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 regime 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.

It is essential to the theory that not only workmen but their children should be confined to a producing group. The equalizing process may take place even though men do not actually abandon one occupation and enter another; for there exists, in the generation of young men not yet committed to any occupation, a disposable fund of labor which will gravitate naturally to the occupations that pay the largest wages. It is not necessary that blacksmiths should ever become shoemakers, or vice versa, but only that the children of both classes of artisans should be free to enter the trade that is best rewarded.

Professor Cairnes does not claim that his classification is exhaustive, nor that the demarcation is absolute:

No doubt the various ranks and classes fade into each other by imperceptible gradations, and individuals from all classes are constantly passing up or dropping down; but while this is so, it is nevertheless true that the average workman, from whatever rank he be taken, finds his power of competition limited for practical purposes to a certain range of occupations, so that, however high the rates of remuneration in those which lie beyond may rise, he is excluded from sharing them. We are thus compelled to recognize the existence of non-competing industrial groups as a feature of our social economy.

It will be seen that the competition which is here under discussion is of an extraordinary kind; and the fact that the general term is applied to it without explanation is a proof of the vagueness of the conceptions of competition with which acute writers have contented themselves. Actual competition consists invariably in an effort to undersell a rival producer. A carpenter competes with a carpenter because he creates a similar utility and offers it in the market. In the theory of Professor Cairnes the carpenter is the competitor of the blacksmith, because his children may enter the blacksmith's calling. In the actual practice of his own trade, the one artisan in no wise affects the other. It is potential competition rather than actual that is here under discussion; and even this depends for its effectiveness on the action of the rising generation.

Modern methods of production have obliterated Professor Cairnes's dividing lines. Potential competition extends to every part of the industrial field in which men work in organized companies. Throwing out of account the professions, a few trades of the highest sort, and the class of labor which is performed by employers themselves and their salaried assistants, it is practically true that labor is in a universal ebb and flow; it passes freely to occupations which are, for the time being, highly paid, and reduces their rewards to the general level.

This objection to the proposed grouping is not theoretical. The question is one of fact; it is the development of actual industry that has invalidated the theory which, in the seventies, expressed an important truth concerning economic relations in England. Moreover, the author of the theory anticipated one change which would somewhat lessen its applicability to future conditions. He recorded his belief that education would prove a leveler, and that it would merge to some extent the strata of industrial society. The children of hod-carriers might become machinists, accountants, or lawyers when they could acquire the needed education. He admitted also that new countries afford conditions in which the lines of demarcation are faint. He was not in a position to appreciate the chief leveling agency, namely, the machine method of production as now extended and perfected. Education makes the laborer capable of things relatively difficult, and machines render the processes which he needs to master relatively easy. The so-called unskilled workmen stand on a higher personal level than those of former times; and the new methods of manufacturing are reducing class after class to that level. Mechanical labor is resolving itself into processes so simple that anyone may learn them. An old-time shoemaker could not become a watchmaker, and even his children would have found difficulties in their way had they attempted to master the higher trade; but a laster in a Lynn shoe factory can, if he will, learn one of the minute trades that are involved in the making of a Waltham watch. His children may do so without difficulty; and this is all that is necessary for maintaining the normal balance between the trades.

The largest surviving differences between workmen are moral. Bodily strength still counts for something, and mental strength for more; but the consideration which chiefly determines the value of a workman to the employer who intrusts to him costly materials and a delicate machine is the question of fidelity. Character is not monopolized by any social class; it is of universal growth, and tends by the prominent part which it plays in modern industry, to reduce to their lowest terms the class differences of the former era.

The rewards of professional life are gauged primarily by character and native endowment, and are, to this extent, open to the children of workmen. New barriers, however, arise here in the ampler education which, as time advances, is demanded of persons in these pursuits; and these barriers give to a part of the fourth and highest class in the scheme that we are criticising a permanent basis of existence. Another variety of labor retains a pre-eminence based on native adaptations and special opportunities. It is the work of the employer himself. It is an organizing and directing function, and in large industries is performed only in part by the owners. A portion of this work is committed to hired assistants. Strictly speaking, the entrepreneur, or employer, of a great establishment is not one man, but many, who work in a collective capacity, and who receive a reward that, taken in the aggregate, constitutes the "wages of superintendence." To some members of this administrative body the returns come in the form of salaries, while to others they come partly in the form of dividends; but if we regard their work in its entirety, and consider their wages in a single sum, we must class it with entrepreneur's profits rather than with ordinary wages. It is a different part of the product from the sum distributed among day laborers; and this fact separates the administrative group from the class considered in our present inquiry. Positions of the higher sort are usually gained either through the possession of capital or through relations to persons who possess it. Though clerkships of the lower grade demand no attainments which the children of workmen cannot gain, and though promotion to the higher grades is still open, the tendency of the time is to make the transition from the ranks of labor to those of administration more and more difficult. The true laboring class is merging its subdivisions, while it is separating more sharply from the class whose interests, in test questions, place them on the side of capital.

2. Competition and the Natural Harmony of Individual Interests[193]

The general industry of the society never can exceed what the capital of the society can employ. As the number of workmen that can be kept in employment by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to his capital, so the number of those that can be continually employed by all the members of a great society must bear a certain proportion to the whole capital of that society and never can exceed that proportion. No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a part of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone; and it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous to the society than that into which it would have gone of its own accord.

Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.

As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry and so to direct that industry that its product may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner that its product may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ, and of which the product is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

3. Competition and Freedom[194]

What, after all, is competition? Is it something that exists and acts of itself, like the cholera? No, competition is simply the absence of oppression. In reference to the matters that interest me, I prefer to choose for myself and I do not want anyone else to choose for me against my will; that's all. And if anyone undertakes to substitute his judgment for mine in matters that concern me I shall demand the privilege of substituting my wishes for his in matters which concern him. What guaranty is there that this arrangement will improve matters? It is evident that competition is liberty. To destroy liberty of action is to destroy the possibility and consequently the faculty of choosing, judging, comparing; it is to kill intelligence, to kill thought, to kill man himself. Whatever the point of departure, there is where modern reforms always end; in order to improve society it is necessary to annihilate the individual, upon the assumption that the individual is the source of all evil, and as if the individual was not likewise the source of all good.

4. Money and Freedom[195]

Money not only makes the relation of individuals to the group a more independent one, but the content of the special forms of associations and the relations of the participants to these associations is subject to an entirely new process of differentiation.

The medieval corporations included in themselves all the human interests. A guild of cloth-makers was not an association of individuals which cultivated the interests of cloth-making exclusively. It was a community in a vocational, personal, religious, political sense and in many other respects. And however technical the interests that might be grouped together in such an association, they had an immediate and lively interest for all members. Members were wholly bound up in the association.

In contrast to this form of organization the capitalistic system has made possible innumerable associations which either require from their members merely money contributions or are directed toward mere money interests. In the case of the business corporation, especially, the basis of organization of members is exclusively an interest in the dividends, so exclusively that it is a matter of entire indifference to the individual what the society (enterprise) actually produces.

The independence of the person of the concrete objects, in which he has a mere money interest, is reflected, likewise, in his independence, in his personal relations, of the other individuals with whom he is connected by an exclusive money interest. This has produced one of the most effective cultural formations—one which makes it possible for individuals to take part in an association whose objective aim it will promote, use, and enjoy without this association bringing with it any further personal connection or imposing any further obligation. Money has brought it about that one individual may unite himself with others without being compelled to surrender any of his personal freedom or reserve. That is the fundamental and unspeakably significant difference between the medieval form of organization which made no difference between the association of men as men and the association of men as members of an organization. The medieval form or organization united equally in one circle the entire business, religious, political, and friendly interests of the individuals who composed it.

III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. Biological Competition

The conception of competition has had a twofold origin: in the notions (a) of the struggle for existence and (b) of the struggle for livelihood. Naturally, then, the concept of competition has had a parallel development in biology and in economics. The growth of the notion in these two fields of thought, although parallel, is not independent. Indeed, the fruitful process of interaction between the differing formulations of the concept in biology and economics is a significant illustration of the cross-fertilization of the sciences. Although Malthus was a political economist, his principle of population is essentially biological rather than economic. He is concerned with the struggle for existence rather than for livelihood. Reacting against the theories of Condorcet and of Godwin concerning the natural equality, perfectability, and inevitable progress of man, Malthus in 1798 stated the dismal law that population tends to increase in geometrical progression and subsistence in arithmetical progression. In the preface to the second edition of his Essay on the Principle of Population Malthus acknowledged his indebtedness to "Hume, Wallace, Dr. Adam Smith and Dr. Price." Adam Smith no doubt anticipated and perhaps suggested to Malthus his thesis in such passages in the Wealth of Nations as, "Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the means of their subsistence," "The demand for men necessarily regulates the production of men." These statements of the relation of population to food supply, however, are incidental to Smith's general theories of economics; the contribution of Malthus lay in taking this principle out of its limited context, giving it the character of scientific generalization, and applying it to current theories and programs of social reform.

The debt of biology to Malthus is acknowledged both by Darwin and by Wallace. Fifteen months after Darwin had commenced his inquiry a chance reading of Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population gave him the clue to the explanation of the origin of species through the struggle for existence. During an attack of intermittent fever Wallace recalled Malthus' theory which he had read twelve years before and in it found the solution of the problem of biological evolution.

Although the phrase "the struggle for existence" was actually used by Malthus: Darwin, Wallace, and their followers first gave it a general application to all forms of life. Darwin in his The Origin of Species, published in 1859, analyzed with a wealth of detail the struggle for existence, the nature and forms of competition, natural selection, the survival of the fittest, the segregation and consequent specialization of species.

Biological research in recent years has directed attention away from the theory of evolution to field study of plant and animal communities. Warming, Adams, Wheeler, and others have described, in their plant and animal ecologies, the processes of competition and segregation by which communities are formed. Clements in two studies, Plant Succession and Plant Indicators, has described in detail the life-histories of some of these communities. His analysis of the succession of plant communities within the same geographical area and of the relations of competitive co-operation of the different species of which these communities are composed might well serve as a model for similar studies in human ecology.

2. Economic Competition

Research upon competition in economics falls under two heads: (a) the natural history of competition, and (b) the history of theories of competition.

a) Competition on the economic level, i.e., of struggle for livelihood, had its origins in the market place. Sir Henry Maine, on the basis of his study of village communities, states in effect that the beginnings of economic behavior are first to be seen in neutral meeting places of strangers and foes.

In order to understand what a market originally was, you must try to picture to yourselves a territory occupied by village-communities, self-acting and as yet autonomous, each cultivating its arable land in the middle of its waste, and each, I fear I must add, at perpetual war with its neighbour. But at several points, points probably where the domains of two or three villages converged, there appear to have been spaces of what we should now call neutral ground. These were the Markets. They were probably the only places at which the members of the different primitive groups met for any purpose except warfare, and the persons who came to them were doubtless at first persons especially empowered to exchange the produce and manufactures of one little village-community for those of another. But, besides the notion of neutrality, another idea was anciently associated with markets. This was the idea of sharp practice and hard bargaining.

What is the real origin of the feeling that it is not creditable to drive a hard bargain with a near relative or friend? It can hardly be that there is any rule of morality to forbid it. The feeling seems to me to bear the traces of the old notion that men united in natural groups do not deal with one another on principles of trade. The only natural group in which men are now joined is the family; and the only bond of union resembling that of the family is that which men create for themselves by friendship.

The general proposition which is the basis of Political Economy, made its first approach to truth under the only circumstances which admitted of men meeting at arm's length, not as members of the same group, but as strangers. Gradually the assumption of the right to get the best price has penetrated into the interior of these groups, but it is never completely received so long as the bond of connection between man and man is assumed to be that of family or clan connection. The rule only triumphs when the primitive community is in ruins. What are the causes which have generalized a Rule of the Market until it has been supposed to express an original and fundamental tendency of human nature, it is impossible to state fully, so multifarious have they been. Everything which has helped to convert a society into a collection of individuals from being an assemblage of families has helped to add to the truth of the assertion made of human nature by the Political Economists.[196]

The extension of the relations of the market place to practically all aspects of life having to do with livelihood has been the outcome of the industrial revolution and the growth of Great Society. Standardization of commodities, of prices, and of wages, the impersonal nature of business relations, the "cash-nexus" and the credit basis of all human relations has greatly extended the external competitive forms of interaction. Money, with its abstract standards of value, is not only a medium of exchange, but at the same time symbol par excellence of the economic nature of modern competitive society.

The literature describing change from the familial communism, typical of primitive society, to the competitive economy of modern capitalistic society is indicated in the bibliography.

b) The history of competition as a concept in political economy goes back to the Physiocrats. This French school of economists, laying stress upon the food supply as the basis and the measure of the wealth of the nation, demanded the abolition of restrictions upon agricultural production and commerce. The Physiocrats based their theories upon the natural rights of individuals to liberty.

The miserable state of the nation seemed to demand a volte face. Taxes were many and indirect. Let them be single and direct. Liberty of enterprise was shackled. Let it be free. State-regulation was excessive. Laissez-faire! Their economic plea for liberty is buttressed by an appeal to Nature, greater than kings or ministers, and by an assertion of the natural, inherent rights of man to be unimpeded in his freedom except so far as he infringes upon that of others.[197]

While the Physiocrats emphasized the beneficent effects of freedom in industry to which the individual has a natural right, Adam Smith, in his book The Wealth of Nations, emphasized the advantages of competition. To him competition was a protection against monopoly. "It [competition] can never hurt either the consumer or the producer; on the contrary it must tend to make the retailers both sell cheaper and buy dearer than if the whole trade was monopolized by one or two persons!"[198] It was at the same time of benefit to both producer and consumer. "Monopoly is a great enemy to good management which can never be universally established but in consequence of that free and universal competition which forces everybody to have recourse to it for the sake of self-defence."[199]

Before Darwin, competition had been conceived in terms of freedom and of the natural harmony of interests. His use of the term introduced into competition the notion of struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. This new conception, in which competition appears as a fundamental process in all life, has been a powerful prop to the laissez faire policy and has led to its continuance regardless of the misery and destitution which, if it did not create, it certainly did not remedy. The works of Herbert Spencer, the greatest expounder of the doctrine of evolution, contain a powerful massing of evidence in favor of laissez faire as a conclusion to be drawn from a scientific study of human behavior. "Nothing but the slow modifications of human nature by the discipline of social life," he said, "can produce permanently advantageous changes. A fundamental error pervading the thinking of nearly all parties, political and social, is that evils admit of immediate and radical remedies."[200]

With the growth of large-scale production with the tendency to the formation of combinations and monopolies, as a result of freedom of competition, works began to appear on the subject of unrestricted competition. The expressions "unfair" and "cut-throat" competition, which occur frequently in recent literature, suggest the new point of view. Another euphemism under which other and more far-reaching proposals for the limitation of competition and laissez faire have been proposed is "social justice." In the meantime the trend of legislation in England for a hundred years, as Mr. A. V. Dicey[201] has pointed out, has been, in spite of Herbert Spencer, away from the individualistic and in the direction of a collectivistic social order. This means more legislation, more control, and less individual liberty.

The full meaning of this change in law and opinion can only be fully understood, however, when it is considered in connection with the growth of communication, economic organization, and cities, all of which have so increased the mutual interdependence of all members of society as to render illusory and unreal the old freedoms and liberties which the system of laissez faire was supposed to guarantee.

3. Competition and Human Ecology

The ecological conception of society is that of a society created by competitive co-operation. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was a description of society in so far as it is a product of economic competition. David Ricardo, in his Principles of Political Economy, defined the process of competition more abstractly and states its consequences with more ruthless precision and consistency. "His theory," says Kolthamer in his introduction, "seems to be an everlasting justification of the status quo. As such at least it was used."

But Ricardo's doctrines were both "a prop and a menace to the middle classes," and the errors which they canonized have been the presuppositions of most of the radical and revolutionary programs since that time.

The socialists, adopting his theories of value and wages, interpreted Ricardo's crude expressions to their own advantage. To alter the Ricardian conclusions, they said, alter the social conditions upon which they depend: to improve upon subsistence wage, deprive capital of what it steals from labour—the value which labour creates. The land-taxers similarly used the Ricardian theory of rent: rent is a surplus for the existence of which no single individual is responsible—take it therefore for the benefit of all, whose presence creates it.[202]

The anarchistic, socialistic, and communistic doctrines, to which reference is made in the bibliography, are to be regarded as themselves sociological phenomena, without reference to their value as programs. They are based on ecological and economic conceptions of society in which competition is the fundamental fact and, from the point of view of these doctrines, the fundamental evil of society. What is sociologically important in these doctrines is the wishes that they express. They exhibit among other things, at any rate, the character which the hopes and the wishes of men take in this vast, new, restless world, the Great Society, in which men find themselves but in which they are not yet, and perhaps never will be, at home.

4. Competition and the "Inner Enemies": the Defectives, the Dependents, and the Delinquents

Georg Simmel, referring, in his essay on "The Stranger," to the poor and the criminal, bestowed upon them the suggestive title of "The Inner Enemies." The criminal has at all times been regarded as a rebel against society, but only recently has the existence of the dependent and the defective been recognized as inimical to the social order.[203]

Modern society, so far as it is free, has been organized on the basis of competition. Since the status of the poor, the criminal, and the dependent, has been largely determined by their ability or willingness to compete, the literature upon defectiveness, dependency, and delinquency may be surveyed in its relation to the process of competition. For the purposes of this survey the dependent may be defined as one who is unable to compete; the defective as the person who is, if not unable, at least handicapped, in his efforts to compete. The criminal, on the other hand, is one who is perhaps unable, but at any rate refuses, to compete according to the rules which society lays down.

Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population first called attention to the pathological effects of the struggle for existence in modern society and emphasized the necessity of control, not merely in the interest of the defeated and rejected members of society, but in the interest of society itself. Malthus sought a mitigation, if not a remedy, for the evils of overpopulation by what he called "moral restraint," that is, "a restraint from marriage, from prudential motives, with a conduct strictly moral during the period of restraint." The alternatives were war, famine, and pestilence. These latter have, in fact, been up to very recent times the effective means through which the problem of overpopulation has been solved.

The Neo-Malthusian movement, under the leadership of Francis Place, Richard Carlile, and Robert Dale Owen in the decade of 1820-30 and of Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant in the decade of 1870-80, advocated the artificial restriction of the family. The differential decline in the birth-rate, that is, the greater decrease in the number of children in the well-to-do and educated classes as compared with the poor and uneducated masses, was disclosed through investigations by the Galton Eugenics Laboratory in England and characterized as a national menace. In the words of David Heron, a study of districts in London showed that "one-fourth of the married population was producing one-half of the next generation." In United States less exhaustive investigation showed the same tendency at work and the alarm which the facts created found a popular expression in the term "race-suicide."

It is under these circumstances and as a result of investigations and agitations of the eugenists, that the poor, the defective, and the delinquent have come to be regarded as "inner enemies" in a sense that would scarcely have been understood a hundred years ago.

Poverty and dependency in modern society have a totally different significance from that which they have had in societies in the past. The literature descriptive of primitive communities indicated that in the economic communism of a society based on kinship, famines were frequent but poverty was unknown. In ancient and medieval societies the dependency, where it was not professional, as in the case of the mendicant religious orders, was intimate and personal. In this respect it differed widely from the organized, official, and supervised philanthropy of our modern cities.

With the abolition of serfdom, the break-up of the medieval guilds, and the inauguration of a period of individual freedom and relatively unrestricted competition (laissez faire) which ushered in the modern industrial order, the struggle for existence ceased to be communal, and became individual. The new order based on individual freedom, as contrasted with the old order based on control, has been described as a system in which every individual was permitted to "go to hell in his own individual way." "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will," said Mill, "is to prevent harm to others. His own good either physical or moral is not a sufficient warranty." Only when the individual became a criminal or a pauper did the state or organized society attempt to control or assist him in the competitive struggle for existence.[204]

Since competitive industry has its beginnings in England, the study of the English poor laws is instructive. Under the influence of Malthus and of the classical economists the early writers upon poverty regarded it as an inevitable and natural consequence of the operation of the "iron laws" of political economy. For example, when Harriet Martineau was forced to admit, by the evidence collected by the Factory Commissioners in 1833, that "the case of these wretched factory children seems desperate," she goes on to add "the only hope seems to be that the race will die out in two or three generations."

Karl Marx, accepting the Ricardian economics, emphasized the misery and destitution resulting from the competitive process, and demanded the abolition of competition and the substitution therefor of the absolute control of a socialistic state.

Recent studies treat poverty and dependency as a disease and look to its prevention and cure. Trade unions, trade associations, and social insurance are movements designed to safeguard industry and the worker against the now generally recognized consequences of unlimited competition. The conceptions of industrial democracy and citizenship in industry have led to interesting and promising experiments.

In this connection, the efforts of employers to protect themselves as well as the community from accidents and occupational diseases may be properly considered. During and since the Great War efforts have been made on a grand scale to rehabilitate, re-educate, and restore to usefulness the war's wounded soldiers. This interest in the former soldiers and the success of the efforts already made has led to an increased interest in all classes of the industrially handicapped. A number of surveys have been made, in different parts of the country, of the crippled, and efforts are in progress to discover occupations and professions in which the deaf, the blind, and otherwise industrially handicapped can be employed and thus restored to usefulness and relative independence.

The wide extension of the police power in recent times in the interest of public health, sanitation, and general public welfare represents the effort of the government, in an individualistic society in which the older sanctions and securities no longer exist, to protect the individual as well as the community from the effects of unrestricted competition.

The literature of criminology has sought an answer to the enigma of the criminal. The writings of the European criminologists run the gamut of explanation from Lombroso, who explained crime as an inborn tendency of the criminal, to Tarde, who defines the criminal as a purely social product.

W. A. Bonger,[205] a socialist, has sought to show that criminality is a direct product of the modern economic system. Without accepting either the evidence or the conclusions of Bonger, it cannot be gainsaid that the modern offender must be studied from the standpoint of his failure to participate in a wholesome and normal way in our competitive, secondary society which rests upon the institution of private property and individual competition.

The failure of the delinquent to conform to the social code may be studied from two standpoints: (a) that of the individual as an organization of original mental and temperamental traits, and (b) that of a person with a status and a role in the social group. The book The Individual Delinquent, by William Healy, placed the study of the offender as an individual upon a sound scientific basis. That the person can and should be regarded as part and parcel of his social milieu has been strikingly illustrated by T. M. Osborne in two books, Within Prison Walls and Society and Prisons. The fact seems to be that the problem of crime is essentially like that of the other major problems of our social order, and its solution involves three elements, namely: (a) the analysis of the aptitudes of the individual and the wishes of the person; (b) the analysis of the activities of our society with its specialization and division of labor; and (c) the accommodation or adjustment of the individual to the social and economic environment.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. BIOLOGICAL COMPETITION

(1) Crile, George W. Man an Adaptive Mechanism. New York, 1901.

(2) Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. London, 1859.

(3) Wallace, Alfred Russel. Studies Scientific and Social. 2 vols. New York, 1900.

(4) ——. Darwinism. An exposition of the theory of natural selection with some of its applications. Chap. iv, "The Struggle for Existence," pp. 14-40; chap. v, "Natural Selection by Variation and Survival of the Fittest," pp. 102-25. 3d ed. London, 1901.

(5) Weismann, August. On Germinal Selection as a Source of Definite Variation. Translated from the German. Chicago, 1896.

(6) Malthus, T. R. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Or a view of its past and present effects on human happiness, with an inquiry into our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation of the evils which it occasions. 2d ed. London, 1803. [1st ed., 1798.]

(7) Knapp, G. F. "Darwin und Socialwissenschaften," Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik. Erste Folge, XVIII (1872), 233-47.

(8) Thomson, J. Arthur. Darwinism and Human Life. New York, 1918.

II. ECONOMIC COMPETITION

(1) Wagner, Adolf. Grundlegung der politischen Oekonomie. Pp. 794-828. [The modern private industrial system of free competition.] Pp. 71-137. [The industrial nature of men.] Leipzig, 1892-94.

(2) Effertz, Otto. Arbeit und Boden. System der politischen Oekonomie. Vol. II, chaps, xix, xx, xxi, xxiii, xxiv, pp. 237-320. Berlin, 1897.

(3) Marshall, Alfred. Principles of Economics. Appendix A, "The Growth of Free Industry and Enterprise," pp. 723-54. London, 1910.

(4) Seligman, E. R. A. Principles of Economics. Chap, x, pp. 139-53. New York, 1905.

(5) Schatz, Albert. L'Individualisme economique et social, ses origines, son evolution, ses formes contemporaines. Paris, 1907.

(6) Cunningham, William. An Essay on Western Civilization in Its Economic Aspects. Medieval and modern times. Cambridge, 1913.

III. FREEDOM AND LAISSEZ FAIRE

(1) Simmel, Georg. Philosophie des Geldes. Chap. iv, "Die individuelle Freiheit," pp. 279-364. Leipzig, 1900.

(2) Bagehot, Walter. Postulates of English Political Economics. With a preface by Alfred Marshall. New York and London, 1885.

(3) Oncken, August. Die Maxime Laissez Faire et Laissez Passer, ihr Ursprung, ihr Werden. Bern, 1886.

(4) Bastiat, Frederic. Harmonies economiques. 9th ed. Paris, 1884.

(5) Cunningham, William. The Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times. Vol. III, "Laissez Faire." 3 vols. 3d ed. Cambridge, 1903.

(6) Ingram, John K. A History of Political Economy. Chap. v, "Third Modern Phase; System of Natural Liberty." 2d ed. New York, 1908.

(7) Hall, W. P. "Certain Early Reactions against Laissez Faire," Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1913. I, 127-38. Washington, 1915.

(8) Adams, Henry C. "Relation of the State to Industrial Action," Publications of the American Economic Association, I (1887), 471-549.

IV. THE MARKETS

(1) Walker, Francis A. Political Economy. Chap. ii, pp. 97-102. 3d ed. New York, 1887. [Market defined.]

(2) Grierson, P. J. H. The Silent Trade. A contribution to the early history of human intercourse. Edinburgh, 1903. [Bibliography.]

(3) Maine, Henry S. Village Communities in the East and West. Lecture VI, "The Early History of Price and Rent," pp. 175-203. New York, 1885.

(4) Walford, Cornelius. Fairs, Past and Present. A chapter in the history of commerce. London, 1883.

(5) Bourne, H. R. F. English Merchants. Memoirs in illustration of the progress of British commerce. New ed. London, 1898.

(6) Webb, Sidney and Beatrice. Industrial Democracy. Part III, chap. ii, "The Higgling of the Market," pp. 654-702. New ed. London, 1902.

(7) Bagehot, Walter. Lombard Street. A description of the money market. New York, 1876.

V. COMPETITION AND INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION

(1) Crowell, John F. Trusts and Competition. Chicago, 1915. [Bibliography.]

(2) Macrosty, Henry W. Trusts and the State. A sketch of competition. London, 1901.

(3) Carter, George R. The Tendency toward Industrial Combination. A study of the modern movement toward industrial combination in some spheres of British industry; its forms and developments, their causes, and their determinant circumstances. London, 1913.

(4) Levy, Hermann. Monopoly and Competition. A study in English industrial organization. London, 1911.

(5) Haney, Lewis H. Business Organization and Combination. An analysis of the evolution and nature of business organization in the United States and a tentative solution of the corporation and trust problems. New York, 1914.

(6) Van Hise, Charles R. Concentration and Control. A solution of the trust problem in the United States. New York, 1912.

(7) Kohler, Josef. Der unlautere Wettbewerb. Darstellung des Wettbewerbsrechts. Berlin und Leipzig, 1914.

(8) Nims, Harry D. The Law of Unfair Business Competition. Including chapters on trade secrets and confidential business relations; unfair interference with contracts; libel and slander of articles of merchandise, trade names and business credit and reputation. New York, 1909.

(9) Stevens, W. H. S. Unfair Competition. A study of certain practices with some reference to the trust problem in the United States of America. Chicago, 1917.

(10) Eddy, Arthur J. The New Competition. An examination of the conditions underlying the radical change that is taking place in the commercial and industrial world; the change from a competitive to a co-operative basis. New York, 1912.

(11) Willoughby, W. W. Social Justice. A critical essay. Chap. ix, "The Ethics of the Competitive Process," pp. 269-315. New York, 1900.

(12) Rogers, Edward S. Good Will, Trade-Marks and Unfair Trading. Chicago, 1914.

VI. SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM

(1) Stirner, Max. (Kaspar Schmidt). The Ego and His Own. Translated from the German by S. T. Byington. New York, 1918.

(2) Godwin, William. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness. Book V, chap. xxiv. London, 1793.

(3) Proudhon, Pierre Joseph. What Is Property? An inquiry into the principle of right and of government. Translated from the French by B. R. Tucker. New York, 189-?

(4) Zenker, E. V. Anarchism. A criticism and history of the anarchist theory. Translated from the German. New York, 1897. [With bibliographical references.]

(5) Bailie, William. Josiah Warren, the First American Anarchist. A sociological study. Boston, 1906.

(6) Russell, B. A. W. Proposed Roads to Freedom. Socialism, anarchism, and syndicalism. New York, 1919.

(7) Mackay, Thomas, editor. A Plea for Liberty. An argument against socialism and socialistic legislation. New York, 1891.

(8) Spencer, Herbert. "The Man versus the State," Appendix to Social Statics. New York, 1897.

(9) Marx, Karl, and Engels, Frederick. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Authorized English translation edited and annotated by Frederick Engels. London, 1888.

(10) Stein, L. Der Socialismus und Communismus des heutigen Frankreichs. Ein Beitrag zur Zeitgeschichte. Leipzig, 1848.

(11) Guyot, Edouard. Le Socialisme et l'evolution de l'Angleterre contemporaine (1880-1911). Paris, 1913.

(12) Flint, Robert. Socialism. 2d ed. London, 1908.

(13) Beer, M. A History of British Socialism. Vol. I, "From the Days of the Schoolmen to the Birth of Chartism." Vol. II, "From Chartism to 1920." London, 1919-21.

(14) Levine, Louis. Syndicalism in France. 2d ed. New York, 1914.

(15) Brissenden, Paul F. The I. W. W. A study of American syndicalism. New York, 1919. [Bibliography.]

(16) Brooks, John Graham. American Syndicalism. New York, 1913.

(17) ——. Labor's Challenge to the Social Order. Democracy its own critic and educator. New York, 1920.

VII. COMPETITION AND "THE INNER ENEMIES"

A. The Struggle for Existence and Its Social Consequences

(1) Henderson, Charles R. Introduction to the Study of the Dependent, Defective, and Delinquent Classes, and of Their Social Treatment. 2d ed. Boston, 1908.

(2) Grotjahn, Alfred. Soziale Pathologie. Versuch einer Lehre von den sozialen Beziehungen der menschlichen Krankheiten als Grundlage der sozialen Medizin und der sozialen Hygiene. Berlin, 1912.

(3) Lilienfeld, Paul de. La Pathologie sociale. Avec une preface de Rene Worms. Paris, 1896.

(4) Thompson, Warren S. Population. A study in Malthusianism. New York, 1915.

(5) Field, James A. "The Early Propagandist Movement in English Population Theory," American Economic Association Bulletin, 4th Ser., I (1911), 207-36.

(6) Heron, David. On the Relation of Fertility in Man to Social Status. And on the changes in this relation that have taken place during the last fifty years. London, 1906.

(7) Elderton, Ethel M. "Report on the English Birthrate." University of London, Francis Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics. Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs, XIX-XX. London, 1914.

(8) D'Ambrosio, Manlio A. Passivita Economica. Primi principi di una teoria sociologica della popolazione economicamente passiva. Napoli, 1909.

(9) Ellwood, Charles A. Sociology and Modern Social Problems. Rev. ed. New York, 1913.

B. Poverty, Labor, and the Proletariat

(1) Woods, Robert A., Elsing, W. T., and others. The Poor in Great Cities. Their problems and what is being done to solve them. New York, 1895.

(2) Rowntree, B. Seebohm. Poverty, a Study of Town Life. London, 1901.

(3) Devine, Edward T. Misery and Its Causes. New York, 1909.

(4) Marx, Karl. Capital. A critical analysis of capitalist production. Chap. xv, "Machinery and Modern Industry." Translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, and edited by Frederick Engels. London, 1908.

(5) Hobson, John A. Problems of Poverty. An inquiry into the industrial condition of the poor. London, 1891.

(6) Kydd, Samuel [Alfred, pseud.] The History of the Factory Movement. From the year 1802 to the enactment of the ten hours' bill in 1847. 2 vols. London, 1857.

(7) Rowntree, B. S., and Lasker, Bruno. Unemployment, a Social Study. London, 1911.

(8) Beveridge, William Henry. Unemployment. A problem of industry. 3d ed. London, 1912.

(9) Parmelee, Maurice. Poverty and Social Progress. New York, 1916.

(10) Gillin, John L. Poverty and Dependency. Their relief and prevention. New York, 1921.

(11) Sombart, Werner. Das Proletariat; Bilder und Studien. Frankfurt am Main, 1906.

(12) Riis, Jacob A. How the Other Half Lives. Studies among the tenements of New York. New York, 1890.

(13) Nevinson, Margaret W. Workhouse Characters and Other Sketches of the Life of the Poor. London, 1918.

(14) Sims, George R. How the Poor Live; and Horrible London. London, 1898.

C. The Industrially Handicapped

(1) Best, Harry. The Deaf. Their position in society and the provision for their education in the United States. New York, 1914.

(2) ——. The Blind. Their condition and the work being done for them in the United States. New York, 1919.

(3) United States Bureau of the Census. The Blind and the Deaf, 1900. Washington, 1906.

(4) ——. Deaf-Mutes in the United States. Analysis of the census of 1910 with summary of state laws relating to the deaf as of January 1, 1918. Washington, 1918.

(5) ——. The Blind in the United States 1910. Washington, 1917.

(6) Niceforo, Alfredo. Les Classes pauvres. Recherches anthropologiques et sociales. Paris, 1905.

(7) Goddard, Henry H. Feeble-mindedness, Its Causes and Consequences. Chap. i, "Social Problems," pp. 1-20. New York, 1914.

(8) Popenoe, Paul B., and Johnson, Roswell H. Applied Eugenics. Chap. ix, "The Dysgenic Classes," pp. 176-83. New York, 1918.

(9) Pintner, Rudolph, and Toops, Herbert A. "Mental Test of Unemployed Men," Journal of Applied Psychology, I (1917), 325-41; II (1918), 15-25.

(10) Oliver, Thomas. Dangerous Trades. The historical, social, and legal aspects of industrial occupations affecting health, by a number of experts. New York, 1902.

(11) Jarrett, Mary C. "The Psychopathic Employee: a Problem of Industry," Bulletin of the Massachusetts Commission on Mental Diseases, I (1917-18), Nos. 3-4, 223-38. Boston, 1918.

(12) Thompson, W. Gilman. The Occupational Diseases. Their causation, treatment, and prevention. New York, 1914.

(13) Kober, George M., and Hanson, William C., editors. Diseases of Occupation and Vocational Hygiene. Philadelphia, 1916.

(14) Great Britain. Ministry of Munitions. Health of Munition Workers Committee. Hours, fatigue, and health in British munition factories. Reprints of the memoranda of the British Health of Munition Workers Committee, April, 1917. Washington, 1917.

(15) Great Britain Home Department. Report of the Committee on Compensation for Industrial Diseases. London, 1907.

(16) McMurtrie, Douglas C. The Disabled Soldier. With an introduction by Jeremiah Milbank. New York, 1919.

(17) Rubinow, I. M. "A Statistical Consideration of the Number of Men Crippled in War and Disabled in Industry," Publication of Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men. Series I, No. 4, Feb. 14, 1918.

(18) Love, Albert G., and Davenport, C. B. Defects Found in Drafted Men. Statistical information compiled from the draft records showing the physical condition of the men registered and examined in pursuance of the requirements of the selective-service act. War Department, U.S. Surgeon General's Office, Washington, 1920.

D. Alcoholism and Drug Addiction

(1) Partridge, George E. Studies in the Psychology of Intemperance. New York, 1912.

(2) Kelynack, T. N. The Drink Problem of Today in Its Medicosociological Aspects. New York, 1916.

(3) Kerr, Norman S. Inebriety or Narcomania. Its etiology, pathology, treatment, and jurisprudence. 3d ed. London, 1894.

(4) Elderton, Ethel M. "A First Study of the Influence of Parental Alcoholism on the Physique and Ability of the Offspring." Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs, University of London, Francis Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics. London, 1910.

(5) Koren, John. Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem. An investigation made for the Committee of Fifty under the direction of Henry W. Farnam. Boston, 1899.

(6) Towns, Charles B. Habits that Handicap. The menace of opium, alcohol, and tobacco, and the remedy. New York, 1916.

(7) Wilbert, Martin I. "The Number and Kind of Drug Addicts," U.S. Public Health Reprint, No. 294. Washington, 1915.

(8) Rowntree, B. Seebohm. Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium. Chap. xxvi, "The Drink Problem." London, 1910.

(9) McIver, J., and Price, G. F. "Drug Addiction," Journal of the American Medical Association, LXVI (1915), 476-80. [A study of 147 cases.]

(10) Stanley, L. L. "Drug Addictions," Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, X (1919), 62-70. [Four case studies.]

E. Crime and Competition

(1) Parmelee, Maurice. Criminology. Chap. vi, pp. 67-91. New York, 1918.

(2) Bonger, William A. Criminality and Economic Conditions. Translated from the French by H. P. Horton, with editorial preface by Edward Lindsey and with an introduction by Frank H. Norcross. Boston, 1916.

(3) Tarde, G. "La Criminalite et les phenomenes economiques," Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, XVI (1901), 565-75.

(4) Van Kan, J. Les Causes economiques de la criminalite. Etude historique et critique d'etiologie criminelle. Lyon, 1903.

(5) Fornasari di Verce, E. La Criminalita e le vicende economiche d'Italia, dal 1873 al 1890, con prefazione di Ces. Lombroso. Torino, 1894.

(6) Devon, J. The Criminal and the Community. London and New York, 1912.

(7) Breckinridge, Sophonisba, and Abbott, Edith. The Delinquent Child and the Home. Chap. iv, "The Poor Child: The Problem of Poverty," pp. 70-89. New York, 1912.

(8) Donovan, Frances. The Woman Who Waits. Boston, 1920.

(9) Fernald, Mabel R., Hayes, Mary H. S., and Dawley, Almena. A Study of Women Delinquents in New York State. With statistical chapter by Beardsley Ruml; preface by Katharine Bement Davis. Chap. xi, "Occupational History and Economic Efficiency," pp. 304-79. New York, 1920.

(10) Miner, Maude. The Slavery of Prostitution. A plea for emancipation. Chap. iii, "Social Factors Leading to Prostitution," pp. 53-88. New York, 1916.

(11) Ryckere, Raymond de. La Servante criminelle. Etude de criminologie professionelle. Paris, 1908.

TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES

1. The Struggle for Existence and the Survival of the Fittest.

2. Economic Competition and the Economic Equilibrium.

3. "Unfair" Competition and Social Control.

4. Competition versus Sentiment.

5. The History of the Market, the Exchange, the Board of Trade.

6. The Natural History of the Laissez-Faire Theory in Economics and Politics.

7. Competition, Money, and Freedom.

8. Competition and Segregation in Industry and in Society.

9. The Neo-Malthusian Movement and Race Suicide.

10. The Economic Order of Competition and "the Inner Enemies."

11. The History of the English Poor Law.

12. Unemployment and Poverty in a Competitive, Secondary Society.

13. Modern Economy and the Psychology of Intemperance.

14. Modern Industry, the Physically Handicapped and Programs of Rehabilitation.

15. Crime in Relation to Economic Conditions.

16. Methods of Social Amelioration: Philanthropy, Welfare Work in Industry, Social Insurance, etc.

17. Experiments in the Limitation of Competition: Collective Bargaining, Trade Associations, Trade Boards, etc.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. In what fields did the popular conceptions of competition originate?

2. In what way does competition as a form of interaction differ from conflict, accommodation, and assimilation?

3. What do you understand to be the difference between struggle, conflict, competition, and rivalry?

4. What are the different forms of the struggle for existence?

5. In what different meanings do you understand Darwin to use the term "the struggle for existence"? How many of these are applicable to human society?

6. What do you understand Darwin to mean when he says: "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"? Does his principle, in your opinion, also apply to the structure of social groups?

7. What examples of competition occur to you in human or social relations? In what respects are they (a) alike, (b) different, from competition in plant communities?

8. To what extent is biological competition present in modern human society?

9. Does competition always lead to increased specialization and higher organization?

10. What evidences are there in society of the effect of competition upon specialization and organization?

11. What do you understand Crile to mean by the sentence: "In every case the fate of each creature seems to have been staked upon one mechanism"? What is this mechanism with man?

12. Do you think that Crile has given an adequate explanation of the evolution of mind?

13. Is there a difference in the character of the struggle for existence of animals and of man?

14. What is the difference in competition within a community based on likenesses and one based on diversities?

15. Compare the ecological concept "reaction" with the sociological conception "control."

16. What do you understand by the expression "the reaction of a community is usually more than the sum of the reaction of the component species and individuals"? Explain.

17. How far can the terms migration, ecesis, and competition, as used by Clements in his analysis of the invasion of one plant community by another, be used in the analysis of the process by which immigrants "invade" this country, i.e., migrate, settle, and are assimilated, "Americanized"?

18. What are the social forces involved in (a) internal, (b) foreign, migrations?

19. What do you understand by the term segregation? To what extent are the social forces making for segregation (a) economic, (b) sentimental? Illustrate.

20. In what ways has immigration to the United States resulted in segregation?

21. Does the segregation of the immigrant in our American cities make for or against (a) competition, (b) conflict, (c) social control, (d) accommodation, and (e) assimilation?

22. What are the factors producing internal migration in the United States?

23. In what sense is the drift to the cities a result of competition?

24. What is Ripley's conclusion in regard to urban selection and the ethnic composition of cities?

25. What are the outstanding results of demographic segregation and social selection in the United States?

26. What, in your judgment, are the chief characteristics of inter-racial competition?

27. To what extent do you agree with Walker's analysis of the social forces involved in race suicide in the United States?

28. In what specific ways is competition now a factor in race suicide?

29. What will be the future effects of inter-racial competition upon the ethnic stock of the American people?

30. "There is a sense in which much of the orthodox system of political economy is eternally true." Explain.

31. To what extent and in what sense is economic competition unconscious?

32. What differences other than innate mental ability enter into competition between different social groups and different persons?

33. Who are your competitors?

34. Of the existence (as identified persons) of what proportion of these competitors are you unconscious?

35. What is meant by competitive co-operation? Illustrate. (See pp. 508, 558.)

36. What do you understand by the term "economic equilibrium"?

37. Is "economic equilibrium" identical with "social solidarity"? What is the relation, if any, between the two concepts?

38. To what extent does competition make for a natural harmony of individual interests?

39. What did Adam Smith mean by "an invisible hand"?

40. "Civilization is the resultant not of conscious co-operation but of the unconscious competition of individuals." Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

41. "By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it." What is the argument for and against this position?

42. Why has the laissez-faire theory in economics been largely abandoned?

43. What do you understand by the term "freedom"? How far may freedom be identified with freedom of competition?

44. Do you accept the conception of Bastiat that "competition is liberty"?

45. How does money make for freedom? Does it make for or against co-operation? Are co-operation and competition mutually antagonistic terms?

46. Under what circumstances do you have competition between individuals and competition between groups?

47. What do you understand by the statement that anarchism, socialism, and communism are based upon the ecological conceptions of society?

48. What is the difference between an opinion or a doctrine taken (a) as a datum, and (b) as a value?

49. From what point of view may the dependent, the delinquent, and the defective be regarded as "inner enemies"? Is this notion individualistic, socialistic, or how would you characterize it?

FOOTNOTES:

[180] Bastiat, Frederic, Oeuvres completes, tome VI, "Harmonies economiques," 9e edition, p. 381. (Paris, 1884.)

[181] Walker, Francis A., Political Economy, p. 92. (New York, 1887.)

[182] See chap. i, pp. 51-54.

[183] The introduction of the rabbit into Australia, where predatory competitors are absent, has resulted in so great a multiplication of the members of this species that their numbers have become an economic menace. The appearance of the boll weevil, an insect which attacks the cotton boll, has materially changed the character of agriculture in areas of cotton culture in the South. Scientists are now looking for some insect enemy of the boll weevil that will restore the equilibrium.

[184] Adapted from J. Arthur Thomson, Darwinism and Human Life, pp. 72-75. (Henry Holt & Co., 1910.)

[185] Adapted from Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, pp. 50-61. (D. Appleton & Co., 1878.)

[186] Adapted from Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, pp. 97-100. (D. Appleton & Co., 1878.)

[187] Adapted from George W. Crile, Man: An Adaptive Mechanism, pp. 17-39. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1916. Reprinted by permission.)

[188] Adapted from F. E. Clements, Plant Succession. An analysis of the development of vegetation, pp. 75-79. (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1916.)

[189] Adapted from Carl Buecher, Industrial Evolution, pp. 345-69. (Henry Holt & Co., 1907.)

[190] From William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, pp. 537-59. (D. Appleton & Co., 1899.)

[191] Adapted from Francis A. Walker, Economics and Statistics, II, 421-26. (Henry Holt & Co., 1899.)

[192] Adapted from John B. Clark, "The Limits of Competition," in Clark and Giddings, The Modern Distributive Process, pp. 2-8. (Ginn & Co., 1888.)

[193] Adapted from Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, I (1904), 419, 421. (By kind permission of Messrs. Methuen & Co., Ltd.)

[194] Translated from Frederic Bastiat, Oeuvres completes, tome VI, "Harmonies economiques," 9e edition, p. 350. (Paris, 1884.)

[195] Translated from Georg Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes, pp. 351-52. (Duncker und Humblot, 1900.)

[196] Henry S. Maine, Village-Communities in the East and West, pp. 192-97. (New York, 1889.)

[197] Henry Higgs, The Physiocrats, p. 142. (London, 1897.)

[198] Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (Cannan's edition), I, 342. London, 1904.

[199] Ibid. I, 148.

[200] Thomas Mackay, A Plea for Liberty. An argument against socialism and socialistic legislation, consisting of an introduction by Herbert Spencer and essays by various writers, p. 24. (New York, 1891.)

[201] Lectures on the Relation between Law and Opinion in England, during the Nineteenth Century. 2d ed. (London, 1914).

[202] The Principles of Taxation. Everyman's Library. Preface by F. W. Kolthamer, p. xii.

[203] Soziologie, p. 686. (Leipzig, 1908.)

[204] John Stuart Mill, On Liberty. (London, 1859.)

[205] Criminality and Economic Conditions. (Boston, 1916.)



CHAPTER IX

CONFLICT

I. INTRODUCTION

1. The Concept of Conflict

The distinction between competition and conflict has already been indicated. Both are forms of interaction, but competition is a struggle between individuals, or groups of individuals, who are not necessarily in contact and communication; while conflict is a contest in which contact is an indispensable condition. Competition, unqualified and uncontrolled as with plants, and in the great impersonal life-struggle of man with his kind and with all animate nature, is unconscious. Conflict is always conscious, indeed, it evokes the deepest emotions and strongest passions and enlists the greatest concentration of attention and of effort. Both competition and conflict are forms of struggle. Competition, however, is continuous and impersonal, conflict is intermittent and personal.

Competition is a struggle for position in an economic order. The distribution of populations in the world-economy, the industrial organization in the national economy, and the vocation of the individual in the division of labor—all these are determined, in the long run, by competition. The status of the individual, or a group of individuals, in the social order, on the other hand, is determined by rivalry; by war, or by subtler forms of conflict.

"Two is company, three is a crowd" suggests how easily the social equilibrium is disturbed by the entrance of a new factor in a social situation. The delicate nuances and grades of attention given to different individuals moving in the same social circle are the superficial reflections of rivalries and conflicts beneath the smooth and decorous surfaces of polite society.

In general, we may say that competition determines the position of the individual in the community; conflict fixes his place in society. Location, position, ecological interdependence—these are the characteristics of the community. Status, subordination and superordination, control—these are the distinctive marks of a society.