YOUNG VERSUS SANGER

In the last issue of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin is printed Dr. Eliot's recent address to the Society of Harvard Dames urging a return to "old-style marriage". Of most modern tendencies Dr. Eliot is sangulne. His characteristic attitude is today the same as it was half a century ago, one of confidence in the ameliorative forces which he has seen at work in the world. But this confidence stops short in face of the appalling evidence of race suicide among educated families. He refers to figures which show that the average Harvard graduate has only one and seven-tenths children, thus failing by three-tenths of a child to reproduce himself and wife.

College men are already accustomed to the thought of race suicide as a peculiar attribute of their class. The facts have often been stated with adequate figures to prove them. The strange part of it is that all such sweeping generalities sound impertinent to the individual. Society's plea for a dozen children is rendered of little account by the obvious personal advantages of having only one or two. It is evident that the entire matter tests with the individuals who compose society, and that the vague future good of the race is not in itself a very potent breeder of large families.

Over population is the cause of so many evils that reducing the number of births among any class would seem a good thing, were it not for the consideration that it is the most intelligent class which is restricting itself while the less intelligent classes go on increasing. This is the serious problem. A common sense solution is to make the facts of birth control as easily accessible to the less fortunate as to the more fortunate members of society. The problem will then adjust itself. Most large families, it is safe to say, are monuments, not to a colossal desire to perpetuate the race, but to a colossal ignorance of eugenics. Dr. Eliot's argument is only cogent if the knowledge of these matters is still to be suppressed by governments whose primary concern is to keep the stock of "cannon fodder" well replenished