The great Russian scientist, Metchnikoff, successor to Pasteur in
the Pasteur Institute, mentions the postponement of marriage as
one of the biological disharmonies of life. It is a disharmony
that "among highly civilized peoples marriage and REGLULAR unions
are impossible at the RIGHT TIME."
And Mr. A. S. Johnson, writing in the authoritative report of the
Committee of Fifteen on the Social Evil, notes the parallel
increase of "young unmarried men" and of a city's "volume of
vice."
He goes on to make, without comment, a statement of the economic
facts of the case.
"As a rule," he says, "the income which a young man earns, while
sufficient to secure a fair degree of comfort for himself, does
not suffice for founding a family."
He cannot found a family at the right time. He goes unmarried
through the romantic period of his development, when the senses
are at their keenest and when the other sex in its most vividly
idealized perfection, is most poignantly desired.
Then, later on, he may begin to get a larger income. Then
marriage may become more feasible. But then romance is waning.
Then, as Mr. Johnson says, "his standard of personal comfort
rises.
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