The American standard of living, while it differs in different classes, is on the whole the highest found anywhere in the world. The increasing appeal to individual selfishness in the last twenty-five years, the greater ease of travel and taste for it, the multiplied and costly pleasures and pastimes, make children a greater and greater burden. The abnormal conditions of city life increase the sacrifice required to support children, and take away a large part of the value of their services in the home. In the greater cities are whole areas larger than the city of Ithaca where children are not admitted to the apartment houses, where no one who has a child can rent rooms. Despite the increasing incomes of the masses of the population, the number of childless homes is increasing, and while the standard of comfort grows, the size of the average family dwindles.
The decreasing death-rate
3. Great improvements in medical and in sanitary science are decreasing the death-rate and thus partly neutralizing the effects of a lower birth-rate. The death-rate in a community is a fairly good index of its general welfare. The death of a large proportion of the children before they arrive at maturity indicates poverty or ignorance. The death-rate in the Middle Ages, especially in cities, was tremendously high, but during the last hundred years has steadily decreased. The race of man which, ever since the beginnings of volitional control, probably has had a smaller death-rate relative to the total number of individuals coming into existence than has any other species of living creatures, has to-day a far lower rate than ever before. Even in the most miserable industrial population where one half the children die before they are five years old, the death-rate is much less than among the young of the lion or the eagle.
The quality of population counts
4. Volitional control is acting with the greatest force in the more capable classes and thus threatens to reduce the quality of the population. The quality of population is of more import than its quantity, alike in its economic, its social, and its ethical results. The productive force of a population is not measured merely by numbers. "Who" make up the population at any moment is no more a matter of indifference than "how many." One new-born child represents a negative addition to society, unintelligent, incapable, foredoomed to become a burden; another, with energy, thrift, inventive genius, comes to enrich and uplift his fellow-men. Quality counts for much.
Change in the American birth-rate
The average number of children reaching maturity in the families of the American colonists was six; the average number to-day in families of American descent is about two. Since many of these do not live to maturity, and of those who do survive many do not marry, the stock does not maintain itself in numbers. Much larger families are found among the poor whites of the mountains, the foreign population, the rate negroes, and, in general, in the lower ranks of labor. Forces are at work to sterilize or reduce in number the more intelligent elements of the population. The "new woman" movement, tempting into "careers," takes away from family life many of the women most worthy to become the mothers of succeeding generations, Self-interest is at war with the social interest. The individual asks, "Am I bound to sacrifice my comfort and happiness to the general good?" If this continues, the result must be a steady decline in the proportion of the population born of the successful strains of stock, and a steady increase of the descendants of the mediocre and duller-witted elements.
Rate of increase in the nineteenth century
5. Population increased at an unprecedented rate throughout Christendom in the nineteenth century, but the pace is now slackening. The nineteenth century saw a great increase in the food-supplies available for Europe. The resources of the American continent were hardly touched until the great Western movement of population began and new agencies of transportation brought American fields thousands of miles nearer to European markets. The improvement of machinery and of other economic equipment in Europe likewise aided to increase production rapidly. Population followed, though not with equal step. Europe had a population of 200,000,000 in 1800, nearly 400,000,000 in 1900. The increase in England was from 12 to 18 per cent, each decade; it had 8,000,000 in 1800 and 30,000,000 in 1900. The United States had 5,000,000 at the beginning of the century and 75,000,000 at the close, an increase of over 30 per cent, each decade. Recently there has been a notable decline in the rate of increase in all the countries of Europe. France is already at the stationary stage, and England probably will have reached it by the middle of the century. The rate of increase by decades has fallen in America from thirty-three to twenty-four since the Civil War. Though the movement of the population is still upward, large classes are stationary or declining in numbers.