CHAPTER VIII

COMPETITION

I. INTRODUCTION

1. Popular Conception of Competition

Competition, as a universal phenomenon, was first clearly conceived and adequately described by the biologists. As defined in the evolutionary formula “the struggle for existence” the notion captured the popular imagination and became a commonplace of familiar discourse. Prior to that time competition had been regarded as an economic rather than a biological phenomenon.

It was in the eighteenth century and in England that we first find any general recognition of the new rôle that commerce and the middleman were to play in the modern world. “Competition is the life of trade” is a trader’s maxim, and the sort of qualified approval that it gives to the conception of competition contains the germ of the whole philosophy of modern industrial society as that doctrine was formulated by Adam Smith and the physiocrats.

The economists of the eighteenth century were the first to attempt to rationalize and justify the social order that is based on competition and individual freedom. They taught that there was a natural harmony in the interests of men, which once liberated would inevitably bring about, in the best of all possible worlds, the greatest good to the greatest number.

The individual man, in seeking his own profit, will necessarily seek to produce and sell that which has most value for the community, and so “he is in this, as in many other cases,” as Adam Smith puts it, “led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”

The conception has been stated with even greater unction by the French writer, Frédéric Bastiat.

The freedom which commerce sought and gained upon the principle of laissez faire has enormously extended the area of competition and in doing so has created a world-economy where previously there were only local markets. It has created at the same time a division of labor that includes all the nations and races of men and incidentally has raised the despised middleman to a position of affluence and power undreamed of by superior classes of any earlier age. And now there is a new demand for the control of competition in the interest, not merely of those who have not shared in the general prosperity, but in the interest of competition itself.

“Unfair competition” is an expression that is heard at the present time with increasing frequency. This suggests that there are rules governing competition by which, in its own interest, it can and should be controlled. The same notion has found expression in the demand for “freedom of competition” from those who would safeguard competition by controlling it. Other voices have been raised in denunciation of competition because “competition creates monopoly.” In other words, competition, if carried to its logical conclusion, ends in the annihilation of competition. In this destruction of competition by competition we seem to have a loss of freedom by freedom, or, to state it in more general terms, unlimited liberty, without social control, ends in the negation of freedom and the slavery of the individual. But the limitation of competition by competition, it needs to be said, means simply that the process of competition tends invariably to establish an equilibrium.

The more fundamental objection is that in giving freedom to economic competition society has sacrificed other fundamental interests that are not directly involved in the economic process. In any case economic freedom exists in an order that has been created and maintained by society. Economic competition, as we know it, presupposes the existence of the right of private property, which is a creation of the state. It is upon this premise that the more radical social doctrines, communism and socialism, seek to abolish competition altogether.

2. Competition a Process of Interaction

Of the four great types of interaction—competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation—competition is the elementary, universal and fundamental form. Social contact, as we have seen, initiates interaction. But competition, strictly speaking, is interaction without social contact. If this seems, in view of what has already been said, something of a paradox, it is because in human society competition is always complicated with other processes, that is to say, with conflict, assimilation, and accommodation.

It is only in the plant community that we can observe the process of competition in isolation, uncomplicated with other social processes. The members of a plant community live together in a relation of mutual interdependence which we call social probably because, while it is close and vital, it is not biological. It is not biological because the relation is a merely external one and the plants that compose it are not even of the same species. They do not interbreed. The members of a plant community adapt themselves to one another as all living things adapt themselves to their environment, but there is no conflict between them because they are not conscious. Competition takes the form of conflict or rivalry only when it becomes conscious, when competitors identify one another as rivals or as enemies.

This suggests what is meant by the statement that competition is interaction without social contact. It is only when minds meet, only when the meaning that is in one mind is communicated to another mind so that these minds mutually influence one another, that social contact, properly speaking, may be said to exist.

On the other hand, social contacts are not limited to contacts of touch or sense or speech, and they are likely to be more intimate and more pervasive than we imagine. Some years ago the Japanese, who are brown, defeated the Russians, who are white. In the course of the next few months the news of this remarkable event penetrated, as we afterward learned, uttermost ends of the earth. It sent a thrill through all Asia and it was known in the darkest corners of Central Africa. Everywhere it awakened strange and fantastic dreams. This is what is meant by social contact.

a) Competition and competitive co-operation.—Social contact, which inevitably initiates conflict, accommodation, or assimilation, invariably creates also sympathies, prejudices, personal and moral relations which modify, complicate, and control competition. On the other hand, within the limits which the cultural process creates, and custom, law, and tradition impose, competition invariably tends to create an impersonal social order in which each individual, being free to pursue his own profit, and, in a sense, compelled to do so, makes every other individual a means to that end. In doing so, however, he inevitably contributes through the mutual exchange of services so established to the common welfare. It is just the nature of the trading transaction to isolate the motive of profit and make it the basis of business organization, and so far as this motive becomes dominant and exclusive, business relations inevitably assume the impersonal character so generally ascribed to them.

“Competition,” says Walker, “is opposed to sentiment. Whenever any economic agent does or forbears anything under the influence of any sentiment other than the desire of giving the least and gaining the most he can in exchange, be that sentiment patriotism, or gratitude, or charity, or vanity, leading him to do otherwise than as self interest would prompt, in that case also, the rule of competition is departed from. Another rule is for the time substituted.”[181]

This is the significance of the familiar sayings to the effect that one “must not mix business with sentiment,” that “business is business,” “corporations are heartless,” etc. It is just because corporations are “heartless,” that is to say impersonal, that they represent the most advanced, efficient, and responsible form of business organization. But it is for this same reason that they can and need to be regulated in behalf of those interests of the community that cannot be translated immediately into terms of profit and loss to the individual.

The plant community is the best illustration of the type of social organization that is created by competitive co-operation because in the plant community competition is unrestricted.

b) Competition and freedom.—The economic organization of society, so far as it is an effect of free competition, is an ecological organization. There is a human as well as a plant and an animal ecology.

If we are to assume that the economic order is fundamentally ecological, that is, created by the struggle for existence, an organization like that of the plant community in which the relations between individuals are conceivably at least wholly external, the question may be very properly raised why the competition and the organization it has created should be regarded as social at all. As a matter of fact sociologists have generally identified the social with the moral order, and Dewey, in his Democracy and Education, makes statements which suggest that the purely economic order, in which man becomes a means rather than an end to other men, is unsocial, if not anti-social.

The fact is, however, that this character of externality in human relations is a fundamental aspect of society and social life. It is merely another manifestation of what has been referred to as the distributive aspect of society. Society is made up of individuals spatially separated, territorially distributed, and capable of independent locomotion. This capacity of independent locomotion is the basis and the symbol of every other form of independence. Freedom is fundamentally freedom to move and individuality is inconceivable without the capacity and the opportunity to gain an individual experience as a result of independent action.

On the other hand, it is quite as true that society may be said to exist only so far as this independent activity of the individual is controlled in the interest of the group as a whole. That is the reason why the problem of control, using that term in its evident significance, inevitably becomes the central problem of sociology.

c) Competition and control.—Conflict, assimilation and accommodation as distinguished from competition are all intimately related to control. Competition is the process through which the distributive and ecological organization of society is created. Competition determines the distribution of population territorially and vocationally. The division of labor and all the vast organized economic interdependence of individuals and groups of individuals characteristic of modern life are a product of competition. On the other hand, the moral and political order, which imposes itself upon this competitive organization, is a product of conflict, accommodation and assimilation.

Competition is universal in the world of living things. Under ordinary circumstances it goes on unobserved even by the individuals who are most concerned. It is only in periods of crisis, when men are making new and conscious efforts to control the conditions of their common life, that the forces with which they are competing get identified with persons, and competition is converted into conflict. It is in what has been described as the political process that society consciously deals with its crises.[182] War is the political process par excellence. It is in war that the great decisions are made. Political organizations exist for the purpose of dealing with conflict situations. Parties, parliaments and courts, public discussion and voting are to be considered simply as substitutes for war.

d) Accommodation, assimilation, and competition.—Accommodation, on the other hand, is the process by which the individuals and groups make the necessary internal adjustments to social situations which have been created by competition and conflict. War and elections change situations. When changes thus effected are decisive and are accepted, conflict subsides and the tensions it created are resolved in the process of accommodation into profound modifications of the competing units, i.e., individuals and groups. A man once thoroughly defeated is, as has often been noted, “never the same again.” Conquest, subjugation, and defeat are psychological as well as social processes. They establish a new order by changing, not merely the status, but the attitudes of the parties involved. Eventually the new order gets itself fixed in habit and custom and is then transmitted as part of the established social order to succeeding generations. Neither the physical nor the social world is made to satisfy at once all the wishes of the natural man. The rights of property, vested interests of every sort, the family organization, slavery, caste and class, the whole social organization, in fact, represent accommodations, that is to say, limitations of the natural wishes of the individual. These socially inherited accommodations have presumably grown up in the pains and struggles of previous generations, but they have been transmitted to and accepted by succeeding generations as part of the natural, inevitable social order. All of these are forms of control in which competition is limited by status.

Conflict is then to be identified with the political order and with conscious control. Accommodation, on the other hand, is associated with the social order that is fixed and established in custom and the mores.

Assimilation, as distinguished from accommodation, implies a more thoroughgoing transformation of the personality—a transformation which takes place gradually under the influence of social contacts of the most concrete and intimate sort.

Accommodation may be regarded, like religious conversion, as a kind of mutation. The wishes are the same but their organization is different. Assimilation takes place not so much as a result of changes in the organization as in the content, i.e., the memories, of the personality. The individual units, as a result of intimate association, interpenetrate, so to speak, and come in this way into possession of a common experience and a common tradition. The permanence and solidarity of the group rest finally upon this body of common experience and tradition. It is the rôle of history to preserve this body of common experience and tradition, to criticise and reinterpret it in the light of new experience and changing conditions, and in this way to preserve the continuity of the social and political life.

The relation of social structures to the processes of competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation may be represented schematically as follows:

3. Classification of the Materials

The materials in this chapter have been selected to exhibit (1) the rôle which competition plays in social life and all life, and (2) the types of organization that competition has everywhere created as a result of the division of labor it has everywhere enforced. These materials fall naturally under the following heads: (a) the struggle for existence; (b) competition and segregation; and (c) economic competition.

This order of the materials serves the purpose of indicating the stages in the growth and extension of man’s control over nature and over man himself. The evolution of society has been the progressive extension of control over nature and the substitution of a moral for the natural order.

Competition has its setting in the struggle for existence. This struggle is ordinarily represented as a chaos of contending individuals in which the unfit perish in order that the fit may survive. This conception of the natural order as one of anarchy, “the war of each against all,” familiar since Hobbes to the students of society, is recent in biology. Before Darwin, students of plant and animal life saw in nature, not disorder, but order; not selection, but design. The difference between the older and the newer interpretation is not so much a difference of fact as of point of view. Looking at the plant and animal species with reference to their classification they present a series of relatively fixed and stable types. The same thing may be said of the plant and animal communities. Under ordinary circumstances the adjustment between the members of the plant and animal communities and the environment is so complete that the observer interprets it as an order of co-operation rather than a condition of competitive anarchy.

Upon investigation it turns out, however, that the plant and animal communities are in a state of unstable equilibrium, such that any change in the environment may destroy them. Communities of this type are not organized to resist or adapt themselves as communities to changes in the environment. The plant community, for example, is a mere product of segregation, an aggregate without nerves or means of communication that would permit the individuals to be controlled in the interest of the community as a whole.[183]

The situation is different in the so-called animal societies. Animals are adapted in part to the situation of competition, but in part also to the situation of co-operation. With the animal, maternal instinct, gregariousness, sex attraction restrict competition to a greater or less extent among individuals of the same family, herd, or species. In the case of the ant community competition is at a minimum and co-operation at a maximum.

With man the free play of competition is restrained by sentiment, custom, and moral standards, not to speak of the more conscious control through law.

It is a characteristic of competition, when unrestricted, that it is invariably more severe among organisms of the same than of different species. Man’s greatest competitor is man. On the other hand, man’s control over the plant and animal world is now well-nigh complete, so that, generally speaking, only such plants and animals are permitted to exist as serve man’s purpose.

Competition among men, on the other hand, has been very largely converted into rivalry and conflict. The effect of conflict has been to extend progressively the area of control and to modify and limit the struggle for existence within these areas. The effect of war has been, on the whole, to extend the area over which there is peace. Competition has been restricted by custom, tradition, and law, and the struggle for existence has assumed the form of struggle for a livelihood and for status.

Absolute free play of competition is neither desirable nor even possible. On the other hand, from the standpoint of the individual, competition means mobility, freedom, and, from the point of view of society, pragmatic or experimental change. Restriction of competition is synonymous with limitation of movement, acquiescence in control, and telesis, Ward’s term for changes ordained by society in distinction from the natural process of change.

The political problem of every society is the practical one: how to secure the maximum values of competition, that is, personal freedom, initiative, and originality, and at the same time to control the energies which competition has released in the interest of the community.

II. MATERIALS

A. THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

1. Different Forms of the Struggle for Existence[184]

The formula “struggle for existence,” familiar in human affairs, was used by Darwin in his interpretation of organic life, and he showed that we gain clearness in our outlook on animate nature if we recognize there, in continual process, a struggle for existence not merely analogous to, but fundamentally the same as, that which goes on in human life. He projected on organic life a sociological idea, and showed that it fitted. But while he thus vindicated the relevancy and utility of the sociological idea within the biological realm, he declared explicitly that the phrase “struggle for existence” was meant to be a shorthand formula, summing up a vast variety of strife and endeavor, of thrust and parry, of action and reaction.

Some of Darwin’s successors have taken pains to distinguish a great many different forms of the struggle for existence, and this kind of analysis is useful in keeping us aware of the complexities of the process. Darwin himself does not seem to have cared much for this logical mapping out and defining; it was enough for him to insist that the phrase was used “in a large and metaphorical sense,” and to give full illustrations of its various modes. For our present purpose it is enough for us to follow his example.

a) Struggle between fellows.—When the locusts of a huge swarm have eaten up every green thing, they sometimes turn on one another. This cannibalism among fellows of the same species—illustrated, for instance, among many fishes—is the most intense form of the struggle for existence. The struggle does not need to be direct to be real; the essential point is that the competitors seek after the same desiderata, of which there is a limited supply.

As an instance of keen struggle between nearly related species, Darwin referred to the combats of rats. The black rat was in possession of many European towns before the brown rat crossed the Volga in 1727; whenever the brown rat arrived, the black rat had to go to the wall. Thus at the present day there are practically no black rats in Great Britain. Here the struggle for existence is again directly competitive. It is difficult to separate the struggle for food and foothold from the struggle for mates, and it seems clearest to include here the battles of the stags and the capercailzies, or the extraordinary lek of the blackcock, showing off their beauty at sunrise on the hills.

b) Struggle between foes.—In the locust swarm and in the rats’ combats there is competition between fellows of the same or nearly related species, but the struggle for existence includes much wider antipathies. We see it between foes of entirely different nature, between carnivores and herbivores, between birds of prey and small mammals. In both these cases there may be a stand-up fight, for instance between wolf and stag, or between hawk and ermine; but neither the logic nor the biology of the process is different when all the fight is on one side. As the lemmings, which have overpopulated the Scandinavian valleys, go on the march they are followed by birds and beasts of prey, which thin their ranks. Moreover, the competition between species need not be direct; it will come to the same result if both types seek after the same things. The victory will be with the more effective and the more prolific.

c) Struggle with fate.—Our sweep widens still further, and we pass beyond the idea of competition altogether to cases where the struggle for existence is between the living organism and the inanimate conditions of its life—for instance, between birds and the winter’s cold, between aquatic animals and changes in the water, between plants and drought, between plants and frost—in a wide sense, between Life and Fate.

We cannot here pursue the suggestive idea that, besides struggle between individuals, there is struggle between groups of individuals—the latter most noticeably developed in mankind. Similarly, working in the other direction, there is struggle between parts or tissues in the body, between cells in the body, between equivalent germ-cells, and, perhaps, as Weismann pictures, between the various multiplicate items that make up our inheritance.

2. Competition and Natural Selection[185]

The term “struggle for existence” is used in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual but success in leaving progeny. Two canine animals in a time of dearth may be truly said to struggle with each other which shall get food and live. But a plant on the edge of a desert is said to struggle for life against the drought, though more properly it should be said to be dependent on the moisture. A plant which annually produces a thousand seeds, of which only one of an average comes to maturity, may be more truly said to struggle with the plants of the same and other kinds which already clothe the ground. The mistletoe is dependent on the apple and a few other trees, but can only in a far-fetched sense be said to struggle with these trees, for, if too many of these parasites grow on the same tree, it languishes and dies. But several seedling mistletoes growing close together on the same branch may more truly be said to struggle with each other. As the mistletoe is disseminated by birds, its existence depends on them; and it may metaphorically be said to struggle with other fruit-bearing plants in tempting the birds to devour and thus disseminate its seeds. In these several senses which pass into each other, I use for convenience’ sake the general term of “struggle for existence.”

A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase. Every being which during its natural lifetime produces several eggs or seeds must suffer destruction during some period of its life, and during some season or occasional year, otherwise, on the principle of geometrical increase, its numbers would quickly become so inordinately great that no country could support the product. Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms; for in this case there can be no artificial increase of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage. Although some species may be now increasing more or less rapidly in numbers, all cannot do so, for the world would not hold them.

There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate in less than a thousand years there would literally not be standing-room for his progeny. Linnaeus has calculated that if an annual plant produced only two seeds—and there is no plant so unproductive as this—and their seedlings next year produced two, and so on, then in twenty years there would be a million plants. The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals, and I have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum rate of natural increase; it will be safest to assume that it begins breeding when thirty years old and goes on breeding till ninety years old, bringing forth six young in the interval and surviving till one hundred years old; if this be so, after a period of from 740 to 750 years there would be nearly nineteen million elephants alive, descended from the first pair.

The struggle for life is most severe between individuals and varieties of the same species. As the species of the same genus usually have, though by no means invariably, much similarity in habits and constitution, and always similarity in structure, the struggle will generally be more severe between them if they come into competition with each other than between the species of distinct genera. We see this in the recent extension over parts of the United States of one species of swallow having caused the decrease of another species. The recent increase of the missel-thrush in parts of Scotland has caused the decrease of the song-thrush. How frequently we hear of one species of rat taking the place of another species under the most different climates! In Russia the small Asiatic cockroach has everywhere driven before it its great congener. In Australia the imported hive-bee is rapidly exterminating the small, stingless native bee. We can dimly see why the competition should be most severe between allied forms which fill nearly the same place in the economy of nature; but probably in no one case could we precisely say why one species has been victorious over another in the great battle of life.

A corollary of the highest importance may be deduced from the foregoing remarks, namely, that the structure of every organic being is related, in the most essential yet often hidden manner, to that of all the other organic beings with which it comes into competition for food or residence or from which it has to escape or on which it preys. This is obvious in the structure of the teeth and talons of the tiger; and in that of the legs and claws of the parasite which clings to the hair on the tiger’s body. But in the beautifully plumed seed of the dandelion, and in the flattened and fringed legs of the water-beetle, the relation seems at first confined to the elements of air and water. Yet the advantage of plumed seeds no doubt stands in the closest relations to the land being already thickly clothed with other plants; so that the seeds may be widely distributed and fall on unoccupied ground. In the water beetle, the structure of its legs, so well adapted for diving, allows it to compete with other aquatic insects, to hunt for its own prey, and to escape serving as prey to other animals.

The store of nutriment laid up within the seeds of many plants seems at first sight to have no sort of relation to other plants. But from the strong growth of young plants produced from such seeds, as peas and beans, when sown in the midst of long grass, it may be suspected that the chief use of the nutriment in the seed is to favor the growth of seedlings whilst struggling with other plants growing vigorously all around.

Look at a plant in the midst of its range; why does it not double or quadruple its numbers? We know that it can perfectly well withstand a little more heat or cold, dampness or dryness, for elsewhere it ranges into slightly hotter or colder, damper or drier, districts. In this case we can clearly see that if we wish in imagination to give the plant the power of increasing in number, we should have to give it some advantage over its competitors, or over the animals which prey upon it. On the confines of its geographical range, a change of constitution with respect to climate would clearly be an advantage to our plant; but we have reason to believe that only a few plants or animals range so far, that they are destroyed exclusively by the rigor of the climate. Not until we reach the extreme confines of life, in the Arctic regions or on the borders of an utter desert, will competition cease. The land may be extremely cold or dry, yet there will be competition between some few species, or between the individuals of the same species, for the warmest or dampest spots.

Hence we can see that when a plant or an animal is placed in a new country amongst new competitors, the conditions of its life will generally be changed in an essential manner, although the climate may be exactly the same as in its former home. If its average numbers are to increase in its new home, we should have to modify it in a different way to what we should have had to do in its native country; for we should have to give it some advantage over a different set of competitors or enemies.

It is good thus to try in imagination to give to any one species an advantage over another. Probably in no single instance should we know what to do. This ought to convince us of our ignorance on the mutual relations of all organic beings, a conviction as necessary as it is difficult to acquire. All that we can do is to keep steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ratio; that each at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction. When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.

3. Competition, Specialization, and Organization[186]

Natural selection acts exclusively by the preservation and accumulation of variations, which are beneficial under the organic and inorganic conditions to which each creature is exposed at all periods of life. The ultimate result is that each creature tends to become more and more improved in relation to its conditions. This improvement inevitably leads to the gradual advancement of the organization of the greater number of living beings throughout the world.

But here we enter on a very intricate subject, for naturalists have not defined to each other’s satisfaction what is meant by an advance in organization. Amongst the vertebrata the degree of intellect and an approach in structure to man clearly come into play. It might be thought that the amount of change which the various parts and organs pass through in their development from the embryo to maturity would suffice as a standard of comparison; but there are cases, as with certain parasitic crustaceans, in which several parts of the structure become less perfect, so that the mature animal cannot be called higher than its larva. Von Baer’s standard seems the most widely applicable and the best, namely, the amount of differentiation of the parts of the same organic being, in the adult state, as I should be inclined to add, and their specialization for different functions; or, as Milne Edwards would express it, the completeness of the division of physiological labor. But we shall see how obscure this subject is if we look, for instance, to fishes, amongst which some naturalists rank those as highest which, like the sharks, approach nearest to amphibians; whilst other naturalists rank the common bony or teleostean fishes as the highest, inasmuch as they are most strictly fishlike and differ most from the other vertebrate classes. We see still more plainly the obscurity of the subject by turning to plants, amongst which the standard of intellect is, of course, quite excluded; and here some botanists rank those plants as highest which have every organ, as sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils, fully developed in each flower; whereas other botanists, probably with more truth, look at the plants which have their several organs much modified and reduced in number as the highest.

If we take as the standard of high organization the amount of differentiation and specialization of the several organs in each being when adult (and this will include the advancement of the brain for intellectual purposes), natural selection clearly leads toward this standard; for all physiologists admit that the specialization of organs, inasmuch as in this state they perform their functions better, is an advantage to each being; and hence the accumulation of variations tending toward specialization is within the scope of natural selection. On the other hand, we can see, bearing in mind that all organic beings are striving to increase at a high ratio and to seize on every unoccupied or less well-occupied place in the economy of nature, that it is quite possible for natural selection gradually to fit a being to a situation in which several organs would be superfluous or useless: in such cases there would be retrogression in the scale of organization.

But it may be objected that if all organic beings thus tend to rise in the scale, how is it that throughout the world a multitude of the lowest forms still exist; and how is it that in each great class some forms are far more highly developed than others? Why have not the more highly developed forms everywhere supplanted and exterminated the lower? On our theory the continued existence of lowly organisms offers no difficulty for natural selection, or the survival of the fittest does not necessarily include progressive development—it only takes advantage of such variations as arise and are beneficial to each creature under its complex relations of life. And it may be asked what advantage, as far as we can see, would it be to an infusorian animalcule—to an intestinal worm, or even to an earthworm—to be highly organized. If it were no advantage, these forms would be left, by natural selection, unimproved or but little improved, and might remain for indefinite ages in their present lowly condition. And geology tells us that some of the lowest forms, as the infusoria and rhizopods, have remained for an enormous period in nearly their present state. But to suppose that most of the many low forms now existing have not in the least advanced since the first dawn of life would be extremely rash; for every naturalist who has dissected some of the beings now ranked as very low in the scale must have been struck with their really wondrous and beautiful organization.

Nearly the same remarks are applicable if we look to the different grades of organization within the same great group; for instance, in the vertebrata to the coexistence of mammals and fish; amongst mammalia to the coexistence of man and the ornithorhynchus; amongst fishes to the coexistence of the shark and the lancelet (Amphioxus), which later fish in the extreme simplicity of its structure approaches the invertebrate classes. But mammals and fish hardly come into competition with each other; the advancement of the whole class of mammals, or of certain members in this class, to the highest grade would not lead to their taking the place of fishes. Physiologists believe that the brain must be bathed by warm blood to be highly active, and this requires aerial respiration; so that warm-blooded mammals when inhabiting the water lie under a disadvantage in having to come continually to the surface to breathe. With fishes, members of the shark family would not tend to supplant the lancelet; for the lancelet, as I hear from Fritz Müller, has as sole companion and competitor on the barren sandy shore of South Brazil an anomalous annelid. The three lowest orders of mammals, namely, marsupials, edentata, and rodents, coexist in South America in the same region with numerous monkeys, and probably interfere little with each other.

Although organization, on the whole, may have advanced and may be still advancing throughout the world, yet the scale will always present many degrees of perfection; for the high advancement of certain whole classes, or of certain members of each class, does not at all necessarily lead to the extinction of those groups with which they do not enter into close competition. In some cases, lowly organized forms appear to have been preserved to the present day from inhabiting confined or peculiar stations, where they have been subjected to less severe competition and where their scanty numbers have retarded the chance of favorable variations arising.

Finally, I believe that many lowly organized forms now exist throughout the world from various causes. In some cases variations or individual differences of a favorable nature may never have arisen for natural selection to act on and accumulate. In no case, probably, has time sufficed for the utmost possible amount of development. In some few cases there has been what we must call retrogression of organization. But the main cause lies in the fact that under very simple conditions of life a high organization would be of no service—possibly would be of actual disservice, as being of a more delicate nature and more liable to be put out of order and injured.

4. Man: An Adaptive Mechanism[187]

Everything in nature, living or not living, exists and develops at the expense of some other thing, living or not living. The plant borrows from the soil; the soil from the rocks and the atmosphere; men and animals take from the plants and from each other the elements which they in death return to the soil, the atmosphere, and the plants. Year after year, century after century, eon after eon, the mighty, immeasurable, ceaseless round of elements goes on, in the stupendous process of chemical change, which marks the eternal life of matter.

To the superficial observer, nature in all her parts seems imbued with a spirit of profound peace and harmony; to the scientist it is obvious that every infinitesimal particle of the immense concourse is in a state of desperate and ceaseless struggle to obtain such share of the available supply of matter and energy as will suffice to maintain its present ephemeral form in a state of equilibrium with its surroundings. Not only is this struggle manifest among living forms, among birds and beasts and insects in their competition for food and habitat, but—if we may believe the revelations of the science of radio-activity—a process of transmutation, of disintegration of the atoms of one element with simultaneous formation of another element, is taking place in every fragment of inanimate matter, a process which parallels in character the more transitory processes of life and death in organisms and is probably a representation of the primary steps in that great process of evolution by which all terrestrial forms, organic and inorganic, have been evolved from the original ether by an action inconceivably slow, continuous, and admitting of no break in the series from inanimate to animate forms.

From colloidal slime to man is a long road, the conception of which taxes our imaginations to the utmost, but it is an ascent which is now fairly well demonstrated. Indeed, the problems of the missing links are not so difficult as is the problem of the origin of the organs and functions which man has acquired as products of adaptation. For whether we look upon the component parts of our present bodies as useful or useless mechanisms, we must regard them as the result of age-long conflicts between environmental forces and organisms.

Everywhere something is pursuing and something is escaping another creature. It is a constant drama of getting food and of seeking to escape being made food, evolving in the conflict structures fitted to accomplish both reactions. Everywhere the strong prey upon the weak, the swift upon the slow, the clever upon the stupid; and the weak, the slow, the stupid, retaliate by evolving mechanisms of defense, which more or less adequately repel or render futile the oppressor’s attack. For each must live, and those already living have proved their right to existence by a more or less complete adaptation to their environment. The result of this twofold conflict between living beings is to evolve the manifold structures and functions—teeth, claws, skin, color, fur, feathers, horns, tusks, wily instincts, strength, stealth, deceit, and humility—which make up character in the animal world. According to the nature and number of each being’s enemies has its own special mechanism been evolved, distinguishing it from its fellows and enabling it to get a living in its particular environment.

In every case the fate of each creature seems to have been staked upon one mechanism. The tiger by its teeth and claws, the elephant and the rhinoceros by their strength, the bird by its wings, the deer by its fleetness, the turtle by its carapace—all are enabled to counter the attacks of enemies and to procreate. Where there is a negative defense, such as a shell or quills, there is little need and no evidence of intelligence: where a rank odor, no need and no presence of claws or carapace; where sting or venom, no need and no possession of odor, claws, shell, extraordinary strength, or sagacity. Where the struggle is most bitter, there exist the most complex and most numerous contrivances for living.

Throughout its whole course the process of evolution, where it is visible in the struggle of organisms, has been marked by a progressive victory of brain over brawn. And this, in turn, may be regarded as but a manifestation of the process of survival by lability rather than by stability. Everywhere the organism that exhibits the qualities of quick response, of extreme sensibility to stimuli, of capacity to change, is the individual that survives, “conquers,” “advances.” The quality most useful in nature, from the point of view of the domination of a wider environment, is the quality of changeableness, plasticity, mobility, or versatility. Man’s particular means of adaptation to his environment is this quality of versatility. By means of this quality expressed through the manifold reactions of his highly organized central nervous system, man has been able to dominate the beasts and to maintain himself in an environment many times more extensive than theirs. Like the defensive mechanisms of shells, poisons, and odors, man’s particular defensive mechanism—his versatility of nervous response (mind)—was acquired automatically as a result of a particular combination of circumstances in his environment.

In the Tertiary era—some twenty millions of years ago—the earth, basking in the warmth of a tropical climate, had produced a luxuriant vegetation and a swarming progeny of gigantic small-brained animals for which the exuberant vegetation provided abundant and easily acquired sustenance. They were a breed of huge, clumsy, and grotesque monsters, vast in bulk and strength, but of little intelligence, that wandered heavily on the land and gorged lazily on the abundant food at hand. With the advance of the carnivora, the primitive forerunners of our tigers, wolves, hyenas, and foxes, came a period of stress, comparable to a seven years of famine following a seven years of plenty, which subjected the stolid herbivorous monsters to a severe selective struggle.

Before the active onslaught of lighter, lither, more intelligent foes, the clumsy, inelastic types succumbed, those only surviving which, through the fortunate possession of more varied reactions, were able to evolve modes of defense equal to the modes of attack possessed by their enemies. Many, unable to evolve the acute senses and the fleet limbs necessary for the combat on the ground, shrank from the fray and acquired more negative and passive means of defense. Some, like the bat, escaped into the air. Others, such as the squirrel and the ape, took refuge in the trees.

It was in this concourse of weak creatures which fled to the trees because they lacked adequate means of offense, defense, or escape on the ground that the lineaments of man’s ancient ancestor might have been discerned. One can imagine what must have been the pressure from the carnivora that forced a selective transformation of the feet of the progenitor of the anthropoids into grasping hands. Coincidentally with the tree life, man’s special line of adaptation—versatility—was undoubtedly rapidly evolved. Increased versatility and the evolution of hands enabled man to come down from the trees millions of years thereafter, to conquer the world by the further evolution and exercise of his organ of strategy—the brain. Thus we may suppose have arisen the intricate reactions we now call mind, reason, foresight, invention, etc.

Man’s claim to a superior place among animals depends less upon different reactions than upon a greater number of reactions as compared with the reactions of “lower” animals. Ability to respond adaptively to more elements in the environment gives a larger dominion, that is all.

The same measure applies within the human species—the number of nervous reactions of the artist, the financier, the statesman, the scientist, being invariably greater than the reactions of the stolid savage. That man alone of all animals should have achieved the degree of versatility sufficient for such advance is no more remarkable than that the elephant should have evolved a larger trunk and tusks than the boar; that the legs of the deer should be fleeter than those of the ox; that the wings of the swallow should outfly those of the bat. Each organism, in evolving the combination of characters commensurate with safety in its particular environment, has touched the limit of both its necessity and its power to “advance.” There exists abundant and reliable evidence of the fact that wherever man has been subjected to the stunting influences of an unchanging environment fairly favorable to life, he has shown no more disposition to progress than the most stolid animals. Indeed, he has usually retrograded. The need to fight for food and home has been the spur that has ever driven man forward to establish the manifold forms of physical and mental life which make up human existence today. Like the simple adaptive mechanisms of the plant by which it gets air, and of the animal by which it overcomes its rivals in battle, the supremely differentiated functions of thought and human relations are the outcome of the necessity of the organism to become adapted to entities in its environment.

B. COMPETITION AND SEGREGATION

1. Plant Migration, Competition, and Segregation[188]

Invasion is the complete or complex process of which migration, ecesis (the adjustment of a plant to a new home), and competition are the essential parts. It embraces the whole movement of a plant or group of plants from one area into another and their colonization in the latter. From the very nature of migration, invasion is going on at all times and in all directions.

Effective invasion is predominantly local. It operates in mass only between bare areas and adjacent communities which contain species capable of pioneering, or between contiguous communities which offer somewhat similar conditions or contain species of wide range of adjustment. Invasion into a remote region rarely has any successional effect (effect tending to transform the character of a plant community), as the invaders are too few to make headway against the plants in possession or against those much nearer a new area. Invasion into a new area or a plant community begins with migration when this is followed by ecesis. In new areas, ecesis produces reaction (the effect which a plant or a community exerts upon its habitat) at once, and this is followed by aggregation and competition, with increasing reaction. In an area already occupied by plants, ecesis and competition are concomitant and quickly produce reactions. Throughout the development migrants are entering and leaving, and the interactions of the various processes come to be complex in the highest degree.

Local invasion in force is essentially continuous or recurrent. Between contiguous communities it is mutual, unless they are too dissimilar. The result is a transition area or ecotone which epitomizes the next stage in development. By far the greater amount of invasion into existing vegetation is of this sort. The movement into a bare area is likewise continuous, though it is necessarily not mutual, and hence there is no ecotone during the earlier stages. The significant feature of continuous invasion is that an outpost may be repeatedly reinforced, permitting rapid aggregation and ecesis, and the production of new centers from which the species may be extended over a wide area. Contrasted with continuous invasion is intermittent or periodic movement into distant regions, but this is rarely concerned in succession. When the movement of invaders into a community is so great that the original occupants are driven out, the invasion is complete.

A topographic feature or a physical or a biological agency that restricts or prevents invasions is a barrier. Topographic features are usually permanent and produce permanent barriers. Biological ones are often temporary and exist for a few years or even a single season. Temporary barriers are often recurrent, however. Barriers are complete or incomplete with respect to the thoroughness of their action. They may affect invasion either by limiting migration or by preventing ecesis.

Biological barriers comprise plant communities, man and animals, and parasitic plants. The limiting effect of a plant community is exhibited in two ways. In the first place, an association acts as a barrier to the ecesis of species invading it from associations of another type, on account of the physical differences of the habitats. Whether such a barrier be complete or partial will depend upon the relative unlikeness of the two areas. Shade plants are unable to invade a prairie, though the species of open thickets or woodland may do so to a certain degree. Closed communities (one in which all the soil is occupied) likewise exert a marked influence in decreasing invasion by reason of the intense and successful competition which all invaders must meet. Closed associations usually act as complete barriers, while more open ones restrict invasion in direct proportion to the degree of occupation. To this fact may be traced the fundamental law of succession (the law by which one type of community or formation is succeeded by another) that the number of stages is determined largely by the increasing difficulty of invasion as the area becomes stabilized. Man and animals affect invasion by the destruction of germules. Both in bare areas and in seral stages the action of rodents and birds is often decisive to the extent of altering the whole course of development. Man and animals operate as marked barriers to ecesis wherever they alter conditions unfavorably to invaders or where they turn the scale in competition by cultivating, grazing, camping, parasitism, etc. The absence of pollinating insects is sometimes a curious barrier to the complete ecesis of species far out of their usual habitat or region. Parasitic fungi decrease migration in so far as they affect seed production. They restrict or prevent ecesis either by the destruction of invaders or by placing them at a disadvantage with respect to the occupants.

By the term reaction is understood the effect which a plant or a community exerts upon its habitat. In connection with succession, the term is restricted to this special sense alone. It is entirely distinct from the response of the plant or group, i.e., its adjustment and adaptation to the habitat. In short, the habitat causes the plant to function and grow, and the plant then reacts upon the habitat, changing one or more of its factors in decisive or appreciable degree. The two processes are mutually complementary and often interact in most complex fashion.

The reaction of a community is usually more than the sum of the reactions of the component species and individuals. It is the individual plant which produces the reaction, though the latter usually becomes recognizable through the combined action of the group. In most cases the action of the group accumulates or emphasizes an effect which would otherwise be insignificant or temporary. A community of trees casts less shade than the same number of isolated individuals, but the shade is constant and continuous, and hence controlling. The significance of the community reaction is especially well shown in the case of leaf mold and duff. The leaf litter is again only the total of the fallen leaves of all the individuals but its formation is completely dependent upon the community. The reaction of plants upon wind-borne sand and silt-laden waters illustrates the same fact.

2. Migration and Segregation[189]

All prehistoric investigation, as far as it relates to the phenomena of the animate world, necessarily rests upon the hypothesis of migration. The distribution of plants, of the lower animals, and of men over the surface of the earth; the relationships existing between the different languages, religious conceptions, myths and legends, customs and social institutions—all these seem in this one assumption to find their common explanation.

Each fresh advance in culture commences, so to speak, with a new period of wandering. The most primitive agriculture is nomadic, with a yearly abandonment of the cultivated area; the earliest trade is migratory trade; the first industries that free themselves from the household husbandry and become the special occupations of separate individuals are carried on itinerantly. The great founders of religion, the earliest poets and philosophers, the musicians and actors of past epochs, are all great wanderers. Even today, do not the inventor, the preacher of a new doctrine, and the virtuoso travel from place to place in search of adherents and admirers—notwithstanding the immense recent development in the means of communicating information?

As civilization grows older, settlement becomes more permanent. The Greek was more settled than the Phoenician, the Roman than the Greek, because one was always the inheritor of the culture of the other. Conditions have not changed. The German is more migratory than the Latin, the Slav than the German. The Frenchman cleaves to his native soil; the Russian leaves it with a light heart to seek in other parts of his broad fatherland more favorable conditions of living. Even the factory workman is but a periodically wandering peasant.

To all that can be adduced from experience in support of the statement that in the course of history mankind has been ever growing more settled, there comes a general consideration of a twofold nature. In the first place, the extent of fixed capital grows with advancing culture; the producer becomes stationary with his means of production. The itinerant smith of the southern Slav countries and the Westphalian iron works, the pack-horses of the Middle Ages and the great warehouses of our cities, the Thespian carts and the resident theater mark the starting and the terminal points of this evolution. In the second place, the modern machinery of transportation has in a far higher degree facilitated the transport of goods than of persons. The distribution of labor determined by locality thereby attains greater importance than the natural distribution of the means of production; the latter in many cases draws the former after it, where previously the reverse occurred.

The migrations occurring at the opening of the history of European peoples are migrations of whole tribes, a pushing and pressing of collective units from east to west, which lasted for centuries. The migrations of the Middle Ages ever affect individual classes alone; the knights in the crusades, the merchants, the wage-craftsmen, the journeymen hand-workers, the jugglers and minstrels, the villeins seeking protection within the walls of a town. Modern migrations, on the contrary, are generally a matter of private concern, the individuals being led by the most varied motives. They are almost invariably without organization. The process repeating itself daily a thousand times is united only through the one characteristic, that it is everywhere a question of change of locality by persons seeking more favorable conditions of life.

Among all the phenomena of masses in social life suited to statistical treatment, there is without doubt scarcely one that appears to fall of itself so completely under the general law of causality as migrations; and likewise hardly one concerning whose real cause such misty conceptions prevail.

The whole department of migrations has never yet undergone systematic statistical observation; exclusive attention has hitherto been centered upon remarkable individual occurrences of such phenomena. Even a rational classification of migrations in accord with the demand of social science is at the present moment lacking.

Such a classification would have to take as its starting-point the result of migrations from the point of view of population. On this basis they would fall into these groups: (1) migrations with continuous change of locality; (2) migrations with temporary change of settlement; (3) migrations with permanent settlement.

To the first group belong gypsy life, peddling, the carrying on of itinerant trades, tramp life; to the second, the wandering of journeymen craftsmen, domestic servants, tradesmen seeking the most favorable spots for temporary undertakings, officials to whom a definite office is for a time entrusted, scholars attending foreign institutions of learning; to the third, migration from place to place within the same country or province and to foreign parts, especially across the ocean.

An intermediate stage between the first and second group is found in the periodical migrations. To this stage belong the migrations of farm laborers at harvest time, of the sugar laborers at the time of the campagne, of the masons of Upper Italy and the Ticino district, common day-laborers, potters, chimney-sweeps, chestnut-roasters, etc., which occur at definite seasons.

In this division the influence of the natural and political insulation of the different countries is, it is true, neglected. It must not, however, be overlooked that in the era of nationalism and protection of national labor political allegiance has a certain importance in connection with the objective point of the migrations. It would, therefore, in our opinion, be more just to make another division, taking as a basis the politico-geographical extent of the migrations. From this point of view migrations would fall into internal and foreign types.

Internal migrations are those whose points of departure and destination lie within the same national limits; foreign, those extending beyond these. The foreign may again be divided into continental and extra-European (generally transmaritime) emigration. One can, however, in a larger sense designate all migrations that do not leave the limits of the Continent as internal, and contrast with them real emigration, or transfer of domicile to other parts of the globe.

Of all these manifold kinds of migration, the transmaritime alone has regularly been the subject of official statistics; and even it has been but imperfectly treated, as every student of this subject knows. The periodic emigrations of labor and the peddling trade have occasionally been also subjected to statistical investigation—mostly with the secondary aim of legislative restriction. Yet these migrations from place to place within the same country are vastly more numerous and in their consequences vastly more important than all other kinds of migration put together.

Of the total population of the kingdom of Belgium there were, according to the results of the census of December 31, 1880, not less than 32.8 per cent who were born outside the municipality in which they had their temporary domicile; of the population of Austria (1890), 34.8 per cent. In Prussia, of 27,279,111 persons, 11,552,033, or 42.4 per cent, were born outside the municipality where they were domiciled. More than two-fifths of the population had changed their municipality at least once.

If we call the total population born in a given place and domiciled anywhere within the borders of the country that locality’s native population, then according to the conditions of interchange of population just presented the native population of the country places is greater than their actual population; that of the cities, smaller.

A balancing of the account of the internal migrations in the grand duchy of Oldenburg gives the cities a surplus, and country municipalities a deficit, of 15,162 persons. In the economy of population one is the complement of the other, just as in the case of two brothers of different temperament, one of whom regularly spends what the other has laboriously saved. To this extent, then, we are quite justified from the point of view of population in designating the cities man-consuming and the country municipalities man-producing social organisms.

There is a very natural explanation for this condition of affairs in the country. Where the peasant, on account of the small population of his place of residence, is much restricted in his local choice of help, adjoining communities must supplement one another. In like manner the inhabitants of small places will intermarry more frequently than the inhabitants of larger places where there is a greater choice among the native population. Here we have the occasion for very numerous migrations to places not far removed. Such migrations, however, only mean a local exchange of socially allied elements.

This absorption of the surplus of emigration over immigration is the characteristic of modern cities. If in our consideration of this problem we pay particular attention to this urban characteristic and to a like feature of the factory districts—where the conditions as to internal migrations are almost similar—we shall be amply repaid by the discovery that in such settlements the result of internal shiftings of population receives its clearest expression. Here, where the immigrant elements are most numerous, there develops between them and the native population a social struggle—a struggle for the best conditions of earning a livelihood or, if you will, for existence, which ends with the adaptation of one part to the other, or perhaps with the final subjugation of the one by the other. Thus, according to Schliemann, the city of Smyrna had in the year 1846 a population of 80,000 Turks and 8,000 Greeks; in the year 1881, on the contrary, there were 23,000 Turks and 76,000 Greeks. The Turkish portion of the population had thus in thirty-five years decreased by 71 per cent, while the Greeks had increased ninefold.

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 hitherto 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 classes 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 municipal 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 Massachusetts, 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 principal 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 classes 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 assumption. 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 analysis 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 reassert itself in the new phases of nineteenth-century competition? All through history this type has been characteristic of the dominant classes, 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 passivity, 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, constitute the main bulk of the population, but these two widely divergent classes 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 principal 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 Institute of Technology in Boston, roughly classified, 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 Competition 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 shores. 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 shores. Again we ask, Did this excess constitute 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:

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 assume that at such a distance in space, 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 passages, 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 circumstances, constituted 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 passing, 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 assigned. 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 shells 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 competition 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 competition. For the first time in our history, the people of the free states became divided into classes. Those classes 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 competition 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 assumed 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 retard 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 COMPETITION

1. Changing Forms of Economic Competition[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 competition 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 competition 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 competitive 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 competition 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 competitors 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 class, 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 competitors 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 régime would have worked independently are merging their capital in corporations and allowing it to be managed as by a single hand.

Predatory competition between unequal parties was the basis of the Ricardian system. This process was vaguely conceived and never fully analyzed; 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 “competition” was made to designate. Yet the competitive 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 competition 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:

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

It is essential to the theory that not only workmen but their children should be confined to a producing group. The equalizing process may take place even though men do not actually abandon one occupation and enter another; for there exists, in the generation of young men not yet committed to any occupation, a disposable fund of labor which will gravitate naturally to the occupations that pay the largest wages. It is not necessary that blacksmiths should ever become shoemakers, or vice versa, but only that the children of both classes of artisans should be free to enter the trade that is best rewarded.

Professor Cairnes does not claim that his classification is exhaustive, nor that the demarcation is absolute:

It will be seen that the competition which is here under discussion is of an extraordinary kind; and the fact that the general term is applied to it without explanation is a proof of the vagueness of the conceptions of competition with which acute writers have contented themselves. Actual competition consists invariably in an effort to undersell a rival producer. A carpenter competes with a carpenter because he creates a similar utility and offers it in the market. In the theory of Professor Cairnes the carpenter is the competitor of the blacksmith, because his children may enter the blacksmith’s calling. In the actual practice of his own trade, the one artisan in no wise affects the other. It is potential competition rather than actual that is here under discussion; and even this depends for its effectiveness on the action of the rising generation.

Modern methods of production have obliterated Professor Cairnes’s dividing lines. Potential competition extends to every part of the industrial field in which men work in organized companies. Throwing out of account the professions, a few trades of the highest sort, and the class of labor which is performed by employers themselves and their salaried assistants, it is practically true that labor is in a universal ebb and flow; it passes freely to occupations which are, for the time being, highly paid, and reduces their rewards to the general level.

This objection to the proposed grouping is not theoretical. The question is one of fact; it is the development of actual industry that has invalidated the theory which, in the seventies, expressed an important truth concerning economic relations in England. Moreover, the author of the theory anticipated one change which would somewhat lessen its applicability to future conditions. He recorded his belief that education would prove a leveler, and that it would merge to some extent the strata of industrial society. The children of hod-carriers might become machinists, accountants, or lawyers when they could acquire the needed education. He admitted also that new countries afford conditions in which the lines of demarcation are faint. He was not in a position to appreciate the chief leveling agency, namely, the machine method of production as now extended and perfected. Education makes the laborer capable of things relatively difficult, and machines render the processes which he needs to master relatively easy. The so-called unskilled workmen stand on a higher personal level than those of former times; and the new methods of manufacturing are reducing class after class to that level. Mechanical labor is resolving itself into processes so simple that anyone may learn them. An old-time shoemaker could not become a watchmaker, and even his children would have found difficulties in their way had they attempted to master the higher trade; but a laster in a Lynn shoe factory can, if he will, learn one of the minute trades that are involved in the making of a Waltham watch. His children may do so without difficulty; and this is all that is necessary for maintaining the normal balance between the trades.

The largest surviving differences between workmen are moral. Bodily strength still counts for something, and mental strength for more; but the consideration which chiefly determines the value of a workman to the employer who intrusts to him costly materials and a delicate machine is the question of fidelity. Character is not monopolized by any social class; it is of universal growth, and tends by the prominent part which it plays in modern industry, to reduce to their lowest terms the class differences of the former era.

The rewards of professional life are gauged primarily by character and native endowment, and are, to this extent, open to the children of workmen. New barriers, however, arise here in the ampler education which, as time advances, is demanded of persons in these pursuits; and these barriers give to a part of the fourth and highest class in the scheme that we are criticising a permanent basis of existence. Another variety of labor retains a pre-eminence based on native adaptations and special opportunities. It is the work of the employer himself. It is an organizing and directing function, and in large industries is performed only in part by the owners. A portion of this work is committed to hired assistants. Strictly speaking, the entrepreneur, or employer, of a great establishment is not one man, but many, who work in a collective capacity, and who receive a reward that, taken in the aggregate, constitutes the “wages of superintendence.” To some members of this administrative body the returns come in the form of salaries, while to others they come partly in the form of dividends; but if we regard their work in its entirety, and consider their wages in a single sum, we must class it with entrepreneur’s profits rather than with ordinary wages. It is a different part of the product from the sum distributed among day laborers; and this fact separates the administrative group from the class considered in our present inquiry. Positions of the higher sort are usually gained either through the possession of capital or through relations to persons who possess it. Though clerkships of the lower grade demand no attainments which the children of workmen cannot gain, and though promotion to the higher grades is still open, the tendency of the time is to make the transition from the ranks of labor to those of administration more and more difficult. The true laboring class is merging its subdivisions, while it is separating more sharply from the class whose interests, in test questions, place them on the side of capital.

2. Competition and the Natural Harmony of Individual Interests[193]

The general industry of the society never can exceed what the capital of the society can employ. As the number of workmen that can be kept in employment by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to his capital, so the number of those that can be continually employed by all the members of a great society must bear a certain proportion to the whole capital of that society and never can exceed that proportion. No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a part of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone; and it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous to the society than that into which it would have gone of its own accord.

Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.

As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry and so to direct that industry that its product may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner that its product may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ, and of which the product is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

3. Competition and Freedom[194]

What, after all, is competition? Is it something that exists and acts of itself, like the cholera? No, competition is simply the absence of oppression. In reference to the matters that interest me, I prefer to choose for myself and I do not want anyone else to choose for me against my will; that’s all. And if anyone undertakes to substitute his judgment for mine in matters that concern me I shall demand the privilege of substituting my wishes for his in matters which concern him. What guaranty is there that this arrangement will improve matters? It is evident that competition is liberty. To destroy liberty of action is to destroy the possibility and consequently the faculty of choosing, judging, comparing; it is to kill intelligence, to kill thought, to kill man himself. Whatever the point of departure, there is where modern reforms always end; in order to improve society it is necessary to annihilate the individual, upon the assumption that the individual is the source of all evil, and as if the individual was not likewise the source of all good.

4. Money and Freedom[195]

Money not only makes the relation of individuals to the group a more independent one, but the content of the special forms of associations and the relations of the participants to these associations is subject to an entirely new process of differentiation.

The medieval corporations included in themselves all the human interests. A guild of cloth-makers was not an association of individuals which cultivated the interests of cloth-making exclusively. It was a community in a vocational, personal, religious, political sense and in many other respects. And however technical the interests that might be grouped together in such an association, they had an immediate and lively interest for all members. Members were wholly bound up in the association.

In contrast to this form of organization the capitalistic system has made possible innumerable associations which either require from their members merely money contributions or are directed toward mere money interests. In the case of the business corporation, especially, the basis of organization of members is exclusively an interest in the dividends, so exclusively that it is a matter of entire indifference to the individual what the society (enterprise) actually produces.

The independence of the person of the concrete objects, in which he has a mere money interest, is reflected, likewise, in his independence, in his personal relations, of the other individuals with whom he is connected by an exclusive money interest. This has produced one of the most effective cultural formations—one which makes it possible for individuals to take part in an association whose objective aim it will promote, use, and enjoy without this association bringing with it any further personal connection or imposing any further obligation. Money has brought it about that one individual may unite himself with others without being compelled to surrender any of his personal freedom or reserve. That is the fundamental and unspeakably significant difference between the medieval form of organization which made no difference between the association of men as men and the association of men as members of an organization. The medieval form or organization united equally in one circle the entire business, religious, political, and friendly interests of the individuals who composed it.

III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. Biological Competition

The conception of competition has had a twofold origin: in the notions (a) of the struggle for existence and (b) of the struggle for livelihood. Naturally, then, the concept of competition has had a parallel development in biology and in economics. The growth of the notion in these two fields of thought, although parallel, is not independent. Indeed, the fruitful process of interaction between the differing formulations of the concept in biology and economics is a significant illustration of the cross-fertilization of the sciences. Although Malthus was a political economist, his principle of population is essentially biological rather than economic. He is concerned with the struggle for existence rather than for livelihood. Reacting against the theories of Condorcet and of Godwin concerning the natural equality, perfectability, and inevitable progress of man, Malthus in 1798 stated the dismal law that population tends to increase in geometrical progression and subsistence in arithmetical progression. In the preface to the second edition of his Essay on the Principle of Population Malthus acknowledged his indebtedness to “Hume, Wallace, Dr. Adam Smith and Dr. Price.” Adam Smith no doubt anticipated and perhaps suggested to Malthus his thesis in such passages in the Wealth of Nations as, “Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the means of their subsistence,” “The demand for men necessarily regulates the production of men.” These statements of the relation of population to food supply, however, are incidental to Smith’s general theories of economics; the contribution of Malthus lay in taking this principle out of its limited context, giving it the character of scientific generalization, and applying it to current theories and programs of social reform.

The debt of biology to Malthus is acknowledged both by Darwin and by Wallace. Fifteen months after Darwin had commenced his inquiry a chance reading of Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population gave him the clue to the explanation of the origin of species through the struggle for existence. During an attack of intermittent fever Wallace recalled Malthus’ theory which he had read twelve years before and in it found the solution of the problem of biological evolution.

Although the phrase “the struggle for existence” was actually used by Malthus: Darwin, Wallace, and their followers first gave it a general application to all forms of life. Darwin in his The Origin of Species, published in 1859, analyzed with a wealth of detail the struggle for existence, the nature and forms of competition, natural selection, the survival of the fittest, the segregation and consequent specialization of species.

Biological research in recent years has directed attention away from the theory of evolution to field study of plant and animal communities. Warming, Adams, Wheeler, and others have described, in their plant and animal ecologies, the processes of competition and segregation by which communities are formed. Clements in two studies, Plant Succession and Plant Indicators, has described in detail the life-histories of some of these communities. His analysis of the succession of plant communities within the same geographical area and of the relations of competitive co-operation of the different species of which these communities are composed might well serve as a model for similar studies in human ecology.

2. Economic Competition

Research upon competition in economics falls under two heads: (a) the natural history of competition, and (b) the history of theories of competition.

a) Competition on the economic level, i.e., of struggle for livelihood, had its origins in the market place. Sir Henry Maine, on the basis of his study of village communities, states in effect that the beginnings of economic behavior are first to be seen in neutral meeting places of strangers and foes.

The extension of the relations of the market place to practically all aspects of life having to do with livelihood has been the outcome of the industrial revolution and the growth of Great Society. Standardization of commodities, of prices, and of wages, the impersonal nature of business relations, the “cash-nexus” and the credit basis of all human relations has greatly extended the external competitive forms of interaction. Money, with its abstract standards of value, is not only a medium of exchange, but at the same time symbol par excellence of the economic nature of modern competitive society.

The literature describing change from the familial communism, typical of primitive society, to the competitive economy of modern capitalistic society is indicated in the bibliography.

b) The history of competition as a concept in political economy goes back to the Physiocrats. This French school of economists, laying stress upon the food supply as the basis and the measure of the wealth of the nation, demanded the abolition of restrictions upon agricultural production and commerce. The Physiocrats based their theories upon the natural rights of individuals to liberty.

While the Physiocrats emphasized the beneficent effects of freedom in industry to which the individual has a natural right, Adam Smith, in his book The Wealth of Nations, emphasized the advantages of competition. To him competition was a protection against monopoly. “It [competition] can never hurt either the consumer or the producer; on the contrary it must tend to make the retailers both sell cheaper and buy dearer than if the whole trade was monopolized by one or two persons!”[198] It was at the same time of benefit to both producer and consumer. “Monopoly is a great enemy to good management which can never be universally established but in consequence of that free and universal competition which forces everybody to have recourse to it for the sake of self-defence.”[199]

Before Darwin, competition had been conceived in terms of freedom and of the natural harmony of interests. His use of the term introduced into competition the notion of struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. This new conception, in which competition appears as a fundamental process in all life, has been a powerful prop to the laissez faire policy and has led to its continuance regardless of the misery and destitution which, if it did not create, it certainly did not remedy. The works of Herbert Spencer, the greatest expounder of the doctrine of evolution, contain a powerful massing of evidence in favor of laissez faire as a conclusion to be drawn from a scientific study of human behavior. “Nothing but the slow modifications of human nature by the discipline of social life,” he said, “can produce permanently advantageous changes. A fundamental error pervading the thinking of nearly all parties, political and social, is that evils admit of immediate and radical remedies.”[200]

With the growth of large-scale production with the tendency to the formation of combinations and monopolies, as a result of freedom of competition, works began to appear on the subject of unrestricted competition. The expressions “unfair” and “cut-throat” competition, which occur frequently in recent literature, suggest the new point of view. Another euphemism under which other and more far-reaching proposals for the limitation of competition and laissez faire have been proposed is “social justice.” In the meantime the trend of legislation in England for a hundred years, as Mr. A. V. Dicey[201] has pointed out, has been, in spite of Herbert Spencer, away from the individualistic and in the direction of a collectivistic social order. This means more legislation, more control, and less individual liberty.

The full meaning of this change in law and opinion can only be fully understood, however, when it is considered in connection with the growth of communication, economic organization, and cities, all of which have so increased the mutual interdependence of all members of society as to render illusory and unreal the old freedoms and liberties which the system of laissez faire was supposed to guarantee.

3. Competition and Human Ecology

The ecological conception of society is that of a society created by competitive co-operation. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was a description of society in so far as it is a product of economic competition. David Ricardo, in his Principles of Political Economy, defined the process of competition more abstractly and states its consequences with more ruthless precision and consistency. “His theory,” says Kolthamer in his introduction, “seems to be an everlasting justification of the status quo. As such at least it was used.”

But Ricardo’s doctrines were both “a prop and a menace to the middle classes,” and the errors which they canonized have been the presuppositions of most of the radical and revolutionary programs since that time.

The anarchistic, socialistic, and communistic doctrines, to which reference is made in the bibliography, are to be regarded as themselves sociological phenomena, without reference to their value as programs. They are based on ecological and economic conceptions of society in which competition is the fundamental fact and, from the point of view of these doctrines, the fundamental evil of society. What is sociologically important in these doctrines is the wishes that they express. They exhibit among other things, at any rate, the character which the hopes and the wishes of men take in this vast, new, restless world, the Great Society, in which men find themselves but in which they are not yet, and perhaps never will be, at home.

4. Competition and the “Inner Enemies”: the Defectives, the Dependents, and the Delinquents

Georg Simmel, referring, in his essay on “The Stranger,” to the poor and the criminal, bestowed upon them the suggestive title of “The Inner Enemies.” The criminal has at all times been regarded as a rebel against society, but only recently has the existence of the dependent and the defective been recognized as inimical to the social order.[203]

Modern society, so far as it is free, has been organized on the basis of competition. Since the status of the poor, the criminal, and the dependent, has been largely determined by their ability or willingness to compete, the literature upon defectiveness, dependency, and delinquency may be surveyed in its relation to the process of competition. For the purposes of this survey the dependent may be defined as one who is unable to compete; the defective as the person who is, if not unable, at least handicapped, in his efforts to compete. The criminal, on the other hand, is one who is perhaps unable, but at any rate refuses, to compete according to the rules which society lays down.

Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population first called attention to the pathological effects of the struggle for existence in modern society and emphasized the necessity of control, not merely in the interest of the defeated and rejected members of society, but in the interest of society itself. Malthus sought a mitigation, if not a remedy, for the evils of overpopulation by what he called “moral restraint,” that is, “a restraint from marriage, from prudential motives, with a conduct strictly moral during the period of restraint.” The alternatives were war, famine, and pestilence. These latter have, in fact, been up to very recent times the effective means through which the problem of overpopulation has been solved.

The Neo-Malthusian movement, under the leadership of Francis Place, Richard Carlile, and Robert Dale Owen in the decade of 1820-30 and of Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant in the decade of 1870-80, advocated the artificial restriction of the family. The differential decline in the birth-rate, that is, the greater decrease in the number of children in the well-to-do and educated classes as compared with the poor and uneducated masses, was disclosed through investigations by the Galton Eugenics Laboratory in England and characterized as a national menace. In the words of David Heron, a study of districts in London showed that “one-fourth of the married population was producing one-half of the next generation.” In United States less exhaustive investigation showed the same tendency at work and the alarm which the facts created found a popular expression in the term “race-suicide.”

It is under these circumstances and as a result of investigations and agitations of the eugenists, that the poor, the defective, and the delinquent have come to be regarded as “inner enemies” in a sense that would scarcely have been understood a hundred years ago.

Poverty and dependency in modern society have a totally different significance from that which they have had in societies in the past. The literature descriptive of primitive communities indicated that in the economic communism of a society based on kinship, famines were frequent but poverty was unknown. In ancient and medieval societies the dependency, where it was not professional, as in the case of the mendicant religious orders, was intimate and personal. In this respect it differed widely from the organized, official, and supervised philanthropy of our modern cities.

With the abolition of serfdom, the break-up of the medieval guilds, and the inauguration of a period of individual freedom and relatively unrestricted competition (laissez faire) which ushered in the modern industrial order, the struggle for existence ceased to be communal, and became individual. The new order based on individual freedom, as contrasted with the old order based on control, has been described as a system in which every individual was permitted to “go to hell in his own individual way.” “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will,” said Mill, “is to prevent harm to others. His own good either physical or moral is not a sufficient warranty.” Only when the individual became a criminal or a pauper did the state or organized society attempt to control or assist him in the competitive struggle for existence.[204]

Since competitive industry has its beginnings in England, the study of the English poor laws is instructive. Under the influence of Malthus and of the classical economists the early writers upon poverty regarded it as an inevitable and natural consequence of the operation of the “iron laws” of political economy. For example, when Harriet Martineau was forced to admit, by the evidence collected by the Factory Commissioners in 1833, that “the case of these wretched factory children seems desperate,” she goes on to add “the only hope seems to be that the race will die out in two or three generations.”

Karl Marx, accepting the Ricardian economics, emphasized the misery and destitution resulting from the competitive process, and demanded the abolition of competition and the substitution therefor of the absolute control of a socialistic state.

Recent studies treat poverty and dependency as a disease and look to its prevention and cure. Trade unions, trade associations, and social insurance are movements designed to safeguard industry and the worker against the now generally recognized consequences of unlimited competition. The conceptions of industrial democracy and citizenship in industry have led to interesting and promising experiments.

In this connection, the efforts of employers to protect themselves as well as the community from accidents and occupational diseases may be properly considered. During and since the Great War efforts have been made on a grand scale to rehabilitate, re-educate, and restore to usefulness the war’s wounded soldiers. This interest in the former soldiers and the success of the efforts already made has led to an increased interest in all classes of the industrially handicapped. A number of surveys have been made, in different parts of the country, of the crippled, and efforts are in progress to discover occupations and professions in which the deaf, the blind, and otherwise industrially handicapped can be employed and thus restored to usefulness and relative independence.

The wide extension of the police power in recent times in the interest of public health, sanitation, and general public welfare represents the effort of the government, in an individualistic society in which the older sanctions and securities no longer exist, to protect the individual as well as the community from the effects of unrestricted competition.

The literature of criminology has sought an answer to the enigma of the criminal. The writings of the European criminologists run the gamut of explanation from Lombroso, who explained crime as an inborn tendency of the criminal, to Tarde, who defines the criminal as a purely social product.

W. A. Bonger,[205] a socialist, has sought to show that criminality is a direct product of the modern economic system. Without accepting either the evidence or the conclusions of Bonger, it cannot be gainsaid that the modern offender must be studied from the standpoint of his failure to participate in a wholesome and normal way in our competitive, secondary society which rests upon the institution of private property and individual competition.

The failure of the delinquent to conform to the social code may be studied from two standpoints: (a) that of the individual as an organization of original mental and temperamental traits, and (b) that of a person with a status and a rôle in the social group. The book The Individual Delinquent, by William Healy, placed the study of the offender as an individual upon a sound scientific basis. That the person can and should be regarded as part and parcel of his social milieu has been strikingly illustrated by T. M. Osborne in two books, Within Prison Walls and Society and Prisons. The fact seems to be that the problem of crime is essentially like that of the other major problems of our social order, and its solution involves three elements, namely: (a) the analysis of the aptitudes of the individual and the wishes of the person; (b) the analysis of the activities of our society with its specialization and division of labor; and (c) the accommodation or adjustment of the individual to the social and economic environment.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. BIOLOGICAL COMPETITION

(1) Crile, George W. Man an Adaptive Mechanism. New York, 1901.

(2) Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. London, 1859.

(3) Wallace, Alfred Russel. Studies Scientific and Social. 2 vols. New York, 1900.

(4) ——. Darwinism. An exposition of the theory of natural selection with some of its applications. Chap. iv, “The Struggle for Existence,” pp. 14-40; chap. v, “Natural Selection by Variation and Survival of the Fittest,” pp. 102-25. 3d ed. London, 1901.

(5) Weismann, August. On Germinal Selection as a Source of Definite Variation. Translated from the German. Chicago, 1896.

(6) Malthus, T. R. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Or a view of its past and present effects on human happiness, with an inquiry into our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation of the evils which it occasions. 2d ed. London, 1803. [1st ed., 1798.]

(7) Knapp, G. F. “Darwin und Socialwissenschaften,” Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik. Erste Folge, XVIII (1872), 233-47.

(8) Thomson, J. Arthur. Darwinism and Human Life. New York, 1918.

II. ECONOMIC COMPETITION

(1) Wagner, Adolf. Grundlegung der politischen Ökonomie. Pp. 794-828. [The modern private industrial system of free competition.] Pp. 71-137. [The industrial nature of men.] Leipzig, 1892-94.

(2) Effertz, Otto. Arbeit und Boden. System der politischen Ökonomie. Vol. II, chaps, xix, xx, xxi, xxiii, xxiv, pp. 237-320. Berlin, 1897.

(3) Marshall, Alfred. Principles of Economics. Appendix A, “The Growth of Free Industry and Enterprise,” pp. 723-54. London, 1910.

(4) Seligman, E. R. A. Principles of Economics. Chap, x, pp. 139-53. New York, 1905.

(5) Schatz, Albert. L’Individualisme économique et social, ses origines, son évolution, ses formes contemporaines. Paris, 1907.

(6) Cunningham, William. An Essay on Western Civilization in Its Economic Aspects. Medieval and modern times. Cambridge, 1913.

III. FREEDOM AND LAISSEZ FAIRE

(1) Simmel, Georg. Philosophie des Geldes. Chap. iv, “Die individuelle Freiheit,” pp. 279-364. Leipzig, 1900.

(2) Bagehot, Walter. Postulates of English Political Economics. With a preface by Alfred Marshall. New York and London, 1885.

(3) Oncken, August. Die Maxime Laissez Faire et Laissez Passer, ihr Ursprung, ihr Werden. Bern, 1886.

(4) Bastiat, Frédéric. Harmonies économiques. 9th ed. Paris, 1884.

(5) Cunningham, William. The Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times. Vol. III, “Laissez Faire.” 3 vols. 3d ed. Cambridge, 1903.

(6) Ingram, John K. A History of Political Economy. Chap. v, “Third Modern Phase; System of Natural Liberty.” 2d ed. New York, 1908.

(7) Hall, W. P. “Certain Early Reactions against Laissez Faire,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1913. I, 127-38. Washington, 1915.

(8) Adams, Henry C. “Relation of the State to Industrial Action,” Publications of the American Economic Association, I (1887), 471-549.

IV. THE MARKETS

(1) Walker, Francis A. Political Economy. Chap. ii, pp. 97-102. 3d ed. New York, 1887. [Market defined.]

(2) Grierson, P. J. H. The Silent Trade. A contribution to the early history of human intercourse. Edinburgh, 1903. [Bibliography.]

(3) Maine, Henry S. Village Communities in the East and West. Lecture VI, “The Early History of Price and Rent,” pp. 175-203. New York, 1885.

(4) Walford, Cornelius. Fairs, Past and Present. A chapter in the history of commerce. London, 1883.

(5) Bourne, H. R. F. English Merchants. Memoirs in illustration of the progress of British commerce. New ed. London, 1898.

(6) Webb, Sidney and Beatrice. Industrial Democracy. Part III, chap. ii, “The Higgling of the Market,” pp. 654-702. New ed. London, 1902.

(7) Bagehot, Walter. Lombard Street. A description of the money market. New York, 1876.

V. COMPETITION AND INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION

(1) Crowell, John F. Trusts and Competition. Chicago, 1915. [Bibliography.]

(2) Macrosty, Henry W. Trusts and the State. A sketch of competition. London, 1901.

(3) Carter, George R. The Tendency toward Industrial Combination. A study of the modern movement toward industrial combination in some spheres of British industry; its forms and developments, their causes, and their determinant circumstances. London, 1913.

(4) Levy, Hermann. Monopoly and Competition. A study in English industrial organization. London, 1911.

(5) Haney, Lewis H. Business Organization and Combination. An analysis of the evolution and nature of business organization in the United States and a tentative solution of the corporation and trust problems. New York, 1914.

(6) Van Hise, Charles R. Concentration and Control. A solution of the trust problem in the United States. New York, 1912.

(7) Kohler, Josef. Der unlautere Wettbewerb. Darstellung des Wettbewerbsrechts. Berlin und Leipzig, 1914.

(8) Nims, Harry D. The Law of Unfair Business Competition. Including chapters on trade secrets and confidential business relations; unfair interference with contracts; libel and slander of articles of merchandise, trade names and business credit and reputation. New York, 1909.

(9) Stevens, W. H. S. Unfair Competition. A study of certain practices with some reference to the trust problem in the United States of America. Chicago, 1917.

(10) Eddy, Arthur J. The New Competition. An examination of the conditions underlying the radical change that is taking place in the commercial and industrial world; the change from a competitive to a co-operative basis. New York, 1912.

(11) Willoughby, W. W. Social Justice. A critical essay. Chap. ix, “The Ethics of the Competitive Process,” pp. 269-315. New York, 1900.

(12) Rogers, Edward S. Good Will, Trade-Marks and Unfair Trading. Chicago, 1914.

VI. SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM

(1) Stirner, Max. (Kaspar Schmidt). The Ego and His Own. Translated from the German by S. T. Byington. New York, 1918.

(2) Godwin, William. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness. Book V, chap. xxiv. London, 1793.

(3) Proudhon, Pierre Joseph. What Is Property? An inquiry into the principle of right and of government. Translated from the French by B. R. Tucker. New York, 189-?

(4) Zenker, E. V. Anarchism. A criticism and history of the anarchist theory. Translated from the German. New York, 1897. [With bibliographical references.]

(5) Bailie, William. Josiah Warren, the First American Anarchist. A sociological study. Boston, 1906.

(6) Russell, B. A. W. Proposed Roads to Freedom. Socialism, anarchism, and syndicalism. New York, 1919.

(7) Mackay, Thomas, editor. A Plea for Liberty. An argument against socialism and socialistic legislation. New York, 1891.

(8) Spencer, Herbert. “The Man versus the State,” Appendix to Social Statics. New York, 1897.

(9) Marx, Karl, and Engels, Frederick. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Authorized English translation edited and annotated by Frederick Engels. London, 1888.

(10) Stein, L. Der Socialismus und Communismus des heutigen Frankreichs. Ein Beitrag zur Zeitgeschichte. Leipzig, 1848.

(11) Guyot, Édouard. Le Socialisme et l’évolution de l’Angleterre contemporaine (1880-1911). Paris, 1913.

(12) Flint, Robert. Socialism. 2d ed. London, 1908.

(13) Beer, M. A History of British Socialism. Vol. I, “From the Days of the Schoolmen to the Birth of Chartism.” Vol. II, “From Chartism to 1920.” London, 1919-21.

(14) Levine, Louis. Syndicalism in France. 2d ed. New York, 1914.

(15) Brissenden, Paul F. The I. W. W. A study of American syndicalism. New York, 1919. [Bibliography.]

(16) Brooks, John Graham. American Syndicalism. New York, 1913.

(17) ——. Labor’s Challenge to the Social Order. Democracy its own critic and educator. New York, 1920.

VII. COMPETITION AND “THE INNER ENEMIES”

A. The Struggle for Existence and Its Social Consequences

(1) Henderson, Charles R. Introduction to the Study of the Dependent, Defective, and Delinquent Classes, and of Their Social Treatment. 2d ed. Boston, 1908.

(2) Grotjahn, Alfred. Soziale Pathologie. Versuch einer Lehre von den sozialen Beziehungen der menschlichen Krankheiten als Grundlage der sozialen Medizin und der sozialen Hygiene. Berlin, 1912.

(3) Lilienfeld, Paul de. La Pathologie sociale. Avec une préface de René Worms. Paris, 1896.

(4) Thompson, Warren S. Population. A study in Malthusianism. New York, 1915.

(5) Field, James A. “The Early Propagandist Movement in English Population Theory,” American Economic Association Bulletin, 4th Ser., I (1911), 207-36.

(6) Heron, David. On the Relation of Fertility in Man to Social Status. And on the changes in this relation that have taken place during the last fifty years. London, 1906.

(7) Elderton, Ethel M. “Report on the English Birthrate.” University of London, Francis Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics. Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs, XIX-XX. London, 1914.

(8) D’Ambrosio, Manlio A. Passività Economica. Primi principi di una teoria sociologica della popolazione economicamente passiva. Napoli, 1909.

(9) Ellwood, Charles A. Sociology and Modern Social Problems. Rev. ed. New York, 1913.

B. Poverty, Labor, and the Proletariat

(1) Woods, Robert A., Elsing, W. T., and others. The Poor in Great Cities. Their problems and what is being done to solve them. New York, 1895.

(2) Rowntree, B. Seebohm. Poverty, a Study of Town Life. London, 1901.

(3) Devine, Edward T. Misery and Its Causes. New York, 1909.

(4) Marx, Karl. Capital. A critical analysis of capitalist production. Chap. xv, “Machinery and Modern Industry.” Translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, and edited by Frederick Engels. London, 1908.

(5) Hobson, John A. Problems of Poverty. An inquiry into the industrial condition of the poor. London, 1891.

(6) Kydd, Samuel [Alfred, pseud.] The History of the Factory Movement. From the year 1802 to the enactment of the ten hours’ bill in 1847. 2 vols. London, 1857.

(7) Rowntree, B. S., and Lasker, Bruno. Unemployment, a Social Study. London, 1911.

(8) Beveridge, William Henry. Unemployment. A problem of industry. 3d ed. London, 1912.

(9) Parmelee, Maurice. Poverty and Social Progress. New York, 1916.

(10) Gillin, John L. Poverty and Dependency. Their relief and prevention. New York, 1921.

(11) Sombart, Werner. Das Proletariat; Bilder und Studien. Frankfurt am Main, 1906.

(12) Riis, Jacob A. How the Other Half Lives. Studies among the tenements of New York. New York, 1890.

(13) Nevinson, Margaret W. Workhouse Characters and Other Sketches of the Life of the Poor. London, 1918.

(14) Sims, George R. How the Poor Live; and Horrible London. London, 1898.

C. The Industrially Handicapped

(1) Best, Harry. The Deaf. Their position in society and the provision for their education in the United States. New York, 1914.

(2) ——. The Blind. Their condition and the work being done for them in the United States. New York, 1919.

(3) United States Bureau of the Census. The Blind and the Deaf, 1900. Washington, 1906.

(4) ——. Deaf-Mutes in the United States. Analysis of the census of 1910 with summary of state laws relating to the deaf as of January 1, 1918. Washington, 1918.

(5) ——. The Blind in the United States 1910. Washington, 1917.

(6) Niceforo, Alfredo. Les Classes pauvres. Recherches anthropologiques et sociales. Paris, 1905.

(7) Goddard, Henry H. Feeble-mindedness, Its Causes and Consequences. Chap. i, “Social Problems,” pp. 1-20. New York, 1914.

(8) Popenoe, Paul B., and Johnson, Roswell H. Applied Eugenics. Chap. ix, “The Dysgenic Classes,” pp. 176-83. New York, 1918.

(9) Pintner, Rudolph, and Toops, Herbert A. “Mental Test of Unemployed Men,” Journal of Applied Psychology, I (1917), 325-41; II (1918), 15-25.

(10) Oliver, Thomas. Dangerous Trades. The historical, social, and legal aspects of industrial occupations affecting health, by a number of experts. New York, 1902.

(11) Jarrett, Mary C. “The Psychopathic Employee: a Problem of Industry,” Bulletin of the Massachusetts Commission on Mental Diseases, I (1917-18), Nos. 3-4, 223-38. Boston, 1918.

(12) Thompson, W. Gilman. The Occupational Diseases. Their causation, treatment, and prevention. New York, 1914.

(13) Kober, George M., and Hanson, William C., editors. Diseases of Occupation and Vocational Hygiene. Philadelphia, 1916.

(14) Great Britain. Ministry of Munitions. Health of Munition Workers Committee. Hours, fatigue, and health in British munition factories. Reprints of the memoranda of the British Health of Munition Workers Committee, April, 1917. Washington, 1917.

(15) Great Britain Home Department. Report of the Committee on Compensation for Industrial Diseases. London, 1907.

(16) McMurtrie, Douglas C. The Disabled Soldier. With an introduction by Jeremiah Milbank. New York, 1919.

(17) Rubinow, I. M. “A Statistical Consideration of the Number of Men Crippled in War and Disabled in Industry,” Publication of Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men. Series I, No. 4, Feb. 14, 1918.

(18) Love, Albert G., and Davenport, C. B. Defects Found in Drafted Men. Statistical information compiled from the draft records showing the physical condition of the men registered and examined in pursuance of the requirements of the selective-service act. War Department, U.S. Surgeon General’s Office, Washington, 1920.

D. Alcoholism and Drug Addiction

(1) Partridge, George E. Studies in the Psychology of Intemperance. New York, 1912.

(2) Kelynack, T. N. The Drink Problem of Today in Its Medicosociological Aspects. New York, 1916.

(3) Kerr, Norman S. Inebriety or Narcomania. Its etiology, pathology, treatment, and jurisprudence. 3d ed. London, 1894.

(4) Elderton, Ethel M. “A First Study of the Influence of Parental Alcoholism on the Physique and Ability of the Offspring.” Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs, University of London, Francis Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics. London, 1910.

(5) Koren, John. Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem. An investigation made for the Committee of Fifty under the direction of Henry W. Farnam. Boston, 1899.

(6) Towns, Charles B. Habits that Handicap. The menace of opium, alcohol, and tobacco, and the remedy. New York, 1916.

(7) Wilbert, Martin I. “The Number and Kind of Drug Addicts,” U.S. Public Health Reprint, No. 294. Washington, 1915.

(8) Rowntree, B. Seebohm. Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium. Chap. xxvi, “The Drink Problem.” London, 1910.

(9) McIver, J., and Price, G. F. “Drug Addiction,” Journal of the American Medical Association, LXVI (1915), 476-80. [A study of 147 cases.]

(10) Stanley, L. L. “Drug Addictions,” Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, X (1919), 62-70. [Four case studies.]

E. Crime and Competition

(1) Parmelee, Maurice. Criminology. Chap. vi, pp. 67-91. New York, 1918.

(2) Bonger, William A. Criminality and Economic Conditions. Translated from the French by H. P. Horton, with editorial preface by Edward Lindsey and with an introduction by Frank H. Norcross. Boston, 1916.

(3) Tarde, G. “La Criminalité et les phénomènes économiques,” Archives d’anthropologie criminelle, XVI (1901), 565-75.

(4) Van Kan, J. Les Causes économiques de la criminalité. Étude historique et critique d’étiologie criminelle. Lyon, 1903.

(5) Fornasári di Verce, E. La Criminalità e le vicende economiche d’Italia, dal 1873 al 1890, con prefazione di Ces. Lombroso. Torino, 1894.

(6) Devon, J. The Criminal and the Community. London and New York, 1912.

(7) Breckinridge, Sophonisba, and Abbott, Edith. The Delinquent Child and the Home. Chap. iv, “The Poor Child: The Problem of Poverty,” pp. 70-89. New York, 1912.

(8) Donovan, Frances. The Woman Who Waits. Boston, 1920.

(9) Fernald, Mabel R., Hayes, Mary H. S., and Dawley, Almena. A Study of Women Delinquents in New York State. With statistical chapter by Beardsley Ruml; preface by Katharine Bement Davis. Chap. xi, “Occupational History and Economic Efficiency,” pp. 304-79. New York, 1920.

(10) Miner, Maude. The Slavery of Prostitution. A plea for emancipation. Chap. iii, “Social Factors Leading to Prostitution,” pp. 53-88. New York, 1916.

(11) Ryckère, Raymond de. La Servante criminelle. Étude de criminologie professionelle. Paris, 1908.

TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES

1. The Struggle for Existence and the Survival of the Fittest.

2. Economic Competition and the Economic Equilibrium.

3. “Unfair” Competition and Social Control.

4. Competition versus Sentiment.

5. The History of the Market, the Exchange, the Board of Trade.

6. The Natural History of the Laissez-Faire Theory in Economics and Politics.

7. Competition, Money, and Freedom.

8. Competition and Segregation in Industry and in Society.

9. The Neo-Malthusian Movement and Race Suicide.

10. The Economic Order of Competition and “the Inner Enemies.”

11. The History of the English Poor Law.

12. Unemployment and Poverty in a Competitive, Secondary Society.

13. Modern Economy and the Psychology of Intemperance.

14. Modern Industry, the Physically Handicapped and Programs of Rehabilitation.

15. Crime in Relation to Economic Conditions.

16. Methods of Social Amelioration: Philanthropy, Welfare Work in Industry, Social Insurance, etc.

17. Experiments in the Limitation of Competition: Collective Bargaining, Trade Associations, Trade Boards, etc.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. In what fields did the popular conceptions of competition originate?

2. In what way does competition as a form of interaction differ from conflict, accommodation, and assimilation?

3. What do you understand to be the difference between struggle, conflict, competition, and rivalry?

4. What are the different forms of the struggle for existence?

5. In what different meanings do you understand Darwin to use the term “the struggle for existence”? How many of these are applicable to human society?

6. What do you understand Darwin to mean when he says: “The structure of every organic being is related, in the most essential yet often hidden manner, to that of all the other organic beings with which it comes into competition for food or residence, or from which it has to escape, or on which it preys”? Does his principle, in your opinion, also apply to the structure of social groups?

7. What examples of competition occur to you in human or social relations? In what respects are they (a) alike, (b) different, from competition in plant communities?

8. To what extent is biological competition present in modern human society?

9. Does competition always lead to increased specialization and higher organization?

10. What evidences are there in society of the effect of competition upon specialization and organization?

11. What do you understand Crile to mean by the sentence: “In every case the fate of each creature seems to have been staked upon one mechanism”? What is this mechanism with man?

12. Do you think that Crile has given an adequate explanation of the evolution of mind?

13. Is there a difference in the character of the struggle for existence of animals and of man?

14. What is the difference in competition within a community based on likenesses and one based on diversities?

15. Compare the ecological concept “reaction” with the sociological conception “control.”

16. What do you understand by the expression “the reaction of a community is usually more than the sum of the reaction of the component species and individuals”? Explain.

17. How far can the terms migration, ecesis, and competition, as used by Clements in his analysis of the invasion of one plant community by another, be used in the analysis of the process by which immigrants “invade” this country, i.e., migrate, settle, and are assimilated, “Americanized”?

18. What are the social forces involved in (a) internal, (b) foreign, migrations?

19. What do you understand by the term segregation? To what extent are the social forces making for segregation (a) economic, (b) sentimental? Illustrate.

20. In what ways has immigration to the United States resulted in segregation?

21. Does the segregation of the immigrant in our American cities make for or against (a) competition, (b) conflict, (c) social control, (d) accommodation, and (e) assimilation?

22. What are the factors producing internal migration in the United States?

23. In what sense is the drift to the cities a result of competition?

24. What is Ripley’s conclusion in regard to urban selection and the ethnic composition of cities?

25. What are the outstanding results of demographic segregation and social selection in the United States?

26. What, in your judgment, are the chief characteristics of inter-racial competition?

27. To what extent do you agree with Walker’s analysis of the social forces involved in race suicide in the United States?

28. In what specific ways is competition now a factor in race suicide?

29. What will be the future effects of inter-racial competition upon the ethnic stock of the American people?

30. “There is a sense in which much of the orthodox system of political economy is eternally true.” Explain.

31. To what extent and in what sense is economic competition unconscious?

32. What differences other than innate mental ability enter into competition between different social groups and different persons?

33. Who are your competitors?

34. Of the existence (as identified persons) of what proportion of these competitors are you unconscious?

35. What is meant by competitive co-operation? Illustrate. (See pp. 508, 558.)

36. What do you understand by the term “economic equilibrium”?

37. Is “economic equilibrium” identical with “social solidarity”? What is the relation, if any, between the two concepts?

38. To what extent does competition make for a natural harmony of individual interests?

39. What did Adam Smith mean by “an invisible hand”?

40. “Civilization is the resultant not of conscious co-operation but of the unconscious competition of individuals.” Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

41. “By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.” What is the argument for and against this position?

42. Why has the laissez-faire theory in economics been largely abandoned?

43. What do you understand by the term “freedom”? How far may freedom be identified with freedom of competition?

44. Do you accept the conception of Bastiat that “competition is liberty”?

45. How does money make for freedom? Does it make for or against co-operation? Are co-operation and competition mutually antagonistic terms?

46. Under what circumstances do you have competition between individuals and competition between groups?

47. What do you understand by the statement that anarchism, socialism, and communism are based upon the ecological conceptions of society?

48. What is the difference between an opinion or a doctrine taken (a) as a datum, and (b) as a value?

49. From what point of view may the dependent, the delinquent, and the defective be regarded as “inner enemies”? Is this notion individualistic, socialistic, or how would you characterize it?