THIS Chapter has to do with Vital Statistics.

The flippant Yankee has long been uneasy
about the future of his people. The serious-
minded Yankee has been appalled by swift decay
of the clan with which he is identified. We are
now to examine data which will justify the appre-
hensions of the shallow, and which pronounces
the over-hanging doom which the seer has already
sensed.

Town, State and Section statistics, with ap-
palling vividness, presënt the finger of God smudg-
ing out the Yankee. Their message is unequivo-
cal. Death is claiming the Anglo-Saxon stock,
and Life is coaxing into being an enormous im-
migrant progeny. In the mysterious march of
humanity out of the dark that precedes birth into
the dark of death, there are dramatic moments,
notable cycles, extraordinary eras. Prolific pe-
riods pile up populations. Famine, pestilence,
and war waste peoples once vigorous. Economic
conditions strangle or exalt races. In reverential
times it was thought that God thus expressed his
beneficence or his displeasure. This era, befud-

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