Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/814

 800 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

assimilation. In general, the greater the number of points of contact, the more rapid will be the assimilation, and conversely. One of the reasons why the United States has such a great power of assimilation is that here both the physical and psychic means of intercourse are more highly developed than elsewhere. Amer- ica has, perhaps, the most perfect system of communication in the world, a system which does much toward annihilating the barriers of space and time, and which is responsible for the simultaneous creation of sentiment and public opinion, through- out the length and breadth of our vast land. In Russia, on the contrary, on account of the poor means of travel and the censor- ship of the press which prohibits the publication of local news and the discussion of internal affairs of state, such a thing as common sentiment or public opinion does not exist. There is no knowledge on the part of the government at St. Petersburg of the interior condition of the empire. It is impossible to dis- cover how reforms work in the provinces. The inevitable result of such a condition is to retard the process of assimilation. The unwieldy character of the Roman empire, too, was, no doubt, due largely to the lack of a perfected system of intercourse. Creation of a set of fellowship feelings throughout all parts of the empire, too, was, in consequence, impossible. Hence only a lax unity was realized. 1 That intercourse accelerates assimilation is shown by the well-known fact that in high mountain regions and in islands, which present difficulties to communication, the population is always far behind that of the adjacent lowland or mainland in civilization. In the Caucasus region, which is called an ethnological museum, live tribes today which take us back to the time of Trajan. Bryce says : " It has also preserved ....

1 "At the epoch of its greatest extension the Roman empire occupied five million square kilometers. Mechanical arts were not then developed enough to cause a vital circulation sufficiently intense throughout a territory so spread out. Maritime travel was moderately rapid .... but only during the warm season. In winter navigation ceased. Communication by land was much slower. After the great Roman roads were built and relays organized, the traveler could make one hundred Roman miles in a day. The most distant provinces probably could not be reached from Rome under three or four weeks. It took at least two months for the reaction in a distant province, toward any measure enacted at Rome, to become known in the capital city." (Novicow Les Luttes entre Socttth humaines, p. 604.)