But the

Contrast
Between

Urban and

Rural Mind Is Diminish

ing

CHAP. II but they are not accumulated, for the city type loathes repetition. Now factors are at work which seem likely to wipe out much of this immemorial difference between city mind and country mind. Rusticity has well-nigh vanished from our Western states, while another generation will see its practical extinction in the corn belt and in most of the dairy belt. The farmer is becoming an entrepreneur, with an attention to the market which makes him a sort of cousin to the business man. Telephone and automobile link him closely with other farmers and with town. But even if the psychology of the isolate vanishes from the open country, it will remain the home of the rural mind, marked by love of the open, intimacy with nature, sympathy with growth processes, selfdirected labor and skill in dealing with things rather than in dealing with people.

The City
Suggests
Spending

The Farm
Suggests
Saving

Certain economic contrasts between rural and urban seem likely to persist. The city does not favor the fundamental economic virtues such as foresight and frugality. The farmer is esteemed according to his production capital, his red barns, tight fences, weedless fields, sleek horses and fat stock. The city man, however, is appraised according to his consumption capital; not his mill nor his business block nor his law library, but his residence and scale of entertainment determine his social marking. In the country, then, the current standards of success incite to thrift; whereas in the city they incite to spending.

Again, the greatest stimulus to thrift is felt when one's present savings will plainly lighten future labor. The farmer pinches now so that next year a windmill may relieve his aching arms, or the horse fork take the strain off his shoulders. Moreover, his saving is expended under his eyes, just where it will do the most good, and no paltry 6 per cent. is his reward. The tiles he lays through his slough may pay for themselves in three years; so likewise, the new barn, the improved dairy herd or the self-binder. On the other hand, the typical city dweller rents his savings to some one else and takes the reward of his abstinence not in a vivid personal experience, but in an annual 4 per cent. from a savings bank or in 6 per cent. from some remote company whose directors he does not know and whose business he has never seen and would not understand.

The rural neighborhood rarely offers more than one or two levels of opinion upon the conduct of its members. Usually it

CHAP. II

The City
Develops

Extremes;

try Favors

the Golden

Mean

applies a single standard sound enough but mediocre. Individuals with a strong bent either upward or downward chafe under unstimulating self-complacent neighborhood opinion and mi- the Moral grate in quest of countenancers, models and appreciators. The the Councity, on the other hand, offers circles which differ immensely in their standards of right and of excellence. At every stage of descent into the pit one finds cronies, while one will hardly rise so far into the empyrean as to find himself without comrades. In the city, therefore, one's possibilities whether for good or for evil more fully develop. Angel or devil, hero or sneak, doer or loafer, miser or spendthrift, sage or fool-each more fully attains the limit of his nature than he is likely to do in the rural community.

СНАР. ІІІ

Why

There Is a "Popula

tion'

CHAPTER III

THE GROWTH OF POPULATION

ASIDE from migration, the increase of population depends on

the margin by which births exceed deaths. Formerly these were largely "natural" phenomena, with which the human will tion Ques had little to do. Population growth was an uncontrollable matter like weather, which set the student of society no problems because there was no way by which he could influence it. In the course of forty years, however, certain forces have come into play among the advanced peoples which have greatly affected both birth rate and death rate. The sociologist has good reason, therefore, to grapple with "the population question."

Progress

in the Sav

man Life

THE SENSATIONAL LOWERING OF THE DEATH RATE

Owing to the great advances in medical science and the arts of ing of Hu- healing and surgery, the better education of physicians, improved public sanitation, the greater enlightenment of people in hygienic matters, the rising plane of comfort and the smaller proportion of infants in the population, the advanced peoples cut down their mortality from a quarter to as much as two-fifths in the third of a century before the outbreak of the World War.

Astonishing Success in Saving Babies

The reduction of the mortality during the first years of life has, indeed, been sensational. The first census taken by the Japanese in Formosa indicated that the Chinese there lose one-half their children before they are six months old. Some years ago regularly a third of the Russian babies and a fourth of the Bavarian babies failed to live as long as one year. On the other hand, in the best Scandinavian or American communities not more than one infant in twenty fails to survive the first year, and in New Zealand, where the baby-saving campaign has been pushed farther than anywhere else, there are cities which lose but one infant in 26!

Baby-saving, besides preserving many sound constitutions, enables some of inferior stamina to reach maturity, so that the very

CHAP. III

success in conserving younger lives adds to the difficulty of reducing the mortality of older lives. Moreover, there is no doubt Baby-sav. ing Adds that individuals are enabled to survive and reproduce themselves to Diffwho transmit to their children a poorer physical inheritance than Saving culty of was found among those who grew up before the art of infant- Adults saving was so advanced.

Compare, for example, America and China in respect to natural selection. Out of ten children born in America, at least seven reach maturity. Out of the same number born in China, only two grow up. The Chinese lose the three weakest just as we do, but in addition they lose five more who can survive under American conditions but not under Chinese conditions. If at birth the white infants and the yellow infants are equal in stamina, the two Chinese who grow up ought to possess greater strength of constitution than the seven whites who grow up. As parents, the latter cannot be expected to transmit as valuable a physical heredity as the former, so that, in respect to toughness of physique, the people with the less searching and relentless elimination of the weaker infants is at a disadvantage. The proper moral to draw from this is not to relax our efforts to prolong life, but to apply the principles of eugenics to reproduction.

HOW FAST CAN POPULATION GROW?

Baby-sav

ing Lowers

the Aver

age Stam

ina of a

Race

sible for a

to Double

Quarter

The greatest fecundity of which we have statistical measure- It Is Posment is to be found in Russia, British India, and French Canada. Population Whole populations here show an average of 50 births per thou- Every sand annually, while there are communities in which the birth rate Century is 55 or even 60! Now, the lowest mortality possible in a population containing so large a proportion of young lives is 25 or 30 per thousand. So that the maximum rate of increase of man under the most favorable conditions is about 3 per cent. yearly. This means that the population doubles in about 25 years, or expands in a century to sixteen times its original volume.

MALTHUS'S DISCOVERY

Law of

A century ago Robert Malthus startled the world by demon- Malthus's strating that, following its natural bent, the human race multi- Population plies faster than it can increase its food supply, the result being that population tends ever to press painfully upon the means of subsistence. So long as mankind reproduces itself freely, num

Checks or

Checks?

CHAP. III bers can be adjusted to subsistence only by such destructive Positive agencies as war, famine, vice, and disease. To be sure, this Prudential ghastly train of ills may be escaped if only people will prudently postpone marriage. Since, however, late marriage calls for the exercise of more foresight and self-control than can be looked for in the masses, Malthus painted the future with a sombreness which gave political economy its early nickname of "the dismal science."

In the Reproduction of Every

Species Nature

Provided a

ORIGIN OF MAN'S EXCESS OF FECUNDITY

His early critics could not conceive that a benevolent Creator would send man into the world with a fatal propensity to overmultiply. Darwin, however, after reading Malthus, conceived the idea that every species becomes involved in a struggle for existence because all species bring forth more young than ordinarily can be brought to maturity. The doctrine of organic evolution has repaid Darwin's debt to Malthus by explaining why every living form tends to multiply to excess.

A species inherits the impulse and capacity for greater reproduction than it needs for continuance under ordinary circumstances because it had to have enough to get past the worst con"Factor ditions it has ever encountered. No doubt countless species or varieties have become extinct because they did not reproduce fast enough to survive certain crises. All the forms we see about us to-day are those which had in their reproductive constitutions a sufficient" factor of safety."

of Safety"

The Human Species Has

Three

city It

Can Safely

Present

Circum

The specific fecundity of mankind became established hundreds of centuries ago and insured it the power of expanding even under Times the the hard conditions of primitive life. In the most advanced stage Reproductive Capaof civilization this capacity is about four times what man needs in order to maintain his numbers and three times that which will Use Under cause population to grow about as fast as the food supply can be augmented. Hence, for man to shut his eyes and propagate without taking thought for the morrow is to act as if he were living in olden times when a twentieth of the population died in a year instead of to-day when not over an eightieth dies in a year. For him to let himself go in respect to the instincts centering about reproduction is almost as disastrous in its effects as for him to give free rein to his pugnacious instinct, his destructive instinct, or his acquisitive instinct.

stances