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on are worn deep and straight and smooth. The poorest stuff CHAP. I is that which migrates in response to a ticket-selling campaign by steamship agents who go about and excite the ignorant and gul

ble with fairy tales. Woe to the land which serves as dumping ground for a commercialized immigration!

standard

Outbreeds

plants the

High

standard

Native

Stock

Bringing 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 w he can do right by more than four. The higher standards of 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 bareut 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" hich has stricken in turn the Americans and each of the Amercanized immigrant elements. Down to 1830 the Americans were fertile a race as ever lived and their decline in fertility coindes in time and locality with the arrival of the immigrant Fud

In 1890 in American cities a thousand foreign-born women could 565 children under five years of age to 309 children shown by a sand native women. By 1900 the contribution of the foreign women tal 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 v 1914, p. 216, offers the following significant table:

AVERAGE NUMBER OF CHILDREN per Wife

(Statistics Based upon Twenty-two Genealogical Records of

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CHAP. I

A Mixed
Immigra-

tion Disin-
the Social

tegrates

Mind

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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 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 yuke. 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

Marry Later than Women

Vitality

flect the

Composi

The ability differences within a population are of immense Society's social importance. The super-normal provide society with lead- and Sucers, misleaders, inspirers, path-finders and directors. Under fair cess Recompetition the conspicuously successful will be of this type. Ability the other hand, the sub-normal are largely responsible for such tion of the nister phenomena as crime, pauperism, vagrancy and prostituion. 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

People

CHAP. I proportion of criminals who are mentally defective is no doubt many times larger than that in the population at large.

Proportion of Congen.

in the

United
States

The number of feeble-minded in the United States is not reckital Defect oned at less than 375,000, while a much greater host carry the taint in their germ plasm and, if they mate with their own type, may transmit it to their descendants. The insane and demented are estimated to number at least 350,000. Epileptics are figured by some at 150,000. Counting in all the well-marked types of congenital defect perhaps one person in a hundred is so poor in natural equipment as to present a problem.

Much Depends on

opment of

a Technique of Mental Measurement

The measurement of mental differences is yet in its infancy. the Devel. Its technique is, however, rapidly developing and before long we may be able to ascertain with a fair degree of accuracy the natural mental capacity of any individual. When that time comes it may be possible to gauge the comparative brain power of races and of hybrids, to discriminate at immigration stations between the desirables and the undesirables, to discover what youth are worthy of being aided to a higher education, to find for each profession the grade of capacity requisite for success in it, or to sort out of a body of employees the ones available for responsibility and direction. Society will then be able to locate its stock of superior ability, to discover whether much of it is running to waste, to see whether it is reproducing itself, to find when and why a community becomes impoverished in respect to ability, and to trace the routes and causes of the migrations of the capable.

CHAPTER II

CITY AND COUNTRY

AT the birth of the American nation one hundred and thirty ORAPUTT

banization

American

years ago, its largest city had but forty-two thousand inhab- swift Urtants, while only one person in thirty lived in the six towns of of the more than eight thousand population each. Now there cannot Population be fewer than eight hundred such places in which dwell at least two-fifths of all Americans. Nearly one-half of us live in places of over 2,500 inhabitants, a tenth in villages, and hardly more than two-fifths in the open country. So many of the coming genera

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POPULATION IN PLACES OF 8,000 INHABITANTS or More at Each

CENSUS: 1790-1910.

on are growing up in cities that it will not be long ere the nat:nal soul is urban.

ing of the

Acceler

Up to thirty years ago there was an agricultural frontier which The Endacted as a brake on the forces of urbanization. The overflow Frontier from the long-settled regions split into two streams, one flowing ates the to the rising cities, while the other spread out upon free land. Process The opportunity to create farm homes in the public domain saved hundreds of thousands every decade from the reaching tentacles

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