CIVILIZATION FOLLOWS THE STORM TRACKS
THE MOST DOMINANT RACES—THOSE THAT BEST CO-ORDINATE THE MENTAL
AND PHYSICAL FACULTIES—ARE FOUND TO EXIST UNDER CERTAIN CLIMATIC
CONDITIONS—CHANGE THE CLIMATE AND YOU CHANGE THE MAN
In a climate where man needs little protection from the elements,
where he may lie upon his back in the shade and with his bare toes
pick wild growing fruit to nourish his body, one will find no great
leaders in art, literature, science, statecraft, or industry;
likewise, in the Arctic, where man simply gathers enough blubber to
supply his animal wants and then burrows beneath the snows of fierce
winters, one will not find leadership or creative genius. The regions
of greatest human potential are limited to such portions of the
temperate zone as have an abundance of rainfall, frequent changes in
the weather, and an alluvial soil. In other words, the most perfect
composite of human resourcefulness is found where nature is neither
so fierce as to crush human aspiration, nor yet so gentle as to lull
human desire.
Humboldt says: “Man is the product of soil and climate; he is brother
to the tree, the rocks, and the animals.” We shall endeavor to show
that civilization and the greatest human potential follow the storm
tracks of the world, and that climate is the most important factor
in his environment, for without its proper adjustment to his needs
the richest soil and the most beneficent form of government fail to
bring out the best that is in him. Empire is determined as much by
direction and force of the wind and changes in the weather as by the
scheming of politicians, the deep-laid plans of diplomats, or the
marshaling of battalions.
The first thing that vigorous man requires is active atmospheric
conditions and in his migrations he follows the climatic lines that
appease his desires. A climate of little change between day and
night and between winter and summer is soothing and at the same time
deadening to the human faculties; but changes should be frequent
rather than violent. The daring, the creative, the pioneering, the
persistent spirits of mankind, like snow birds showering themselves
with icy crystals, revel in the cool air, the perpetual oscillations
of temperature, and the frequent changes from sunshine to cloud that
pertain to the regions where storms are most numerous.
Some days the mind works with a joyous lucidity, the spirits are
high and the step elastic and vigorous. On another day the mind is
turbid; it works slowly and hesitates in reaching decisions; one is
listless and lacking in physical energy. On both days one may be in
a perfectly normal physical and mental condition, except for the
effects of the weather.
Under the direction of the writer, comparison of the records of
crimes of violence with the weather records, by officials of the U.
S. Weather Bureau, showed a marked increase of crime of this sort
during midsummer as against midwinter, and the extremely hot summer
showed more crime than the cool ones. During recent years Ellsworth
Huntington has made exhaustive and extremely valuable studies of
the records of piece workers in factories and elsewhere from New
England and the Middle Atlantic States down to Florida and the Gulf
of Mexico, and also of the mental activities of the cadets at West
Point and Annapolis, and of the students in colleges, as shown by
their recitation markings.[4] He has compared these records with
the weather day by day and hour by hour and definitely shown a
direct relation between variations in the meteorological conditions
and human efficiency. He finds that people’s health and strength
are greatest when the temperature falls to between 56° and 60° at
night and rises to somewhere between 68° and 72° during the day. He
has determined the optimum, or, in other words, the meteorological
conditions best suited to man’s health, happiness, and efficiency.
For mental activity the optimum temperature is much lower than for
physical. People’s minds are more alert, they reason with greater
analytic precision, they have greater confidence in their decisions
and they are more optimistic, when the temperature falls to about
freezing at night and rises to 45° or 50° during the day. Except for
limited activities, the most efficient man is the one in whom the
mental and physical faculties are most perfectly coördinated. Broadly
speaking, this agreement may be best accomplished during times when
the daily temperature ranges between 45° and 65°.
Excessive humidity in midsummer—eighty per cent. or over—is harmful
and adds enormously to the death rate; on the other hand, some of the
worst colds may come from extreme dryness in summer. It may be found
feasible to dry the air in sleeping and living rooms in summer when
the humidity is too high, by closing the apartment and forcing the
air over or through calcium carbide or melting ice and salt. When the
air is kept at 65 to 70 per cent. humidity in winter one will feel
comfortable in a much lower temperature—about 68°—than when the air
is extremely dry, as it usually is in the average living apartment.
With a relative humidity of 30 to 40 per cent. which one now often
finds in warm houses in winter, the temperature may be forced up
to 75° or over and still one may feel cold, because of the rapid
evaporation from the pores of the skin, and the cold created inside
the clothing by the heat lost in the process of evaporation. Bear in
mind that perspiration is going on at all temperatures, even if one
is unconscious of the fact.
In the most populous portions of the United States there are two
periods of maximum efficiency and two of minimum each year. Let us
consider that wonderful region including southern New England, the
Middle Atlantic States, the Ohio Valley, and westward to the Rocky
Mountains. Again referring to the records of Huntington we find that
human energy is greatest in October; the output of factory, mine, and
counting room is greater per man than at any other time of the year
and the product of mental effort is greater and of higher quality.
Likewise disease is less and the death rate the least. From this time
there is a loss in energy until January or February, when vitality
and efficiency may have dropped twenty to thirty per cent. Then there
is a gain until May or early June, when the conditions of health and
efficiency are nearly equal to the most favorable time of the year
in October. Again there is a loss until the middle of July, when a
second minimum occurs; physical and mental energy are at a low ebb
and the death rate is high. Diseases are not quite the same as in
winter, as stomach troubles are more common than colds. The hotter
the summer and the colder the winter the less favorable are the
conditions of human existence.
As there is a certain optimum beyond which diurnal and annual range
of temperature cannot increase without a loss in energy, so there
is a limitation in latitude beyond which the favorable climatic
conditions decrease as one goes northward or southward. As an
example, Canada and northern Maine have but one unfavorable period,
which is the entire winter. The people of these regions are at their
greatest potential July to September, after which they show a steady
decline as the severity of the northern winter draws upon their
vitality, until in January and February their minimum is below that
of regions considerably farther south for the same period.
From the most favorable climatic area in the middle latitudes—and
the entire world possesses none more favorable or of greater extent
than that possessed by the United States—the loss of health and
strength due to the enervating effects of heat, high humidity, and
insufficient temperature oscillations increases as one goes toward
the equator. In Florida and the southern third of the Gulf States
there is but one favorable period, the short winter. The enervating
conditions still further are manifest as one proceeds farther
southward.
In the “Principles of Human Geography”, it is stated that “in Central
France and Southern Germany the seasonal variations in health and
strength are much the same as in Boston, New York, Cleveland, and
Detroit. That is, people are most healthy and strong in October
and early November and again in May and early June, while they are
weakest and most subject to disease in January, February, and early
March, and again in July and August. Farther north, for example,
in Scotland, Scandinavia, and Finland, the summer is the best time
of the whole year and the winter the worst. To the south, on the
contrary, in Italy, Spain, and Greece, the harmful effect of the
winter decreases and that of summer increases, until finally on the
south side of the Mediterranean the winter is much the best time of
the whole year, while the long summer greatly diminishes the people’s
efficiency and increases disease and death.”
As the highest mental activity is coincident with temperatures lower
than those that induce the greatest physical energy, it naturally
follows that in the Ohio Valley, southern New England, and the Middle
Atlantic States the mental worker is at his maximum in November
instead of October, and April instead of May.
[Illustration: CHART 17.—MAP OF CLIMATIC ENERGY. (Huntington and
Cushing.)]
Chart 17 shows how human energy would be distributed over the earth
if it depended on climate alone. It is remarkable how almost exactly
it agrees with what we know to be the distribution of the great
political power. Japan is meant to be included in the region of high
power, but the scale of the chart is too small to make this plain.
[Illustration: CHART 18.—DENSITY OF POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES,
1910.]
From the time when man began to lose his tribal instinct and to
assume national consciousness, in Egypt, the Mesopotamian Valley,
and the region between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf, he
has been founding empires of more or less enduring nature, and
with few exceptions has builded towards the west, in the face of
the prevailing winds. The center of Empire has steadily migrated
along the paths of greatest storm frequency. Examine Charts 10, 11,
and 18 and note the relation between density of population and the
closeness of the storm tracks. The figures at the center of each
brace indicate the number of storms that originated in the region of
the brace during a ten-year period, and the lines leading from the
brace show the tracks followed by the centers of the storms. Bear
in mind that each storm covered an area of from five hundred to one
thousand miles in diameter, that it was a vast rotating eddy in the
atmosphere, and that its center of rotation followed one of these
storm tracks. Twelve storms came from the West Indies during these
ten Augusts, fifty-seven from the Rocky Mountains and none from the
Pacific Ocean; while in the ten Januaries none came from the West
Indies and but twenty-two from the Pacific Ocean. But the point to
which your attention is directed is that, no matter what the origin,
the tendency of each storm was to move towards the Ohio Valley,
Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and New England. This tendency
gives to these regions the most frequent changes in weather, with
alternations of sunshine and clouds, and changes in temperature and
air pressure—conditions essential to the development of the greatest
human potential. Here population is the densest, civilization the
highest, and the products of man’s brain and hand greater and more
diversified than elsewhere in this country, and probably than
elsewhere in the world. The United States is abundantly blessed, for
nearly its entire area is under the influence of high atmospheric
potential. Only the region adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico and the
southwest is outside of the favored area, and here the conditions are
charted as medium, and not poor; at least not poor in comparison with
many more purely tropical regions.
To-day the Empire of Human Greatness is centered over the United
States, that is to say, greatness as expressed in material wealth,
population, and homogeneously knit political institutions. Will it
continue its westward migration, or will it remain here indefinitely
for the working out of a civilization higher than yet has come to any
of the nations of the past, or to other of those of the present? So
far as atmospheric activities have to do with its translation from
place to place, we may derive comfort from the fact that storm tracks
do not cross the Pacific Ocean as freely as they do the Atlantic.
In fact our Rocky Mountains are a barrier to the passage of summer
storms (Chart 10) and a reference to Chart 11 will show that of
ninety-five winter storms that crossed our continent during the ten
Januaries of which the chart is a record only twenty-two came into
our area from the Pacific; and we know that these twenty-two largely
originated off our coast somewhere between Hawaii and the Aleutian
Islands. Let us hope that the center of earthly power has reached the
end of its westward journey and that here it shall remain, always
to exercise a just and beneficent influence upon the less favored
portions of the earth.
Enough has been said to indicate that climate is nearly as important
to animal life as it is to the vegetable existence, and that a cold
climate, if it be not so extreme as to limit the production of cereal
crops, and has frequent changes in temperature, pressure, sunshine,
and cloud, favors the development of hardy and resourceful races
of men; in fact, that no dominating race can exist without such
stimulating conditions of climate.