Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/880

 866 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Moral and Social Interests Involved in Restricting Oriental Immigration. — — The chief charge that we can bring against the oriental is that class by class, he is cleaner, thriftier, more industrious and better trained than his white neighbor in the world of labor. Shall the oriental be antagonized, solidi- fied into a caste, compelled by our treatment to herd vilely? Shall our legisla- tion be in the interest of race conflict or of race progress? The problem o\ immigration should be placed in the charge of an expert governmental com- mission of the highest class which without prejudice and with ample powers would assist the immigrant to become more American instead of keeping him unAmerican. — T. L. Eliot, Annals American Academy, September, 1909.

E.S.B.

Einfluss der Mikroben auf die Entstehung der Menschenrassen. — (i) The different races are and have been subject to different microbe diseases. (2) The continents and certain tributary districts are disseminating places for specific microbe diseases, as Asia for cholera. (3) A striking relationship exists be- tween pigmentation and microbe affections. (4) The different cranial types may be explained by reason of the stage of culture of the race, and by the influence of endemic diseases upon the development of the brain. (5) The hair in its growth is strongly influenced by microbes. (6) The relation which the activity of the microbes may sustain to the building-up of the protein element, sug- gests an explanation for the distinction in blood reaction between races. — Otto Jackmann, Archiv filr Rassen- tind Gesellschafts-Biologie, November, 1909.

E.W.B.

The Genealogical Method of Anthropological Inquiry. — Most primitive people preserve orally their pedigrees for several generations in all the collateral hues. Upon these pedigrees and the facts of social significance about each person concerned which are gathered and tabulated, the genealogical method is based. It is used to work out (i) systems of relationship, (2) regulations of marriage, (3) the laws regulating descent and the inheritance of property, (4) the tend- ency of migrations, (5) abstract problems on a concrete basis. It has two great merits, (i) it takes us back to a time before European influence had affected the tribe under study, and (2) demonstrates the effect of ^be "^w influences upon the tribe. — W. H. R. Rivers, Sociological Review, January, 1910.

E.S.B.

Aus- undlEinwanderung und die Lehre von der gesellschaftlichen Auslese. — Social selection functions through the competition and conflict of groups to secure group ends. Emigration and local migration play an important role in this process. The movement of population to America and to the city has depleted many rural districts in England and Germany of skilled agricultural laborers not readily replaced. The nations receiving immigrants increase their energetic population, while the nations losing them augment their proportion of passive population. New countries in the intense race for material prosperity reproduce at a slower rate than old countries. Future American prosperity depends upon continued immigration from Europe. Investigators generally agree that the immigrants to North America are taller and fairer than the average in the homeland. This kind of selection works toward an increasing per cent of the short, brunette brachy-cephalic type in north and west European countries. — August Sartorius von Watershausen, Zeitschrift fiir Socialwissenschaft, No- vember, 1909. E.W.B.

Das Wolf'sche Bev51kerungsgesetz und das Bevolkerungsproblem der Juden in Deutschland. — Wolf distinguishes three periods in the relation of population to subsistence: (i) the extensive stage in which the Malthusian Law holds unmodified; (2) the intensive stage with increase of population enjoined by re- ligious sanction 1(3) the regulative stage, incipient with the breakdown of religious conviction. Statistics exhibit a radical change in the rate of increase of the Jews in Germany within the last twenty-five years. The number of births per thousand among the Christians in 1885 was 37, in 1907, 33; among the Jews 27 in 1885, and but 17 in 1907. Bretanne claims that with increasing wealth,