The great disproportion of the sexes is itself partly to be explained as the result of infanticide.
It is somewhat the fashion to say that the so-called "extravagancies" of the Kansas folk and other American Western men arise from the extraordinary position given to their women by the disproportion of the sexes.
Now in all the Australian colonies the men vastly outnumber the women, yet the disproportion has none of those results which have been attributed to it by some writers on America.
Illustration] {10} These tables show at a glance the disproportion between the Catholics of the North and those of the South.
And this resort to foreigners, poor as it is, scarcely meets the demand; while the disproportion must every year increase, especially if our prosperity increases.
The great disturbance in values caused by the war, and the vast demand for grain and forage for the army, have reduced this disproportion in prices very much for the time, but it may be looked for again on the return of peace.
Further, the representation of the Free States had steadily increased from the origin of the Government; the admission of California threatened, at last, to open the way for a corresponding disproportion in the Senate.
A very strong disproportionbetween the sexes appears, furthermore, among the widowed.
Likewise do a large portion of actresses, whose wardrobe outlays alone stand in crass disproportion to their salaries, depend upon such unclean sources of revenue.
As already observed, emigration across the seas is, in great part, responsible for the disproportion in the number of the sexes.
As a mitigation of the shocking disproportionbetween the unmarried and the married, the circumstance may be taken into consideration that a not small number of the unmarried were insane from early childhood.
A principal cause of this disproportion is emigration, inasmuch as by far more men emigrate than women.
This table shows that, up to the tenth year, the number of boys exceeds that of girls, due merely to the disproportion in births.
Two excellent reasons may be adduced why any disproportion in the numbers of the sexes should be the opposite of that which now obtains.
The disproportion of the sexes we have already discussed, and it may here be assumed that that grave obstacle to the success of monogamy is removed.
In lowering the infant mortality we shall reduce this disproportion of male deaths, and shall make for the survival of a larger number of men.
More boys than girls are indeed born, but from our infantile mortality, which is largely a male infanticide, onwards, morbid influences are at work which result in the disproportion already named.
Let the reader briefly be reminded, then, that, as I have previously argued, Nature makes no arrangement for such a disproportion between the sexes.
We are to regard any disproportion in the number of the sexes as inimical to monogamy.
Her instinct made her attempt, though very clumsily, certain childish tricks, a way of doing her hair so as not so much to show her forehead and so accentuate the disproportion of her face.
Each shows also a striking disproportion of numbers: the little force on the defensive completely defeating the much larger body of the attack.
The second difficulty arose from the disproportion of qualified voters in the Northern and Southern States, and the disadvantages which this mode would throw on the latter.
The disproportion of the colored race to the whites was fearfully great, being that of seven or eight to one; whilst, in our slaveholding states, the whites outnumber the colored people.
But there was this difference: the immense disproportion in wealth and power, and the political control exercised by the greater state, caused all the evils of disunion to concentrate with intensified force upon the smaller state.
George Sand discovers that there are certain inconveniences connected with intimacies in which there is such disproportion of age and of social position.
In the country, though, where difference of age is soon less apparent, the disproportion does not seem as objectionable as it would in city life.
Expostulations upon the disproportion of the punishment were also made by various classes of society; but, alas!
From the immense disproportion between our finite minds and the infinite objects of future hope, our conceptions of the disimbodied spirit must necessarily be feeble.
Pass by, I pray thee, and take no notice of who I am, because there is, as thou very well knowest, so great a disproportion between me and thee.
There is great difference and disproportion betwixt the life and an apple; yet the one must go for the other, by the law of your Shaddai.
There is ever this same disproportion between the conception and accomplishment.
And then, another reason for the wofuldisproportion between what we have and what we utilise is the love of ease, such as kept these Israelites from going up to Ramoth-Gilead.
Note, as the first lesson taught here, the divinely appointed disproportion between means and end, and its purpose.
I have carefully abstained from all indefinite eulogies, which merely serve to prove a disproportion betwixt the feeling and the capability of expressing it.
That disproportion must of course have been greater during our colonial existence and at the Revolutionary period, when our commerce was trifling, and we were almost if not entirely destitute of manufactures.
Let them compare these with previous enumerations, and they will see how invariable and large is thedisproportion in numbers between the agricultural and other classes.
Finally, in desperate cases, when our forces have such a disproportion to the enemy's, that we see no possibility of success, except through extraordinary daring.
This injustice becomes more apparent, when we consider thedisproportion between the cost of other transportation and letter postage.
