The Relation of Racial Progress to Economic Conditions. The tremendous energies of the social workers and of the philanthropists are inspired by the belief that education, legislation and changes of environmental conditions operate to raise the race rather speedily to higher physical and mental standards, and probably as well by the belief that some degree of permanent racial improvement is effected by such social efforts. How well founded are these beliefs? So far as charity is concerned we concur with David Starr Jordan, who has said that "charity creates the misery she tries to relieve; she never relieves half the misery she creates." He qualifies this by stating that it is unwise charity which is responsible for half the pauperism of the world and that it is the duty of charity to remove the causes of weakness and suffering and equally to see that weakness and suffering are not needlessly perpetuated. ployers' Liability laws have been enforced, because employers discriminate against married persons, whom these laws make special provision for, naturally enough. Then as a result of Child Labor legislation we often see a rise in the deathrate among babies. Since the children cease to be family assets less care is given them. Child Labor legislation also has operated powerfully in some localities to reduce the birthrate. This fact, while ordinarily quoted as one of the evils of Child Labor legislation, by many will be considered salutary and wholesome, for it is perhaps better that factories should close and communities die out than that children should be brought into the world to work in factories. It is our view that a wise charity is a theoretic, academic, abstract sort of thing, nor do we regard legislative and other attacks on social evils as properly belonging within the field of charity. We think the legitimate field of charity very small. Most of its measures of relief, as we see them daily applied, are without permanent effect and often racially detrimental. And legislation is a dangerous thing, and not nearly so efficacious as so many imagine. Its end results are not taken careful note of by its promoters. Thus a premium has been put on celibacy in certain districts where Em We fear that social service is too often "indulged" in as an end in itself. We are fond of saying that im-. mediate, palliative measures of relief are demanded by the call of economic, social and moral duties. Very well; this sounds good, but most of the people who talk this way are stand-patters in the sense that they keep on doling out amelioration, rather than correction, all their days. They neither wish to know the whole truth about the results of their putterings and tinkerings, nor are they in deep sympathy sympathy translated into real action. with radical, progressive forces. The smug contentment afforded them by their work, and the personal exploitation derived from conservative, reactionary interests, which always applaud our philanthropists, are all suffi Biologists, eugenists, sociologists and other thinkers and workers are continually talking about environment. Poverty, bad housing, unhealthful trades, alcoholism, industrial exploitation of women constitute and determine bad environmental influences, they say. Then come along our smug, shallow, but very wealthy philanthropists, and expend their moneys here and there, but their efforts affect only local environments, so to say. Basic economic causes do not enter into their calculations. Themselves the products of anti-social factors, why should society look to them for anything but evil? Viewed sanely, their activities are nothing short of malicious, while seemingly beneficent. What is needed is a good environment in the biggest sense, by which we mean the realization of the Cooperative Commonwealth which to-day seems less and less a dream. But it would be the greatest mistake in the world to imagine that a political and economic millennium would ever mean the automatic disappearance of mental and physical aberrations. We know very well that Mendelian heredity plays its part in man inexorably, influenced little by environment. The basic facts of heredity are alike in all organisms. A certain percentage of the race will probably always provide crime, disease, cruelty and degeneracy, tho under normal social conditions this percentage would be rather small. It is this vicious stock which an enlightened society will yet rid itself of thru the legalization of vasectomy and of salpingectomy, as now practised in Indiana, Connecticut and Oregon. In the meantime we must see to it that data bearing upon the operation of the Mendelian laws in the human family are collected and reported, in order that society will come into the possession of sufficient facts upon which a radical program of elimination may be based in the near future. And regarding social service work of the ameliorative sort this ought to be considered justified only when pursued, not as an end in itself, but as a means of education in respect to the results of scandalous economic conditions, in order that intelligent correction of the latter may be attained; for the miseries of the race are mainly the result, not of Mendelian heredity or the transmission of acquired characteristics (the latter is nowadays a badly frazzled doctrine), but of vicious economic factors. The greatest need is the cultivation. of a proper attitude toward public affairs, particularly economics. As Senator La Follette, our leading insurgent and progressive, has said: “Attitude is more important than any definite views a man may hold." When this is attained we will enter naturally into an era in which property rights will not be permitted to overshadow human rights and in which the quest for a happy humanity will be realized in so far as such a thing is possible here below. We must work for a Kingdom of God here on earth and He will take care of the hereafter. SPECIAL ARTICLE Louis Pasteur.1 AN APPRECIATION OF HIS CHARACTER By JAMES P. WARBASSE, M.D., Brooklyn, New York. If one would know the ancestry of Louis Pasteur he must read "The History of a Proletarian Family" by Eugene Sue. The family of Pasteur emerged from serfdom in the person of Claude Etienne Pasteur, youngest son of that Claude, who was the firstborn of Dennis, the serf who married Jeanne David in 1682. Claude Etienne procured his freedom at the age of thirty from his lord, the Count of Udressier in 1763, paying four gold pieces of 24 livres, the deed specifying that he and his unborn posterity should henceforth be free from the stigma of mortmain. Then he married, and set up in business as tanner of hides. He had ten children. Louis Louis Pasteur, who became the greatest of experimental scientists, the founder of bacteriology and the discoverer of the key to modern surgery and modern therapeutics in the realm. of infective diseases. This boy enjoyed the advantage of growing up in a country district, playing in the fields and woods, and following the streams thru the vales of Arbois; and the still greater advantage of growing up in a family circle where love and loyalty to one another were supreme. At school he was considered slow because he never made an affirmation unless he was sure. He was accurate, thoro, truthful, and sympathetic. When he went to Paris as a student of fifteen years, he was overcome by homesickness. He longed for the warm hearts at home and the warm skies of Arbois; and the mother and father and sisters wished and wished for Louis back again. This quiet boy was filled with despair at being away from home. He could neither work nor smile. He grew almost melancholy. "If I could only get a smell of the tannery yard I feel I should be. cured." The The face of face of the father, mother and sisters haunted him. He wanted them; they wanted him. The urge became irresistible. One morning the boy found himself in the embrace brace of the soldier-tanner, tears streaming from his eyes; and together, silently and with hearts full, hand in Of these Jean Henri followed his father's vocation; and his son Jean Joseph also became a tanner. Jean Joseph was left an orphan at the age of four years, but he was a well brought up boy. At the age of twenty-one he was drawn as a conscript in the army of France and went thru the Peninsular war in 1812 and 1813. From private he came out of the army of Napoleon as sergeantmajor, decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honor. This soldier returned to his civil tasks, and in 1815 married Jeanne Etiennette Roqui. They lived at Dole, the sturdy patriot and his wife, laboring diligently and loving devotedly; and here in the humble tanner's home were born to them three girls and a boy. The boy was 1 Most of the data, representing statements of fact concerning Pasteur, are from "The Life of Pasteur," by René Vallery-Radot. hand, they journeyed back to the home that hungered for them at Dôle. Then he entered Besancon College, nearer home. His work was marked by thoroness, persistence and intelligence. He took his bachelor of letters at eighteen. Dijon University gave him his bachelor of science. He taught and studied. He was sensitive, simple, quiet. His genius was intensely scientific, still he possessed abundant sentiment and inspiration. Some of the pictures in crayon which he executed at home were good. His pastel drawings formed a considerable collection. Three things are true: he was well thought of, he did well always at school, he was a devoted and loving son and brother; his ideals were high. At twenty he again attempted Paris, and became a pupil in the Ecole Normale, attending some lectures also at the Sorbonne. It was at the lectures of J. B. Dumas on chemistry at the Sorbonne that his passion for scientific research was awakened. He The crystals of paratartaric acid had puzzled the chemists and physicists up to that time, and Pasteur undertook the study of these elusive bodies. approached the subject from the standpoint of chemistry on one side and physics on the other. He became absorbed in the physics of crystals and the polarization of light. We read with fascination of his own first chemical experiment: how that he bought a few bones, and isolated from them the pure element phosphorus; and how he was filled with joy to have it in a little vial duly labeled " Phosphorus." His first theses were on physics and chemistry. They were dedicated to his father and mother, and read in 1847. His researches in dimorphism (substance crystallizing in two differ ent ways) formed the basis of his first thesis read before the Academy of Sci ences. The power of concentration displayed by the young man was admired by Chappius. He taught, read and studied; but study absorbed him most not the study of books but of nature. We find him professor of physics at Dijon at twenty-six. Then he went to the chair of chemistry at Strasburg. The problem of the elusive racemic acid received his attention until he solved it. Then came the epoch-making discoveries in alcoholic and lactic fermentation. In 1857 every worker in the field of science in France with a mind capable of grasping human values recognized him as an extraordinary man; but still his name was rejected by the Academy of Sciences. The candidature required canvassing; candidates called upon the members and begged them for their votes; Pasteur was too busy working in his laboratory and too sensitive in his nature to conform to this established custom, and the great Academy rebuked him for his nonconformity. His study of fermentation explained and placed upon a scientific footing the common phenomena that had ever before eluded the human mind. His clear and positive proofs of what he found were incontrovertible. Superstitions and traditions were perishing at his hands. In 1860 the Academy of Sciences conferred upon him the Prize for Experimental Physiology. Until that time, spontaneous generation of even the complex forms of life was still believed in. Pasteur carried on painstaking experiments to show that germ life required germ life for its origin. His friends strongly urged him against combating spontaneous generation. It 66 was one of the mainstays of the theologians; their "Beastiaries" and Physiologius" were founded upon it. It was believed in by Aristotle, Lucretius, Pliny and Von Helmont, the latter of whom, in the sixteenth century, had given a receipt for creating mice by placing some dirty clothes in a receptacle in a dark closet with some. wheat grains or a bit of cheese. When Pasteur carried his culture media from sea level to mountain heights, infecting them with air of varying degrees of purity, proving that the germs that cause fermentation and putrefaction are carried by the air, and that as the higher mountain heights were ascended the fewer germs were found, he added in his report to the Academy this significant statement: What would be most desirable would be to push these studies far enough to prepare the way for a serious search into the origin of various diseases." He showed that the production of vinegar was due to living organisms in the realm of plant life, and that it was not an inert chemical process as was then believed and taught by the chemists. He used the words infusoria, animalcula, microbe, mycoderma, and vibrone to designate the living things he was able to cultivate in his tubes and see with his microscope. One class he designated as aërobes and another as anaërobes. Liebig and the Germans were against him. They scouted his germs. Abuse itself was not denied him. The bookish scientists were against him. He won the proud distinction of being defeated for membership in the Institute a second time. Finally in 1862, thru the sheer force of his germs, his name could no longer be resisted, and he was admitted. 66 The academicians did not know how to classify this man. He had made discoveries, which were startling, in the world of crystals, the physics of light, chemical fluids, vegetable and animal life. They disputed as to whether he was minerologist, physicist, chemist, botanist, or zoologist. Moquin-Tandon agreed to go to Pasteur's room; and if you find a botanical work in his library I shall put him on the list," he said. Duclaux, after a meeting at which Pasteur had shown large wooden models of his crystals, in order to make the subject easy of comprehension to the scientists, in exasperation succeeded in winning a laugh from the patient Pasteur by suggesting that he hurl his wooden crystals at their heads. As to Pasteur, he went on studying microscopic fungi that transformed wine into vinegar, carrying out experiments with such accuracy and skill that Biot declared that "such skill in the observation of inferior vegetables equalled any botanist." The study of fermentation in vegetable substances lead to the study of putrefaction in animal substances; and he entered upon the field that was destined to revolutionize the practice of medicine and surgery, and add untold eons of life to the years of mankind. The Emperor Napoleon desired to speak with him, and summoned him to the Tuileries. Of this interview Pasteur wrote: "I assured the Emperor that all my ambition was to arrive at the knowledge of the causes of putrid and contagious diseases." The losses in the souring of wines. at this time was great. Pasteur showed that wine could be preserved from disease and acid fermentation, without adding more alcohol, by the simple process of heating to 50° or 60° C, and then keeping it sealed from |