more correctly assume toward America), it
appears that there has been a very slight decrease in the proportion of
persons under 20 who are married, but that between the ages of 20 and 30
the proportion of those married has risen during recent years. The same
condition exists all over Europe, according to F. H. Hankins,[105]
except in England and Scotland. "Moreover on the whole marriages take
place earlier in France than in England, Germany or America. Nor is this
all, for a larger proportion of the French population is married than in
any of these countries. Thus the birth-rate in France has continued to
fall in spite of those very conditions which should have sustained it
or even caused it to increase."

In America, conditions are not dissimilar. Although it is generally
believed that young persons are marrying at a later age than they did
formerly, the census figures show that for the population as a whole the
reverse is the case. Marriages are not only more numerous, but are
contracted at earlier ages than they were a quarter of a century ago.
Comparison of census returns for 1890, 1900 and 1910, reveals that for
both sexes the percentage of married has steadily increased and the
percentage listed as single has as steadily decreased. The census
classifies young men, for this purpose, in three age-groups: 15-19,
20-24, and 25-34; and in every one of these groups, a larger proportion
was married in 1910 than in 1900 or 1890. Conditions are the same for
women. So far as the United States as a whole is concerned, therefore,
marriage is neither being avoided altogether, nor postponed unduly,--in
fact, conditions in both respects seem to be improving every year.

So far the findings should gratify every eugenist. But the census
returns permit further analysis of the figures. They classify the
population under four headings: Native White of Native Parentage, Native
White of Foreign Parentage or of Mixed Parentage, Foreign-born White,
and Negro. Except among Foreign-born Whites, who are standing still, the
returns for 1910 show that in every one of these groups the marriage
rate has steadily increased during the past three decades; and that the
age of marriage is steadily declining in all groups during the same
period, with a slight irregularity of no real importance in the
statistics for foreign-born males.

On the whole, then, the marriage statistics of the United States are
reassuring. Even if examination is limited to