understanding of the passion that attracts and unites the
sexes. We need an apotheosis of conjugal love as a basis for a new
appreciation of marriage. Reverence for love should be fostered from the
outset of the adolescent period by parents and pedagogues."

If, in addition to this "diffusion of healthier views of the conjugal
relation," some of the economic changes suggested in later chapters are
put in effect, it seems probable that the present racially disastrous
tendency of the most superior young men and women to postpone or avoid
marriage would be checked.

CHAPTER XIII

INCREASE OF THE BIRTH-RATE OF THE SUPERIOR

Imagine 200 babies born to parents of native stock in the United States.
On the average, 103 of them will be boys and 97 girls. By the time the
girls reach a marriageable age (say 20 years), at least 19 will have
died, leaving 78 possible wives, on whom the duty of perpetuating that
section of the race depends.

We said "Possible" wives, not probable; for not all will marry. It is
difficult to say just how many will become wives, but Robert J. Sprague
has reported on several investigations that illuminate the point.

In a selected New England village in 1890, he says, "there were forty
marriageable girls between the ages of 20 and 35. To-day thirty-two of
these are married, 20 per cent. are spinsters.

"An investigation of 260 families of the Massachusetts Agricultural
College students shows that out of 832 women over 40 years of age 755 or
91 per cent. have married, leaving only 9 per cent. spinsters. This and
other observations indicate that the daughters of farmers marry more
generally than those of some other classes.

"In sixty-nine (reporting) families represented by the freshman class of
Amherst College (1914) there are 229 mothers and aunts over 40 years of
age, of whom 186 or 81 per cent. have already married.

"It would seem safe to conclude that about 15 per cent. of native women
in general American society do not marry during the child-bearing
period." Deducting 15 per cent. from the 78 possible wives leaves
sixty-six probable wives. Now among the native wives of Massachusetts 20
per cent. do not produce children, and deducting these thirteen
childless ones from the sixty-six probable wives leaves fifty-three
probable, married, child-bearing women, who must be depended on to
reproduce the original 200 individuals with whom we began this chapter.
That means that each woman w