the writers consider to be
their duty toward their students, their graduates would have a higher
marriage and birth-rate than that of their sisters, cousins and friends
who do not go to college. But the reverse is the case. M. R. Smith's
investigation showed the comparison between college girls and girls of
equivalent social position and of the same or similar families, as
follows:

_Number of_ _Per cent childless_
_children_ _at time_

College 1.65 25.36
Equivalent Non-College 1.874 17.89

Now if education is tending toward race suicide, then the writers
believe there is something wrong with modern educational methods. And
certainly all statistics available point to the fact that girls who have
been in such an atmosphere as that of some colleges for four years, are,
from a eugenic point of view, of diminished value to the race. This is
not an argument against higher education for women, but it is a potent
argument for a different kind of higher education than many of the
colleges of America are now giving them.

This is one of the causes for the decline of the birth-rate in the old
American stock. But of course it is only one. A very large number of
causes are unquestionably at work to the same end, and the result can be
adequately changed only if it is analyzed into as many of its component
parts as possible, and each one of these dealt with separately. The
writers have emphasized the shortcoming of women's colleges, because it
is easily demonstrated and, they believe, relatively easily mitigated.
But the record of men's colleges is not beyond criticism.

Miss Smith found that among the college graduates of the 18th century in
New England, only 2% remained unmarried, while in the Yale classes of
1861-1879, 21% never married, and of the Harvard graduates from
1870-1879 26% remained single. The average number of children per
Harvard graduate of the earlier period was found to be 3.44, for the
latest period studied 1.92. Among the Yale graduates it was found that
the number of children per father had declined from 5.16 to 2.55.

[Illustration: BIRTH RATE OF HARVARD AND YALE GRADUATES

FIG. 37.--During the period under consideration it declined
steadily, although marriage was about as frequent and as early at the
end as at the beginning of the period. It is necessary to suppose that
the decli