more rapidly than their income. This has led to later marriages and
smaller families. Again, more intense competition along all lines has
forced certain elements of the native stock into occupations where wages
are low in comparison with the standard of living. This has, perhaps,
especially come about through the increased competition which the
foreign born have offered to the native white element. The foreign born
have taken rapidly all the places which might be filled by unskilled
labor and many of the places filled by skilled labor. The native born
have shrunk from this competition and have retired for the most part to
the more socially honorable occupations, such as clerkships in business,
the professions, and the like. In many of these occupations, however, as
we have already said, the wages are low as compared with the standards
of living maintained by that particular occupational class; hence, as we
have already said, later marriages and fewer children. Rising standards
of living and rising costs of living have, therefore, impinged more
heavily upon the native born than upon the foreign born. It is difficult
to suggest a remedy for this condition of affairs. No legislator can
devise means of encouraging a class to have large families when by so
doing that class would necessarily have to sacrifice some of its
standards of living. However, it may be that the native born can be
protected to some extent from the competition of the foreign born
through reasonable restrictions upon immigration, and it may also be
that unreasonable advances in standards of living may be checked, but
both of these propositions seem to be of somewhat doubtful nature.

(2) No doubt the pressure of economic conditions is not responsible for
small families in some elements of the native white population in the
United States, for oftentimes the smallest families are found among the
wealthy, among whom there could be no danger of a large family lowering
the standards of living or pressing upon other economic needs. We must