and only 74 unlimited, while for the ten years 1890-9 out of 120 marriages 107 were limited and only 13 unlimited, but as five of these 13 were childless there were only 8 unlimited fertile marriages out of 120. As to the causes assigned for limiting the number of children, in 73 out of 128 cases in which particulars were given under this head the poverty of the parents in relation to their standard of comfort was a factor; sexual ill-health—that is, generally, the disturbing effect of child-bearing—in 24; and other forms of ill-health of the parents in 38 cases; in 24 cases the disinclination of the wife was a factor, and the death of a parent had in 8 cases terminated the marriage.29 In the skilled artisan class there is also good reason to believe that the voluntary limitation of families is constantly becoming more usual, and the statistics of benefit societies show a marked decline in the fertility of superior working-class people during recent years; thus it is stated by Sidney Webb that the Hearts of Oak Friendly Society paid benefits on child-birth to 2472 per 10,000 members in 1880; by 1904 the proportion had fallen to 1165 per 10,000, a much greater fall than occurred in England generally.
The voluntary adoption of preventive precautions may not be, however, the only method by which the birth-rate has declined; we may have also to recognize a concomitant physiological sterility, induced by delayed marriage and its various consequences; we have also to recognize pathological sterility due to the impaired vitality and greater liability to venereal disease of an increasingly urban life; and we may have to recognize that stocks differ from one another in fertility.
The delay in marriage, as studied in England, is so far apparently slight; the mean age of marriage for all husbands in England has increased from 28.43 in 1896 to 28.88 in 1909, and the mean age of all wives from 26.21 in 1896 to 26.69 in 1909. This seems a very trifling rate of progression. If, however, we look at the