We have the matrimonial histories of colonial Yale and Harvard men grouped and averaged according to the decade in which they were graduated. We will regard the graduates of each decade as together constituting one case.
In no case does the average number of children per wife go higher than 3.89. In one case it goes as low as 2.98.
Perhaps the modern wife’s habit of going on living and thereby protracting her period of childbearing will in time cause her fertility record to compare not unfavorably with that of the colonial wife, who made an early start but a quick finish.
In the year 1903, among all the 370 Smith graduates in those first ten classes, only twenty-four had died. And among all the 315 children, only twenty-six had died. On the whole, between being the wife of a Yale or Harvard colonial graduate and being a member of one of the first ten Smith classes, a modern girl might conclude that the chances of being a dead one matrimonially in the latter case would be more than offset by the chances of being a dead one actually in the former.
This deplorable flippancy would overlook the serious fact that permanent or even prolonged celibacy on the part of large numbers of young men and young women is a great social evil. The consequences of that evil we shall observe later on.[1]
In speaking about celibacy we refer wholly to secular and not at all to religious celibacy.
In the meantime we return to John and Mary.