2. _The desire to maintain and raise the standard of life is the most effective motive limiting population in our society._ The phrase "standard of life" expresses the complex thought of that measure of necessities, comforts, and luxuries considered by any individual to be indispensable for himself and his children; that measure which he will make great sacrifices to secure. This standard differs from land to land, and from time to time. In the Asiatic countries it is so low that it touches in large classes the minimum of subsistence. Despite adverse influences and the uninterrupted series of famines, the population of India in the last century under English rule increased from two hundred millions to three hundred millions. Such a population "lets out all the slack" of income, and never takes up any. The great public works of irrigation, forestry, and transportation, and the development of industry under English rule, gave an opportunity for a higher standard of living; but it was used instead to permit the existence of a greater number of men in the same old misery. These facts have a bearing upon the question of Oriental immigration to America. The emigration of millions of Chinese from their native land would leave no void in their numbers. Peopling their own land constantly down to their own standard of living, they have the power, if they are tempted hither in great numbers, to people this continent also to the same density. [Sidenote: The American standard] The American standard of living, while it differs in different classes, is on the whole the highest found anywhere in the world. The increasing appeal to individual selfishness in the last twenty-five years, the greater ease of travel and taste for it, the multiplied and costly pleasures and pastimes, make children a greater and greater burden. The abnormal conditions of city life increase the sacrifice required to support children, and take away a large part of the value of their services in the home. In the greater cities are whole areas larger than the city of Ithaca where children are not admitted to the apartment houses, where no one who has a child can rent rooms. Despite the increasing incomes of the masses of the population, the number of childless homes is increasing, and while the standard of comfort grows, the size of the average family dwindles. [Sidenote: The decreasing death-rate]