And you can't pass a law prohibiting her from earning
more than five dollars a week.
"It's all economic," thought Mary. "Nothing else." She had much
reason for thinking so.
Did you ever see Meitzen's diagram showing the relation between
the price of rye and the number of marriages in Prussia during a
period of twenty-five years?
Cheap rye, easy living conditions--number of marriages rises.
Dear rye, hard living conditions--number of marriages drops. The
fluctuations are strictly proportional. In the twenty-sixth year,
given the price of rye, you could predict very closely the number
of marriages.
It's like suicides. It's the easiest thing in the world to
predict the number of men and women who will next year "decide"
to take their own lives.
The marriage rate responds not only to the economic conditions of
a whole country but to the economic conditions of its various
parts.
You live in Vermont. Very well. Between the ages of twenty-five
and thirty in Vermont, there will be 279 out of every 1,000 of
you who will still be single.
But you live in the state of New York. Very well. Between the
ages of twenty-five and thirty there will be 430 of you out of
every thousand who will still be single.
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