From the foregoing considerations we can deduce this, that the Japanese are mostly at the prime of life, and that the percentage of married people is exceedingly high. Now, in comparing the birth rates of two groups such as those of the Japanese and of the Californians in general, a mere comparison of rates without taking into consideration the difference in age distribution and marital conditions is not only useless, but it is absolutely misleading. California has only 20 per cent. of people between the ages of eighteen to forty-four,[26] while the Japanese group has 59 per cent.; California has about 25 per cent. or less of married population, including those who have passed the fertile period; while the Japanese community has 46 per cent. of married population, all of whom are in the zenith of productivity. No wonder, then, that the Japanese in California have three times as high a birth rate as that of California as a whole. There is another factor which accounts for the high birth rate of the Japanese. It is the sudden rise of the standard of living. It is an established principle of immigration that when immigrants settle in a new country and attain a much higher standard of living than they were accustomed to at home they tend to multiply very rapidly through high birth rate. Among the European immigrants in this country, a birth rate of fifty per thousand is not rare.[27] In the careful researches made in Rhode Island concerning the fertility of the immigrant population,[28] it was found that their birth rate was invariably high, 72 per cent. of the married women each having upwards of three children, with an average of 4.5 children for each one of them. This fact holds equally good for the Japanese immigrants, most of whom came from the poor quarters of the agricultural communities, where not only economic handicaps but customs and social fetters operate to check their multiplication. When, therefore, they come to California, where food is abundant, work easy, climate salubrious, and personal freedom is incomparably greater, they naturally tend to multiply. What we May Expect in the Future. We have seen, then, that the high birth rate among the Japanese settlers in California is due primarily to the facts that the largest portion of them are in the prime of life; that the percentage of married people is remarkably high, the larger part of them, especially the women, being at the zenith of productivity, and that their standard of living suddenly improves when they settle in California. The question naturally arises as to what will be the future development of Japanese nativity. Remembering that a prediction, however scientific, cannot at best be more than a possibility, we shall venture to forecast the future of the Japanese birth rate in California.