(H.M. Registration Examiner for East of Scotland).
There is an elusiveness here and there in this paper which has helped to
confirm me in the opinion that it is well to emphasise the fact that
Prof. Geddes is not only a dreamer of lofty dreams but a doer and a
practical initiator. He has expressed himself not only in words but in
art and in architecture, and in educational organisation; and he has in
many ways, sometimes indirectly, influenced scholastic and civic
activities.
If from the Outlook Tower he dreams of an idealised Edinburgh he has
only to reply to the scoffer who asks, "What have you done?"
"_Circumspice!_" There stand the settlements he initiated, the houses
beautiful, bright, delectable; and the tower itself is an embodiment of
his ideas, an encyclopædia in stone and in storeys.
We must, in criticising this paper, take into account these attempts
towards realisation of its principles. The sociological evolutionist is
"concerned primarily with origins, but ultimately and supremely with
ideals," we were reminded in a recent paper read before this Society.
And in the same paper it was affirmed that, "through the formulation of
its larger generalisations as ideals, sociology may hope to achieve the
necessary return from theory to practice." Thus, if Civics is applied
Sociology, we must rest its claims on these criteria. What, then, we
have to ask is:--(1) What actually are the generalisations of the
present paper? (2) How far they are warranted by verifiable sociological
testimony, and (3) What results do they yield when transformed by the
touch of emotion into ideals of action? To attempt an adequate answer to
these questions would perhaps transcend the limits of this discussion.
But merely to raise these questions of presupposition should tend to
clarify the discussion. Coming to detail, I may say, as one whose
occupation is demographic, I regret the unavoidable briefness of the
reference in "Civics" to a "rationalised census of the present condition
of the people."
[Page: 135] No one, however, who has studied the concluding portion of
"The Evolution of Sex" can accuse Prof. Geddes of ignoring questions of
_population_; and his eulogium, written ten years ago, of "Mr. Charles
Booth as one of our own latest and best Economists," is familiar to all
readers of "Education for Economics and Citizenship." In that extremely
suggestive treatise, Prof. Geddes further points out that population
must have a primary place in consideration, and that "our studies of the
characteristic occupation of region by region are the essential material
of a study of its whole civilisation."
Accepting Mr. Branford's definition of _occupation_ as "any and every
form of human endeavour, past, present, and future," we see that
occupation must have a large place in the description, explanation, and
forecasting of the evolution of cities--such as Edinburgh, Glasgow,
Dundee--in the scheme of survey outlined so sweepingly in "Civics."
"Life and Labour of the People in London" contains several general
observations almost equally applicable to our largest Scottish cities,
with the demographic conditions of which my official duties give me
special opportunities for becoming familiar and for regional survey.
In the concluding volume of that great contribution to sociology Mr.
Booth (page 23) remarks:--
"Many influences conspire to cause the poor to multiply almost in
proportion to their poverty, and operate in the other direction in the
case of the better off, almost in proportion to their wealth. But," says
Mr. Booth, "when we bring the death-rate into account this law no longer
holds."
With the poor living under bad conditions in crowded homes the net
increase is diminished. To those of us who are hopeful of improvement by
eugenics it is pleasing to note that Mr. Booth--somewhat unlike Mr. Kidd
in his well-known "Social Evolution"--is optimistic in his conclusion
that "on the whole it may fairly be expected that concurrently with a
rising standard of health we may see a fall in birth-rate as well as
death-rate, and thus have no cause to fear, as the result of better
sanitation, that the largest natural increase in population will ever be
contributed by the lowest class." So the heritage of the city may grow
not only in quantity but also in quality.
From PROFESSOR W.I. THOMAS
(Professor in the University of Chicago, U.S.A.)
From the standpoint of its applicability to new countries like America,
Professor Geddes' programme is inadequate because of its failure to
recognise that a city under these conditions is formed by a rapid and
contemporaneous movement of population, and not by the lapse of time.
[Page: 136] The first permanent white settler came to Chicago precisely
one hundred years ago, and the city has a population at present of about
two and a quarter millions. It is here not a question of slow historic
development but of the rapid drifting towards a certain point, of a
population from all quarters of the globe, and the ethnological
standpoint therefore becomes of more importance than the historical.