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though at varying rates, in each successive decade. This of itself, however, is not enough to prove a declining birth rate, as the decrease in the proportion of children in the total population may indicate merely an increase in the average duration of life and the consequent survival of a larger number of adults.

But by taking the proportion of children to women of child-bearing age we are able to get a more satisfactory index of the movement of the birth rate. Between 1850 and i860, the earliest decade for which figures can be obtained, this proportion increased. But since 1860 it has decreased without interruption. The decrease has been very unequal from decade to decade, but if twenty-year periods are considered, it has been very regular. In 1860 the number of children under 5 years of age to 1,000 women 15 to 49 years of age was 634; in 1900 it was only 474. In other words, the proportion of children to potential mothers in 1900 was only three-fourths as large as in 1860. One is thus led to the conclusion that there has been a persistent decline in the birth rate since 1860.

No attempt is made by the author of the bulletin to determine the probable causes of this decline. An extended argument by Gen. Francis A. Walker is given, suggesting that it is largely due to the influx of foreigners and the resultant shock to the population instinct of the natives. Professor Willcox does not express a definite opinion, claiming that the vital statistics of the United States are not sufficiently developed to afford a sound basis of judgment. He notes, however, that there has been a similar marked decline in the birth rate of Australia, where there has been no such torrent of immigration.

If this decline were due in large part to the influx of immigrants, we should expect it to be greatest in those sections of the country to which most of the immigrants have gone—greater in the North and West than in the South. It is found, in fact, that in the North and West there has been a more or less regular decline, while in the South the change has been less regular and the decline less marked. In 1850 the proportion of children to 1,000 women in the North and West was five-sixths of what it was in the South; in 1900 it was less than three-fourths.

In 1900 the smallest proportion of children was in the District of Columbia, where the number of children under 5 was hardly more than one-fourth the number of women of child-bearing age. But from the sociological standpoint the District of Columbia should be classed with cities rather than with states and territories. The next smallest proportion was that for Massachusetts, where it was slightly more than one-third. The largest proportion was in North Dakota and Indian Territory, in each of which it was two-thirds.

There was an unusual decrease in the proportion of children between 1860 and 1870, which must be attributed to the direct and indirect results of the civil war.

The decrease in the proportion of white children under 10 to the total white population began as early as the decade 1810 to 1820, and has continued without interruption, but with varying rapidity, to the end of the century. The greatest decreases were found in the decades of greatest immigration, and may have been due in part to the disproportionate number of adults in the new immigrant population. The decreases in the decades 1850 to 1860 and 1890 to 1900 were very slight. The fact that these were the decades immediately following the great waves of immigration suggests that the check in