Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/869

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 853

families are the strongest. This naturalized class is more numerous than any other. This fact should be the cause of much encouragement to those who have been complaining that, instead of " digesting its immigrants, the nation is dying."

The classification by types of mind in the block is as follows : ideo-motor, 38 families (mostly Italians and Irish) ; ideo-emotional, 170 families (the ones that make possible frenzied mobs and the ones being modified by the schools; ; dogmatic-emotional, 6 (mostly Jews). There are no families in the block that can be classed as critically-intellectual.

The power of the " consciousness of kind " has clearly been seen in the history of each house in the block. Racial affinity, often the limit of consciousness of land, has several times been disregarded. Even color lines have failed to keep like dispositions apart. Strong economic forces have entered the community and scattered all purely social groups ; but after the storm, quietly, but certainly, like has attracted like and the house has gradually filled with a homogeneous group. When Italians enter a house, the Jews gradually move out; and if a negro enters anywhere, it is into an Italian house.

The simplest examples of " concerted volition " are in certain housekeeping arrangements. Five of these tenement families illustrate the tendency to revert to the " compound " housekeeping of primitive life. The disposition of the Irish, and the business qualities of the Jews, make possible purely economic co-operation between these races.

The ordinary conception of the " social composition " of an urban population is that of a large aggregation of individuals independent of one another and not knowing their neighbors. The formal relations of middle-class families in apart- ment houses are responsible for this idea. But there is a perfect stratification and classification of peoples in cities as in the village group, brought about by the same social and economic forces. This classification reveals itself in two arrangements : (i) that in which the group is limited to well-defined localities; and (2) that in which the group is scattered in various parts of the city. It is in the latter groups that often a family does not even have an acquaintance in the block in which he lives. The block studied, of course, belongs to the arrangement according to locality.

The development of personality is the end of " social welfare." In this block, where residence is usually brief, it is difficult to determine individual changes. The testimony of those who have known the street for many years points to a distinct improvement in the last ten. In the reaction of personality on institutions the most noteworthy effect of a community of this kind upon American life is its infusion of foreign ideas. The hope of developing an American type lies almost entirely in American institutions. The most effective are those with the avowed purpose of bettering the neighborhood, the public schools, churches, and settlements. The influence of the churches in this community is exceedingly small. Settlement work fails to perform one function. It fails to study the prevailing traits and to establish activities for curbing the impulsiveness of the Italian, modifying the extreme individualism of the Jew, causing the Irish to give up shiftlessness and turn to frugality, and for showing all the value of the spiritual in life according to the Anglo-Saxon ideal. THOMAS JESSE JONES, in Columbia Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, Vol. XXI (1904), No. 2. H. E. F.

Political Economy and the Tariff Problem. A majority of the economists of Great Britain signed a manifesto a few months ago which sought to put an absolute veto on the tariff proposals of the late secretary of state for the colonies. A not inconsiderable minority declined to sign. The minority have pointed out that German economists favor protection.

A survey of the history of political economy will help to explain the divergence between the signers and the minority. Starting with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, a partisan book based on a philosophy no longer held, there grew up a neat self-contained little body of doctrine which constituted " political economy." The principles, at first, practically meant nothing but the desirability of free trade. An orthodox political economy developed, culminating in 1863.

In the seventies there was a stirring of the waters, notably in Germany, (i) under the pressure of the labor problem ; (2) because of the growth of the his-