CHAP. XX of industry. The rapid Latinizing of the Gauls after Cæsar's conquest was due to the plain superiority of the Roman culture. Rome made no effort to assimilate them but they Latinized of their own accord. Within forty years Druidism lost nearly all its authority, the Gauls renounced their warlike habits and became interested in peaceful labor, and Roman speech, schools and towns were everywhere. Even conquerors will accept the tongue and civilization of their subjects in case these are clearly superior. The Franks who conquered Gaul in the sixth century were quickly Gallicized and soon disappeared as a distinct order in the population. The Manchu conquerors of China accepted the Chinese culture. The impression Rome made on the barbarian mind comes out in the naïve confession of Ataulfus the Goth that "in the first exuberance of his strength and spirits he had made this his most earnest desire to utterly obliterate the Roman name and bring under sway of the Goths all that had once belonged to them—in fact, to turn Romania into Gothia and to make himself, Ataulfus, all that Cæsar Augustus had once been. But when he had learnt, by long experience, that the Goths would obey no laws on account of the unrestrained barbarism of their character, yet that it was wrong to deprive the commonwealth of laws without which it would cease to be a commonwealth, he at least for his part had chosen to have the glory of restoring the Roman name to its old estate and increasing its potency by Gothic vigor, and he wished to be looked upon by posterity as the great author of the Roman restoration, since he had failed in his attempt to be its transformer." 10 If, on the other hand, the cultures juxtaposed are on about the same plane their bearers reciprocally influence one another.11 There are various factors which promote the process of accommodation. 10 Hodgkin," Italy and Her Invaders," Vol. V, p. 402. 11" Among the infinite causes of the struggles that engage civilized nations struggles for outlets and for means of subsistence, clashings of pride, metaphysical quarrels — the vague and obscure antipathies of race occupy the very lowest place. What is taken for them is merely the clash of colliding traditions. The clash of traditions, however ancient and deeply rooted, cannot produce a state of ceaseless warfare since two opposing traditions, when brought into contact, end either by an adaptation of the one to the other, if they be equally strong and sound, or by the conversion of the one into the other. The struggle of races can end only Stirring verso Ele the Di ments of the Popu Through other If Comtions Fail, munica Localities Develop on Intermingling. The Incas hastened the assimilation of the populations under them by transferring bodies of peasantry from one district to another.12 Charlemagne deported Saxons into south Germany and Franconia while Franks and Slavs were imported into Saxony. The spread of the Roman culture was lation greatly accelerated by the visits of Roman merchants to the remotest bounds of the Empire and by the settlement of Romans in every province. So long as such intercourse and settlement continues, the diverse peoples grow more alike. But, owing to the roads becoming infested with bandits after the central authority broke down, this osmosis ceases in the fifth century and the forces of differentiation gain the upper hand. The old provinces erected into independent states diverge more and more from one another, a whole family of languages grow out of Latin and several nationalities with distinct speech, customs and institutions Divergent develop out of populations becoming ever more unlike. Improvements in Communication. Intermingling is greatly facilitated by good highways, which bring forward into the present groups which have been sealed up in some mountain region like the Scotch Highlands, the Caucasus, the Pyrenees, the Abruzzi, the Peruvian Sierra, or the Appalachians. Contact has but a slow effect on groups moving on diverging lines of development ment -such as Hindoos and English, Turks and Armenians - but it effaces with startling rapidity unlikeness between groups at different points on a certain line of development by bringing quickly forward the belated group. Thanks to better communications the Highlanders have caught up with their fellow British, the Corsicans with the French, the Sardinians with the Italians and the Appalachian mountain folk with the Americans. A common religion. A religion which provides the entire inupon the battle-field and by extermination. The struggle of traditions, though carried to the battle-field, can find its definite solution only in the depths of thought and conscience." James Darmsteter, "Selected Essays," PP 173-4 12 At first the original organization of the servient pueblo remains ur disturbed. The chief will continue to exercise his former functions under the supervision, it may be, of a resident chief representing the dominant pueblo. The people continue their own religious practices. It s only when newcomers introduced by the policy of the dominant pueblo so far predominate as to supersede the original organization that the district will begin to assume the appearance of a homogeneous state. This had occurred in Peru and was occurring in Mexico." Payne, "History of the New World Called America," Vol. II, p. 53. Lines Contact porizes Groups at Different the Same Contem Points on Line of the Cli Adher ents of the Same Religion Are, CHAP. XX tellectual background establishes such fundamental agreements Religion is among its followers that the toughest lump in the population bemate of the gins to dissolve when it is no longer held together by a religion Spirit of its own. This was why Charlemagne forced Christianity upon the Saxons even at the point of the sword. The conversion of the heathen barbarians between the fourth and the thirteenth centuries was in every case a momentous event, for it at once brought them within a new set of influences and they began to share in the movement of European culture. Just as the heathen Slavs who settled in Greece in the sixth century came on so as it Were, rapidly after they were Christianized that they furnished a Patriarch to Constantinople in the eighth century, so the heathen Danes who settled Northumbria in the ninth century were providing England with archbishops within less than a hundred years. In the wake of the religion of Mahomet followed presently the brilliant Saracenic culture. In the foreign missionary activity of to-day so many elements of Occidental culture are blended with purely religious teachings that the net effect is the promotion of resemblance and sympathy between races on the most divergent lines of cultural development. Dwellers in the Same Climatic Zone Community of Language Essential to a True Society Separate ward the ward the A common law. A dual system of law preserves the distinctness of ethnic elements in society, while a law common to all weakens unlikeness by ignoring it. The Visigoths in Italy quickly blended with the Italians when at the end of the seventh century the two laws, Visigothic and Roman, which had existed side by side, were fused into one law common to the two races. A common language. A foreign language cocoons an ethnic group and keeps it alien. Ignorant of social science, Americans have allowed groups of foreign born thus to encyst themselves until there are young people born and educated in America who cannot understand or speak the English language. Requiring all children here to attend schools conducted in English would have nothing in common with the odious attempt of Czars and Kaisers to denationalize unwilling subjects by putting their language under ban. The public school. Separate schools for different elements in the population deepen and extend the sense of difference because of their emphasis on distinctiveness of race, history, language, literature, religion and culture. On the other hand, the school that is common to all stresses the present and the future rather than the past and emphasizes the matters common to all, such as CHAP. XX present life interests. Compare the assimilative achievement of the Americans in the Philippines with the common school with that of the Dutch in Java without it. The common newspaper. With its emphasis on the present the newspaper weakens the grasp of the traditions which hold apart the unlike. Minds reached by the same newspapers are oriented in the same direction and find new and common interests. The American "yellow" newspaper, which, by means of scare-heads, color pictures, and gong effects, gets itself read by the foreignborn, has been a potent agent of Americanization. Voluntary associations crossing ethnic lines. Joint action in defense of common interests quickly overcomes the suspiciousness and aversion between the unlike. An investigation by U. S. Commissioner of Labor Wright shows that among the foreign-born in the stock yards district of Chicago each nationality has its own churches, schools, building and loan associations and political clubs. The one association which embraces all nationalities is the trade union, which organizes men according to occupation and refuses to recognize nationality lines. "In his trade union the Slav mixes with the Lithuanian, the German and the Irish, and this is the only place they do mix until, by virtue of this intercourse and this mixing, clannishness is to a degree destroyed, and a social mixing along other lines comes naturally into play." "In every trade union, however conservative, there are members who will occasionally get the floor and advise their hearers to vote high wages and shorter hours at the ballot box. As the groups of Slovaks gather around after the business is over to have these things explained to them, many get their first real idea of what the ballot and election day mean, and the relation of these to the Government itself. In their own countries the two essential, if not only, elements of the peasant and agricultural laborer's mind is to believe and obey, or follow. Advantage is taken of this fact here by clan politicians, as well as the clan leader in every department. Once the leader can make these people believe in him, he thinks for the entire group, and insists that their duty consists in following his lead implicitly. Necessarily, the trade union, in order to get them to break away from the leader that opposed the union on industrial lines, would be com The Trade Union as lator Union The Trade Brings operation of the UnBasis of ity of Eco About Co like on the Commun nomic In terest CHAP. pelled to urge them to consider their own personal and group interests as wage workers; to think and act for themselves along lines where they knew the real conditions better than any one else, and certainly better than their leader in a child insurance society, or something else as remote. Here, too, are the first germs of what may be called departmental thinking implanted in their minds — that is, that while a leader may be worthy of their confidence in one thing, it does not necessarily follow that he is so in some other class of interests. Power of the Bread Interest to Bring Peo ple out of "It is doubtful if any organization other than a trade union and-Butter could accomplish these things, for only the bread and butter necessity would be potent enough as an influence to bring these people out of the fixed forms and crystallizations of life into which they have been compressed. Certain it is that no other organization is attempting to do this work, at least not by amalgamation, which is the only way assimilation can be secured among these various foreign elements. The drawing of these people away from their petty clique leaders and getting them to think for themselves upon one line of topics, namely, the industrial conditions and the importance of trade organization, result in a mental uplift. The only way they can pull a Slovak away from his leader is to pull him up until he is gotten above his leader along the lines of thought they are working on." Fighting Struggle together and particularly victory together weld the unlike. Says Commons: "For the twenty-five years down to 1900 the racial forces in opposition to assimilation between Slav and English-speaking nationalities in the anthracite industry were dominant. But the industrial disturbances of 1900 and 1902 here directed the social forces into a different channel. On the broad ground of industrial self-interest racial ties are being broken down, largely through the instrumentality of the United Mine Workers of America." 13 Intermar riage Com Process of AMALGAMATION After the major differences in speech, religion, and customs pletes the between intermixed population elements have been planed away. Adaptation intermarriage takes place freely and the original diversity disappears. The offspring of these mixed unions reconcile in their persons the opposed tendencies. Inheriting from their two par13" Trade Unionism and Labor Problems," pp. 340-41. |