Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/737

 THE SOCIAL MARKING SYSTEM 723

Poles, and both native and foreign negroes, more mixed, com- posite, or heterogeneous than one made up of native white Americans, Spanish-Americans, Chinamen, Hawaiian Islanders, and Indians not taxed, and, if so, how much more? To answer a question of this kind we must first assign each nationality or race to a position on a predetermined marking-scale of resem- blance or affiliation. We must be able to say: Nationality E is so many points more unlike the native-born whites than Na- tionality B is, or to say : Race K is psychologically and culturally so many positions more distant from Race A than Race D is.

By general consent we have employed a scale of this kind for twenty years or more in our discussion of the immigration prob- lem. No one ever questions the propriety of assigning the native-born of white parents to the initial position, which we will call "zero," nor of assigning the native-bom of foreign-bom whites to the second position which we will call "one." In like manner, without dispute the uncivilized races are assigned to the final position, whatever its number may happen to be. Assign- ments to intermediate positions are made by concurring judg- ments upon the varying degrees of resemblance which immigrant nationalities bear to the native-born whites of native parentage. Immigrants from the British Isles and English provinces of Canada, who have spoken the English language from birth, are held to be more like the native stock than are the immigrants from continental Europe. Of the latter, we regard the people of northwestern Europe as psychologically, culturally, and his- torically more nearly related to us than are the peoples of southern or of eastern Europe.

But little interpolation and re-arrangement are needed to con- vert this rough marking-scale of nationalities and races into a scientific scale of ten positions, as follows: o, Native born of native white parents; i. Native-bom of foreign-born white par- ents; 2, Foreign-born, English-speaking; 3, Northwestern Europeans ; 4. Southern Europeans and Latin-American whites ; 5, Eastern Europeans; 6, All other whites; 7, Civilized yellow; 8, Civilized dark; 9, Uncivilized.

The principle on which this marking-scale is constructed for