. This suspicion becomes a certainty, as one investigation after another shows the same results. Statistics compiled on marriages among college women (1901) showed that:

45% of college women marry before the age of 40.

90% of all United States women marry before the age of 40.

96% of Arkansas women marry before the age of 40.

80% of Ma.s.sachusetts women marry before the age of 40.

In Ma.s.sachusetts, it is further to be noted, 30% of all women have married at the age when college women are just graduating.

It has, moreover, been demonstrated that the women who belong to Phi Beta Kappa and other honor societies, and therefore represent a second selection from an already selected cla.s.s, have a lower marriage rate than college women in general.

In reply to such facts, the eugenist is often told that the college graduates marry as often and as early as the other members of their families. We are comparing conditions that can not properly be compared, we are informed, when we match the college woman's marriage rate with that of a non-college woman who comes from a lower level of society.

But the facts will not bear out this apology. Miss M. R. Smith's statistics[106] from the data of the Collegiate Alumnae show the true situation. The average age at marriage was found to be for

_Years_ College women 26.3 Their sisters 24.2 Their cousins 24.7 Their friends 24.2

and the age distribution of those married was as follows:

_Equivalent_ _Percentage of married_ _College_ _non-college_ Under 23 years 8.6 30.1 23-32 years 83.2 64.9 33 and over 8.0 5.0

[Ill.u.s.tration: Wellesley Graduates and Non-graduates

FIG. 36.--Graph showing at a glance the record of the student body in regard to marriage and birth rates, during the years indicated.

Statistics for the latest years have not been compiled, because it is obvious that girls who graduated during the last fifteen years still have a chance to marry and become mothers.]

If these differences did not bring about any change in the birth-rate, they could be neglected. A slight sacrifice might even be made, for the sake of having mothers better prepared. But taken in connection with the birth-rate figures which we shall present in the next chapter, they form a serious indictment against the women's colleges of the United States.

Such conditions are not wholly confined to women's colleges, or to any one geographical area. Miss Helen D. Murphey has compiled the statistics for Was.h.i.+ngton Seminary, in Was.h.i.+ngton, Pennsylvania, a secondary school for women, founded in 1837. The marriage rate among the graduates of this inst.i.tution has steadily declined, as is shown in the following table where the records are considered by decades:

'45 '55 '65 '75 '85 '95 '00 Per cent. married 78 74 67 72 59 57 55 Per cent. who have gone into 20 13 12 19 30 30 39 other occupations than home-making

A graph, plotted to show how soon after graduation these girls have married, demonstrates that the greatest number of them wed five or six years after receiving their diplomas, but that the number of those marrying 10 years afterward is not very much less than that of the girls who become brides in the first or second year after graduation (see Fig.

35).

C. S. Castle's investigation[107] of the ages at which eminent women of various periods have married, is interesting in this connection, in spite of the small number of individuals with which it deals:

_Century_ _Average age_ _Range_ _Number of cases_ 12 16.2 8-30 5 13 16.6 12-29 5 14 13.8 6-18 11 15 17.6 13-26 20 16 21.7 12-50 28 17 20.0 13-43 30 18 23.1 13-53 127 19 26.2 15-67 189

Women in coeducational colleges, particularly the great universities of the west, can not be compared without corrections with the women of the eastern separate colleges, because they represent different family and environmental selection. Their record none the less deserves careful study. Miss s.h.i.+nn[108] calculated the marriage rate of college women as follows, a.s.suming graduation at the age of 22:

_Women over_ _Coeducated_ _Separate_ 25 38.1 29.6 30 49.1 40.1 35 53.6 46.6 40 56.9 51.8

She has shown that only a part of this discrepancy is attributable to the geographic difference, some of it is the effect of lack of co-education. Some of it is also attributable to the type of education.

The marriage rate of women graduates of Iowa State College[109] is as follows:

1872-81 95.8 1882-91 62.5 1892-01 71.2 1902-06 69.0

Study of the alumni register of Oberlin,[110] one of the oldest coeducational inst.i.tutions, shows that the marriage rate of women graduates, 1884-1905, was 65.2%, only 34.8% of them remaining unmarried.

If the later period, 1890-1905, alone is taken, only 55.2% of the girls have married. The figures for the last few cla.s.ses in this period are probably not complete.

At Kansas State Agricultural College, 1885-1905, 67.6% of the women graduates have married. At Ohio State University in the same period, the percentage is only 54.0. Wisconsin University, 1870-1905, shows a percentage of 51.8, the figures for the last five years of that period being:

1901 33.9 1902 52.9 1903 45.1 1904 32.3 1905 37.4

From alumni records of the University of Illinois, 54% of the women, 1880-1905, are found to be married.

It is difficult to discuss these figures without extensive study of each case. But that only 53% of the women graduates of three great universities like Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin, should be married, 10 years after graduation, indicates that something is wrong.

In most cases it is not possible to tell, from the alumni records of the above colleges, whether the male graduates are or are not married. But the cla.s.s lists of Harvard and Yale have recently been carefully studied by John C. Phillips,[111] who finds that in the period 1851-1890 74% of the Harvard graduates and 78% of the Yale graduates married. In that period, he found, the age of marriage has advanced only about 1 year, from a little over 30 to just about 31. This is a much higher rate than that of college women.

Statistics from Stanford University[112] offer an interesting comparison because they are available for both men and women. Of 670 male graduates, cla.s.ses 1892 to 1900, inclusive, 490 or 73.2% were reported as married in 1910. Of 330 women, 160 or 48.5% were married. These figures are not complete, as some of the graduates in the later cla.s.ses must have married since 1910.

The conditions existing at Stanford are likewise found at Syracuse, on the opposite side of the continent. Here, as H. J. Banker has shown,[113]

the men graduates marry most frequently 4.5 years after taking their degrees, and the women 4.7 years. Of the women 57% marry, of the men 81%. The women marry at the average age of 27.7 years and the men at 28.8. Less than one-fourth of the marrying men married women within the college. The last five decades he studied show a steady decrease in the number of women graduates who marry, while the men are much more constant. His figures are:

_Per cent of men_ _Per cent of women_ _Decade_ _graduates_ _graduates_ _married_ _married_

1852-61 81 87 1862-71 87 87 1872-81 90 81 1882-91 84 55 1892-01 73 48

C. B. Davenport, looking at the record of his own cla.s.smates at Harvard, found[114] in 1909 that among the 328 original members there were 287 surviving, of whom nearly a third (31%) had never married.

"Of these (287)," he continues, "26 were in 'Who's Who in America?' We should expect, were success in professional life promoted by bachelors.h.i.+p, to find something over a third of those in Who's Who to be unmarried. Actually all but two, or less than 8%, were married, and one of these has since married. The only still unmarried man was a temporary member of the cla.s.s and is an artist who has resided for a large part of the time in Europe. There is, therefore, no reason to believe that bachelors.h.i.+p favors professional success."

Particularly pernicious in tending to prevent marriage is the influence of certain professional schools, some of which have come to require a college degree for entrance. In such a case the aspiring physician, for example, can hardly hope to obtain a license to practice until he has reached the age of 27 since 4 years are required in Medical College and 1 year in a hospital. His marriage must in almost every case be postponed until a number of years after that of the young men of his own cla.s.s who have followed business careers.

This brief survey is enough to prove that the best educated young women (and to a less extent young men) of the United States, who for many reasons may be considered superior, are in many cases avoiding marriage altogether, and in other cases postponing it longer than is desirable.

The women in the separate colleges of the East have the worst record in this respect, but that of the women graduates of some of the coeducational schools leaves much to be desired.

It is difficult to separate the causes which result in a postponement of marriage, from those that result in a total avoidance of marriage. To a large extent the causes are the same, and the result differs only in degree. The effect of absolute celibacy of superior people, from a eugenic point of view, is of course obvious to all, but the racial effect of postponement of marriage, even for a few years, is not always so clearly realized. The diagram in Fig. 36 may give a clearer appreciation of this situation.

Francis Galton clearly perceived the importance of this point, and attempted in several ways to arrive at a just idea of it. One of the most striking of his investigations is based on Dr. Duncan's statistics from a maternity hospital. Dividing the mothers into five-year groups, according to their age, and stating the median age of the group for the sake of simplicity, instead of giving the limits, he arrived at the following table:

_Age of mother at_ _Approximate average_ _her marriage_ _fertility_ 17 9.00--6 1.5 22 7.50--5 1.5 27 6.00--4 1.5 32 4.50--3 1.5

which shows that the relative fertility of mothers married at the ages of 17, 22, 27 and 32, respectively, is as 6, 5, 4, and 3 approximately.

"The increase in population by a habit of early marriages," he adds, "is further augmented by the greater rapidity with which the generations follow each other. By the joint effect of these two causes, a large effect is in time produced."

Certainly the object of eugenics is not to merely increase human numbers. Quality is more important than quant.i.ty in a birth-rate. But it must be evident that other things being equal, a group which marries early will, after a number of generations, supplant a group which marries even a few years later. And there is abundant evidence to show that some of the best elements of the old, white, American race are being rapidly eliminated from the population of America, because of postponement or avoidance of marriage.

Taking the men alone, we find that failure to marry may often be ascribed to one of the following reasons:

1. The cultivation of a taste for s.e.xual variety and a consequent unwillingness to submit to the restraints of marriage.

2. Pessimism in regard to women from premature or unfortunate s.e.x experiences.

3. Infection by venereal disease.