formists

Religious or political oppression is likely to start up a current of CHAP. I super-representative migrants because it is chiefly the superior Non-conwho refuse to conform to the will of the powerful. The English are Puritans, Quakers and Catholics, the Scotch Covenanters, the Superior French Huguenots, the German sectaries who settled Pennsylvania and the refugee German liberals of 1848 were among the super-representative elements which came to America. Discrimination against a people or a race generally causes a representa

tive outflow, e.g., the Scotch Irish and the Scotch Highlanders of Colonial days as well as the streams of Armenians, Syrians and Russian Hebrews which have come to us latterly.

Pioneers
Venture-

Excel in

someness

Subduers of the wilderness generally surpass in energy and venturesomeness their kinsmen who stay where they were born. It is the trout rather than the carp that find their way out of the pool into the swift water. The American pioneering breed had rare courage and initiative and the European immigrants who came to settle in the Great West may well have topped the average of their people in these traits. Those who follow the lure of high wages in a foreign labor market will sub-represent their peo- Job-seekple in ability. The educated, the propertied, the established, the represent well-connected, having prospects at home, have no motive to sub

sixteen and seventeen millions-certainly the largest body of strangers any people has ever engulfed. Never before did the old American element constitute so small a proportion of the people.

ers Sub

CHAP. I mit themselves to the hardships of the steerage. The children of the successful abide in their fatherland; only the children of the unsuccessful migrate, and it is very unlikely that such a stream

of Success

do not Wander

will constitute a good sample of the beauty, brains and initiative of the stock.

Early

comers Su. perior to Later

comers

Even the difficulties of a distant migration have a selective value. The first-comers from a people probably have more initiative than those who come later, after the channels of immigra

on are worn deep and straight and smooth. The poorest stuff s that which migrates in response to a ticket-selling campaign by steam-hip agents who go about and excite the ignorant and gulble with fairy tales. Woe to the land which serves as dumping ground for a commercialized immigration!

CHAP. I

standard

Outbreeds

plants the

High

standard Native

Eringing his own inherited low standard of living, the foreign- The Lowborn outbreeds his native competitor, whose standard of living Immigrant reflects the better prospects of the newer country. The former and Supwill be ready to marry before the latter feels justified in doing so. The former will beget eight children while the latter does not see how he can do right by more than four. The higher standards of Stock cleanliness, decency and education cherished by the native element act on it like a slow poison. William does not leave so many children as 'Tonio because he will not huddle his family to one room, eat macaroni off a bare board, work his wife bare1st in the field, and keep his children weeding onions instead of at school. Subjection to competition with low-standard immigrants appears to be the root cause of the mysterious" sterility which has stricken in turn the Americans and each of the Amercanized immigrant elements. Down to 1830 the Americans were as fertile a race as ever lived and their decline in fertility coinrades in time and locality with the arrival of the immigrant

In 180 in American cities a thousand foreign-born women could ow 565 children under five years of age to 309 children shown by a sand native women. By 1900 the contribution of the foreign women had risen to 612, while that of the native women had declined to 296. F S. Crum in the Bulletin of the American Statistical Association for Sept 1914, p. 216, offers the following significant table:

AVERAGE NUMBER OF CHILDREN Per Wife

(Statistics Based upon Twenty-two Genealogical Records of

American Families.)

CHAP. I

A Mixed
Immigra-

tion Disin-
the Social

tegrates

Mind

In a society governed from outside or above-Egypt, for example the introduction of strangers, provided they are lawabiding and industrious, may do no harm. But a democratic society, in which government, laws, and moral standards are the outcome of common understanding, suffers as it becomes more heterogeneous in composition. The unworthy are able to slip into power because groups of worthy citizens are pulling different ways. When a people is so like-minded politically that fundamentals are taken for granted, it is ready to tackle new questions as they come up. But if it admits to citizenship myriads of strangers who insist on threshing over again old straw - the relation of church to state, of church to school, of state to parent, of law to the liquor trade- ripe sheaves ready to yield the wheat of wisdom under the flails of discussion lie untouched. Pressing questions - public hygiene, conservation, the control of monopoly, the protection of labor - go to the foot of the docket and public interests are not looked after.

American
Matrimoni.

High

MARITAL CONDITION

Contrary to the prevalent impression, the Americans are one of ality very the most married peoples on the face of the earth. A greater proportion of them are, or have been, married than of the British, French, Belgians, Scandinavians, Germans, Austrians, Swiss, Italians, Greeks or Japanese. Their only superiors in Europe are the Magyars and the Slavs. This high marriedness reflects, no doubt, rural life, relative ease of economic conditions among the common people, and a social position of woman which prompts her to scorn the irregular relations which a certain male element prefers. Moreover, servants are much hampered in marrying and in the United States the proportion of servants is singularly small.

Low IIlegitimacy

The usual American proportion of illegitimate births is from 3 to 4 per cent. When the rate exceeds this, it is usually owing to the negroes, many of whom have the most primitive ideas as to sex obligation. When one considers that in the European peoples the proportion born out of wedlock runs from 5 to 15 per cent., while in the South American countries the proportion of illegitimate births ranges from 20 per cent. to more than 50 per cent., the fact that, out of a hundred American white children, ninety

six or ninety-seven have been born in marriage indicates a fair CHAP. I degree of success in social control of the sex relation.

Not only are Americans much married but their fondness for the conjugal state seems to be increasing. From 1890 (when first the needful data were gathered) to 1910 the proportion of men 20 to 24 years of age who had married increased a fourth. The proportion of women in this age-class who had taken a husband advanced from 47 per cent. to 50 per cent. Out of a hundred American women in 1890 32 were single; in 1900, 31; in 1910, 30.

Married

Earlier in

1910 than

in 1890

Nor is this tendency due to the influx of early-marrying East Americans Europeans. Take the girls of American parentage. In 1890 just about half of them were married; in 1910 nearly 52 per cent. of them had stood before the altar. After all we hear about "bachelor maids," the higher cost of the married state, and the postponement of marriage, it comes as a shock to discover that marriages are earlier than formerly and that all that has happened is that one or two women who twenty years ago would have become wives now never marry at all. The fact that one man in ten and four women in ten marry Marry before the age of 21 and that two-thirds of the women marry under 25 while only two-fifths of the men marry under 25, reflects the very unequal economic incidence of the matrimonial yoke. Since it is the husband who undertakes the legal obligation of support, matrimony generally occurs two or three years. later for men than for women. Greater difficulty in getting a start in life results in a later average age of marriage for men, but does not affect the age of brides.

NORMALITY

On

Why Men

Later than
Women

Vitality

and success ReAbility tion of the People

flect the

Composi

The ability differences within a population are of immense Society's social importance. The super-normal provide society with leaders, misleaders, inspirers, path-finders and directors. Under fair competition the conspicuously successful will be of this type. the other hand, the sub-normal are largely responsible for such sinister phenomena as crime, pauperism, vagrancy and prostitution. There is reason to believe that a third of the prostitutes in America are feeble-minded. It is supposed that from a quarter to a third of the paupers are hereditarily defective. Half or more of chronic inebriates are victims of a bad heredity. The