investigation, and I began study of it by looking up the statistics of
suicide in the national capital. It seemed to me that if the decrease in
1898 was due to a general economic cause, it would not be particularly
noticeable in the city of Washington, for the reason that Washington is
not a manufacturing or business center. If, on the other hand, the fall
in the suicide rate was really due to the war as a specific cause, it
would be most marked at the nation's capital, where the war attracted
most attention and created most excitement. I went to the District
Health Office and made an examination of the suicide records for a term
of six years, beginning with 1895 and ending with 1900. I found not only
that the depression in the Washington suicide curve was precisely
synchronous with that of the national suicide curve, but that it was
much deeper, amounting, in fact, to a sudden decrease of fifty per cent.
As suicides are tabulated in the Health Office of the District of
Columbia by months, I was able to ascertain, furthermore, that the
decrease began, not in the first month of the year, but in the spring
months, when the war excitement became epidemic. Normally, the suicide
rate should have risen, from January to June, in accordance with the
seasonal law; but, instead of so doing, it fell rapidly at the very time
when it should have been approaching its maximum. The colored population
of the city, taken separately, was affected in the same way and to an
even greater degree, the number of suicides among the blacks falling off
fifty-six per cent., as compared with fifty per cent. among the whites.
The number of suicides in both races remained low throughout the year
1899, and then rose suddenly in 1900, an almost precise correspondence
with the suicide curve of the nation as a whole.
During our Civil War the suicidal tendency was affected in the same way,
but to a much greater extent. I have not been able to find mortality
statistics of the whole country for the period in question, but in New
York City the average rate of suicide in the five years of the Civil War
was forty-two per cent. lower than the average for the five preceding
years, and forty-three per cent. lower than the average for the five
subsequent years. In the State of Massachusetts, where accurate
statistics were kept, the number of suicides decreased seventeen per
cent. in the five-year period from 1861 to 1865, as compared with the
five-year period from 1856 to 1860.
In Europe the restraining influence of war upon the suicidal impulse is
equally marked. The war between Austria and Italy in 1866 decreased the
suicide rate of each country about fourteen per cent. The Franco-German
war of 1870-71 lowered the suicide rate of Saxony 8.0 per cent., that of
Prussia 11.4 per cent., and that of France 18.7 per cent. The reduction
was greatest in France, because the German invasion of that country made
the war excitement there much more general and intense than it was in
Saxony or Prussia.
An explanation of the decrease of suicide in time of war may be found,
perhaps, in the power that any strong excitement has to change the
current of thought and substitute one emotion for another. Suicide,
among civilized peoples, is largely due to morbid introspection and long
brooding over real or imaginary trouble; and anything that takes a man's
mind away from his own unhappiness, and gives him a keen interest in
things or events about him, weakens his suicidal impulse. An unhappy man
might resolve to end his life, and might load a revolver with the
intention of shooting himself; but if he should happen to see a couple
of his neighbors fighting in his front door-yard, he would probably lay
the revolver aside, for a time, and watch the combat. The cause of his
unhappiness would still remain, but the current of his thought would
suddenly be diverted into a new channel and his despondency would give
way to the excitement of a fresh and vivid interest. War acts upon men
in the same way, but with greater force.
Then, too, war restrains suicide by strengthening the bonds of social
sympathy and drawing large masses of people more closely together. The
unhappy man always thinks of himself as lonely, isolated, and out of
harmony with his environment; but when, as a result of the victories or
defeats of war, he finds himself participating in the triumph or sharing
the grief of thousands of other persons, the mere consciousness of
sympathetic association with his fellow-men becomes a source of comfort
and consolation to him and makes his life more endurable. But war is not
the only agency that exerts a restraining influence upon
self-destruction. Any great calamity which causes intense public
excitement, and which at the same time draws people together in friendly
sympathy and cooeperation, lowers the suicide rate. The calamity may
greatly intensify suffering, and may make life, for a time, almost
intolerable; but it does not increase the number of persons who try to
escape from life; on the contrary, it reduces it.
_San Francisco Earthquake Decreased Suicides_
A striking illustration of this fact was furnished by San Francisco in
1906. Before the earthquake and fire of April 18 the suicides in that
city averaged twelve a week. After the earthquake, when the whole
population was homeless, destitute, and exposed to hardships and
privations of every kind, there were only three suicides in two months.
The decrease, therefore, in the suicide rate was more than 97 per cent.
This surprising result of a disheartening and depressing calamity was
due partly to the excitement of life under new and extraordinary
conditions, and partly to the feeling, which every man had, that he was
enduring and working with a host of sympathetic comrades, and not
suffering and striving alone. If life were always vividly interesting,
as it was in San Francisco after the earthquake, and if all men worked
and suffered together as the San Franciscans did for a few weeks,
suicide would not end ten thousand American lives every year, as it does
now.
The dependence of suicide upon such conditions as age, sex, occupation,
and religion does not offer any problem as difficult and baffling as
that involved in the relation of suicide to weather, nor any as curious
and suggestive as that which connects suicide with war; but there is
hardly a phase of the subject that does not present some more or less
interesting question. The researches of Durkheim and Gubski show that,
after the period of childhood, the tendency to suicide increases
steadily with advancing age. In France, for example, if the population
be segregated in groups comprising all persons ten to twenty years of
age, all persons twenty to thirty years of age, all persons thirty to
forty years of age, and so on, by decades, the annual number of suicides
per million rises as follows: first group 56, second group 130, third
155, fourth 204, fifth 217, sixth 274, seventh 317, and the rate finally
reaches its maximum in the group that comprises persons more than eighty
years of age.
In the United States, the rate increases from 128 per million, in the
age group comprising persons under forty-five, to 300 per million in the
age group comprising persons over sixty-five. The figures vary in
different countries, according to the hereditary national suicide
tendencies; but the steady increase with advancing age is common to all.
These statistics would seem to support the pessimistic philosophy of
Schopenhauer, and to prove that the longer one lives the less one wants
to live; but it must not be forgotten that the suicide rate is a measure
of exceptional unhappiness, not of the general welfare.
In the suicidal tendencies of the sexes there is, as might be expected,
a very great difference. In all countries and in all parts of the world,
suicides among women are far less frequent than among men. The ratio
varies from one to two to two to five. This difference is generally
attributed to the supposed fact that women are sheltered and protected
by men, as well as by their domestic environment, and that,
consequently, they suffer less from the wear and tear of life; but I
doubt very much the adequacy of this explanation. The life of women, in
the world at large, is quite as hard as that of men, and often harder.
In the higher and wealthier classes of society women may be, and
doubtless are, sheltered and protected; but in the poorer classes they
take their full share of the suffering, even if they do not bear the
brunt of the struggle.
The hundreds of Russian women who between 1877 and 1885 were exiled to
eastern Siberia for political offenses had no shelter or protection
whatever, and must necessarily have suffered more than the exiled men
from the hardships and privations of banishment; and yet, I am quite
sure that I understate the fact when I say that the number of suicides
among the men was at least five times greater than it was among the
women. The exiled men themselves admitted to me that when it came to the
endurance of suffering against which no fight could be made and from
which there was no escape, the women were greatly their superiors. The
infrequency of self-destruction among women, as compared with that among
men, seems to me to be due, not to their comparative immunity from
suffering, but to three other causes, namely, first, a greater power of
patient, passive endurance, when there is no fight to be made; second, a
mind and heart that are more influenced by feelings and beliefs that may
be called religious; and, third, a peculiar capacity for self-restraint
and self-preservation, based on the maternal instinct, that is, on
closer and more intimate relations with, stronger love for, and greater
devotion to young children.
A study of the relation that suicide bears to occupation discloses some
interesting and noteworthy facts. The first is that soldiers, both in
Europe and in the United States, must be put in a class by themselves,
for the reason that the suicide rate of army officers and men is so much
higher than that of the populations to which they belong that they can
hardly be included in the same category. In Prussia, for example, the
proportion of military suicides to civilian suicides is 1-1/2 to 1; in
England 2-1/2 to 1; in Italy 5 to 1; in Austria 10 to 1; and in Russia
nearly 11 to 1. Even in the United States, the tendency of soldiers to
kill themselves is 8-1/2 times that of adult men in civil life.
This disproportionately high suicide rate in armies is not easy of
explanation. In countries where military service is compulsory, and
where inexperienced young men, torn suddenly from their families, are
subjected to rigorous discipline in a strange and uncongenial
environment, the suicidal impulse may be intensified by homesickness,
loneliness, humiliation, and the monotony of camp or barrack life; but
in our own country, where the army is filled by voluntary enlistment,
and where the relations between officers and men are fairly sympathetic
and cordial, there would seem to be fewer reasons for unhappiness and
suffering than in the military service of Italy, Austria, or Russia. The
American soldier is generally well taken care of and well treated; and
while his life, in time of peace, is not exciting, it is easier and less
monotonous than that of a factory operative, and it is hard to
understand why he should be abnormally disposed to self-destruction. His
suicidal tendency, however, is reduced by war, just as that of the civil
population is, and for the same reasons.
_Professional Classes Furnish Most Suicides_
Statistics of self-destruction are not yet accurate and detailed enough
to enable us to determine the relation that suicide bears to business
employment; but it may be said, in a general way, that the occupations
in which the suicide rate is lowest are those that involve rough manual
labor out of doors and employ men of comparatively little educational
culture, such as miners, quarrymen, shipwrights, fishermen, gardeners,
bricklayers, and masons. Next come farmers, shopkeepers, and town
artisans. And at the head of the list, with the highest suicide rate of
all, are physicians, journalists, teachers, and lawyers. The tendency
of these professional classes to commit suicide is from one and a half
to three times as great as that of the population generally.
Clergymen, however, who also constitute an educated professional class,
have a suicide rate which is only half that of the population as a
whole, and this is undoubtedly due to the restraining influence of
religion, which is much stronger in clergymen than in laymen. The
relation of suicide to religion raises a number of curious and
interesting questions, but, unfortunately, the religious factor is so
involved with other factors in the complicated problem of
self-destruction that it is almost impossible to isolate it so as to
study it alone. For example, the suicide rate of Protestant Christians
in the northern part of Ireland is twice that of Roman Catholics in the
southern part; but here education comes in as a complication: the
Protestants are generally better educated than the Catholics, and their
higher suicide rate may be due to their education and not to the form of
their religion. In Europe generally, the tendency to suicide is much
greater among both Protestants and Catholics than among Jews; but here
education, race, and economic condition all come in as complicating
factors, so that it is impossible to credit the Jewish faith alone with
the lower rate. In view, however, of the fact that the suicide rate of
the Protestant cantons in Switzerland is nearly four times that of the
Catholic cantons, it seems probable that Catholicism, as a form of
religious belief, does restrain the suicidal impulse. The efficient
cause may be the Catholic practice of confessing to priests, which
probably gives much encouragement and consolation to unhappy but devout
believers, and thus induces many of them to struggle on in spite of
misfortune and depression.
The Salvation Army, in attempting to lessen self-destruction by opening
"anti-suicide bureaus" in large cities, and by inviting persons who are
contemplating suicide to visit these bureaus and talk over their
troubles, is virtually introducing a system of confession which, so far
as this particular evil is concerned, resembles that of the Catholic
Church.
In view, however, of the conflicting nature of the evidence, and the
extreme difficulty of disentangling religious factors from other
important factors, I doubt the possibility of drawing any trustworthy
conclusions with regard to the dependence of suicide upon religious
belief. It may be said, as a matter of record, that the tendency to
self-destruction is greatest among Protestant Christians, next largest
among Roman Catholics and Orthodox Greeks, and lowest among Mohammedans
and Jews; but the differences are not certainly due to religion.
The dependence of suicide upon nationality and race presents a number of
problems of great interest, but of extraordinary difficulty and
complexity. I can state a few of these problems, but I cannot solve any
of them.
Among the highest suicide rates in Europe are those of Saxony and
Denmark, and among the lowest those of Italy, Portugal, and Spain. You
may perhaps conclude, from this, that the tendency to self-destruction
is much greater among the Slavs and Scandinavians of the north than it
is among the Latin peoples of the south, and that the differences are
due to latitude or race; but your specious generalization is shattered
when you discover that the suicide rates of Norway and Russia, both
northern countries inhabited by Scandinavians and Slavs, are almost as
low as those of Italy, Portugal, and Spain, all southern countries
inhabited by Latins.
From an ethnological point of view, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are
nearly homogeneous Scandinavian states, and we should therefore expect
their suicide rates to be nearly if not quite identical; but the rate of
Denmark is twice that of Sweden and three times that of Norway.
The Slavs of Bohemia do not differ ethnologically from the Slavs of
Dalmatia, but the suicide rate of the one group is 158 per million,
while that of the other is only 14 per million. Saxony is not far away,
geographically, from Belgium; but the suicide rate of the former is 324
per million, while that of the latter is only 128 per million.
I am unable to offer even a conjectural solution of the problems
involved in the differences thus shown to exist between populations that
are ethnologically identical, or that stand at nearly the same level of
educational culture and economic well being.
_Germany's High Suicide Rates_
The extremely high suicide rate of the Germanic peoples long ago
attracted the attention of European sociologists, but, so far as I know,
it has never been satisfactorily explained. If it were limited to adults
it might possibly be attributed to economic causes, particularly to the
rapid development of manufacturing industry, which seems everywhere to
increase the suicidal tendency; but self-destruction in Germany is
almost as common among children as among grown people. Between 1883 and
1903 there were 1,125 suicides among the pupils of the public schools
in Prussia alone, and most of them were of boys and girls under fifteen
years of age. An investigation made by the ministry of public
instruction showed that this prevalence of suicide among children was
not due to the conditions of modern life in cities, inasmuch as the
proportion of cases was fully as large in places of the smallest size as
in crowded centers of population. It seemed to be due, rather, to an
inherent suicidal tendency in the race.
Racial characteristics, however, do not by any means account for the
extraordinary differences in suicide rates that we find among the
European peoples, as shown in the following table:[21]
EUROPEAN PEOPLES GROUPED RACIALLY
NUMBER OF SUICIDES PER MILLION INHABITANTS
I. SLAVS
In Dalmatia (about 1896) 14
European Russia (1900) 31
Bulgaria (about 1900) 118
II. SCANDINAVIANS
In Norway (1901-'05) 65
Sweden (1900-'04) 142
Denmark (1901-'05) 227
III. LATINS
In Spain (1893) 21
Portugal (1906) 23
Italy (1901-'05) 64
France (1900-'04) 227
IV. GERMANS
In Austria (1902) 173
Prussia (1902-'06) 201
Saxony (1902-06) 324
Bavaria (1902-'06) 141
V. ENGLISH
In Ireland (1906) 34
Scotland (1905) 65
England and Wales (1906) 100
Australasia (1903) 121
United States (1907) 126
VI. ASIATICS
In Japan (1905) 209
It is difficult to assign definite or satisfactory reasons for the wide
differences shown in the above table. Skelton has suggested that the low
suicide rates of certain countries are due to emigration, "which
provides an outlet for a great deal of misery and constitutes a hopeful
alternative to suicide"; but this conjecture, although ingenious, is
hardly supported by the facts. It might perhaps explain the low suicide
rates of Italy and Ireland, but it does not account for the equally low
suicide rate of the Russian peasants, who emigrate hardly at all, nor
for the extremely high suicide rate of the Germans, who emigrate in
large numbers. Neither does it throw any light upon the persistence of
national suicide rates long after emigration. The generalization that
seems to harmonize and explain the greatest number of facts is that
suicide is most prevalent in countries where education goes hand in hand
with highly developed manufacturing industry. In Spain, Portugal, Italy,
and Russia the people have little education, manufacturing industries
are feebly developed, and the suicide rate is low. In Saxony the
percentage of illiteracy is very small, more than half of the population
work in factories, and the suicide rate is the highest in Europe. I do
not dare to assert that even this rude generalization is warranted by
the facts; but, if it were sustained, it would seem to show that suicide
is a by-product of the great, complicated machine that we call modern
civilization.
Whatever may be the reasons for differences in national suicide rates,
and whatever may be the causes that have produced them, there is little
doubt, I think, that the rates themselves are true manifestations of
national character, and that they are as permanent as the character of
which they are an outcome. When, therefore, a people migrates from one
place to another, it takes both its character and its suicide rate to
the new location. This is clearly apparent in the vital statistics of
immigrants who come from various parts of Europe to the United States.
Such immigrants, as a rule, prosper here and become happier here, but
the increased prosperity and happiness do not greatly affect the
suicidal tendencies that they had when they were poor and wretched in
their original homes. Even their descendants, born in America, keep
substantially unchanged the suicide rates that they have inherited, with
their character, from their European ancestors. The Germans who came
here forty or fifty years ago brought a high suicide rate with them, and
their descendants maintain it. The Irish, on the contrary, brought a low
suicide rate to this country, and their children have it still. In the
following table will be found the suicide rates of a few nationalities
in Europe and of their descendants in the United States.[22]
SUICIDES PER MILLION OF POPULATION
NATIONALITIES IN EUROPE IN THE U. S.
Native Americans 68
Hungarians 114 118
Germans 213 193
French 228 220
English 100 104
In an address delivered before the Anthropological Society of
Washington, D. C., on October 19, 1880, Mr. M. B. W. Hough said: "As
long as the features of the ancestor are repeated in his descendants, so
long will the traits of his character reappear. Language may change,
customs be left behind, races may migrate from place to place and
subsist on whatever the country they occupy affords; but their
fundamental characteristics will survive, because they are comparatively
uninfluenced by the mere accidents of nutrition." This statement is as
true of suicide as it is of other manifestations of national character.
_Odd Methods Employed by Suicides_