This left fifty to grow up. It was an average of five surviving
children for each of the ten fathers. But it was an average of
only 2.7 for each of the eighteen mothers.
In commending the colonial family one must make an offset for the
unfair frequency with which it had more than one wife-and-mother
to help out its fertility record. And in commending the era of
young wives and numerous children one must make an offset for the
hideous frequency with which it killed them.
Turn from Harvard to Yale. Look at the men who graduated from
1701 to 1745.
The girls they took in marriage were most of them under
twenty-one and were many of them down in their 'teens, sometimes
as far down as fourteen.
May we observe that they were not taken in marriage out of a
conscious sense of duty to the Commonwealth and to Population?
They were taken because they were needed. The colonial gentleman
had to have his soap-kettles and candle-molds and looms and
smokehouses and salting-tubs and spinning-wheels and other
industrial machines operated for him by somebody, if he was going
to get his food and clothes and other necessaries cheap. He lost
money if he wasn't domestic. He was domestic.
Our young engineering friend, John, when HE looked forward to HIS
future domestic establishment, saw no industrial machines in it
at all except a needle and a saucepan. Consequently he had very
little real use for a wife. What he wanted was money enough to
"give" Mary a home.
Marriages are more uncertain now. And fewer of them are marriages
of mere convenience. It is both a worse and a better state of
things. On the one hand, John didn't marry Mary so soon. On the
other hand, he was prevented from wanting anything in his
marriage except just Mary.
The enormous utility of the colonial wife, issuing in enormous
toil (complicated by unlimited childbearing), had this kind of
result:
Among the wives of the 418 Yale husbands of the period from 1701
to 1745, there were
Thirty-three who died before they were twenty-five years old;
Fifty-five who died before they were thirty-five years old;
Fifty-nine who died before they were forty-five years old.
Those 418 Yale husbands lost 147 wives before full middle age.
It ceases, therefore, to be surprising, though it remains
unabatedly sickening, that the stories of the careers of colonial
college men, of the best-bred men of the times, are filled with
such details as:
"----First wife died at twenty-four, leaving six children."
"----Eight children born within twelve years, two of them
feeble-minded."
"----First wife died at nineteen, leaving three children.
"----Fourteen children. First wife died at twenty-eight, having
borne eight children in ten years."
From that age of universal early marrying and of promiscuous
early dying we have come in two centuries to an age of delayed
(and even omitted) marrying and of a settled determination to
keep on living.
The women's colleges are so new and they attracted in their early
days so un-average a sort of girl that their records are not
conclusive. Nevertheless, here are some guiding facts from Smith
College, of Northampton, Massachusetts:
--> We are taking college facts not because this article is
confined in any respect to college people but merely because the
matrimonial histories in the records of the colleges are the most
complete we know of.)
In 1888, Smith College, in its first ten classes, had graduated
370 women.
In 1903, fifteen years later, among those 370 women there were
212 who were still single.
This record does not satisfy Mr. G. Stanley Hall, who figured it
out. The remaining facts, however, might be considered more
cheering:
The 158 Smith women who had married had borne 315 children. This
was two for each of them. And most of them were still in their
childbearing period. Compare this with the colonial records. But
don't take the number of children per colonial father. Be fair.
Take it per mother.
We have the matrimonial histories of colonial Yale and Harvard
men grouped and averaged according to the decade in which they
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]
[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.
While John was doing his last year in engineering school, Mary
did a year of technical study in the New York School of
Philanthropy, or in the St. Louis School of Social Economy, or in
the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, or in the Boston
School for Social Workers.
They won't even let you start in "doing good" nowadays without
some training for it. This is wise, considering how much harm
doing good can do.
But how the preparation for life does lengthen itself out!
Mary took a civil service examination and got a job with the
State Bureau of Labor. She finished her first year with the
Bureau at the same time when John finished his first year with
the electrical firm. She had earned $600. He had earned $480.
There were several hundred other apprentices in the shops along
with John. When he thought of the next year's work at fifty a
month and when he looked at the horde of competing Bachelors of
Science in which he was pocketed, he whitened a bit.
"I must get out of the ruck," he said to himself. "I must get a
specialty. I must do some more preparing.
He began to perceive how long it takes the modern man to grow up,
intellectually and financially. He began to perceive what a
tedious road he must travel before he could arrive at
maturity--and Mary!
But he had pluck. "I'll really prepare," he said, "and then I'll
really make good."
A western university offered a scholarship of $500 a year, the
holder of which would be free to devote himself to a certain
specified technical subject. John tried for the scholarship and
got it, and spent a year chasing electrical currents from the
time when they left the wheels of street cars to the time when
they eventually sneaked back home again into the power-house,
after having sported clandestinely along gas mains and water
pipes, biting holes into them as they went.
It was a good subject, commercially. At the end of the year he
was engaged as engineer by a street-car company which was being
sued by a gas company for allowing its current to eat the gas
company's property. He was to have a salary of $1,000 a year. He
was going strong.
One thousand dollars! Millions of married couples live on less
than that. But John didn't even think of asking Mary to share it
with him.
Mary, when married, was to be supported in approximate accordance
with the standards of the people John knew. Every John thinks
that about it, without really thinking about it at all. It's just
in him.
It bothered Mary. How much money would John want to spend on her
before he would take her? It made her feel like a box of candy in
a store window.
Still, a social standard is a fact. Just as much so as if it
could be laid off with a tape. And there is sense in it.
"After all," thought Mary, "if we had only $1,000 a year we
couldn't live where any of our friends do, and John would be cut
off from being on daily intimate terms with people who could help
him; and if we had children--Well, there you are! We surely
couldn't give our children what our children ought to have. That
settles it."
The influence of social standards is greatly increased and
complicated in a world in which women earn their living before
marriage and have a chance to make social standards of their own
in place of the ones they were born to.
We here insert a few notes on cases which are not compositely
imagined--like Mary and John--but are individually (though
typically) existent in real life in one of the large American
cities:
R----J----. Makes $6,500 a year. Only man she was ever "real
sweet on" was a teamster. When she was selling in the perfumes at
five a week he used to take her to the picnics of the Social
Dozen Pleasure Club. They would practice the Denver Lurch on
Professor DeVere's dancing platform. At midnight he would give
her a joy-ride home in his employer's delivery wagon. He still
drives that wagon. She is in charge of suits and costumes and has
several assistant buyers under her. She has bought a cottage for
her father, who is an ingrain weaver in a carpet factory. She
wears a stick-pin recently presented to her by her teamster. "I
like him all right," is her notion about it, "but I ought to have
took him ten years ago. Now he can't support me."
S----V----. Makes twelve dollars a week as a manicurist. Thinks a
man ought to have at least thirty dollars a week before marrying.
T----V----. Sister of S----V----, who doesn't think much of her.
She works in a paper-box factory at five dollars a week and is
engaged to a glove cutter who makes eleven.
T----A----. Saleswoman. Thinks women ought to be paid as much as
men. "Then they wouldn't be so ready to marry ANYBODY." Works in
the cloak department. Is a star. Makes about eighteen dollars a
week. Says that most of the men she knows who could support her
would certainly get in a terrible row at home if they married a
cloak-department girl. Families are stuck up. "But I don't care;
let it run awhile. Tell you something. I was born in the
steerage. I've been right where the money isn't. I'm not taking
any chances on getting there again. Let Georgina do it."
R----B----. Sub-bookkeeper. Seven dollars a week. Engaged to
clerk who earns thirteen. Says: "Of course I'm not earning much,
but I'm living with my folks and when we're married I'll have to
give up a lot of things. Kinda wish I hadn't got used even to the
seven."
This last case, of the bookkeeper engaged to the clerk, is the
modern situation at its happiest normal. The modern marriage,
except among the rich, is a contraction of resources. It is just
the reverse, in that respect, of the colonial marriage.
The colonial bride, marrying into Industry, brought her full
economic value to her husband.
The modern bride, marrying out of Industry, leaves most of her
economic value behind. And the greater that value was, the
sharper is the shock of the contraction of resources.
Of course, the case of the department-store buyer and the
teamster is irrelevantly extreme. But aren't there thousands and
thousands of cases which, while less advanced, are pointed in the
same direction? The more a woman earns, the fewer become the men
who can support her. How can the clerk support the cloak
saleswoman who has had eighteen dollars a week of her own? How
can the barber support the manicurist who has had twelve?
The cloak saleswoman may talk flippantly about it, but, at heart,
isn't she seriously right? She has pulled herself up to a certain
level. Except in response to a grande passion she 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 thousand 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 thousand, only 428.
In the South Central states, 543. In the North Atlantic states,
428. A difference of 115!
Getting married early is imputed unto us for actual personal
righteousness by innumerable clergymen, essayists, and editorial
writers. Are there so many more righteous women along the Gulf of
Mexico than along the Atlantic coast? One hundred and fifteen
more out of every thousand? We cannot quite credit so great a
discrepancy in relative human virtue.
You can't escape, in any numbers, from the law which reigns in
your vicinity.
Live on the Gold Coast of Africa. When you're thirteen, if you're
a girl, they'll boil a yam and mash it and mix it with palm oil
and scatter it on the banks of the stream and wash you in the
stream and streak your body with white clay in fine lines and
lead you down the street under an umbrella and announce your
readiness to be a bride. Which you will be in a day or two.
Live in Russia, and if you're a girl you'll get married before
you're twenty in more than fifty cases out of a hundred. It's the
most primitive of civilized countries. It's half way between
Africa and, say, Rhode Island.
These marriages before twenty tend to fall off rapidly in a
rapidly developing industrial region like Rhode Island.
In 1860 the married persons in Rhode Island who had married
before they were twenty were twenty-one in every 100.
In 1900 they were only nine in every 100.
A drop from twenty-one to nine in forty years!
And if you can't escape, in any numbers, from the law which
reigns in your vicinity, neither can you escape, in any numbers,
from the law which reigns in your social set.
Here's Bailey's book on "Social Conditions":
Live in England and be a girl and belong to the class of people
that miners come from: Your age at marriage will be, on the
average, twenty-two. But belong to the class of people that
professional men come from: Your age at marriage will be, on the
average, twenty-six.
This difference exists also in the United States. It is in the
direct line of social and economic development.
The professional man is a farther developed type of man than the
miner. It takes him longer to get through his educational
infancy--longer to arrive at his mental and financial maturity.
The professional man's wife is a farther developed type than the
miner's wife. She has much more economic value (if she works)
before marriage and much LESS economic value (in any case) after
marriage.
Where these two lines of development, male and female, come to a
meeting point; where the man's infancy is longest and the woman's
economic value as a wife is least, there is, necessarily,
altogether apart from personal preferences, the greatest
postponement of marriage.
The United States, except possibly in certain sections, has not
come to the end of its growth toward postponed marriage.
It is true that in Massachusetts, within the past forty-five
years, the average age of women at marriage has risen from 20.7
to 24.6. That is a very "modern" and "developed" marriage age.
But many of the older countries surpass it. In Belgium, for
instance, which is a most intensely industrialized country, the
average age of women at marriage is 28.19.
It is hard, indeed, to look at the advancing marriage age and to
compare its varying rate of progress in different continents,
different countries, different localities, and different social
circles without admitting that, whatever whirling, nebulous mists
of personal preferences it may create and carry with it, its
nucleus is purely economic.
Early marriage was made by economic advantages. It was destroyed
by economic changes. It will not be restored except by economic
adjustments.
"Nevertheless," said Mary, "I want John."
John had finished being engineer for the electric railway
company.
Out of his two years' experience he had saved a few hundred
dollars. No, he hadn't. That isn't probable. The way he made his
start into the next phase of his career was not by having any
ready money. Having ready money is far from being characteristic
of the young man of to-day.
John opened his office as a consulting electrical engineer not on
his own resources but as an agent for an electrical supply
company. Being agent for that company assured him enough money to
pay the office rent and stenographer. For the rest, for his meals
and his bed, he depended on his clients. Whom he didn't have. But
he started out to get them.
He opened his office in the city in which Mary was.
And then a strange but normal thing occurred. They spent enough
money on theatres and boat rides and candy in the next three
months to have paid the rent on a flat. It is true John's net
income was too small and uncertain to have justified the founding
of a family. But it was also true that they spent every cent they
had. The celibate life is an extravagant life. One of the
innumerable sources of modern extravagance is found just there.
Mary reflected on it. She didn't like it. And she began to see
other things she didn't like in this protraction of the period of
singleness.
Her work for the Bureau of Labor had taken her into many places,
among all sorts of women. She began to observe the irregular
living which is inevitably associated with a system of late
marriages.
Mr. Lester F. Ward has learnedly and elaborately informed us that
if we go back to the origin of life on this planet we shall find
that the female was the only sex then existent, being original
life itself, reproducing itself by division of itself, and that
the male was created as an afterthought of nature's for the
purpose of introducing greater variation into the development of
living things. The male, to begin with, had only one function.
That was to be a male. He was purely a sex-thing.
Whether this biological theory stands or falls, it is certain
that it squares with the present character of the sexes. The sex
which originated as a sex-thing remains the more actively sexed.
There was once a very good sociologist called Robert Louis
Stevenson who made many researches into the psychology of the
human race. While on his "Inland Voyage" he observed in this
matter that "it is no use for a man to take to the woods; we know
him; Anthony tried the same thing long ago and had a pitiful time
of it by all accounts. But there is this about some women, that
they suffice to themselves and can walk in a high and cold zone
without the countenance of any trousered being."
The celibate life is more possible for most of them by nature. If
it were not for that fact, the postponement of marriage would by
this time have demolished the ethical code.
Even as things stand, Mary was quite willing to admit, when she
saw it, that there are two kinds of women greatly increasing in
modern days. Both have always existed, but now they are
increasing very rapidly and in parallel lines of corresponding
development.
In one column is the enormous army of young women who remain
unmarried till twenty-five, till thirty, till thirty-five. Even
at that latter age, and beyond it, in a well-developed city like,
say, Providence, Rhode Island, in the age period from thirty-five
to forty-five, twenty out of every hundred women are still
single.
In the other column is the enormous army of young women who,
outside of the marriage relation altogether, lead a professional
sex life, venal, furtive, ignoble, and debasing; an army which
has existed since the beginning of time but which every
postponement of the age of marriage causes to increase in
relative numbers and to gain new strength for poisoning the blood
of life.
Love, denied at the front door, flies in by the cellar window.
Angel or bat, it is always with us. Our only choice is between
its guises.
Mary looked at the army of women celibates in offices and in
stores and in their apartments and in their boarding houses,
women celibates five and ten and fifteen and twenty years into
the period when nature has by irrepealable edict ordained love.
It was surely unnatural, for the mass of them. They were not
vowed nuns. They were not devoted to any Great Cause. They were
just ordinary, normal young women, thousands and thousands and
thousands and thousands of them.
Then, on the other side, Mary looked at the great army of women
in the midnight restaurants, in the streets, in their segregated
quarters--women who, however they may be sentimentalized about
and however irresponsible they may be for their own condition,
are, as a matter of fact, ignorant, stupid, silly, and dirty. Yet
on them was squandered the emotional life of millions of young
men.
On the one side--intelligent, capable, effective young women,
leading lives of emotional sterility. On the other side--inferior
women blasted and withered by their specialization in the
emotional life of youth!
The connection between postponement of marriage and irregularity
of living will be admitted by everybody who is willing to face
facts and who is optimist enough to believe that if, instead of
letting facts lie, we face them and fight them we can make a
better race.
The great Russian scientist, Metchnikoff, successor to Pasteur in
the Pasteur Institute, mentions the postponement of marriage as
one of the biological disharmonies of life. It is a disharmony
that "among highly civilized peoples marriage and REGLULAR unions
are impossible at the RIGHT TIME."
And Mr. A. S. Johnson, writing in the authoritative report of the
Committee of Fifteen on the Social Evil, notes the parallel
increase of "young unmarried men" and of a city's "volume of
vice."
He goes on to make, without comment, a statement of the economic
facts of the case.
"As a rule," he says, "the income which a young man earns, while
sufficient to secure a fair degree of comfort for himself, does
not suffice for founding a family."
He cannot found a family at the right time. He goes unmarried
through the romantic period of his development, when the senses
are at their keenest and when the other sex in its most vividly
idealized perfection, is most poignantly desired.
Then, later on, he may begin to get a larger income. Then
marriage may become more feasible. But then romance is waning.
Then, as Mr. Johnson says, "his standard of personal comfort
rises." Romance has been succeeded by calculation. "Accordingly
he postpones marriage to a date in the indefinite future or
abandons expectation of it altogether."
Celibacy through the age of romance! It's emotionally wrong.
Sexlessness for a score of years after sex has awakened! It's
biologically wrong. It's a defiance of nature. And nature
responds, as she does to every defiance, with a scourge of
physical and social ills.
"But what of all that?" thought Mary. "Those things are just
observations. What I am going to act on is that I want John."
At which point she stopped being a typical modern young woman.