increasing population makes upon resources, these figures are more truly significant than are the absolute numbers of people or the percentage of increase by decades; for they show how many additional inhabitants must find employment, materials, and food on the available area. This means greater intensiveness of utilization. The cumulative additions are now made on an area nearing, or already past, the point of maximum advantage to the masses of the nation. By 1890 the habitable agricultural area of the United States had not been completely occupied, but the frontier of fertile lands ready for man's use had at length been all but attained. Suddenly was unmasked the true character of those great, uncolored areas shown on the map. Deserts they are, for the most part, deserts they must ever remain. Nature had no more free gifts to distribute to the prodigal children of America. She would grant still some new arable fields, but only for the price of toil and patient art. Our increasing population must thenceforth find its livelihood in the more intensive cultivation of the settled areas. We had been rapidly losing those economic advantages which had distinguished us from the older, more densely settled countries. A new economic situation confronted our people. Economic results did not long delay their appearance. In the nineties of the last century the wave of popular prosperity at length attained its crest. Some great forces lifting wages throughout Christendom despite any counteracting effects from increasing population seem at last to have spent themselves. Cheap food from America had been a boon to the European workman as well as to the American. The year 1896 marked the lowest American prices in recent decades for food and for farm products. The year 1898 was that of maximum export of foodstuffs from the United States. Since 1896 food and other farm products have almost steadily advanced in price at a more rapid rate than general prices; since 1898 exports of foodstuffs from the United States have less steadily, but none the less surelv, declined. In the past twenty years the general progress in science and the technical arts has been phenomenal. It is the accepted economic belief that the trend and effect of such changes is favorable to the real wages of labor. The last twenty years, therefore, should have been a period of rapidly rising wages had not this technical progress been offset by some powerful opposing forces. Why have real wages risen so slowly or even fallen? In part no doubt the explanation may be found in the fact that when the general scale of prices is rising wages move more tardily. In large part the explanation must be found in the fact that we have passed the point of diminishing returns in the relation of our population to our resources. The growth of population is serving to neutralize for the masses of the people the gains of technical progress. It is high time to revise the optimistic American doctrine of population. The hope is ever with us that improvements in agricultural methods will offset the influence of the increase of population. We rightly speak of the wonders of the new agriculture; but these improvements fast crowding upon each other in the past two decades have not even kept the cost of food from increasing in terms of the common man's wage. Shall we then base an economic policy on the assumption of much greater improvements which as yet are only in the realm of imagination? Undoubtedly the development of water power will retard the trend toward higher prices of coal; forestry will eventually grow lumber enough to meet the greatly curtailed demand at higher prices; but, given a population steadily increasing at anything like the present rate, and real wages in America must decrease in terms of food, clothing and fuel, and all the commodities dependent on wood, iron, copper, and other primary materials. The steady increase alone of population will offset the popular benefits of the new miracles of industrial progress. In the decade ending 1910, but for immigration, the rate of increase of the total population would have been much less instead of somewhat greater than that of the preceding decade. But in 1910 there were over three million more foreign-born persons in the country than were here ten years earlier. Onefifth of the increase in population consisted in foreign-born, and another fifth of their children born in America. The current objections to immigration are mainly based on the alleged evil effects to the political, social, and moral standards of the community. It is often asserted that present immigration is inferior in racial quality to that of the past. Whatever be the truth and error mingled in these views, we are not now discussing them. Our view is wholly impersonal and without race I prejudice. If the present immigration were all of the AngloSaxon race, were able to speak, read and write English, and had the same political sentiments and capacities as the earlier popu lation, the validity of our present conclusions would be unaffected. When our policy of unrestricted immigration is thus opposed to the interests of the mass of the people, its continuation in a democracy where universal manhood suffrage prevails, is possible only because of a remarkable complexity of ideas, sentiments, and interests, neutralizing each other and paralyzing action. The American sentiment in favor of the open door to the oppressed of all lands is a part of our national heritage. The wish to share with others the blessings of freedom and of economic plenty is the product of many generations of American experience. The open door policy had partly a political basis: a growing population in a young and sparsely settled country gave greater security on the frontier of settlement and greater strength against foreign enemies. The policy had, however, mainly an economic basis: land was here a free good on the margin of a vast frontier. Most citizens benefited by a growing population. Let it not be accounted cynicism to recognize in this national self-interest the source of a generous sentiment toward the incoming stranger. That sentiment, truly generous, now lingers after its real cause has disappeared. It impels to an unthinking liberality to the alien while sacrificing the heritage of the workers of America; it makes the citizen with humane ideals the misguided ally of commercial greed. The open door policy is vain to relieve the condition of the masses of other lands. Emigration from overcrowded countries, with the rarest exceptions, leaves no permanent gaps. Natural increase quickly fills the ranks of an impoverished peasantry. If America with futile hospitality continues to welcome great numbers from countries with low standards of living, she can but reduce the level of her own prosperity while affording no permanent relief to the overcrowded lands. Nations under bad governments must find relief through the reform of their own political conditions. Lands whose people are in economic misery must improve their own industrial organization, elevate their standards of living, and limit their numbers. If they go on breeding multitudes which find an unhindered outlet in continuous migration to more fortunate lands, they can at last but drag others down to their own unhappy economic level. The pride of immigrants and of their children, sometimes to the second and third generations, is another strong force opposing restriction. Immigrants, having become citizens, are proud of the race of their origin, and resent restriction as a reflection upon themselves and their people. One may admire the loyalty and idealism here manifested, while regretting that these sentiments and arguments serve to distract attention from the real problem to minor and irrelevant incidents. North American Review. 192: 56-67. July, 1910 National Eugenics in Relation to Immigration. How far do our present immigration laws enable us to keep out those who are physically, mentally and morally undesirable for parenthood; whose coming here will tend to produce an inferior rather than a superior American race; who are eugenically unfit for race culture? We in the United States have an opportunity which is unique in history for the practice of eugenic principles. Our country was founded and developed by picked men and women. And to-day, by selecting our immigrants through proper immigration legislation, we have the power to pick out the best specimens of each race to be the parents of our future citizens. But we have left the choice almost altogether to the selfish interests which do not care whether we want the immigrants they bring, or whether the immigrants will be the better for coming. Steamship agents and brokers all over Europe and western Asia are today deciding for us the character of the American race of the future. It is no argument against practising eugenic ideas in the selection of our alien immigrants to say that our New England country towns are full of hopelessly degenerate native Americans who are inferior, mentally, morally and physically, to the "sturdy peasants of Europe." It will not help to reduce the number of our native degenerates if we admit alien degenerates, National eugenics means the prevention of the breeding of the unfit native, no less than the prevention of the admission, and of the breeding after admission, of the unfit alien. Should we not exercise the same care in admitting human beings as we exercise in relation to animals or insect pests or disease germs? Yet it is true that we have actually been taking more care in the selection, and in the examination for soundness and for health, of a Hereford bull or a Southdown ewe, imported for the improvement of our cattle and sheep, than we have taken in the selection of the alien men and women who are coming here to be the fathers and mothers of future American children. We do not hesitate to prohibit the importation of cattle from a foreign country where the foot and mouth disease is prevalent. It is only in very extreme cases that we have ever taken such a step in the case of the importation of aliens, yet there are certain parts of Europe from which it would be better for the American race if no aliens at all were admitted. Our present laws are intended to exclude some twenty or more classes of mentally, physically, morally and economically undesirable aliens. The list is formidable and seems abundantly sufficient to accomplish adequate eugenic selection. But careful and unprejudiced students of immigration agree that these laws do not keep out the unfit so as to preserve the status quo, and certainly do not promote eugenic improvement. We already have an army of not less than 150,000 feeble-minded in the United States, of whom only a very small percentage are in institutions, the rest being free to propagate their kind. And of those in institutions the large proportion are there only temporarily, being at liberty for much of the time during their reproductive period. Further, there are over 150,000 insane in the institutions of this country, and of these many have already left offspring to perpetuate their insanity. In spite of these appalling facts, appalling from the standpoint of mere sentiment and of mere philanthropy, doubly appalling from the standpoint of eugenics, we have been admitting alien insane, and alien imbeciles, and alien epileptics, and alien habitual criminals, partly because of a lax enforcement of the law under past administrations, partly because the law is incapable, under existing conditions, of effective enforcement. Parenthood on the part of the insane, the imbecile, the feeble-minded, the hereditary criminal, and those afflicted with hereditary disease, is a crime against the future. To admit such persons into this country is no less a crime against the future. The ideal selection of our immigrants, from the eugenic point of view, would be possible only if we could have a fairly complete family history, running back a few generations, showing the hereditary tendencies of each alien. The results of eugenic investigation already reached have given us enough definite |