defective type in stature. He seems to be susceptible to favorable
influences, however; for in London, the West End prosperous Jews
almost equal the English in height, while they at the same time
surpass their East End brethren by more than three inches.[14]
In Russia also they become taller as a class wherever the life
conditions become less rigorously oppressive. They are taller in the
fertile Ukraine than in sterile Lithuania; they sometimes boast of
a few relatively tall men.[15] These facts all go to show that the
Jew is short, not by heredity, but by force of circumstances; and
that where he is given an even chance, he speedily recovers a part
at least of the ground lost during many ages of social persecution.
Jacobs mentions an interesting fact in this connection about his
upper-class English Jews. Close analysis of the data seems to show
that, for the present at least, their physical development has been
stretched nearly to the upper limit; for even in individual cases the
West End Jews of London manifest an inability to surpass the height
of five feet nine inches. So many have been blessed by prosperity
that the average has nearly reached that of the English; but it is
a mean stature of which the very tall form no component part. Thus
perhaps does the influence of heredity obstruct the temporary action
of environment.
Whether this short stature of the Jew is a case of an acquired
characteristic which has become hereditary, we are content to leave
an open question. All we can say is, that the modern Semites in
Arabia and Africa are all of goodly size, far above the Jewish
average.[16] This would tend to make us think that the harsh
experiences of the past have subtracted several cubits from the
stature of the people of Israel. In self-defense it must be said that
the Christian is not entirely to blame for the physical disability.
It is largely to be ascribed to the custom of early marriages among
them. This has probably been an efficient cause of their present
degeneracy in Russia, where Tschubinsky describes its alarming
prevalence. Leroy-Beaulieu says that it is not at all uncommon to
find the combined age of husband and wife, or even of father and
mother, to be under thirty years. The Shadchan, or marriage broker,
has undoubtedly been an enemy to the Jewish people within their own
lines. In the United States, where they are, on the other hand,
on the up grade socially, there are indications that this age of
marriage is being postponed, perhaps even unduly.[17]
[Illustration: SOCIAL STATUS WARSAW.]
A second indication in the case of the Jew of uncommonly hard
usage in the past remains to be mentioned. These people are,
anthropologically as well as proverbially, narrow-chested and
deficient in lung capacity. Normally the chest girth of a
well-developed man ought to equal or exceed one half his stature,
yet in the case of the Jews as a class this is almost never the
case. Majer and Kopernicki[18] first established this in the case
of the Galician Jews. Stieda[19] gives additional testimony to the
same effect. Jacobs[20] shows the English Jews distinctly inferior
to Christians in lung capacity, which is generally an indication of
vitality. In Bosnia, Glück[21] again refers to it as characteristic.
Granted, with Weissenberg,[22] that it is an acquired characteristic,
the effect of long-continued subjection to unfavorable sanitary and
social environment, it has none the less become a hereditary trait;
for not even the perhaps relatively recent prosperity of Jacobs's
West End Jews has sufficed to bring them up to the level of their
English brethren in capacity of the lungs.
At this point a surprising fact confronts us. Despite the appearances
of physical degeneracy which we have noted, the Jew betrays an
absolutely unprecedented tenacity of life. It far exceeds, especially
in the United States, that of any other known people.[23] This we
may illustrate by the following example: Suppose two groups of one
hundred infants each, one Jewish, one of average American parentage
(Massachusetts), to be born on the same day. In spite of all the
disparity of social conditions in favor of the latter, the chances,
determined by statistical means, are that one half of the Americans
will die within forty-seven years; while the first half of the Jews
will not succumb to disease or accident before the expiration of
seventy-one years. The death rate is really but little over half that
of the average American population. This holds good in infancy as
in middle age. Lombroso has put it in another way. Of one thousand
Jews born, two hundred and seventeen die before the age of seven
years; while four hundred and fifty-three Christians--more than twice
as many--are likely to die within the same period. This remarkable
tenacity of life is well illustrated by the following table from a
most suggestive article by Hoffmann.[24] We can not forbear from
reproducing it in this place.
_Death Rates per 1,000 Population in the Seventh, Tenth, and
Thirteenth Wards of New York City, 1890, by Place of Birth._
----------------+--------+-------------+--------+--------+-------------
| |United States| | | Russia and
AGES. | Total. | (includes |Ireland.|Germany.| Poland
| | colored). | | |(mostly Jews).
----------------+--------+-------------+--------+--------+-------------
Total | 26.25 | 45.18 | 36.04 | 22.14 | 16.71
Under 15 years | 41.28 | 62.25 | 40.71 | 30.38 | 32.31
15 to 25 years | 7.55 | 9.43 | 15.15 | 7.14 | 2.53
25 to 65 years | 21.64 | 25.92 | 39.51 | 21.20 | 7.99
65 and under | 104.72 | 105.96 | 120.92 | 88.51 | 84.51
----------------+--------+-------------+--------+--------+-------------
From this table it appears, despite the extreme poverty of the
Russian and Polish Jews in the most densely crowded portions of New
York; despite the unsanitary tenements, the overcrowding, the long
hours in sweat shops; that nevertheless, a viability is manifested
which is simply unprecedented. Tailoring is one of the most deadly
occupations known; the Jews of New York are principally engaged in
this employment; and yet they contrive to live nearly twice as long
on the average as their neighbors, even those engaged in the outdoor
occupations.
Is this tenacity of life despite every possible antagonistic
influence, an ethnic trait; or is it a result of peculiar customs and
habits of life? There is much which points to the latter conclusion
as the correct one. For example, analysis of the causes of mortality
shows an abnormally small proportion of deaths from consumption and
pneumonia, the dread diseases which, as we know, are responsible
for the largest proportion of deaths in our American population.
This immunity can best be ascribed to the excellent system of meat
inspection prescribed by the Mosaic laws. It is certainly not a
result of physical development, as we have just seen. Hoffmann cites
authority showing that in London often as much as a third of the
meats offered for sale are rejected as unfit for consumption by Jews.
Is not this a cogent argument in favor of a more rigid enforcement of
our laws providing for the food inspection of the poor?
A second cause conducive to longevity is the sobriety of the Jew, and
his disinclination toward excessive indulgence in alcoholic liquors.
Drunkenness among Jews is very rare. Temperate habits, a frugal
diet, with a very moderate use of spirits, render the proportion
of Bright's disease and affections of the liver comparatively very
small. In the infectious diseases, on the other hand, diphtheria and
the fevers, no such immunity is betrayed. The long-current opinion
that the Jews were immune from cholera and the other pestilences of
the middle ages is not to-day accepted. A third notable reason for
this low death rate is also, as Hoffmann observes, the nature of
the employment customary among Jews, which renders the proportion
of deaths from accidental causes exceedingly small. In conclusion,
it may be said that these people are prone to nervous and mental
disorders; insanity, in fact, is fearfully prevalent among them.
Lombroso asserts it to be four times as frequent among Italian
Jews as among Christians. This may possibly be a result of close
inbreeding in a country like Italy, where the Jewish communities are
small. It does not, however, seem to lead to suicide, for this is
extraordinarily rare among Jews, either from cowardice, as Lombroso
suggests; or more probably for the reason cited by Morselli--namely,
the greater force of religion and other steadying moral factors.
[_To be continued._]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In the preparation of this article I have to acknowledge the
courtesy of Mr. Joseph Jacobs, of London, whose works in this line
are accepted as an authority. In its illustration I have derived
invaluable assistance from Dr. S. Weissenberg, of Elizabethgrad,
Russia, and Dr. L. Bertholon, of Tunis. Both these gentlemen have
loaned me a large number of original photographs of types from
their respective countries. Dr. Bertholon has also taken several
especially for use in this way. The more general works upon which
we have relied are: R. Andree, Zur Volkskunde der Juden, Bielefeld,
1881; A. Leroy-Beaulieu, Les Juifs et l'antisémitisme, Paris, 3e
éd. 1893; and C. Lombroso, Gli Antisemitismo, Torino, 1894. For all
other authorities to whom reference is made by name and year, consult
our comprehensive Bibliography of the Anthropology and Ethnology
of Europe, in a forthcoming Special Bulletin of the Boston Public
Library. In its index under "Jews" and "Semites" will be found an
exhaustive list of authorities given chronologically.
[2] Andree, 1881, pp. 194 _et seq._, with tables appended; Jacobs,
1886 a, p. 24; and quite recently A. Leroy-Beaulieu, 1893, chapter
i, are best on this. Tschubinsky, 1877, gives much detail at first
hand on western Russia. In the Seventeenth Annual Report of the
Anglo-Jewish Association, London, 1888, is a convenient census,
together with a map of distribution for Europe. On America, no
official data of any kind exist. The censuses have never attempted an
enumeration of the Jews. Schimmer's results from the census of 1880
in Austria-Hungary are given in Statistische Monatsschrift, vii, p.
489 _et seq._
[3] This is clearly shown by Schimmer in Statistische Monatsschrift,
vii, pp. 489 _et seq._
[4] See also map in Kettler, 1880.
[5] J. C. Majer (1862) ascribes the shortness of stature in Furth to
this Jewish influence.
[6] 1892.
[7] 1895, p. 577.
[8] 1891.
[9] Glück, 1896; and Weisbach, 1877 and 1895 a.
[10] Majer and Kopernicki, 1877, p. 36, for Ruthenia; Stieda, 1883,
p. 70; Anutchin, 1889, p. 114, etc.
[11] Zakrezewski, 1891, p. 38. In the October Monthly our stature map
of all Russia brings out the contrast very strongly.
[12] Centralblatt für Anthropologie, iii, p. 66. Uke, cited by
Andree, 1881, p. 32, agrees.
[13] Popular Science Monthly, vol. li, p. 20 _et seq._ (May, 1897),
and vol. lii, p. 602 (March, 1898).
[14] Jacobs, 1889, p. 81.
[15] Talko-Hryncewicz, 1892, pp. 7 and 58.
[16] Collignon, 1887 a, pp. 211 and 326; and Bertholon, 1892, p. 41.
[17] Jacobs, 1891, p. 50, shows it to be less common in other parts
of Europe. In the United States, Dr. Billings finds the marriage rate
to be only 7.4 per 1,000--about one third that of the Northeastern
States.
[18] 1877, p. 59.
[19] 1883, p. 71.
[20] 1889, p. 84.
[21] 1896, p. 591.
[22] 1895, p. 374.
[23] On Jewish demography, consult the special appendix in Lombroso,
1874; Andree, 1881, p. 70; Jacobs, 1891, p. 49. Dr. Billings, in
Eleventh United States Census, 1890, Bulletin No. 19, gives data for
our country. On pathology, see Buschan, 1895.
[24] The Jew as a Life Risk. The Spectator (an actuarial journal)
1895, pp. 222-224, and 233, 234. Lagneau, 1861, p. 411, speaks of a
viability in Algeria even lower than that of the natives.
THE PLAYGROUNDS OF RURAL AND SUBURBAN SCHOOLS.
BY ISABELLA G. OAKLEY.
While the officers and friends of education in large cities are
exerting themselves to provide open-air playgrounds for the schools,
the villages and smaller towns all over the East are reversing the
case. Except in the small district schools, the children's playground
has almost ceased to exist.
This is an evil which has crept in with the tendency to centralize
the schools. When in any place the schools begin to overflow, a
movement to put up a larger building takes place, accompanied by an
effort to create a high-school department; not so much the need of
the community as the ambitious dream of some principal who would be
superintendent, or some sort of central sun to a group of satellites.
This dream is too easily realized, because it flatters the people.
Then there rises a preposterous structure of stone and brick; a house
of many gables, out of keeping with everything, either public or
private, in the place; a temple of vanity. Now is rung the knell of
the school playground, for the new "high school," although it will
house all the children from five to fifteen, must needs be surrounded
by a fine lawn, studded with shrubbery, and threaded by bluestone
roads. The janitor has to employ an assistant to keep the grounds
in order. A shut-in, penitentiarylike place has been evolved by the
architect and school committee, gratifying to their pride and a
deep wrong to the children. There are many wrongs about it; the one
insisted upon here is the abolishing of the recess, that time-honored
joy of the American schoolboy and schoolgirl.
The cheerful sounds of play no more re-echo; the little ones march in
"lock step" from the doors to the very curb of this immaculate ornate
inclosure. If, on this beautiful lawn, any impulsive youngster is
caught running, or performing an instinctive hopscotch or leapfrog,
he is sure to be seen by a watching and powerful janitor and
reported. Leapfrog and profanity, in the true Draconian spirit, are
alike visited with the extreme penalty of a visit to the principal's
office. However, in default of a playground, the new schoolhouse
provides a gymnasium for physical culture. I speak now of a
particular school, the pride of a simple village, and a type of many.
This gymnasium is a costly room filled with elaborate apparatus,
most of which is suited only to the high-school pupils, and never
touched by the majority, who leave school at twelve or thirteen;
their physical exercises have been chiefly provided for by a box of
dumb-bells and wands. In many schools the "gymnasium" is a cavernous
and ugly basement, a place full of shadows cast by the gloomy arches
on which the building rests, with walls of brick and floors of
asphalt. Little troops of silent, pale children arrive and depart
all day for their _physical culture_, a dreary repetition of silent
dumb-bell exercises. There is no speech nor language among them, no
sound is heard but the jingle of the piano and the sharp tones of
the monitor's counting. I have never heard the children count aloud
or accompany the calisthenics by singing except in a private school.
What an alternative for a free recess! No penitentiary drill could
be more perfunctory, spiritless, dead. It must be said of the public
schools that the thing they most seem to dread is the sound of a
child's voice. The rude, untrained intonations, the slovenly speech,
the slouching attitude remain rude, slovenly, and slouching, for all
the school attempts to do for their improvement is infinitely little.
Even the blessed relief of shaking the arm and hand to attract the
teacher's attention has been reduced in some schools to lifting two
fingers.
The pupils generally hate their calisthenics, or, in the new phrase,
physical culture exercises. And they would hate just as sincerely
regulated games superintended by some impossible master of sports.
What they want is spontaneity in play. Public money is wasted in
providing these abhorrent alternatives. Poor little Carthusians as
young as six and seven years are kept in their rooms, and principally
in their seats, above two hours at each session, and often after
that to atone for some delinquency, most likely for speaking. In
many schools they do not leave the room for any kind of exercise. If
they were capable of demanding their rights they would call for both
the abolition of the school lawn and calisthenic basement, and the
restoration of their playground and recess.
From the cruelty of this repression nature finds a little way out;
the children require of the neighbors what they have been deprived
of by the school committee. All around the precincts of the temple
of learning the trodden borders of the sidewalk, churned to mire in
winter and trampled to rock in summer, speak of the victory of the
boys. There are towns, perhaps, where they all go straight home, but
in our town, they gather four times a day in knots of twenties and
fifties for some kind of fun. The patient neighbors go on removing
coats and dinner pails from the pickets, clearing away papers and
missiles from their inclosures, yet I discover that even they would
vote to keep the school lawn; it improves the town. Very true. But
ingenuity could well contrive some way of uniting the playground
and the school park. Spaces of grass to rest the eye and decorate
the square could be interspersed with inclosures of asphalt,
furnished with a few parallel bars and swings, without sacrifice
of appearances. Often the school property is so large that it could
include half a dozen such special playgrounds. We have but to begin
it to find some feasible plan.
If the palatial school and its park is reaction against the "ragged
beggar" of Whittier's lovely poem, sunning in the midst of the
blackberry vines of Hardscrabble Hill, it is a reaction that has gone
too far to suit a generation which loves to read Hosea Bigelow:
"So the old school'us is a place I choose
Afore all others, ef I want to muse;
I set down where I used to set, an' git
My boyhood back, an' better things with it--
Faith, Hope, an' sunthin', ef it isn't Cherrity,
It's want o' guile, an' thet's ez gret a rarity."
If it may be replied, that is not the generation for whom
schoolhouses are now built, it is one which may interpret the wants
of its children by just such recollections.
Another evil has grown out of the centralization of the schools.
The smaller schoolhouses formerly stood within convenient reach,
and by abandoning them we have forced many little children to walk
farther than they are able to walk. In the absence of street cars and
sidewalks this becomes a great hardship in extreme weather. In one
village in New York, out of an enrollment of fourteen hundred, there
was one month last year an average attendance of four hundred. The
new school building, which had cost seventy-five thousand dollars,
was more than two miles from some part of the district, and there
were no sidewalks; neither were there paved streets or street lamps.
In such circumstances a number of children are unable to get home
to the noon meal, usually dinner, and most important. Where do they
eat their luncheon? In their seats, watched by teachers, who are
compelled unwillingly to take turns at this duty, and who have also
to eat a cold, unpalatable lunch in bad air for a week at a time.
After lunch there is an hour to be disposed of by the children, but
there is no place to play in except the basement or the streets
of the neighborhood. The teachers frequently read them a story,
that they may stretch their minds a little if not their bodies.
It is a painful sight--few more painful to me--to see a crowd of
young children having their recreation in one of these basements.
Running and loud talking are forbidden; a police of teachers armed
with symbols of authority and punishment keep the restless little
prisoners within bounds.
Another objection to the central school is the rainy-day
half-session. Though the daily instruction may be managed so that the
pupils do not miss anything, it is still a fact that the majority of
parents expect the school to take charge of their children, and are
often much dissatisfied to have them thrown back upon their own hands
on rainy days.
How has it come about that the playground and school recess
have been so generally given up? Is it altogether on account of
appearances? Teachers plead that the children ought to be preserved
from association with objectionable playmates. This may do for the
touch-me-not, only child, but in American society it is never a
strong plea. That small fraction which seeks to educate its children
as a class can do so in a few schools limited to church, plutocracy,
Quakerism, or some such narrow basis. But the schools of a free
State are, above everything, founded on the essential equality of
individuals in the State, and the possibility of every one to rise to
a successful and honorable manhood. If there is one conviction above
another strengthened by experience, it is that, in their choice of
companions and susceptibility to influence, children are governed by
their innate qualities, and these qualities are fixed by heredity and
home influences long before the school age. In so large a community
as a public school there is companionship for all, for it certainly
represents the town itself. Let no one be afraid of the democratic
instincts of childhood.
I believe the playground is abolished because it interferes with
that deadly order and craze for supervision which is sought for as
the prime condition both inside and outside the schools. Order of
a wholesome sort is not inconsistent with the free recess of a big
school. I watched in Los Angeles a great school as it was marshaled
out to play and back again at the sound of a drum. After a quarter
of an hour of unrestrained sport, several hundreds were gathered in
lines at the tap of the drum, facing the cheerful schoolhouse in the
mild bright sun, their faces radiating contentment and good will
while they straightened up at the mere hint of the teachers on duty.
In San Francisco I once found a certain primary school keeping doll's
day, when every girl brought her doll to school and exhibited her at
recess. The school yard was a barren inclosure within a high board
fence, but a joyful place to that young company. To what purpose are
teachers urged to study psychology? The children in their seats are
emptied of everything that pertains to their souls. Not to study,
because the teacher will explain everything, and to behave just well
enough to get safe out of school, is the simple code which covers the
conduct of average children. To extend this code to ideas of social
duty--the highest--is not possible while they do not form a society.
Cultivation of friendship is just as much out of the case; awakening
of ideals, an impossibility. But thrown together half an hour or
more each day, the dead machinery that pulls the bells and adds the
marks within the school walls gives way to life; and here a man who
sympathizes with childhood has all the opportunity he needs, and
probably much more than he can use, in providing for that life where
a code of reciprocity and honor must be established. It is not as the
magistrate he will successfully rule, but as the sympathetic general
in the field, whose very name is a talisman and an inspiration to
every man. In the school yard, the bully, who comes to the front in
about every tenth child, needs to be repressed; the foul mouth must
be cleansed; against these prevailing evils the playground has a
protection the street can not possess. The boy's world is a peculiar
world, certainly, making laws for itself as rigorous and about as
barbarous as those of a gang of pirates; but it is through his
_esprit du corps_ he can be uplifted and educated; the individual may
be a selfish animal; as one of a body he is capable of heroism and
devotion to a noble idea. He can be a friend; the playground is the
field for the natural growth of friendships, and youth the generous
time of their birth.