e will not again
drop below it. She will bring up her children at a point as close to
her present level as she can. That is instinct.

Meanwhile, she isn't married. But what can you do about it? She went
to work, like almost every other working woman, because she had to.
And you can't pass a law prohibiting her from earning more than five
dollars a week.

"It's all economic," thought Mary. "Nothing else." She had much reason
for thinking so.

Did you ever see Meitzen's diagram showing the relation between the
price of rye and the number of marriages in Prussia during a period of
twenty-five years?

Cheap rye, easy living conditions--number of marriages rises. Dear
rye, hard living conditions--number of marriages drops. The
fluctuations are strictly proportional. In the twenty-sixth year,
given the price of rye, you could predict very closely the number of
marriages.

It's like suicides. It's the easiest thing in the world to predict the
number of men and women who will next year "decide" to take their own
lives.

The marriage rate responds not only to the economic conditions of a
whole country but to the economic conditions of its various parts.

You live in Vermont. Very well. Between the ages of twenty-five and
thirty in Vermont, there will be 279 out of every 1,000 of you who
will still be single.

But you live in the State of New York. Very well. Between the ages of
twenty-five and thirty there will be 430 of you out of every 1,000 who
will still be single.

In Vermont, 279. In New York, 430. A difference of 151 in every
1,000.

For those 151 persons, is it human volition? Is it a perverse aversion
to the other sex?

Even at that, on the face of it, those who try to argue New Yorkers
into marrying young are clearly taking the difficult route to their
purpose. It would be more adroit simply to urge them to live in
Vermont.

But isn't the real reason this--that New York, with its large cities,
is farther removed than Vermont, with no large cities, from the
primitive industrial conditions of colonial times?

The North Atlantic states, as a whole, are industrially more advanced
than the South Central states. Compare them in this marriage matter:

Among all the wives in the South Central states, there are 543 out of
every 1,000 who are under thirty-five years of age.

Among all the wives in the North Atlantic states those who are under
thirty-five years of age are, in each 1,000, only 428.

In the