n the older American
stock.[129]

The competition is not so severe in country districts where the native
stock prevails; but in the cities and industrial centres the skilled and
ambitious workman and workwoman discover that in order to keep
themselves above the low standards of the immigrants they must postpone
marriage. The effect is noticeable and disastrous in the case of the
Irish-Americans. Displaced by Italians and Slavs, many of the young men
have fallen into the hoodlum and criminal element. Here moral causes
produce physical causes of race destruction, for the vicious elements of
the population disappear through the diseases bequeathed to their
progeny, and are recruited only from the classes forced down from above.
On the other hand, many more Irish have risen to positions of
foremanship, or have lived on their wits in politics, or have entered
the priesthood. The Irish-American girls, showing independence and
ambition, have refused to marry until they could be assured of a husband
of steady habits, and they have entered clerical positions, factories,
and mills. Thus this versatile race, with distinct native ability, is
meeting in our cities the same displacement and is resorting to the same
race suicide which itself inflicted a generation or two earlier on the
native colonial stock. But the effect is more severe, for the native
stock was able to leave the scenes of competition, to go West and take
up farms or build cities, but the Irish-American has less opportunity to
make such an escape.

Great numbers of Irishmen, together with others of English, Scotch,
German, and American descent, remaining in these industrial centres,
have sought to protect themselves and maintain high standards through
labor-unions and the so-called "closed shop," by limiting the number of
apprentices, excluding immigrants, and giving their sons a preference of
admission. But even with the unions they find it necessary also to limit
the size of their families, and I am convinced from personal
observation, that, were the statistics on this point compiled from the
unions of skilled workmen, there would be found even stronger evidences
of race suicide than among other classes in the nation.

To the well-to-do classes freedom from the care of children is not a
necessity, but an opportunity for luxury and indulgence. These include
the very wealthy, whose round of social functions would be interrupted
by home obligations. To them, of cou