p. 62 | Yankees Running Out

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 9, 1867

Yankees Running Out.

DR. NATHAN ALLEN, of Lowell, recently delivered an address before an agricultural society, in which he contended that the native population of Massachusetts was running out. He said that the population was decreasing in many towns. This fact may be accounted for by the absorption of the lands by the few, and the emigration of the people to the West. Population has decreased in twenty counties of Ohio during the past fifteen years from this cause. But when he states the fact that for several years the births in American families is far less than the deaths, he perplexes us very much in attempting a reply. Then when he says that such is not the case with the foreign element, but on the contrary, their families have two or three times as many children as the same number of American families, he again states a fact on which he can defend his theory against all assaults.

We quote the following passage from Dr. Allen’s address;

The records in Lowell show that for some time, among the American population, there has been every year more deaths than births, by about one hundred. In the town of Dunstable, made up almost wholly of American families, the record for five years shows more deaths than births, and within twenty-five years the population has been reduced by over 150 persons. On the other side of us, in the town of Wilmington, made up mostly of American families, there have also been more deaths than births, and this town reports less inhabitants now than it had fifteen years ago.

It is about 200 years since the settlement of these towns, and their history will include some six generations. Now from an actual examination, it is found that the families composing the first generation had on an average between eight and ten children; the next three generations average about seven to each family; the fifth generation four and a half, and the sixth generation less than three for each family. The generation now coming upon the stage is not doing so well as that. What a change as to the size of the family now and in those old times! Then large families were common—now it is the exception; then it was rare to find married persons having only one, two and three children, now it is very common. Then it was regarded as a calamity for a married couple to have no children, but now we find such calamities on every side of us—in fact, they are fashionable!

Every one who will look about him and a little into his family records for two or three generations past will find abundant confirmation of these statements. We know that the same tendency to small families is manifest in the West even now—in Ohio, even before completing three-quarters of a century from her first settlement. No one of a native family who is sufficiently intelligent to investigate the question, can fail to establish the fact that in the first generation of our population large families of children were numerous, and that the average per family was somewhere between eight and ten, while the average of the present generation is not and will not be more than four per family. It is evident that we in Ohio have become almost as respectable and nearly as weak and barren as they have become in Massachusetts during two hundred years of education and degeneracy! The reason why we have made so much more rapid progress in refinement is because of the fertility of our soil that has enriched us so much more rapidly. Besides this, the multiplication of machinery, the discoveries of precious ores and metals, the enlargement of manufactures and commerce, during the past half century have greatly hastened the work of civilization as compared with the three previous half centuries.

Bad luck to us in these latter days that our boasted improvements have been so great! We have become wiser and weaker. Our refinement is but the synonym for physical delicacy and mental weakness! Our civilization means the exhaustion of the human race and its extinction very soon after, and in the same proportion as it becomes civilized! The facts show it. Facts, well defined, are stubborn things.

But, it may be said that the merits of a people are not to be rated with the number of children they have. There might be circumstances under which a limited number of births would not indicate physical degeneracy, but such is not the case with our native American families. Formerly all women, with few exceptions on account of physical weakness, were proud of motherhood and rejoiced in the increase of their little realms in population; now many women sigh and whine and cry in view of this distinction, and thousands of constitutions are shattered and early death insured by desperate attempts to prevent it! Does not this prove a lack of physical vigor? All the functions of a perfectly healthy person demand exercise and the individual is happy in proportion as they are fully employed. One becomes “lazy” because of bodily unsoundness, and so does one shrink from any natural office or duty for the same reason.

It may be said that our young wives so earnestly desire to improve their minds and enjoy the exercise of their higher faculties, that they have a disgust for the merely animal, and hence their anxiety to escape the bondage of motherhood! We do not see it. The desire to cultivate their minds we find displaying itself in a new bonnet for every change of the moon, in such shoes as are a certain receipt for a cough, in dressing up to fifty thousand dollars worth a year, and in all the wishy-washy small talk and flimsy reading that obtains in fashionable circles. We cannot perceive in this the desire for science, art, philosophy and genuine learning. On the contrary, it is sacrificing all the joys of earth and the race itself in an idolatry more abominable than ever was symbolized by gods of wood and stone.

A genuine love for science would not be followed by colds, coughs and consumption, tooth-ache, sick-headache and every other ache that the doctors hear of, together with a terrible dread of those results which are surely indicative of sound health. The woman who rambles over the hills and through the plains and prairies in search of the knowledge of nature’s most beautiful exhibition, inhales health with the free air, and establishes solid vigor by the exercise. She could surround herself with a little colony of her own, and they would all share in her love for science. So of the acquisition of knowledge in any other department of science.

True civilization, therefore, is not distractive of health, happiness and of the race itself. On the contrary, it is the only conservative power we have. It means science, the laws of health and obedience to them; duty and its performance; justice and its establishment in our institutions; progress and its dependency upon physical perfection.

The Boston Journal makes a very lame attempt at a reply to Dr. ALLEN’s arguments. It says as to the excess of deaths over births in 1864, that that was an exceptional year, and that the excess is due to the deaths of soldiers in the field and hospitals. In reply, let it be said that the excess is seen in other years, and will continue to be seen until the native Americans mend their manners, and break loose from their fashionable and enervating habits. In 1864 there were six thousand more deaths than births in the American families of Massachusetts. To show how this is exceptional, the Journal says:

The whole number of Massachusetts soldiers known to have died in the service during the four years of the war was 12,978, an average of 3,244 yearly. This average was probably exceeded in 1864, which was one of the bloodiest years of the war. That the number of births should fall below the number of deaths in such a year is not surprising.

An annual average of 3,244 deaths in the army, or as 1864 was “one of the bloodiest years”—say 4,000 deaths of soldiers that year—still there are 2,000 excess of deaths over births to account for. Besides this a large, indeed the principal part of these deaths of soldiers were from the foreign element, as the natives largely “played out” and procured substitutes. In addition, the births should have been just double the number of the deaths, which would leave at least ten thousand more to account for; so that in fact the Yankees of that State are rapidly going into extinction.

Who are filling their places? The facts tell us—for, in 1860, 260,000 foreign families produced more children than nearly a million Yankees! At this rate, how long will it take the Dutch to capture all Yankeedom—indeed, all of the “Universal Yankee Nation,” clear to the great lakes, the Gulf, and the Pacific?—Cincinnati Times.