Why Almost Everyone Has to Go to College
Posted on December 30, 2012 by thrasymachus33308

CHAPTER XII

THE woman's movement AND THE BABY CROP

The woman's movement is a movement towards
progressive national degeneration and ultimate na-
tional ѕυιcιdє.

Already the evidence Is conclusive that the effects
of Feminism upon the inalienable function and im-
memorial duty of woman — the bearing of children
— are so appalling as to threaten the perpetuation
of the best parts of the nation.

The one duty to society which women alone can
discharge Is the bearing of children. In this respect
they can never, except at the cost of national extinc-
tion, attain identity of powers, and privileges and ex-
emptions with men.^

The final test of the woman's movement Is its
effect upon the most essential, exacting and exalted
of woman's duties. Ultimately the woman's move-
ment must succeed or fail according as It strengthens
or weakens woman's motherhood — her mother-
hood physical, Intellectual and. spiritual.

We will examine, then, the available facts that

^ We may thrust aside as too bizarre and foolish for serious
consideration, the experiments aiming at artificial incubation of
human infants which Dr. G. Stanley Hall says that a few groups
of women have conducted.

122



THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 123

illuminate this phase of the woman's movement in
America.

Earliest among the manifestations of this move-
ment was the demand for higher education for
women, a demand which was speedily met. To-day
the college education of women Is so abundantly sup-
phed that In 1911-12 72,703 women were In col-
leges In the United States. College training has be-
come not merely respectable but fashionable. Little
trace remains of opposition to college training on the
ground that It Is unwomanly. In twenty years the
number of women at college has more than trebled.
This feminine corps of more-or-less Intellectuals has
Increased from 20,874 In 1889-90 to 72,703 In
1911-12, a rate of growth double as fast as the
men students' rate of growth.

It Is In the circles from which college women come
that the woman's movement has been most pro-
nounced, for Feminism as a cult touches the less in-
tellectual levels of society but lightly. All that Is in-
volved In the claims of Feminism, the liberation of
women by making their lives and work approximate
to the lives and work of men, has been attained more
by college graduates than by any other set of women.
Their lives have been directed consciously according
to the gospel of the woman's movement more than
the lives of their wage-earning sisters in factories
and stores. They have enjoyed that free choice be-
tween domestic and business careers, following upon
the best training and preparation that society af-



124 FEMINISM

forded, that free choice which Feminism hopes to
offer to every woman.

When the higher education of women was in dis-
pute its advocates derided the idea that the mother-
hood of women could be prejudicially affected in the
slightest degree by college education. They argued
that maternal instincts were too deep seated and the
joys of motherhood were too much desired to be
modified by any changes of training or environment.

What are the facts ? When they are quoted they
are usually challenged. Therefore I have taken
them exclusively from the statistical publication of
highest repute and unimpeachable integrity, the ofii-
^ cial journal of the American Statistical Association,
verifying and correcting my statements by correspon-
dence with the writers of the articles, none of whom
is arguing against Feminism.

First, it is now proven that half the college women
graduates do not marry at all. In an article in the
Journal of the American Statistical Association
(June, 19 14) has been brought together in scientific
fashion all the available marriage statistics of the
women graduates of colleges in America. The
writer concludes her examination as follows : *' The
decade of 1890 to 1899 is undoubtedly the most
fairly representative (as respects marriage rates).
On the one hand, it falls within the epoch which ac-
cepted college education for women and looked upon
it as thoroughly respectable. On the other hand,
the graduates in the latest graduating class (class of



THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 125

1899) are now at least thirty-five years of age.
The marriage record of the decade is therefore
fairly complete. The eight colleges graduating
more than one hundred students each during the
decade (Earlham, Swarthmore, Wilson, Indiana,
Vassar, Radcliffe, Wellesley and Bryn Mawr) show
fairly uniform marriage rates. The lowest is Bryn
Mawr, 41.8 per cent. (294 graduates), and the
highest Swarthmore, 58.7 per cent. (148 graduates).
It is probable that the marriage rate for this decade
is fairly representative of the tendency in the mod-
ern women's college world." And, as shown by the
figures for this decade : " The proportion of
women college graduates who marry is approxi-

^ mately one-half." Possibly a few members of the
latest classes included in the calculation might marry
after the age of thirty-five or thirty-six; but so few
as not to affect the argument.

This conclusion is accepted by women leaders
themselves as indisputable. Miss M. Carey
Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr College, says
" that 50 per cent, of women college graduates
marry and 40 per cent, bear and rear children," ^
a gracious concession on their part to nature and to
society which should, in her opinion, save them from
hostile criticism. To feminists it appears to be a
matter of astonishment, a claim on man's gratitude,

. that one college woman out of two still consents to
marry and two out of five actually bear a child.

^Educational Re'vieiv, January, 1908.



126 FEMINISM

To judge whether this marriage rate is less than
normal and may be a result of the woman's move-
ment, we must know whether other women In the
United States of the same colour and race and na-
tivity marry more or less. Eighty-five per cent, of
women college graduates are of native white paren-
tage ; so plainly it would be unfair to compare their
marriage record with the record of coloured women
or of recent Immigrants. So we will make a com-
parison with women of their own colour and race.
We do not know, by direct count, the proportion
of noncolleglate, white native women, who, given
plenty of time, ultimately marry; but only the pro-
portion of them who, when a census is taken, are
married women. In 1 910 of all the women of na-
tive white parentage In the United States who were
15 years of age or over, 69.8 per cent, were mar-
ried; and of all college graduates of all ages in 19 12,
42.2 per cent, were married. But 15 per cent, of
college graduates are of foreign or mixed parentage;
and, paradoxically enough, the marriage rate among
women of foreign or mixed parentage Is lower than
among women of native white parentage. Making
allowance for this Infusion among college graduates
of a strain of mixed parentage It is shown ^ that out
of every 100 women of the same colour and nativity,
67 noncollegians, 15 years of age and over, are mar-
ried and 42.2 collegians. Collegians are all over

8 See article " Education and Fecundity," by Nearing, Journal of
American Statistical Association, June, 1914.



THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 127

22. The percentage of noncollegians over 22 who
are married would be considerably higher than 67;
but, as we do not know the exact figure, we will ac-
cept the handicap upon the argument involved in tak-
ing the proportion for those 15 years of age and
over. Now, 67 is 59 per cent, above 42. So that
the chance that a noncollege white American girl will
marry is at least 59 per cent, higher than the chance
that a college girl will marry. But we know by
actual count that of every 100 collegians 50
marry; therefore, of every 100 noncollegians 80
will marry.

Thus far, then, it appears that the woman's move-
ment and college education and all that it brings in
its train must share the responsibility for the spin-
ster state of 30 out of every 100 graduates.

Next consider the number of children born to that
half of the graduates who, despite their college train-
ing and subsequent economic careers, do marry.

First, we notice the disturbing fact that a far
larger proportion of the marriages of college gradu-
ates are sterile than among the general population.
The proportion of infertile marriages among mar-
ried graduates of the period of 18 70-1 901, the
count being made over ten years after the graduation
of the youngest class considered, varies from 20.1
per cent, among the graduates of Rockford to 32.9
per cent, among the graduates of Smith;* whereas

*See Nearing on "Education and Fecundity": American Statisti-
cal Association Quarterly, June, 1914.



128 FEMINISM

in the native white population outside colleges
among women under 45 years of age married 10 to
20 years, a group comparable in all respects, it is
13 per cent, as is proven by Dr. Joseph A. Hill.^
So that childless marriages are one and a half to two
and a half times a^ common among those college
women who do marry as among married white
American women in general. Whether that sad
condition is due to causes physiological or psychologi-
cal will be considered later.

Next, how many children do those college women
bear, who do have any at all? We know that the
376 women who graduated from Vassar between
1880 and 1889 had, by 19 12, given birth to 348
children and that the 518 women who graduated dur-
ing the same period from Wellesley had given birth
to 427 children, which means less than i child per
graduate in each case, or for every 100 graduates
who married, 167.3 ^^^ 166.1 children, respectively.
Since the youngest of these women would be over 45
years old when the count was made, it is unlikely
that their families will increase. Plainly they have
not been recklessly prolific. They have scorned the
injunction to increase and multiply.

" Where only those graduates who have been
graduated a sufficient number of years to allow for
marriage and all probable family increase are con-
sidered," the number of children per family is less
than two. That Is to say, that women graduates,

5 See American Statistical Association Quarterly, December, 1913.



THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 129

married and unmarried being reckoned, bear on an
 average less than one child — not enough to replace
themselves and the husbands of the married half,
even if every child survived. The spinster half be-
comes extinct, unrepresented by any child of their
married classmates. Fruitless twigs on the tree of
life they die. Remember that 3.7 children to each
 wife are. necessary to maintain a stationary popula-
tion.^

Again, to judge whether the woman's movement
has had any influence in producing this race-suicidal
result we must consider the fruitlessness of noncol-
legians in the same sections of the population. Dr.
Joseph A. Hill has ascertained that the birth rate
of native-born white American women under 45
years of age, married 10 to 20 years, is 2.7 per
^ family, the families of the youngest being incom-
plete.'^ Compare this figure with the number 1.67
for the completed families of Vassar and Wellesley
graduates, though to do so is to compare completed
collegians' families with incomplete noncollegians'
famihes, and therefore to weight the figures against
the argument. We find that of every 100 graduates
about 50 will marry and they will produce about 84
children, and of every corresponding 100 noncol-
legians about 80 will marry and they will produce

*" Education and Race ѕυιcιdє," by Sprague in Journal of
Heredity, April, 19 15.

^ See " Comparative Fecundity of Women of Native and Foreign
Parentage in the United States," in American Statistical Associa-
tion Quarterly, December, 1900.



I30 FEMINISM

more than 216 children — roughly two and a half
times the baby crop.^

That is the central and stupefying fact. Women
college graduates in America hear only two-fifths as
many children in proportion to their number as other
native white American women.

"A friend of mine and his wife are both very religious/conservative people. They have three daughters who are fairly strident liberal/feminists. How? They all came back from college transformed."

to which the answer was given

"Which once again shows how utterly clueless religious conservatives are in transmitting their faith and values to the next generation.

I’m in my early 30s and grew up in a conservative Catholic parish where a half-dozen children to a family was common (but not common for the wider culture in the 80s).

I remember back in the day, my friends’ and acquaintances’ parents were crowing about how they were going forth and multiplying while the secularists aborted and contracepted themselves out of existence.

Yet this was a upper-middle class community where all the privileged daughters were not at all prepared for their own marriage and family. They were sent to college on daddy’s dime or got lucrative scholarships with family connections.

I’ve been following most of my childhood friends/classmates on Facebook and not a single one is following the mold of a traditional religious family with large numbers of children.

A huge percentage of both the boys and girls I grew up with are still single and childless in their 30s. The ones that do have children typically have 1 or two within a dual-career, dual-income household."

You are single and childless and well into your 30s yourself Tele and yet you're not a liberal.

Quote from: Marlelar

There are so many variables that I do not think it is wise to imply that there is some kind of plan to get young adults to attend college so that they will either be conditioned to become liberals or political police.

That's very naive.  The whole education system is controlled by people who have that intention.  And they have you denying that that's what it's about.  Which is exactly what they want.

It's not just minorities enforcing leftism on the general populace.  It's also liberal trads who are causing the liberalization of tradition today.

What your reaction shows is that you value your "respectable suburbanite" identity very highly - as do most bourgeois trads - so that you will stick your head in the sand as to how bad the current system is.

College?  For me a necessary evil.  Without that magic diploma, I'd be on welfare or couch surfing.  Don't bother unless you already have a goal in mind for which the degree is necessary.  Whatever you do, WORK your through.  If it works out, you've bought yourself a little time for discernment and R&R.  If it doesn't go as planned, at least you're not saddled with debt for the next 30 years of your life.

Yes, children are indoctrinated, but there is an intellectual limit to what teachers can do.  An elementary school teacher in particular isn't going to be taken as an authority in substitute for Mom and Dad.