Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/495

Rh types of which the population is constituted. This he seeks to prove from the occurrence of a decreasing birth rate in all the open, fertile districts where the Teutonic element has intermingled with the native population. The argument has been advanced a stage further even than this; for purely economic phenomena, such as the distribution of property, tax-paying faculty, and the like, are in the same way ascribed to purely racial peculiarities, Because wealth happens to be concentrated in the fertile areas of Teutonic occupation, it is again assumed that this coincidence demonstrates either a peculiar acquisitive aptitude in this race, or else a superior measure of frugality.

By this time our suspicions are aroused. The argument is too simple. Its conclusions are too far-reaching. We can do better for this race than even its best friends along such lines of proof. With the data at our disposition there is no end to the racial attributes which we might saddle upon our ethnic types. Thus, judging from mere comparison of our map of head form with others of social statistics, it would appear that the Alpine type in its sterile areas of isolation was the land-hungry one described by Zola in his powerful novels. For, roughly speaking, individual landholdings are larger in them on the average than among the Teutonic populations. Peasant proprietorship is more common also; there are fewer tenant farmers. Crime in the two areas assumes a different aspect. We find that among populations of Alpine type in the isolated uplands offenses against the person predominate in the criminal calendar. In the Seine basin, along the Rhône Valley, wherever the Teuton is in evidence, on the other hand, there is less respect for property; so that offenses against the person, such as assault, murder, and rape, give place to embezzlements, burglary, and arson. It might just as well be argued that the Teuton shows a predilection for offenses against property; the native Celt an equal propensity for crimes against the person. Or, again, why does not the Alpine type appear through statistical eyes as endowed with a peculiar aptitude for migration? For the sterile upland areas of his habitation are almost invariably characterized by emigration to the lowlands and to the cities.