NOTES AND ABSTRACTS

How History Can be Taught from a Sociological Point of View.-At present sociology can best be taught in the high school through the medium of history, if the latter is taught, from the social viewpoint and so as to show the laws of social growth, organization, and functioning. This necessitates a satisfactory training in sociology in addition to a thoroughly scientific training in history. This should include the history of social theory as well as the study of present theories of society. In the teaching of history, no one particular theory of social development should be given undue prominence, as the economic (Marx), geographical (Buckle), ideological (Hegel), great-man theory (Carlyle), or other, but all views should be given due prominence, as all these factors have played a part. The object of teaching history from the sociological point of view should be to give better training for citizenship.— Charles A. Ellwood, Education, January, 1910. L. L. B.

Social Self-Control.-Sociology is the study of the nature, scope, and consequences of the reaction of a community upon itself. Society controls the variations from itself; it has always been standardizing conduct and character by means of discipline. This disciplinary activity of society is recorded and described in official reports and documents, largely statistical. This large set of numerical data may be used for a scientific analysis of social pressure and to answer the question: How much liberty and how much restraint are conducive to the welfare of society? If in a given situation the degree of social restraint was normal, fluctuation would make known the action of the disturbing forces.-F. H. Giddings, Polit. Sci. Quarterly, December, 1909. E. S. B.

Labor Supply and Labor Problems.-The chief handicap to the development of manufactures in the South is a dearth of population. Why has Rhode Island 407 inhabitants per square mile and South Carolina but 44? Why Massachusetts 348 and North Carolina only 39? Inefficiency characterizes the mass of laborers, and this phenomenon does not follow racial lines. The fundamental economic problem is physiological. It is necessary to get rid of diseases including those due to the mosquito and the hookworm, and to give artificial stimulation to the powers that latently exist. Booker Washington is right in advocating immediate and far-reaching educational work along the lines of economic training.-Enoch M. Banks, Annals Amer. Acad., January, 1910.

E. S. B.

Want of Work and Poverty.-Work would increase and be of a constant and steady character unless artificially interfered with. Temporary interferences with trade are entirely dependent on the credit system which causes waves of much and little work. Permanent interferences such as monopoly of land and railway preferences cause constant diminution of work. The immediate duty is to increase the war against internal malpractice; the ultimate and efficient remedy is nationalization of industry.-N. M. Taylor, Westminster Rev., January, 1910. E. S. B.

The Negro's Part in Southern Development.-Negro labor dug the ditches, cut down the forests, and helped to build the railroads of the South. Even before the Civil War, the productive labor of the negro contributed annually to the wealth of the southern states about $30,000,000. Today, they own 19,057,377 acres an area equal to that of Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined. They own or are paying for 375,000 homes. In 1866, they owned about twenty million dollars worth of property; today

close to $550,000,000. At least 15,000 negroes in the South are operating drygoods and grocery stores. And the South is learning to what extent it is dependent upon its humblest citizen.-Booker Washington, Annals Amer. Acad., January, 1910. E. S. B.

The Problems of Town Development.-Town-planning is a problem of the oreation of value. Traffic streets should be developed far out into the country prior to demand; thus promoting construction of residential streets. The high price of land is the cause of the five-story tenement. Land price might be stopped at a certain height by a tax on unbuilt-on land, beginning with low rates, 5 per cent. on sites sold up to 500 pounds per acre, and advancing gradually, 1 per cent. per every hundred pounds, then increasing by 11⁄2 per cent. or 2 per cent. The production of houses is an affair almost exclusively between landowner and builder; the mass of the people have no direct share therein.Rudolph Eberstadt, Contemp. Rev., December, 1909. E. S. B.

The Transmission of Disease by Money.-The average number of bacteria in each of twenty-one bills examined was 142,000. It is scientifically established beyond question that "money is a medium of bacterial communication from one individual to another."-A. C. Morrison, Pop. Sci. Month., January, E. S. B.

1910.

Criminal Procedure in the United States.-The faults are (1) cumbersomeness, (2) slowness with which criminal trials are expedited, (3) importance given to technicalities, (4) too much latitude of appeal. It took thirteen weeks and the summoning of 10,000 veniremen at a cost of $40,000 or $50,000 to secure a jury in the Cornelius Shea case; in England, scarcely more than an hour is ever taken to secure a jury. In the Iroquois fire case, it took three years and four months to bring the accused to trial; and even then he was freed on a technicality. From 40 per cent. to 46 per cent. of appealed cases are granted re-trials; in England (1904), only nine out of 555 cases were reversed-new trials rarely being allowed on merely technical errors. The primary purpose of criminal procedure is to protect the innocent members of society, not to protect the guilty.-J. W. Garner, No. Amer. Rev., January, 1910. E. S. B.

Effects of Industrialism upon Political and Social Ideas.-In the South, rural population is gradually transferring itself to the villages. Nearly every village in some parts has manufacturing enterprises which seek more than a local market. College graduates are turning to business. Political solidarity is being broken; manufacturing classes can no longer be counted on to vote regularly. "Commercialism is doing what bayonets could not do." The negroes are failing to meet the test of industrial efficiency; the new generation is less tolerant of them than the old was of the slaves.-Harold Thompson, Annals Amer. Acad., January, 1910.

ern

The Evolution of Man and its Control.-Eugenics opposes war; the southstates are just awakening from the stagnation caused by the wholesale destruction of superior men in the Civil War. Although college-bred men and women are apparently failing to replace themselves, eugenics expects much from coeducation; it warns against "flashiness" as over against honest worth; it hopes that some pope will recognize celibacy as a suicidal institution and abolish it; it raises the cry of race progress as distinguished from race suicide. By eugenics, the function of philanthropy is extended to include future generations.-Roswell H. Johnson, Pop. Sci. Month., January, 1910.

E. S. B.

A Healthy Race: A Woman's Vocation.-The chief causes of rejection of large numbers of men for public services are defective development and physical unfitness. The high death-rate for children under five years comes

chiefly from causes for which the parents are responsible; diseases of the heart and blood vessels are due to racial deterioration, the remedy for which is preeminently a woman's question. "A healthy race is a woman's vocation." The tendency of women to center attention on "outside" activities reduces woman to a machine, saps her noblest feelings, "blasts home life."-Wm. Hill-Climo, Westminster Rev., January, 1910. E. S. B.

Christian Morals and the Competitive System.-Both are habits of thought, and develop out of different cultural situations. Underlying the competitive system are the principles of natural rights, where individual deals with individual on a footing of pecuniary efficiency. On the other hand, the Christian principle of non-resistance arose out of the servile relations under Roman authority in the early times, and has virtually been eliminated from Christian morals today. The other leading Christian principle, brotherly love, developed out of lower cultures and appears so often as to indicate that it is an essential part of the species. "The ancient racial bias embodied in the Christian principle of brotherhood should logically continue to gain ground at the expense of the pecuniary morals of competitive business."-Thorstein Veblen, Inter. Jour. of Ethics, December, 1909.

E. S. B.

Immigration and the Future American Race -City populations die out rapidly, but are replaced by immigrants and by people from the rural districts. The presence of illiterate immigrants is an impediment to municipal reform. The United States for economic reasons will soon be compelled to close the gates to the great mass of poor immigrants. Then the stream of people from the country will reconquer the cities. As the great struggle for existence grows in intensity, the negro will melt away from before the white man; but no general intermixture between the two will ever take place.-Albert Alleman, Pop. Sci. Month., December, 1909, E. S. B.

La situation des veuves et des orphelins.-The charities of France are well organized for relief of the aged, enfeebled, and infirm, but widows and orphans do not receive proper attention. Many young widows with children require immediate and careful assistance after that great blow which has taken from them the family support. The solution of the problem demands the combined action of the societies for aid and prevention: the former for carrying immediate relief to the actual widows, and so assisting them as to maintain the cohesion of the family; the latter for so organizing its work as to prevent future widows from falling to the charge of the aid society by distinguishing clearly the benefits coming to premature and late widowhood.-Emile Cheysson, Rev. Philanthropique, December, 1909. R. B. McC.

La criminalité juvenile. The increase of juvenile criminality is unquesunquestionable, as all who frequent the courts of France will agree. One is struck with surprise at seeing that most of the accused are very young, almost children. On investigation we find that evil example of family, of street companion, of comrade, is the principal cause of this criminality. Alcoholism is a chief factor. Each year 67 per cent. of the military contingent is discovered to be unfit for the service, and in view of the facts we may say alcoholism costs France a corps of armed men every year. The children of alcoholics are very often predestined to criminality. The instruction of the schools is defective. Men like Hervé inculcate in children abominable ideas of antipatriotism, and also destroy in them all noble impulses. As to the remedy, private initiative is preferable to official action.-M. Henri Robert, La. Réforme Sociale, January, 1910. R. B. McC.

Le Travail des femmes à la campagne. One can readily attribute to the machine the disappearance of those industries which in our towns and villages once gave employment to large numbers of women as well as to men. The machine uses cotton instead of hemp and flax; ships use steam instead of