Note 28 — PART IV.ToC

It is a fact not to be lost sight of, says Dr. J.C. Toner of Washington, that the proportion between the number of American children under fifteen years of age, and the number of American women between the child-bearing ages of fifteen and fifty, is declining steadily. In 1830, there were to every 1,000 marriageable women, 1,952 children under fifteen years of age. Ten years later, there were 1,863, or 89 less children to every thousand women than in 1830. In 1850, this number had declined to 1,720; in 1860, to 1,666; and in 1870, to 1,568. The total decline in the forty years was 384, or about 20 per cent of the whole proportional number in 1830, a generation ago. The United-States census of 1870 shows that there is, in the city of New York, but one child under fifteen years of age, to each thousand nubile women, when there ought to be three; and the same is true of our other large cities.—The Nation, Aug. 28, 1873, p. 145.