Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/591

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 571

measure to the Teutonic peoples. In the face of these changes in control from one race to another the objection may be raised that it is not a race endowment that accounts for the superiority. In answer it may be said that the loss of influence has been due in part to mixture with inferior races and in part to certain phenomena of degeneration which can be observed also in the animal and plant kingdoms.

The modern world is controlled by the Teutonic peoples. Which will be the most successful ? Great Britain has declined somewhat, Germany is becoming a greater rival, but all the industrial nations are being threatened by the competition of North America. England won the title of "mistress of the seas" from the Nether- lands, and owes her commercial and industrial supremacy to certain personal charac- teristics of race. The Englishman is a realist and an individualist. It is for this reason that socialism has never played an important role in Great Britain. Thtse characteristics have made her also a great colonial power. But the Englishman's lack of accommodation to the demands of the consumer is one of his weaknesses in the international market in comparison with the more accommodating and flexible German.

More rapid than the ascendancy of England has been that of Germany, and still more rapid than either has been that of North America. Very astonishing, however, has been the economic growth of Germany, for it is apparently as if by a revolution, and not as the result of national characteristics. The change in Germany from ideal- ism to a more practicable activity as the first condition of effectiveness in industry is connected with the name of Bismarck and the events of 1870-71. The two character- istics which have led to this competitive ability on the part of Germany are the feeling of duty and the faithfulness to a purpose once undertaken. That Germany is on the point of winning, in many ways, advantages over England is certain, but we do not agree with those who claim that England has already been surpassed by Germany.

It was out of English and German elements that the ability of the United States was born. The rise there from industrial inferiority to industrial superiority has been rapid. Ten or twenty years ago the cost of production of American manufactures was usually considerably higher than the German and English, but now in the most important departments it is lower. American progress is due largely to enormous race energy, tenacity, courage, and initiative. These race peculiarities manifest them- selves in that most dangerous form of American competition the trusts. It is esti- mated that three -fourths of American exports are the products of trust organizations. The trusts are the creation in general of great undertakers, and business enterprises of such extent are little known outside of America. Doubtless the political and social freedom in America and the great natural resources have made the opportunities for the business initiative ; but without this initiative, which is rooted in blood, America would never have become what it is.

The industrial position won by England and Germany is endangered by the strength of the United States, and one of the problems of Europe in the near future will be to find some means of defense against that state whose greatness has grown out of a mixture of English and German blood. DR. JULIUS WOLF, "Das Rassen- problem in der Weltwirthschaft," in Zeitschrift fur Social-wissenschaft, January, 1903.

E. M.

The Three Primary Laws of Social Evolution. In accepting Darwin's theory of " the survival of the fittest " as a good and self-sufficient explanation of the phenomena of social progress, the historical school has been betrayed into the very same error as that of which they have convicted the orthodox economist. Like the latter, the historical school has assumed that a theory of progress which is true only for cer- tain stages in social development is necessarily true for all stages, or has universal validity. The historical school has seemed to content itself with the theory of evolution proposed by Mr. Darwin. Now, in the introduction to his Origin of Species, p. 3, Mr. Darwin says that " the struggle for existence among all organic beings throughout the world, which invariably follows from the high geometric ratio of their increase . . . ., is the doctrine of Matthus applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdom." It is strange, to say the least, that economists should have accepted a theory of progress which is confessedly based upon a long-since discarded economic doctrine. And again, on p. 60, Mr. Darwin says : "It is the doctrine of Matthus applied with mani-