In 1900 they were only nine in every hundred.
A drop from twenty-one to nine in forty years!
And if you can’t escape, in any numbers, from the law which reigns in your vicinity, neither can you escape, in any numbers, from the law which reigns in your social set.
Here’s Bailey’s book on “Social Conditions”:
Live in England and be a girl and belong to the class of people that miners come from: Your age at marriage will be, on the average, twenty-two. But belong to the class of people that professional men come from: Your age at marriage will be, on the average, twenty-six.
This difference exists also in the United States. It is in the direct line of social and economic development.
The professional man is a farther developed type of man than the miner. It takes him longer to get through his educational infancy—longer to arrive at his mental and financial maturity. The professional man’s wife is a farther developed type than the miner’s wife. Her economic utility as a cook and as a laundress in her husband’s house tends to approach zero.
Where these two lines of development, male and female, come to a meeting point; where the 23 man’s infancy is longest and the woman’s value as housewife is least;—there is, necessarily, altogether apart from personal preferences, the greatest postponement of marriage.
The United States, except possibly in certain sections, has not come to the end of its growth toward postponed marriage.