its population to retain
indefinitely a high degree of fertility. Whether this is so or not,
there is the further consideration to be borne in mind that, during
nearly the whole of the Victorian period, emigration of the most
vigorous stocks took place to a very marked extent. It is not difficult
to see the influence of such emigration in connection with the greatly
diminished population of Ireland, as compared with Scotland; and we may
reasonably infer that it has had its part in the decreased fertility of
the United Kingdom generally.

But we encounter the remarkable fact that this decreased fertility of
the Anglo-Saxon populations is not confined to the United Kingdom. It is
even more pronounced in those very lands to which so many thousand
shiploads of our best people have been taken. In the United States the
question has attracted much attention, and there is little disagreement
among careful observers as to the main facts of the situation. The
question is, indeed, somewhat difficult for two reasons: the
registration of births is not generally compulsory in the United States,
and, even when general facts are ascertained, it is still necessary to
distinguish between the different classes of the population. Our
conclusions must therefore be based, not on the course of a general
birth-rate, but on the most reliable calculations, based on the census
returns and on the average size of the family at different periods, and
among different classes of the population. A bulletin of the Census
Bureau of the United States since 1860 was prepared a few years ago by
Walter F. Wilcox, of Cornell University. It determines from the data in
the census office the proportion of children to the number of women of
child-bearing age in the country at different periods, and shows that
there has been, on the whole, a fall from the beginning to the end of
the last century. Children under ten years of age constituted one-third
of the population at the beginning of the century, and at the end less
than one-fourth of the total population. Between 1850 and 1860 the
proportion of children to women between fifteen and forty-nine years of
age increased, but since 1860 it has constantly decreased. In 1860 the
number of children under five years of age to one thousand women between
fifteen and forty-nine years of age was 634; in 1900 it was only 474.
The proportion of children to potential mothers in 1900 was only
three-fourths as large as in 1860.