It follows that the superior members of the community must marry, and at a reasonably early age. If in the best elements of the community celibacy increases, or if marriage is postponed far into the reproductive period, the racial contribution of the superior will necessarily fall, and after a few generations the race will consist mainly of the descendants of inferior people, its eugenic average being thereby much lowered. In a survey of vital statistics, to ascertain whether marriages are as frequent and as early as national welfare requires, the eugenist finds at first no particularly alarming figures. In France, to whose vital statistics one naturally turns whenever race suicide is suggested (and usually with a holier-than-thou attitude which the Frenchman might much more correctly assume toward America), it appears that there has been a very slight decrease in the proportion of persons under 20 who are married, but that between the ages of 20 and 30 the proportion of those married has risen during recent years. The same condition exists all over Europe, according to F. H. Hankins,[105] except in England and Scotland. "Moreover on the whole marriages take place earlier in France than in England, Germany or America. Nor is this all, for a larger proportion of the French population is married than in any of these countries. Thus the birth-rate in France has continued to fall in spite of those very conditions which should have sustained it or even caused it to increase." In America, conditions are not dissimilar. Although it is generally believed that young persons are marrying at a later age than they did formerly, the census figures show that for the population as a whole the reverse is the case. Marriages are not only more numerous, but are contracted at earlier ages than they were a quarter of a century ago. Comparison of census returns for 1890, 1900 and 1910, reveals that for both sexes the percentage of married has steadily increased and the percentage listed as single has as steadily decreased. The census classifies young men, for this purpose, in three age-groups: 15-19, 20-24, and 25-34; and in every one of these groups, a larger proportion was married in 1910 than in 1900 or 1890. Conditions are the same for women. So far as the United States as a whole is concerned, therefore, marriage is neither being avoided altogether, nor postponed unduly,--in fact, conditions in both respects seem to be improving every year.