As already maintained, we naturally consider our fellows first, and we study the picture of life around us; our power of foretelling the future and the results of our present actions comes later on. So it is that our politicians, in cases where sincerity is undoubted, have aimed at the betterment of the individual, and the adjustment in the community of individual capacity to suitable occupation. Few have ever asked themselves the question, What will be the result of my present action on the next generation born? For this there is every excuse, for until recently these questions were unanswerable in the face of our great ignorance of the chief facts of evolution.
[Capable and Ambitious Men Marry Late in Life.]
When we turn to the experiences of life common to most of us, we shall find, I think, pretty strong evidence that surrounding conditions determine that, as a rule, the capable and ambitious man has fewer children than his fellows. Let us examine some of these facts of common experience. The agricultural labourer, of the intellectual value of whose education I have by no means a low opinion, nevertheless obtains this education without cost. Bred on the farm, he insensibly imbibes from what he sees around him the multifarious bits of information a farm hand requires. The manual labour which he is called upon to perform implies a very varied, although often underrated, skill, but this skill, and, indeed, his whole education, may easily be acquired, and that without cost, by the age of twenty. He is then capable of earning a maximum wage, for he has reached the period of life at which he is a full-farm-labourer, and at forty he does nothing more and receives no higher wage. Now this maximum wage which he is capable of earning at so early an age is sufficient to support a wife and family. In consequence of this condition of things the countryman generally marries in his early twenties, and selects in preference to an older woman one of about his own age. The pair are married during nearly the whole of their child-bearing period, and have as many children as they, in the ordinary course of nature, can produce. Much the same sort of statement applies to the lower artisan, factory hand, etc. In these cases perfect accomplishment of the set routine of their especial work can be obtained at a very early age, and for the rest of life no further advance is made. The manual dexterity required in most of these occupations is indeed best acquired during youth, and at twenty or thereabouts the full standard of efficiency is reached, and full wages demanded in return. Need we wonder at the fertility of these marriages, or at the swarms of children seen in every street where the town labourers and lower artisans reside. Now, rightly or wrongly, the man who dresses fashionably, who drives a pen or serves behind a counter, is held of much more account than one who pursues the more manly occupations of tilling the ground or of laying drains. How this sentiment has arisen we need not discuss; there it is, and it has the effect of drawing from the agricultural and lower artisan classes the more ambitious and capable, and turning them into clerks and shop attendants. The slightly-increased wage is not more than is required in the new position, and is expended on dress and those appearances and pleasures which associate themselves with town life. The future has, no doubt, possibilities, for the clerk may rise, and the shop attendant may become himself a master, and with these possibilities in view most are inclined to wait in hope, many fondly believing in their power and certainty of eventual success. Marriage, however, is a very serious thing, for though the country hand is comfortable enough with his fifteen shillings a week, free cottage, etc., and a wife used to roughing it, the clerk has to mate with a woman who has to be dressed like a lady, and who has placed a foot on that ladder which strikes all who find themselves upon it with the folly of wishing to appear to be on one rung above that on which they really rest. His means are, therefore, quite inadequate for marriage, unless with discomfort and privation, and it tends, therefore, to be postponed. This especially will be the case with those whose capacity is opening out a brighter future, and who would naturally hesitate before they imperil this by a course which, to say the least, might complicate the issue.
A step further we come to occupations which require a long preliminary training, and we find that the time of marriage is postponed maybe to the later years of life. An artist requires years of careful training before his work can reach a standard which is of marketable value, and even then his progress is generally delayed while a connection is being established, and a reputation built up. The manufacturer requires general education of a fairly advanced kind, to be followed by a more or less protracted acquaintance with the special business to which he may be devoted, an acquaintance which tends to be wider and of greater value as time goes on; he frequently has to wait for openings only obtainable on the decease of those with whom he is associated. The lawyer and doctor are only able to marry comparatively late in life owing again to the prolonged and special training required of them. The medical student must continue his studies for at least five years after he has left his school, and then almost invariably continues for a few years to act as assistant or partner, content to learn the practical aspects of his profession, with but a small monetary return. Amongst these the most ambitious aim at special knowledge of some small branch, and here again a longer training is required and years of patience, until their work has received sufficient recognition to bring the rich harvest to which they ultimately aspire.
[Many Unmarried Persons among Upper Classes.]
For such reasons ambitious rising men fear marriage, and the possibility of large families. In many cases marriage is never contracted, and the middle and upper classes are full of men and women living single lives, without contributing their share to the production of the race. The lower classes, less hampered by a sense of prudence, contract marriages most freely, increasing thereby the relative fertility of their class. While the success of a woman in the upper classes who has several daughters to dispose of is proverbially precarious, we read that in the East End of London every girl in the lowest classes can get married, and with hardly one exception does marry.[28] Those in the upper classes who marry at all do so, as already remarked, at a later period. In verification of this fact we have not only the statements previously adduced from the circumstances of every-day experience, but we also have statistical information at hand in the Forty-Ninth Report on Births, Deaths, and Marriages, where we can find the average age of marriage given for a variety of trades and occupations as follows:—
| Occupations. | Bachelors. | Spinsters. |
|---|---|---|
| Miners | 24·06 | 22·46 |
| Textile hands | 24·38 | 23·43 |
| Shoemakers, tailors | 24·92 | 24·31 |
| Artisans | 25·35 | 23·70 |
| Labourers | 25·56 | 23·66 |
| Commercial clerks | 26·25 | 24·43 |
| Shopkeepers, shopmen | 26·67 | 24·22 |
| Farmers and sons | 29·23 | 26·91 |
| Professional and independent class | 31·22 | 26·40 |
We shall see from a study of this table that marriage is contracted at a more advanced age by those who occupy what in the world’s estimation are high positions, and this implies diminished fertility on the part of the women. We should expect from common observation that the younger women would be more prolific, and this is borne out by exact statistical observation. Matthews Duncan[29] concludes that women who marry from twenty to twenty-four are the most prolific, and that the only period which at all rivals this is the five years from fifteen to nineteen inclusive, and that women married later in life than twenty-four are distinctly less prolific.
[Lower Class Marriages are the Most Prolific.]
Not only do the wives of the working classes produce individually more children than those of the professional classes, but, owing to these earlier marriages, generations succeed each other with greater rapidity. In order to realise how soon a slight advantage like this tells upon the composition of the race, we will suppose for the nonce that the labourer’s wife A marries at twenty-three, and the lawyer’s wife B marries at twenty-six, and that they have the same number of children, in each case four. In the case of A the population will double, say roughly, every twenty-seven years, and in the case of B every thirty years, allowing in each case four years for the birth of the family. As we shall see by the following table, the population produced by the labourer’s wife A will in 270 years be 2,048, while the population produced by the lawyer’s wife B will be half as much, namely, 1,024 in the same period.[30]