Introduction to the Science of Sociology Part 72

Not everywhere, to be sure, do those struggles take the form of such a general process of displacement; but in individual cases it will occur with endless frequency within a country that the stronger and better-equipped element will overcome the weaker and less well-equipped.

Thus we have here a case similar to that occurring so frequently in nature: on the same terrain where a more highly organized plant or animal has no longer room for subsistence, others less exacting in their demands take up their position and flourish. The coming of the new is in fact not infrequently the cause of the disappearance of those already there and of their withdrawal to more favorable surroundings.

If these considerations show that by no means the majority of internal migrations find their objective point in the cities, they at the same time prove that the trend toward the great centers of population can, in itself be looked upon as having an extensive social and economic importance. It produces an alteration in the distribution of population throughout the state; and at its originating and objective points it gives rise to difficulties which legislative and executive authority has. .h.i.therto labored, usually with but very moderate success, to overcome.

It transfers large numbers of persons almost directly from a sphere of life where barter predominates into one where money and credit exchange prevail, thereby affecting the social conditions of life and the social customs of the manual laboring cla.s.ses in a manner to fill the philanthropist with grave anxiety.

3. Demographic Segregation and Social Selection[190]

There are two ways in which demographic crystallization may have taken place. A people may have become rigid horizontally, divided into castes, or social strata; or it may be geographically segregated into localized communities, varying in size all the way from the isolated hamlet to the highly individualized nation. Both of these forms of crystallization are breaking down today under the pressure of modern industrialism and democracy, in Europe as well as in America.

The sudden growth of great cities is the first result of the phenomenon of migration which we have to note. We think of this as essentially an American problem. We comfort ourselves in our failures of munic.i.p.al administration with that thought. This is a grievous deception. Most of the European cities have increased in population more rapidly than in America. This is particularly true of great German urban centers. Berlin has outgrown our own metropolis, New York, in less than a generation, having in twenty-five years added as many actual new residents as Chicago, and twice as many as Philadelphia. Hamburg has gained twice as many in population since 1875 as Boston; Leipzig has distanced St.

Louis. The same demographic outburst has occurred in the smaller German cities as well. Beyond the confines of the German Empire, from Norway to Italy, the same is true.

Contemporaneously with this marvellous growth of urban centers we observe a progressive depopulation of the rural districts. What is going on in our New England states, especially in Ma.s.sachusetts, is entirely characteristic of large areas in Europe. Take France, for example. The towns are absorbing even more than the natural increment of country population; they are drawing off the middle-aged as well as the young.

Thus great areas are being actually depopulated.

A process of selection is at work on a grand scale. The great majority today who are pouring into the cities are those who, like the emigrants to the United States in the old days of natural migration, come because they have the physical equipment and the mental disposition to seek a betterment of their fortunes away from home. Of course, an appreciable contingent of such migrant types is composed of the merely discontented, of the restless, and the adventurous; but, in the main, the best blood of the land it is which feeds into the arteries of city life.

Another more certain mode of proof is possible for demonstrating that the population of cities is largely made up either of direct immigrants from the country or of their immediate descendants. In German cities, Hansen found that nearly one-half their residents were of direct country descent. In London it has been shown that over one-third of its population are immigrants; and in Paris the same is true. For thirty of the princ.i.p.al cities of Europe it has been calculated that only about one-fifth of their increase is from the loins of their own people, the overwhelming majority being of country birth.

The first physical characteristic of urban populations, as compared with those of country districts, which we have to note, is their tendency toward that shape of head characteristic of two of our racial types, Teutonic and Mediterranean respectively. It seems as if for some reason the broad-headed Alpine race was a distinctly rural type. Thirty years ago an observer in the ethnically Alpine district of south central France noted an appreciable difference between town and country in the head form of the people. In a half-dozen of the smaller cities his observations pointed to a greater prevalence of the long-headed type than in the country roundabout. Dr. Ammon of Carlsruhe, working upon measurements of thousands of conscripts of the Grand Duchy of Baden, discovered radical differences here between the head form in city and country, and between the upper and lower cla.s.ses in the larger towns.

Several explanations for this were possible. The direct influence of urban life might conceivably have brought it about, acting through superior education, habits of life, and the like. There was no psychological basis for this a.s.sumption. Another tenable hypothesis was that in these cities, situated, as we have endeavored to show, in a land where two racial types of population were existing side by side, the city for some reason exerted superior powers of attraction upon the long-headed race. If this were true, then by a combined process of social and racial selection, the towns would be continually drawing unto themselves that tall and blond Teutonic type of population which, as history teaches us, has dominated social and political affairs in Europe for centuries. This suggested itself as the probable solution of the question; and investigations all over Europe during the last five years have been directed to the further a.n.a.lysis of the matter.

Is this phenomenon, the segregation of a long-headed physical type in city populations, merely the manifestation of a restless tendency on the part of the Teutonic race to rea.s.sert itself in the new phases of nineteenth-century compet.i.tion? All through history this type has been characteristic of the dominant cla.s.ses, especially in military and political, perhaps rather than purely intellectual, affairs. All the leading dynasties of Europe have long been recruited from its ranks. The contrast of this type, whose energy has carried it all over Europe, with the persistently sedentary Alpine race is very marked. A certain pa.s.sivity, or patience, is characteristic of the Alpine peasantry. As a rule, not characterized by the domineering spirit of the Teuton, this Alpine type makes a comfortable and contented neighbor, a resigned and peaceful subject. Whether this rather negative character of the Alpine race is entirely innate, or whether it is in part, like many of its social phenomena, merely a reflection from the almost invariably inhospitable habitat in which it has long been isolated, we may not pretend to decide.

Let us now for a moment take up the consideration of a second physical characteristic of city populations--viz., stature. If there be a law at all in respect of average statures, it demonstrates rather the depressing effects of city life than the reverse. For example, Hamburg is far below the average for Germany. All over Britain there are indications of this law, that town populations are, on the average, comparatively short of stature. Dr. Beddoe, the great authority upon this subject, concludes his investigation of the population of Great Britain thus: "It may therefore be taken as _proved_ that the stature of men in the large towns of Britain is lowered considerably below the standard of the nation, and as _probable_ that such degradation is hereditary and progressive."

A most important point in this connection is the great variability of city populations in size. All observers comment upon this. It is of profound significance. The people of the west and east ends in each city differ widely. The population of the aristocratic quarters is often found to exceed in stature the people of the tenement districts. We should expect this, of course, as a direct result of the depressing influence of unfavorable environment. Yet there is apparently another factor underlying that--viz., social selection. While cities contain so large a proportion of degenerate physical types as on the average to fall below the surrounding country in stature, nevertheless they also are found to include an inordinately large number of very tall and well-developed individuals. In other words, compared with the rural districts, where all men are subject to the same conditions of life, we discover in the city that the population has differentiated into the very tall and the very short.

The explanation for this phenomenon is simple. Yet it is not direct, as in Topinard's suggestion that it is a matter of race or that a change of environment operates to stimulate growth. Rather does it appear that it is the growth which suggests the change. The tall men are in the main those vigorous, mettlesome, presumably healthy individuals who have themselves, or in the person of their fathers, come to the city in search of the prizes which urban life has to offer to the successful. On the other hand, the degenerate, the stunted, those who entirely outnumber the others so far as to drag the average for the city as a whole below the normal, are the grist turned out by the city mill. They are the product of the tenement, the sweat shop, vice, and crime. Of course, normally developed men, as ever, const.i.tute the main bulk of the population, but these two widely divergent cla.s.ses attain a very considerable representation.

We have seen thus far that evidence seems to point to an aggregation of the Teutonic long-headed population in the urban centers of Europe.

Perhaps a part of the tall stature in some cities may be due to such racial causes. A curious anomaly now remains, however, to be noted. City populations appear to manifest a distinct tendency toward brunetness--that is to say, they seem to comprise an abnormal proportion of brunet traits, as compared with the neighboring rural districts. This tendency was strikingly shown to characterize the entire German Empire when its six million school children were examined under Virchow's direction. In twenty-five out of thirty-three of the larger cities were the brunet traits more frequent than in the country.

Austria offers confirmation of the same tendency toward brunetness in twenty-four out of its thirty-three princ.i.p.al cities. Farther south, in Italy, it was noted much earlier that cities contained fewer blonds than were common in the rural districts roundabout. In conclusion let us add, not as additional testimony, for the data are too defective, that among five hundred American students at the Inst.i.tute of Technology in Boston, roughly cla.s.sified, there were 9 per cent of pure brunet type among those of country birth and training, while among those of urban birth and parentage the percentage of such brunet type rose as high as 15.

It is not improbable that there is in brunetness, in the dark hair and eye, some indication of vital superiority. If this were so, it would serve as a partial explanation for the social phenomena which we have been at so much pains to describe. If in the same community there were a slight vital advantage in brunetness, we should expect to find that type slowly aggregating in the cities; for it requires energy and courage, physical as well as mental, not only to break the ties of home and migrate, but also to maintain one's self afterward under the stress of urban life.

From the preceding formidable array of testimony it appears that the tendency of urban populations is certainly not toward the pure blond, long-headed, and tall Teutonic type. The phenomenon of urban selection is something more complex than a mere migration of a single racial element in the population toward the cities. The physical characteristics of townsmen are too contradictory for ethnic explanations alone. To be sure, the tendencies are slight; we are not even certain of their universal existence at all. We are merely watching for their verification or disproof. There is, however, nothing improbable in the phenomena we have noted. Naturalists have always turned to the environment for the final solution of many of the great problems of nature. In this case we have to do with one of the most sudden and radical changes of environment known to man. Every condition of city life, mental as well as physical, is at the polar extreme from those which prevail in the country. To deny that great modifications in human structure and functions may be effected by a change from one to the other is to gainsay all the facts of natural history.

4. Inter-racial Compet.i.tion and Race Suicide[191]

I have thus far spoken of the foreign arrivals at our ports, as estimated. Beginning with 1820, however, we have custom-house statistics of the numbers of persons annually landing upon our sh.o.r.es. Some of these, indeed, did not remain here; yet, rudely speaking, we may call them all immigrants. Between 1820 and 1830, population grew to 12,866,020. The number of foreigners arriving in the ten years was 151,000. Here, then, we have for forty years an increase, substantially all out of the loins of the four millions of our own people living in 1790, amounting to almost nine millions, or 227 per cent. Such a rate of increase was never known before or since, among any considerable population over any extensive region.

About this time, however, we reach a turning-point in the history of our population. In the decade 1830-40 the number of foreign arrivals greatly increased. Immigration had not, indeed, reached the enormous dimensions of these later days. Yet, during the decade in question, the foreigners coming to the United States were almost exactly fourfold those coming in the decade preceding, or 599,000. The question now of vital importance is this: Was the population of the country correspondingly increased? I answer, No! The population of 1840 was almost exactly what, by computation, it would have been had no increase in foreign arrivals taken place. Again, between 1840 and 1850, a still further access of foreigners occurred, this time of enormous dimensions, the arrivals of the decade amounting to not less than 1,713,000. Of this gigantic total, 1,048,000 were from the British Isles, the Irish famine of 1846-47 having driven hundreds of thousands of miserable peasants to seek food upon our sh.o.r.es. Again we ask, Did this excess const.i.tute a net gain to the population of the country? Again the answer is, No! Population showed no increase over the proportions established before immigration set in like a flood. In other words, as the foreigners began to come in larger numbers, the native population more and more withheld their own increase.

Now this correspondence might be accounted for in three different ways: (1) It might be said that it was a mere coincidence, no relation of cause and effect existing between the two phenomena. (2) It might be said that the foreigners came because the native population was relatively declining, that is, failing to keep up its pristine rate of increase. (3) It might be said that the growth of the native population was checked by the incoming of the foreign elements in such large numbers.

The view that the correspondence referred to was a mere coincidence, purely accidental in origin, is perhaps that most commonly taken. If this be the true explanation, the coincidence is a most remarkable one.

In the June number of this magazine, I cited the predictions as to the future population of the country made by Elkanah Watson, on the basis of the censuses of 1790, 1800, and 1810, while immigration still remained at a minimum. Now let us place together the actual census figures for 1840 and 1850, Watson's estimates for those years, and the foreign arrivals during the preceding decade:

1840 1850 The census 17,069,453 23,191,876 Watson's estimates 17,116,526 23,185,368 ___________ ___________ The difference -47,073 +6,508

Foreign arrivals during the preceding decade 599,000 1,713,000

Here we see that, in spite of the arrival of 500,000 foreigners during the period 1830-40, four times as many as had arrived during any preceding decade, the figures of the census coincided closely with the estimate of Watson, based on the growth of population in the pre-immigration era, falling short of it by only 47,073 in a total of 17,000,000; while in 1850 the actual population, in spite of the arrival of 1,713,000 more immigrants, exceeded Watson's estimates by only 6,508 in a total of 23,000,000. Surely, if this correspondence between the increase of the foreign element and the relative decline of the native element is a mere coincidence, it is one of the most astonishing in human history. The actuarial degree of improbability as to a coincidence so close, over a range so vast, I will not undertake to compute.

If, on the other hand, it be alleged that the relation of cause and effect existed between the two phenomena, this might be put in two widely different ways: either that the foreigners came in increasing numbers because the native element was relatively declining, or that the native element failed to maintain its previous rate of increase because the foreigners came in such swarms. What shall we say of the former of these explanations? Does anything more need to be said than that it is too fine to be the real explanation of a big human fact like this we are considering? To a.s.sume that at such a distance in s.p.a.ce, in the then state of news-communication and ocean-transportation, and in spite of the ignorance and extreme poverty of the peasantries of Europe from which the immigrants were then generally drawn, there was so exact a degree of knowledge not only of the fact that the native element here was not keeping up its rate of increase but also of the precise ratio of that decline as to enable those peasantries, with or without a mutual understanding, to supply just the numbers necessary to bring our population up to its due proportions, would be little less than laughable. Today, with quick pa.s.sages, cheap freights, and ocean transportation there is not a single wholesale trade in the world carried on with this degree of knowledge, or attaining anything like this point of precision in results.

The true explanation of the remarkable fact we are considering I believe to be the last of the three suggested. The access of foreigners, at the time and under the circ.u.mstances, const.i.tuted a shock to the principle of population among the native element. That principle is always acutely sensitive alike to sentimental and to economic conditions. And it is to be noted, in pa.s.sing, that not only did the decline in the native element, as a whole, take place in singular correspondence with the excess of foreign arrivals, but it occurred chiefly in just those regions to which the newcomers most freely resorted.

But what possible reason can be suggested why the incoming of the foreigner should have checked the disposition of the native toward the increase of population at the traditional rate? I answer that the best of good reasons can be a.s.signed. Throughout the northeastern and northern middle states, into which, during the period under consideration, the newcomers poured in such numbers, the standard of material living, of general intelligence, of social decency, had been singularly high. Life, even at its hardest, had always had its luxuries; the babe had been a thing of beauty, to be delicately nurtured and proudly exhibited; the growing child had been decently dressed, at least for school and church; the house had been kept in order, at whatever cost, the gate hung, the shutters in place, while the front yard had been made to bloom with simple flowers; the village church, the public schoolhouse, had been the best which the community, with great exertions and sacrifices, could erect and maintain. Then came the foreigner, making his way into the little village, bringing--small blame to him!--not only a vastly lower standard of living, but too often an actual present incapacity even to understand the refinements of life and thought in the community in which he sought a home. Our people had to look upon houses that were mere sh.e.l.ls for human habitations, the gate unhung, the shutters flapping or falling, green pools in the yard, babes and young children rolling about half naked or worse, neglected, dirty, unkempt. Was there not in this a sentimental reason strong enough to give a shock to the principle of population? But there was, besides, an economic reason for a check to the native increase. The American shrank from the industrial compet.i.tion thus thrust upon him. He was unwilling himself to engage in the lowest kind of day labor with these new elements of the population; he was even more unwilling to bring sons and daughters into the world to enter into that compet.i.tion. For the first time in our history, the people of the free states became divided into cla.s.ses. Those cla.s.ses were natives and foreigners. Politically, the distinction had only a certain force, which yielded more or less readily under partisan pressure; but socially and industrially that distinction has been a tremendous power, and its chief effects have been wrought upon population. Neither the social companionship nor the industrial compet.i.tion of the foreigner has, broadly speaking, been welcome to the native.

It hardly needs to be said that the foregoing descriptions are not intended to apply to all of the vast body of immigrants during this period. Thousands came over from good homes; many had all the advantages of education and culture; some possessed the highest qualities of manhood and citizenship.

But let us proceed with the census. By 1860 the causes operating to reduce the growth of the native element--to which had then manifestly been added the force of important changes in the manner of living, the introduction of more luxurious habits, the influence of city life, and the custom of "boarding"--had reached such a height as, in spite of a still-increasing immigration, to leave the population of the country 310,503 below the estimate. The fearful losses of the Civil War and the rapid extension of habits unfavorable to increase of numbers make any further use of Watson's computations uninstructive; yet still the great fact protrudes through all the subsequent history of our population that the more rapidly foreigners came into the United States, the smaller was the rate of increase, not merely among the native population separately, but throughout the population of the country, as a whole, including the foreigners. The climax of this movement was reached when, during the decade 1880-90, the foreign arrivals rose to the monstrous total of five and a quarter millions (twice what had ever before been known), while the population, even including this enormous re-enforcement, increased more slowly than in any other period of our history except, possibly, that of the great Civil War.

If the foregoing views are true, or contain any considerable degree of truth, foreign immigration into this country has, from the time it first a.s.sumed large proportions, amounted, not to a reinforcement of our population, but to a replacement of native by foreign stock. That if the foreigners had not come the native element would long have filled the places the foreigners usurped, I entertain not a doubt. The competency of the American stock to do this it would be absurd to question, in the face of such a record as that for 1790 to 1830. During the period from 1830 to 1860 the material conditions of existence in this country were continually becoming more and more favorable to the increase of population from domestic sources. The old man-slaughtering medicine was being driven out of civilized communities; houses were becoming larger; the food and clothing of the people were becoming ampler and better. Nor was the cause which, about 1840 or 1850, began to r.e.t.a.r.d the growth of population here to be found in the climate which Mr. Clibborne stigmatizes so severely. The climate of the United States has been benign enough to enable us to take the English shorthorn and greatly to improve it, as the re-exportation of that animal to England at monstrous prices abundantly proves; to take the English race-horse and to improve him to a degree of which the startling victories of Parole, Iroquois, and Foxhall afford but a suggestion; to take the Englishman and to improve him, too, adding agility to his strength, making his eye keener and his hand steadier, so that in rowing, in riding, in shooting, and in boxing, the American of pure English stock is today the better animal.

No! Whatever were the causes which checked the growth of the native population, they were neither physiological nor climatic. They were mainly social and economic; and chief among them was the access of vast hordes of foreign immigrants, bringing with them a standard of living at which our own people revolted.

C. ECONOMIC COMPEt.i.tION

1. Changing Forms of Economic Compet.i.tion[192]

There is a sense in which much of the orthodox system of political economy is eternally true. Conclusions reached by valid reasoning are always as true as the hypotheses from which they are deduced. It will remain forever true that if unlimited compet.i.tion existed, most of the traditional laws would be realized in the practical world. It will also be true that in those corners of the industrial field which still show an approximation to Ricardian compet.i.tion there will be seen as much of correspondence between theory and fact as candid reasoners claim. If political economy will but content itself with this kind of truth, it need never be disturbed by industrial revolutions. The science need not trouble itself to progress.

This hypothetical truth, or science of what would take place if society were fashioned after an ideal pattern, is not what Ricardo believed that he had discovered. His system was positive; actual life suggested it by developing tendencies for which the scientific formulas which at that time were traditional could not account. It was a new industrial world which called for a modernized system of economic doctrine. Ricardo was the first to understand the situation, to trace the new tendencies to their consummation, and to create a scientific system by insight and foresight. He outran history in the process, and mentally created a world more relentlessly compet.i.tive than any which has existed; and yet it was fact and not imagination that lay at the basis of the whole system. Steam had been utilized, machines were supplanting hand labor, workmen were migrating to new centers of production, guild regulations were giving way, and compet.i.tion of a type unheard of before was beginning to prevail.

A struggle for existence had commenced between parties of unequal strength. In manufacturing industries the balance of power had been disturbed by steam, and the little shops of former times were disappearing. The science adapted to such conditions was an economic Darwinism; it embodied the laws of a struggle for existence between compet.i.tors of the new and predatory type and those of the peaceable type which formerly possessed the field. Though the process was savage, the outlook which it afforded was not wholly evil. The survival of crude strength was, in the long run, desirable. Machines and factories meant, to every social cla.s.s, cheapened goods and more comfortable living.

Efficient working establishments were developing; the social organism was perfecting itself for its contest with crude nature. It was a fuller and speedier dominion over the earth which was to result from the concentration of human energy now termed centralization.

The error unavoidable to the theorists of the time lay in basing a scientific system on the facts afforded by a state of revolution. This was attempting to derive permanent principles from transient phenomena.

Some of these principles must become obsolete; and the work demanded of modern economists consists in separating the transient from the permanent in the Ricardian system. How much of the doctrine holds true when the struggle between unequal compet.i.tors is over, and when a few of the very strongest have possession of the field?

In most branches of manufacturing, and in other than local transportation, the contest between the strong and the weak is either settled or in process of rapid settlement. The survivors are becoming so few, so powerful, and so nearly equal that if the strife were to continue, it would bid fair to involve them all in a common ruin. What has actually developed is not such a battle of giants but a system of armed neutralities and federations of giants. The new era is distinctly one of consolidated forces; rival establishments are forming combinations, and the principle of union is extending itself to the labor and the capital in each of them. Laborers who once competed with each other are now making their bargains collectively with their employers. Employers who under the old regime would have worked independently are merging their capital in corporations and allowing it to be managed as by a single hand.

Predatory compet.i.tion between unequal parties was the basis of the Ricardian system. This process was vaguely conceived and never fully a.n.a.lyzed; what was prominent in the thought of men in connection with it was the single element of struggle. Mere effort to survive, the Darwinian feature of the process, was all that, in some uses, the term "compet.i.tion" was made to designate. Yet the compet.i.tive action of an organized society is systematic; each part of it is limited to a specific field, and tends, within these limits, to self-annihilation.

An effort to attain a conception of compet.i.tion that should remove some of the confusion was made by Professor Cairnes. His system of "non-competing groups" is a feature of his value theory, which is a noteworthy contribution to economic thought. Mr. Mill had followed Ricardo in teaching that the natural price of commodities is governed by the cost of producing them. Professor Cairnes accepts this statement, but attaches to it a meaning altogether new. He says, in effect:

Commodities do indeed exchange according to their cost of production; but cost is something quite different from what currently pa.s.ses by that name. That is merely the outlay incurred by the capitalist-employer for raw materials, labor, etc. The real cost is the personal sacrifice made by the producing parties, workmen as well as employers. It is not a mercantile but a psychological phenomenon, a reaction upon the men themselves occasioned by the effort of the laborer and the abstinence of the capitalist. These personal sacrifices gauge the market value of commodities within the fields in which, in the terms of the theory, compet.i.tion is free. The adjustment takes place through the spontaneous movement of capital and labor from employments that yield small returns to those that give larger ones. Capital migrates freely from place to place and from occupation to occupation. If one industry is abnormally profitable, capital seeks it, increases and cheapens its product, and reduces its profits to the prevailing level.

Profits tend to a general uniformity.

Wages are said to tend to equality only within limits. The transfer of labor from one employment to another is checked by barriers.