Work formed a division under the title "The Organization of the Social
Forces of the Community." The term community, in connection with that of
social forces, suggests that every community may be conceived as a
definite constellation of social forces. In this form the notion has
been fruitful in suggesting a more abstract, intelligible, and, at the
same time, sounder conception of the community life.
Most of the social surveys made in recent years are based upon this
conception of the community as a complex of social forces embodied in
institutions and organizations. It is the specific task of every
community survey to reveal the community in its separated and often
isolated organs. The references to the literature on the community
surveys at the conclusion of chapter iii, "Society and the Group,"[170]
will be of service in a further study of the application of the concept
of social forces to the study of the community.
2. Social Forces and History
Historians, particularly in recent years, have frequently used the
expression "social forces" although they have nowhere defined it. Kuno
Francke, in the Preface of his book entitled _A History of German
Literature as Determined by Social Forces_, states that it "is an honest
attempt to analyze the social, religious, and moral forces which
determined the growth of German literature as a whole." Taine in the
Preface to _The Ancient Régime_ says: "Without taking any side,
curiosity becomes scientific and centres on the secret forces which
direct the wonderful process. These forces consist of the situations,
the passions, the ideas, and the wills of each group of actors, and
which can be defined and almost measured."[171]
It is in the writings of historians, like Taine in France, Buckle in
England, and Karl Lamprecht in Germany, who started out with the
deliberate intention of writing history as if it were natural history,
that we find the first serious attempts to use the concept of social
forces in historical analysis. Writers of this school are quite as much
interested in the historical process as they are in historical fact, and
there is a constant striving to treat the individual as representative
of the class, and to define historical tendencies in general and
abstract terms.
But history conceived in those terms tends to become sociology.
"History," says Lamprecht, "is a _socio-psychological science_. In the
conflict between the old and the new tendencies in historical
investigation, the main question has to do with social-psychic, as
compared and contrasted with individual-psychic factors; or to speak
somewhat generally, the understanding on the one hand of conditions, on
the other of heroes, as the motive powers in the course of
history."[172] It was Carlyle--whose conception of history is farthest
removed from that of Lamprecht--who said, "Universal history is at
bottom the history of great men."
The criticism of history by historians and the attempts, never quite
successful, to make history positive furnish further interesting comment
on this topic.[173]
3. Interest, Sentiments, and Attitudes as Social Forces
More had been written, first and last, about human motives than any
other aspect of human life. Only in very recent years, however, have
psychologists and social psychologists had either a point of view or
methods of investigation which enabled them to analyze and explain the
facts. The tendency of the older introspective psychology was to refer
in general terms to the motor tendencies and the will, but in the
analysis of sensation and the intellectual processes, will disappeared.
The literature on this subject covers all that has been written by the
students of animal behavior and instinct, Lloyd Morgan, Thorndike,
Watson, and Loeb. It includes the interesting studies of human behavior
by Bechterew, Pavlow, and the so-called objective school of psychology
in Russia. It should include likewise writers like Graham Wallas in
England, Carleton Parker and Ordway Tead in America, who are seeking to
apply the new science of human nature to the problems of society.[174]
Every social science has been based upon some theory, implicit or
explicit, of human motives. Economics, political science, and ethics,
before any systematic attempt had been made to study the matter
empirically, had formulated theories of human nature to justify their
presuppositions and procedures.
In classical political economy the single motive of human action was
embodied in the abstraction "the economic man." The utilitarian school
of ethics reduced all human motives to self-interest. Disinterested
conduct was explained as enlightened self-interest. This theory was
criticized as reducing the person to "an intellectual calculating
machine." The theory of evolution suggested to Herbert Spencer a new
interpretation of human motives which reasserted their individualistic
origin, but explained altruistic sentiments as the slowly accumulated
products of evolution. Altruism to Spencer was the enlightened
self-interest of the race.
It was the English economists of the eighteenth century who gave us the
first systematic account of modern society in deterministic terms. The
conception of society implicit in Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_
reflects at once the temper of the English people and of the age in
which he lived.[175] The eighteenth century was the age of
individualism, laissez faire and freedom. Everything was in process of
emancipation except woman.
The attention of economists at this time was directed to that region of
social life in which the behavior of the individual is most
individualistic and least controlled, namely, the market place. The
economic man, as the classical economists conceived him, is more
completely embodied in the trader in the auction pit, than in any other
figure in any other situation in society. And the trader in that
position performs a very important social function.[176]
There are, however, other social situations which have created other
social types, and the sociologists have, from the very first, directed
their attention to a very different aspect of social life, namely, its
unity and solidarity. Comte conceived humanity in terms of the family,
and most sociologists have been disposed to take the family as
representative of the type of relations they are willing to call social.
Not the auction pit but the family has been the basis of the
sociological conception of society. Not competition but control has been
the central fact and problem of sociology.
Socialization, when that word is used as a term of appreciation rather
than of description, sets up as the goal of social effort a world in
which conflict, competition, and the externality of individuals, if they
do not disappear altogether, will be so diminished that all men may live
together as members of one family. This, also, is the goal of progress
according to our present major prophet, H. G. Wells.[177]
It is intelligible, therefore, that sociologists should conceive of
social forces in other terms than self-interest. If there had been no
other human motives than those attributed to the economic man there
would have been economics but no sociology, at least in the sense in
which we conceive it today.
In the writings of Ratzenhofer and Small human interests are postulated
as both the unconscious motives and the conscious ends of behavior.
Small's classification of interests--health, wealth, sociability,
knowledge, beauty, rightness--has secured general acceptance.
"Sentiment" was used by French writers, Ribot, Binet, and others, as a
general term for the entire field of affective life. A. F. Shand in two
articles in _Mind_, "Character and the Emotions" and "Ribot's Theory of
the Passions," has made a distinct contribution by distinguishing the
sentiments from the emotions. Shand pointed out that the sentiment, as a
product of social experience, is an organization of emotions around the
idea of an object. McDougall in his _Social Psychology_ adopted Shand's
definition and described the organization of typical sentiments, as love
and hate.
Thomas was the first to make fruitful use of the term attitude, which he
defined as a "tendency to act." Incidentally he points out that
attitudes are social, that is, the product of interaction.
4. Wishes and Social Forces
Ward had stated that "The social forces are wants seeking satisfaction
through efforts, and are thus social motives or motors inspiring
activities which either create social structures through social synergy
or modify the structures already created through innovation and
conation."[178] Elsewhere Ward says that "desire is the only motive to
action."[179]
The psychoanalytic school of psychiatrists have attempted to reduce all
motives to one--the wish, or _libido_. Freud conceived that sex appetite
and memories connected with it were the unconscious sources of some if
not all of the significant forms of human behavior. Freud's
interpretation of sex, however, seemed to include the whole field of
desires that have their origin in touch stimulations. To Jung the
_libido_ is vital energy motivating the life-adjustments of the person.
Adler from his study of organic inferiority interpreted the _libido_ as
the wish for completeness or perfection. Curiously enough, these critics
of Freud, while not accepting his interpretation of the unconscious
wish, still seek to reduce all motives to a single unit. To explain all
behavior by one formula, however, is to explain nothing.
On the other hand, interpretation by a multitude of unrelated conscious
desires in the fashion of the older sociological literature is no great
advance beyond the findings of common sense. The distinctive value of
the definition, and classification, of Thomas lies in the fact that it
reduces the multitude of desires to four. These four wishes, however,
determine the simplest as well as the most complex behavior of persons.
The use made of this method in his study of the Polish peasant indicated
its possibilities for the analysis of the organization of the life of
persons and of social groups.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. POPULAR NOTION OF SOCIAL FORCES
(1) Patten, Simon N. _The Theory of Social Forces._ Philadelphia, 1896.
(2) Gladden, Washington. _Social Facts and Forces._ The factory, the
labor union, the corporation, the railway, the city, the church. New
York, 1897.
(3) Richmond, Mary. "Charitable Co-operation," _Proceedings of the
National Conference of Charities and Correction_, 1901, pp. 298-313.
(Contains "Diagram of Forces with which Charity Worker may Co-operate.")
(4) Devine, Edward T. _Social Forces._ From the editor's page of _The
Survey_. New York, 1910.
(5) Edie, Lionel D., Editor. _Current Social and Industrial Forces._
Introduction by James Harvey Robinson. New York, 1920.
(6) Burns, Allen T. "Organization of Community Forces for the Promotion
of Social Programs," _Proceedings of the National Conference of
Charities and Correction_, 1916, pp. 62-78.
(7) _Social Forces._ A topical outline with bibliography. Wisconsin
Woman's Suffrage Association, Educational Committee. Madison, Wis.,
1915.
(8) Wells, H. G. _Social Forces in England and America._ London and New
York, 1914.
II. HISTORICAL TENDENCIES AS SOCIAL FORCES
(1) Lamprecht, Karl. _What Is History?_ Five lectures on the modern
science of history. Translated from the German by E. A. Andrews. London
and New York, 1905.
(2) Loria, A. _The Economic Foundations of Society._ Translated from the
2d French ed. by L. M. Keasbey. London and New York, 1899.
(3) Beard, Charles A. _An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of
the United States._ New York, 1913.
(4) Brandes, Georg. _Main Currents in Nineteenth-Century Literature._ 6
vols. London, 1906.
(5) Taine, H. A. _The Ancient Régime._ Translated from the French by
John Durand. New York, 1891.
(6) Buckle, Henry Thomas. _History of Civilization in England._ 2 vols.
New York, 1892.
(7) Lacombe, Paul. _De l'histoire considérée comme science._ Paris,
1894.
(8) Francke, Kuno. _Social Forces in German Literature._ A study in the
history of civilization. New York, 1896.
(9) Hart, A. B. _Social and Economic Forces in American History._ From
_The American Nation, A History_. London and New York, 1904.
(10) Turner, Frederick J. _Social Forces in American History, The
American Historical Review_, XVI (1910-11), 217-33.
(11) Woods, F. A. _The Influence of Monarchs._ Steps in a new science of
history. New York, 1913.
III. INTERESTS AND WANTS
A. _Interests, Desires, and Wants as Defined by the Sociologist_
(1) Ward, Lester F. _Dynamic Sociology, or Applied Social Science._ As
based upon statical sociology and the less complex sciences. "The Social
Forces," I, 468-699. New York, 1883.
(2) ----. _Pure Sociology._ A treatise on the origin and spontaneous
development of society. Chap. xii, "Classification of the Social
Forces," pp. 256-65. New York, 1903.
(3) ----. _The Psychic Factors of Civilization._ Chap. ix, "The
Philosophy of Desire," pp. 50-58, chap. xviii, "The Social Forces," pp.
116-24. Boston, 1901.
(4) Small, Albion W. _General Sociology._ Chaps. xxvii and xxxi, pp.
372-94; 425-42. Chicago, 1905.
(5) Ross, Edward A. _The Principles of Sociology._ Part II, "Social
Forces," pp. 41-73. New York, 1920.
(6) Blackmar, F. W., and Gillin, J. L. _Outlines of Sociology._ Part
III, chap ii, "Social Forces," pp. 283-315. New York, 1915.
(7) Hayes, Edward C. "The 'Social Forces' Error," _American Journal of
Sociology_, XVI (1910-11), 613-25; 636-44.
(8) Fouillée, Alfred. _Education from a National Standpoint._ Translated
from the French by W. J. Greenstreet. Chap. i, pp. 10-27. New York,
1892.
(9) ----. _Morale des idées-forces._ 2d ed. Paris, 1908. [Book II, Part
II, chap. iii, pp. 290-311, describes opinion, custom, law, education
from the point of view of "Idea-Forces."]
B. _Interests and Wants as Defined by the Economist_
(1) Hermann, F. B. W. v. _Staatswirthschaftliche Untersuchungen._ Chap.
ii. München, 1870. [First of the modern attempts to classify wants.]
(2) Walker, F. A. _Political Economy._ 3d ed. New York, 1888. [See
discussion of competition, pp. 91-111.]
(3) Marshall, Alfred. _Principles of Economics._ An introductory volume.
Chap. ii, "Wants in Relation to Activities," pp. 86-91. 6th ed. London,
1910.
(4) ----. "Some Aspects of Competition," _Journal of the Royal
Statistical Society._ Sec. VII, "Modern Analysis of the Motives of
Business Competition," LIII (1890), 634-37. [See also Sec. VIII,
"Growing Importance of Public Opinion as an Economic Force," pp.
637-41.]
(5) Menger, Karl. _Grundsatze der Volkswirthschaftslehre._ Chap. ii,
Wien, 1871.
(6) ----. _Untersuchungen über die Methode der Socialwissenschaften und
der politischen Ökonomie insbesondere._ Chap. vii, "Über das Dogma,"
etc. Leipzig, 1883.
(7) Jevons, W. S. _The Theory of Political Economy._ Chap. ii, "Theory
of Pleasure and Pain," pp. 28-36; "The Laws of Human Wants," pp. 39-43.
4th ed. London, 1911.
(8) Bentham, Jeremy. "A Table of the Springs of Action." Showing the
several species of pleasures and pains of which man's nature is
susceptible; together with the several species of _interests_, _desires_
and _motives_ respectively corresponding to them; and the several sets
of appellatives, _neutral_, _eulogistic_, and _dyslogistic_, by which
each species of _motive_ is wont to be designated. [First published in
1817.] _The Works of Jeremy Bentham_, I, 195-219. London, 1843.
C. _Wants and Values_
(1) Kreibig, Josef K. _Psychologische Grundlegung eines Systems der
Wert-Theorie._ Wien, 1902.
(2) Simmel, Georg. _Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft._ Eine Kritik
der ethischen Grundbegriffe. Vol. I, chap. iv, "Die Glückseligkeit." 2
vols. Berlin, 1904-05.
(3) Meinong, Alexius. _Psychologische-ethische Untersuchungen zur
Wert-Theorie._ Graz, 1894.
(4) Ehrenfels, Chrn. v. _System der Wert-Theorie._ 2 vols. Leipzig,
1897-98.
(5) Brentano, Franz. _Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte._ Chap.
vi-ix, pp. 256-350. Leipzig, 1874.
(6) Urban, Wilbur Marshall. _Valuation, Its Nature and Laws._ Being an
introduction to the general theory of value. London, 1909.
(7) Cooley, Charles H. _Social Process._ Part VI, "Valuation," pp.
283-348. New York, 1918.
IV. SENTIMENTS, ATTITUDES, AND WISHES
(1) White, W. A. _Mechanisms of Character Formation._ An introduction to
psychoanalysis. New York, 1916.
(2) Pfister, Oskar. _The Psychoanalytic Method._ Translated from the
German by Dr. C.R. Payne. New York, 1917.
(3) Jung, Carl G. _Analytical Psychology._ Translated from the German by
Dr. Constance E. Long. New York, 1916.
(4) Adler, Alfred. _The Neurotic Constitution._ Outlines of a
comparative individualistic psychology and psychotherapy. Translated
from the German by Bernard Glueck. New York, 1917.
(5) Freud, Sigmund. _General Introduction to Psychoanalysis._ New York,
1920.
(6) Tridon, André. _Psychoanalysis and Behavior._ New York, 1920.
(7) Holt, Edwin B. _The Freudian Wish and Its Place in Ethics._ New
York, 1915.
(8) Mercier, C.A. _Conduct and Its Disorders Biologically Considered._
London, 1911.
(9) Bechterew, W. v. _La psychologie objective._ Translated from the
Russian. Paris, 1913.
(10) Kostyleff, N. _Le mécanisme cérébral de la pensée._ Paris, 1914.
(11) Bentley, A. F. _The Process of Government._ A study of social
pressures. Chicago, 1908.
(12) Veblen, T. _The Theory of the Leisure Class._ An economic study in
the evolution of institutions. New York, 1899. [Discusses the wish for
recognition.]
(13) ----. _The Instinct of Workmanship._ And the state of the
industrial arts. New York, 1914. [Discusses the wish for recognition.]
(14) McDougall, William. _An Introduction to Social Psychology._ Chaps.
v-vi, pp. 121-73. 13th ed. Boston, 1918.
(15) Shand, A. F. "Character and the Emotions," _Mind._, n. s., V
(1896), 203-26.
(16) ----. "M. Ribot's Theory of the Passions," _Mind._, n. s., XVI
(1907), 477-505.
(17) ----. _The Foundations of Character._ Being a study of the
tendencies of the emotions and sentiments. Chaps. iv-v, "The Systems of
the Sentiments," pp. 35-63. London, 1914.
(18) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and
America._ III, 5-81. Boston, 1919.
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. The Concept of Forces in the Natural Sciences.
2. Historical Interpretation and Social Forces.
3. The Concept of Social Forces in Recent Studies of the Local
Community.
4. Institutions as Social Forces: The Church, the Press, the School,
etc.
5. Institutions as Organizations of Social Forces: Analysis of a Typical
Institution, Its Organization, Dominant Personalities, etc.
6. Persons as Social Forces: Analysis of the Motives determining the
Behavior of a Dominant Personality in a Typical Social Group.
7. Group Opinion as a Social Force.
8. Tendencies, Trends, and the Spirit of the Age.
9. History of the Concepts of Attitudes, Sentiments, and Wishes as
Defined in Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Sociology.
10. Attitudes as the Organizations of Wishes.
11. The Freudian Wish.
12. Personal and Social Disorganization from the Standpoint of the Four
Wishes.
13. The Law of the Four Wishes: All the Wishes Must Be Realized. A Wish
of One Type, Recognition, Is Not a Substitute for a Wish of Another
Type, Response.
14. The Dominant Wish: Its Rôle in the Organization of the Person and of
the Group.
15. Typical Attitudes: Familism, Individualism, "Oppressed Nationality
Psychosis," Race Prejudice.
16. The Mutability of the Sentiment-Attitude: Love and Hate, Self-esteem
and Humility, etc.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Make a list of the outstanding social forces affecting social life in
a community which you know. What is the value of such an analysis?
2. How does Simons use the term "social forces" in analyzing the course
of events in American history?
3. In what sense do you understand Ely to use the term "social forces"?
4. Would there be, in your opinion, a social tendency without conflict
with other tendencies?
5. How far is it correct to predict from present tendencies what the
future will be?
6. What do you understand by _Zeitgeist_, "trend of the times," "spirit
of the age"?
7. What do you understand by public opinion? How does it originate?
8. Is legislation in the United States always a result of public
opinion?
9. Does the trend of public opinion determine corporate action?
10. Is public opinion the same as the sum of the opinion of the members
of the group?
11. What is the relation of social forces to interaction?
12. Is it possible to study trends, tendencies, and public opinion as
integrations of interests, sentiments, and attitudes?
13. Are desires the fundamental "social elements"?
14. What do you understand Small to mean when he says, "The last
elements to which we can reduce the actions of human beings are units
which we may conveniently name 'interests'"?
15. What is Small's classification of interests? Do you regard it as
satisfactory?
16. What do you think is the difference between an impulse and an
interest?
17. Do people behave according to their interests or their impulses?
18. Make a chart showing the difference in interests of six persons with
whom you are acquainted.
19. Make a chart indicating the variations in interests of six selected
groups.
20. What difference is there, in your opinion, between interests and
social pressures?
21. Do you consider the following statement of Bentley's correct: "No
slaves, not the worst abused of all, but help to form the government"?
22. Does the group exert social pressure upon its members? Give
illustrations.
23. What do you understand to be the differences between an idea and an
idea-force?
24. Give illustrations of idea-forces.
25. Are there any ideas that are not idea-forces?
26. What do you understand by a sentiment?
27. What is the difference between an interest and a sentiment? Give an
illustration of each.
28. Are sentiments or interests more powerful in influencing the
behavior of a person or of a group?
29. What do you understand by a social attitude?
30. What is a mental conflict?
31. To what extent does unconsciousness rather than consciousness
determine the behavior of a person? Give an illustration where the
behavior of a person was inconsistent with his rational determination.
32. What do you understand by mental complexes?
33. What is the relation of memory to mental complexes?
34. What do you understand by personality? What is its relation to
mental complexes?
35. What is meant by common sense?
36. How does Holt define the Freudian wish?
37. What distinction does he make between the wish and the motor
attitude?
38. How would you illustrate the difference between an attitude and a
wish as defined in the introduction?
39. How far would you say that the attitude may be described as an
organization of the wishes?
40. How far is the analogy between the wish as the social atom and the
attitude as the social element justified?
41 What is the "psychic censor"?
42. What is the Freudian theory of repression? Is repression conscious
or unconscious?
43. What is the relation of wishes to occupational selection?
44. Give illustrations of the "four wishes."
45. Describe a person in terms of the type of expression of these four
wishes.
46. What social problems arise because of the repression of certain
wishes?
47. "Wishes in one class cannot be substituted for wishes in another."
Do you agree? Elaborate your position.
48. Analyze the organization of a group from the standpoint of the four
wishes.
FOOTNOTES:
[157] Adapted from A. M. Simons, in the Preface to _Social Forces in
American History_, pp. vii-viii. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1912.
Reprinted by permission.)
[158] Adapted from Richard T. Ely, _Evolution of Industrial Society_,
pp. 456-84. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1903. Reprinted by
permission.)
[159] Adapted from A. V. Dicey, _Law and Public Opinion in England_, pp.
19-41. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1905. Reprinted by permission.)
[160] Adapted from Albion W. Small, _General Sociology_, pp. 532-36.
(The University of Chicago Press, 1905.)
[161] Adapted from Albion W. Small, _General Sociology_, pp. 425-36.
(The University of Chicago Press, 1905.)
[162] Adapted from Arthur F. Bentley, _The Process of Government_, pp.
258-381. (The University of Chicago Press, 1908.)
[163] Adapted from Alfred Fouillée, _Education from a National
Standpoint_, pp. 10-16. (D. Appleton & Co., 1897.)
[164] Adapted from William McDougall, _An Introduction to Social
Psychology_, pp. 121-64. (John W. Luce & Co., 1916.)
[165] From Robert E. Park, _Principles of Human Behavior_, pp. 18-34.
(The Zalaz Corporation, 1915.)
[166] Adapted from Edwin B. Holt, _The Freudian Wish and Its Place in
Ethics_, pp. 3-56. (Henry Holt & Co., 1915.)
[167] Adapted from John B. Watson, "The Psychology of Wish Fulfillment,"
in the _Scientific Monthly_, III (1916), 479-86.
[168] A restatement from a paper by William I. Thomas, "The Persistence
of Primary-Group Norms in Present-Day Society," in Jennings, Watson,
Meyer, and Thomas, _Suggestions of Modern Science Concerning Education_.
(Published by The Macmillan Co., 1917. Reprinted by permission.)
[169] _Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and
Correction_, 1901, p. 300.
[170] See p. 219.
[171] H. A. Taine, _The Ancient Régime_, Preface, p. viii. (New York,
1891.)
[172] Karl Lamprecht, _What Is History?_ p. 3. (New York, 1905.)
[173] See chap. i, _Sociology and the Social Sciences_, pp. 6-12.
[174] See references, chap. ii, "Human Nature," p. 149.
[175] For a discussion of the philosophical background of Adam Smith's
political philosophy see Wilhelm Hasbach, _Untersuchungen über Adam
Smith_. (Leipzig, 1891.)
[176] "The science of Political Economy as we have it in England may be
defined as the science of business, such as business is in large
productive and trading communities. It is an analysis of that world so
familiar to many Englishmen--the 'great commerce' by which England has
become rich. It assumes the principal facts which make that commerce
possible, and as is the way of an abstract science it isolates and
simplifies them: it detaches them from the confusion with which they are
mixed in fact. And it deals too with the men who carry on that commerce,
and who make it possible. It assumes a sort of human nature such as we
see everywhere around us, and again it simplifies that human nature; it
looks at one part of it only. Dealing with matters of 'business,' it
assumes that man is actuated only by motives of business. It assumes
that every man who makes anything, makes it for money, that he always
makes that which brings him in most at least cost, and that he will make
it in the way that will produce most and spend least; it assumes that
every man who buys, buys with his whole heart, and that he who sells,
sells with his whole heart, each wanting to gain all possible advantage.
Of course we know that this is not so, that men are not like this; but
we assume it for simplicity's sake, as an hypothesis."--Walter Bagehot,
_The Postulates of English Political Economy_. (New York and London,
1885.)
[177] H. G. Wells, _The Outline of History_, Vol. II, pp. 579-95. (New
York, 1920.)
[178] _Pure Sociology_, p. 261. (New York, 1903.)
[179] _Dynamic Sociology_, II, 90.(New York, 1883.)
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.
Since goods which seem at first to be the exclusive property of
individuals become by the estimable decrees of a wise
providence [competition] the common possession of all; since
the natural advantages of situation, the fertility,
temperature, mineral richness of the soil and even industrial
skill do not accrue to the producers, because of competition
among themselves, but contribute so much the more to the profit
of the consumer; it follows that there is no country that is
not interested in the advancement of all the others.[180]
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:
SOCIAL PROCESS SOCIAL ORDER
Competition The economic equilibrium
Conflict The political order
Accommodation Social organization
Assimilation Personality and the cultural heritage
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:
1840 1850
The census 17,069,453 23,191,876
Watson's estimates 17,116,526 23,185,368
___________ ___________
The difference -47,073 +6,508
Foreign arrivals during the preceding
decade 599,000 1,713,000
Here we see that, in spite of the arrival of 500,000 foreigners during
the period 1830-40, four times as many as had arrived during any
preceding decade, the figures of the census coincided closely with the
estimate of Watson, based on the growth of population in the
pre-immigration era, falling short of it by only 47,073 in a total of
17,000,000; while in 1850 the actual population, in spite of the arrival
of 1,713,000 more immigrants, exceeded Watson's estimates by only 6,508
in a total of 23,000,000. Surely, if this correspondence between the
increase of the foreign element and the relative decline of the native
element is a mere coincidence, it is one of the most astonishing in
human history. The actuarial degree of improbability as to a coincidence
so close, over a range so vast, I will not undertake to compute.
If, on the other hand, it be alleged that the relation of cause and
effect existed between the two phenomena, this might be put in two
widely different ways: either that the foreigners came in increasing
numbers because the native element was relatively declining, or that the
native element failed to maintain its previous rate of increase because
the foreigners came in such swarms. What shall we say of the former of
these explanations? Does anything more need to be said than that it is
too fine to be the real explanation of a big human fact like this we are
considering? To 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:
Commodities do indeed exchange according to their cost of
production; but cost is something quite different from what
currently passes by that name. That is merely the outlay
incurred by the capitalist-employer for raw materials, labor,
etc. The real cost is the personal sacrifice made by the
producing parties, workmen as well as employers. It is not a
mercantile but a psychological phenomenon, a reaction upon the
men themselves occasioned by the effort of the laborer and the
abstinence of the capitalist. These personal sacrifices gauge
the market value of commodities within the fields in which, in
the terms of the theory, competition is free. The adjustment
takes place through the spontaneous movement of capital and
labor from employments that yield small returns to those that
give larger ones. Capital migrates freely from place to place
and from occupation to occupation. If one industry is
abnormally profitable, capital seeks it, increases and cheapens
its product, and reduces its profits to the prevailing level.
Profits tend to a general uniformity.
Wages are said to tend to equality only within limits. The transfer of
labor from one employment to another is checked by barriers.
What we find, in effect [continues Professor Cairnes], is not a
whole population competing indiscriminately for all
occupations, but a series of industrial layers, superimposed on
one another, within each of which the various candidates for
employment possess a real and effective power of selection,
while those occupying the several strata are, for all purposes
of effective competition, practically isolated from each other.
We may perhaps venture to arrange them in some such order as
this: first, at the bottom of the scale there would be the
large group of unskilled or nearly unskilled laborers,
comprising agricultural laborers, laborers engaged in
miscellaneous occupations in towns, or acting in attendance on
skilled labor. Secondly, there would be the artisan group,
comprising skilled laborers of the secondary order--carpenters,
joiners, smiths, masons, shoemakers, tailors, hatters, etc.,
etc.--with whom might be included the very large class of small
retail dealers, whose means and position place them within the
reach of the same industrial opportunities as the class of
artisans. The third layer would contain producers and dealers
of a higher order, whose work would demand qualifications only
obtainable by persons of substantial means and fair educational
opportunities; for example, civil and mechanical engineers,
chemists, opticians, watchmakers, and others of the same
industrial grade, in which might also find a place the superior
class of retail tradesmen; while above these there would be a
fourth, comprising persons still more favorably circumstanced,
whose ampler means would give them a still wider choice. This
last group would contain members of the learned professions, as
well as persons engaged in the various careers of science and
art, and in the higher branches of mercantile business.