Undoubtedly various causes are responsible for the decline in the birth-rate, some of which have existed for ages. When the dominant cause is psychological the remedy, if desirable, must be looked for in the education of a community. Conditions must be brought about making children desirable in the home, and a sufficient number of them for the race to hold its own. But if the cause is beyond individual selfishness--is other than psychological, and is a symptom of race degeneracy in its reproductive capacities, it is as Thorndyke suggests “time that it should be questioned.” A statistical study of 524 families in the city of Chicago made in the summer of 1909 suggests the possibilities of race degeneracy brought about by economic causes. The mothers of these 524 families had been married at least ten years and were born in foreign countries. The nationalities represented were Italians, Germans, Irish, Bohemians, Polish, Swedish and Norwegian, English and Scotch. They were people who lived in the congested districts of the city and whose families represented from one to thirteen children. 588 children died before they reached the age of three years and 303 more were prematurely born or died at birth, making the total loss under three years of age of 891. Of the 588 deaths practically all would be attributed to social causes such as unsanitary conditions existing in large cities or the ignorance of mothers in the care and feeding of their children. Of the 303 babies who died at birth or were prematurely born a large percentage would be attributed to psychological causes resulting in foetiside. But when one considers that only 20 per cent of the mothers embraced the Protestant religion, a little less than 15 per cent were Jews and 65 per cent Catholics--the Catholic mother believes the unbaptized child is destined to eternal punishment--the suspicion seems unwarranted. It is true the above cases are all abnormal. They do not even represent the average family of the congested parts of Chicago but rather the most unfortunate of the unfortunate. They are the mothers who were sent by the charity associations to the summer camps for a few weeks’ rest. Nearly all were miserably poor, and had large families which in all probability were important factors bringing about their poverty. Undoubtedly the men of the families were the most inefficient workers and the women possessed the least vitality when compared with the women of the more fortunate classes. They might have been the least fit to be parents, and their children--those who did survive the first three years of life--help to swell the number of defective children in our schools. The fact, as Phelps notes, that so little difference exists in the infant mortality-rate in the various countries of the world in spite of increased medical knowledge may be indicative of a social evil common to all countries, namely poverty.