NOTES AND ABSTRACTS

La récente enquête de la société des agriculture de France sur les causes de l'abandon des campagnes.-The tendency is toward the city. Primary instruction is not given in the rural point of view. The things taught are industrial and commercial instead of agricultural. The young girl trained in the schools has an aversion to rural work; she dreams of marrying a man of the city, an artisan, a shopman, an employee of some kind. If the school has not turned the young farmer away from the paternal occupation, he at least finds it difficult to secure a companion who shares his tastes and sentiments. Obligatory military service also drags the young man away from the farm, and the external brilliancy of the city attracts him; the offers of employment there decide him against the rural district. A powerful cause of rural depopulation is found in absentee proprietary. There is, however, a reaction in this regard at present, but if proprietors return to the country to continue living urban lives of luxury instead of entering into the life of their tenants, that will be worse than absenteeism.-René Lavollée, Réforme sociale, September, 1909.

R. B. McC.

Les oeuvres sociales de protection de la première enfance.-Necessity for protecting early infancy rests on observations made for some time that infants of the lowest age die in great numbers, making infantile mortality become an important cause of depopulation, and a social peril along with alcoholism, tuberculosis, and syphilis. Investigations have found the chief cause of these early deaths in the feeding of nurslings; it is too often from the bottle which contains milk of a poor quality. Statistics secured by H. Monod show 47 out of 100 deaths due to diarrhea among infants fed from the bottle, and 28 out of 100 among infants fed at the breast. Protection must be exercised in at least three ways: first, legislative measures for protection and surveillance here and there of all infants not brought up by their mothers; second, maternal nursing in all possible ways, and medical attendance; third, advice, aid, and relief for needy mothers: this assistance having for its aim to instruct and enable mothers to care for their own infants and to nourish them with their own milk.-C. H. Maygrier, Revue philanthropique, October, 1909.

R. B. McC.

The Integrity of the Family a Vital Issue.-The cry to save the child at the expense of the family is absurd; the one cannot exist without the other. The test of charity is not in what is given, but in what is obtained from the subject. The problem is to find out what the human mechanism is fashioned to do, for apart from this activity it does not exist. It must be subordinate to a social end. There are two great inevitable social ends, (1) the state (organized society), (2) the family, the primal social unit, the type and origin of the social ends giving man his fullest life. The family with its ritual gives individuality and definiteness of social function as no other institution does or can.-Joseph Lee, The Survey, December 4, 1909. L. L. B.

The Scope and Importance to the State of the Science of National Eugenics.— The essentials of an imperial race are a clean body, a sound if slow mind, a vigorous and healthy stock, and a numerous progeny. In America, however, we find that the classes which take as their standard an academic education, are not reproducing themselves-their average number of offspring being less than two. Against this is the maximum fertility of the degenerate stocks. The state is vitally interested in a scientific knowledge of inheritance, variation, selection, fertility in man, and in the relation of these results to racial efficiency.-Karl Pearson, Eugenics Lab. Lect., Series I, Univer. of Lond., 2d ed., 1909.

E. S. B.

Mental Inheritance.-Galton estimates that England at her best falls two grades below the highest intellect of Athens and produces but one man of supreme eminence where the older culture produced 200. No principle of selection for a long time has been sufficiently active to raise the level of mental endowment; and social heritage has outstripped hereditary growth of mind. As regards mental endowment, we begin very much as our ancestors began. The way to approach the problem of mental endowment is through an analytical treatment of traits by a science of individual differences. Man will do well to examine and estimate the hereditary factor in his own mental development and seek to combine for his improvement the forces of nature and of nurture.I. M. Bentley, Pop. Sci. Month., November, 1909. E. S. B.

Sensational Journalism and the Remedy.-The public journal, no longer the advocate of truth, so furbishes its news as to make it a feeder to the more profitable feature-advertisements. It destroys (1) the artistic sense; (2) leads young people to think marriage a mere experiment; (3) destroys confidence in those vested in authority; (4) perverts the processes of thought and ascertainment of facts. Remedy: Subject the press to the same law of state which governs the other relations of men; legally suppress scandal and falsehood in the newspaper in the way that adulteration in food is suppressed.-S. W. Pennypacker, No. Amer. Rev., November, 1909. E. S. B.

Local Option and After.-The "bare majority" principle is not capable of enforcement and must be rejected notwithstanding the efforts of the fanatical section of the temperance party. The lines of least resistance must be followed. License or no-license should be decided by a substantial majority. The bar should be abolished by law; the number of licensed houses limited to one for every thousand inhabitants. A bare majority should decide on reducing the number of licensed houses and the daily period of selling hours. The licensed houses should be under disinterested management, the shareholders should be limited to 5 per cent. profits, the surplus should be disposed of so as to remove from the municipality all motives for encouraging the traffic.—R. E. MacNaughten, No. Amer. Rev., November, 1909. E. S. B.

Empires and Races. Today the isolation of any race is impossible; the development of mechanical skill has brought about the interpenetration of nations. This contact results, within certain limits, in national fusion; but humanity is being organized on the basis of imperialisms, which tend to be racial. The future is likely to be marked by crises along the rough edges of racial difference, repugnance, and rivalry. In America, for instance, there is a permanently veiled hostility toward the blacks. But a hopeful movement is in progress to undermine racial differences and to do away with armaments-the effort to substitute reason and conciliation for passion and hatred.-N. H. Marshall, Contemporary Rev., September, 1909. E. S. B.

The American Negro and Race-blending.-The negro has contributed to the ancestry of the nations inhabiting the Mediterranean shores of Europe; he can contribute to the American race in the following ways: (1) physical integrity on the whole; (2) good humor and altruistic tendencies; (3) musical voice; (4) mental ability if given a fair chance; (5) patriotism and an essentially American feeling. He doesn't ask for intermarriage, but for removal of all humiliating and injurious restrictions, a régime of justice and equal law, which so far has been denied him.-Frances Hoggan, Sociol. Rev., October, 1909. E. S. B.

Darwinism and Politics.-Side by side with the struggle for existence is co-operation for existence. Competition allows but a comparatively low level for all forms of life which are successful in surviving. The state will not defy natural laws, but will use them for the benefit of all, not simply of the fittest to exist. The newer politics will try to control the social forces through the collective mind of society in order to provide a fair opportunity for all mem