of these countries. Thus the birth-rate in France has continued to fall in spite of those very conditions which should have sustained it or even caused it to increase."
In America, conditions are not dissimilar. Although it is generally believed that young persons are marrying at a later age than they did formerly, the census figures show that for the population as a whole the reverse is the case. Marriages are not only more numerous, but are contracted at earlier ages than they were a quarter of a century ago. Comparison of census returns for 1890, 1900 and 1910, reveals that for both sexes the percentage of married has steadily increased and the percentage listed as single has as steadily decreased. The census classifies young men, for this purpose, in three age-groups: 15-19, 20-24, and 25-34; and in every one of these groups, a larger proportion was married in 1910 than in 1900 or 1890. Conditions are the same for women. So far as the United States as a whole is concerned, therefore, marriage is