REPORT

OF THE

BUREAU OF VITAL STATISTICS

OF THE

STATE OF NEW JERSEY

FOR THE

Statistical Year from July 1st, 1883, to July 1st, 1884.

WITH ADDITIONAL QUINQUENNIAL TABLES AND CLIMATOLOGY.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE.

TO HON. HENRY C. KELSEY, SECRETARY OF STATE.

By EZRA M. HUNT, M.D., Sc.D.,

Medical Superintendent of Vital Statistics.

INTRODUCTION TO THE REPORT ON VITAL

STATISTICS.

The importance of vital statistics is so well recognized by all who understand their bearing, that it is now seldom necessary to explain the work begun in this State in 1838, and rendered more complete by recent laws.

Since political economy, social science and the study of population have come to be recognized as very essential factors of prosperity, not a few are getting closer insight into the work. It is a great concern of the State whether a proper guard is placed upon the conditions of marriage, whether the evidence of parents' consent to minors, of the reality of the ceremony, and of the competency of the parties to the contract, are established. The family is the essential unit of the State, because it is of all society. On it depends more for the State than upon any other of its institutions. The English requirement of notice of marriage, and the plans still adopted in some of the States and in the District of Columbia, did not arise from inquisitive officiousness, but from what both reason and experience had taught as to the concern which the State has in properly-considered and attested marriages. It is believed that the influence of the method of the Society of Friends and of our early laws on this subject has been very salutary, and help to account for the fact that the grounds for divorce and its frequency are not so commonplace in this State as in many others. The marriage certificate now furnished has, in addition to the blank, a certificate which the parties may be asked to sign, and which not only is valuable as a defense to the person performing the ceremony, but is also a proper guard to the parties.

The record of deaths not only serves to identify, but is the mildest form of certificate that the life of a human being has ceased and that there has been proper care exercised as to it. So long as one of the chief objects for which the State exists is the protection of human life,

such certificates are not incidental but essential to a proper conduct of social and civic administration. We have constant evidence of the salutary influence which the system has exerted upon that oversight of human life and its perils, which cannot be too carefully impressed upon citizens. Strange as it may seem, very many incline to be careless in the protection of life. The flagrant case which occurred in this State during the past year, as to the burial of twenty or more infants, is but an illustration of how far an act of great impropriety may take place without that reflection which is due to the sacredness of life and to the relation which each life bears to the State.

As the incident of birth is none the less real in its civic relations than that of marriage or death, and as we also need to know the age and character of the material on which the forces of disease are acting, this record comes in as essential to the other two.

As to all, it may now be said that we know of no one who has made a study of political and social economy, who does not realize that, for social as well as for legal purposes, there should be this uniform method of collecting the statistics so as to make them not only accessible but comparable with each other for statistical and sanitary purposes. While one who works in such a field has great reason for humility, by reason of the imperfections realized, yet he also has great reason for encouragement, since the imperfections decrease, and, even with them, the greatest guides and lights of social and sanitary progress have realized and exhibited their essential value.

The only rare and incidental friction that occurs is from the fact that an occasional physician or undertaker claims that he is rendering a service for which the State should award him some compensation. The first plea is that the State has no right to require this service of him, since it should be asked, if at all, from the family in which the death has occurred or from the parent of the child born.

The answer which other countries or States have seen fit to give to this is, that there are reciprocal duties always growing out of the relations between a government and its people, and that, in its supreme right, the State must decide from whom certain duties are to be asked and what duties these shall be. If it decides that, for the social and political welfare of the State, it is necessary that the State should have the information, it makes its own choice as to who shall impart it. Thus it asks of the head of the family the facts as to a census, or of