NOTES AND ABSTRACTS

Féminisme et science positive. New conditions of modern life, with increased opportunities for work, have detached woman more and more from her family environment, in which now her help is less necessary nd less efficacious, thanks to the part society now plays in education. She should, along with these new activities in all other realms, be conceded full legal rights as well.Francesco Cosentini, Rev. Internat. d. Sociologie, November, 1909. F. F.

Corporal Punishment with Especial Reference to its Sexual Aspect.-The objections to corporal punishment of both children and adults are: (1) it degrades; (2) it is cruel; (3) it excites sexually. Most children are not amenable to kindness and reason alone. They usually see the justice of corporal punishment when wisely administered. Among adults the sense of shame is often largely deadened, and especially among hoodlums and youthful criminals bodily pain is the only effective corrective. Cruelty and abuse would be eliminated by taking corporal punishment out of the hands of prison subordinates. Such punishment is much less severe than many forms of punishment in use, as fasting, solitary confinement, etc., and is not necessarily demoralizing. However it may produce sexual perversion in the subject, operator, or spectators, such as flagellantism. This is a more serious objection. Yet only a vanishing proportion of the more susceptible children are subject to this danger, which does not seem to warrant the abolition of the practice.-Dr. P. Näcke, Archiv. f. Kriminal-Anthropologie u. Kriminalistic, October, 1909. P. W.

New Legal Procedure Against Juvenile Offenders in Germany. -Whenever the offenses of juveniles are a consequence of insufficient training, the interests of the community are better served by state interference in their education than by repression of the individual. Harmless offenders could thus be sufficiently corrected in the course of home or school discipline. The following are the aims of the legislature in this matter; to restrict the punishment of juvenile offenders to those cases in which educational influences are not effective; to prevent the contact of youth with the criminal courts as far as possible, by meeting their educational and protective needs; and by reducing the harm of an inevitable penal procedure by modifying its form in accordance with the demands of juvenile protection and the welfare of the delinquent.-Dr. Felisch, Jugendwohlfahrt, January, 1909. P. W.

Jugendfürsorge und Staatsinteresse.-The movement for social amelioration promises to yield the earliest and surest success in the domain of juvenile care. Its essential advantage here lies in the fact that its material is the plastic rather than the fixed and finished individual. Any expense in money and energy applied to this problem brings by far the most fruitful results. All prevention and suppression of causes of disease in children is equivalent to an insurance against unemployment and invalidity in later life. Juvenile care and protection by the state, contributing as it must to increase the defensive (military) strength of the nation, to combat the causes of juvenile delinquency and degeneracy, but especially to reinforce the sources of the physical, moral, and economic welfare of youth, gradually shows its effects in the diminished expenditures for accident and sickness insurance, poor relief, insane asylums, prisons, reformatory education, penal courts, and police. Not least in importance, the co-operation of numerous men and women in organized and efficiently administered work of juvenile care trains expert and increasingly proficient helpers for the high aims of the state.-Staatsminister z. D. Hentig, Jugendwohlfahrt, January, 1909. P. W.

Moral and Social Interests Involved in Restricting Oriental Immigration.— -The chief charge that we can bring against the oriental is that class by class, he is cleaner, thriftier, more industrious and better trained than his white neighbor in the world of labor. Shall the oriental be antagonized, solidified into a caste, compelled by our treatment to herd vilely? Shall our legislation be in the interest of race conflict or of race progress? The problem of immigration should be placed in the charge of an expert governmental commission of the highest class which without prejudice and with ample powers would assist the immigrant to become more American instead of keeping him unAmerican.-T. L. Eliot, Annals American Academy, September, 1909.

E.S.B.

Einfluss der Mikroben auf die Entstehung der Menschenrassen. -(1) The different races are and have been subject to different microbe diseases. (2) The continents and certain tributary districts are disseminating places for specific microbe diseases, as Asia for cholera. (3) A striking relationship exists between pigmentation and microbe affections. (4) The different cranial types may be explained by reason of the stage of culture of the race, and by the influence of endemic diseases upon the development of the brain. (5) The hair in its growth is strongly influenced by microbes. (6) The relation which the activity of the microbes may sustain to the building-up of the protein element, suggests an explanation for the distinction in blood reaction between races.-Otto Jackmann, Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Biologie, November, 1909.

E.W.B.

The Genealogical Method of Anthropological Inquiry.-Most primitive people preserve orally their pedigrees for several generations in all the collateral hues. Upon these pedigrees and the facts of social significance about each person concerned which are gathered and tabulated, the genealogical method is based. It is used to work out (1) systems of relationship, (2) regulations of marriage, (3) the laws regulating descent and the inheritance of property, (4) the tendency of migrations, (5) abstract problems on a concrete basis. It has two great merits, (1) it takes us back to a time before European influence had affected the tribe under study, and (2) demonstrates the effect of the new influences upon the tribe.-W. H. R. Rivers, Sociological Review, January, 1910. E.S.B.

Aus- und Einwanderung und die Lehre von der gesellschaftlichen Auslese. -Social selection functions through the competition and conflict of groups to secure group ends. Emigration and local migration play an important role in this process. The movement of population to America and to the city has depleted many rural districts in England and Germany of skilled agricultural laborers not readily replaced. The nations receiving immigrants increase their energetic population, while the nations losing them augment their proportion of passive population. New countries in the intense race for material prosperity reproduce at a slower rate than old countries. Future American prosperity depends upon continued immigration from Europe. Investigators generally agree that the immigrants to North America are taller and fairer than the average in the homeland. This kind of selection works toward an increasing per cent of the short, brunette brachy-cephalic type in north and west European countries. -August Sartorius von Watershausen, Zeitschrift für Socialwissenschaft, November, 1909. E.W.B.

Das Wolf'sche Bevölkerungsgesetz und das Bevölkerungsproblem der Juden in Deutschland.-Wolf distinguishes three periods in the relation of population to subsistence : (1) the extensive stage in which the Malthusian Law holds unmodified; (2) the intensive stage with increase of population enjoined by religious sanction; (3) the regulative stage, incipient with the breakdown of religious conviction. Statistics exhibit a radical change in the rate of increase of the Jews in Germany within the last twenty-five years. The number of births per thousand among the Christians in 1885 was 37, in 1907, 33; among the Jews 27 in 1885, and but 17 in 1907. Bretanne claims that with increasing wealth,

increase of sexual diseases, increase of mental affections and decrease of desire for procreation cause a decrease in fecundity. Thirty years ago, the command "Be fruitful and multiply" held these factors in check, but with the breakdown of the old intense religious faith, the Jews have entered the third period of growth in population.-Wasserman, Zeitschrift für Socialwissenschaft,_November, 1909.

E.W.B.

Zur Phychologie des englischen Geistes.—The Roman type of mind demanded clearness, logic, and unity as life conditions; the ground concepts of Teutonic culture were the manifoldness and individuality of the works of nature. In England the Germanic characteristics crystallized in pure and typical forms. The English gather up vast quantities of disorganized knowledge, which must await systematic treatment by foreigners. The empirical procedure has been the leading method in English intellectual history from Bacon to Mill. The great English inventors and discoverers of scientific laws have relied more upon inspiration than upon systematic inquiry. Conservative regard for ancient customs and institutions is exhibited by a modern democracy expressing the will of the people through mediaeval forms of government. The success of England in social, political and colonial affairs is largely due to adapting measures to needs and circumstances and not to preconceived dogmas or rigid general laws.-Ernst Bernhard, Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft, January, E.W.B.

1910.

What the Poor Want.-The poor do not want to be treated as a subject race, but as equals. They want to be hobnobbed with, their wives to be introduced to the wives of wealthy folks, their children to be educated for the kind of life in which they will have to make a living. They want to have a say in social legislation, to get value for their rent-money, i.e., better homes, to progress by their own efforts, to be treated in a spirit of understanding, of patience, of good-fellowship.-Stephen Reynolds, Quarterly Review, January, 1910. E.S.B.

International and Inter-racial Relations.-Nearly the whole world has become an area of connectedness. Purposive action for ideals has been extending its sway; the means has been increase of power. Has the natural obstructiveness of racial differences been mitigated by racial intimacy? Perhaps not. But there is a greater potency for good in the co-operation of diverse peoples discharging varied functions than in a world simple and unified in structure. The progress of nations and races, if not toward uniformity, is toward unity of thought, of sentiment and of life.-A. Caldecott, Sociological Review, January, 1910. E.S.B.

La criminalité juvénile.-A law regarding the treatment of juvenile criminals seems absolutely necessary. Private initiative, however, may go ahead and show what may be accomplished. The Eighth Correctional Chamber is now specialized for dealing with these cases, but all rests with the men on the bench as to how long this will be kept up; a new set of judges may change things considerably. Another reform should be a better regulation of the audience in the court. In spite of the care taken to keep out the public often sixty or eighty persons who have no part in the cases are there. The law ought to bar them out as in other countries. The tolerance of the officers in not arresting the child for the first offense helps to make the latter a criminal. The judge may put the child in prison or under the guardianship of an individual or send it to the country. But all of these separate the child from the parent. It may be acquitted, but there is no sanction for this in the idea of justice. The best method seems to be that of American probation, which has now been practiced three years in Paris.- M. Julhiet, La réf. soc., January, 1910.

R.B.MCC.

Private Conscience and Corporate Right.-Private conscience is regardless of corporate right; juries will permit their antipathies for the genus cor

poration to outweigh any evidence that may be introduced in its favor; honest people delight in stealing transportation; others make exorbitant demands of insurance companies for indemnities. On the other hand, corporate right is magnified; officers and directors are not made to suffer by personal fines and imprisonment for corporate wrong; the law fosters corporate privilege at the expense of the masses. Corporate right accepts the rôle of freebooter, forces honest competitors into bankruptcy, houses its employees and their families in squalor all this and more in order to make money. The corporation has a right to enjoy the privileges and immunities of a person, but is under a profound obligation to promote the social well-being.-J. B. Ross, Political Science Quarterly, March, 1910. E.S.B.

Le rôle social de l'église.-To observers religion often appears to be a purely individual affair. But in fact the Christian church has always stood for social salvation also. Monasteries built for the retreat of priests were open to the poor. The wealthy knights gave freely their material goods to save their souls, and the church used this in organized beneficence. The church has stood strongly for Sunday rest, for limited hours of work, for the protection of women and children. It has fought the practice of speculation in business which still ruins families and nations. The church is built upon the brotherhood of men, and its natural function is to increase the spirit of unity, to aid the poor, aged, and infirm. Our modern conditions especially call for the social activity of the church. Governments are absorbed by political parties. The church only is independent and disinterested enough to care for the people sincerely, and it must continue.-A. de Mun, Rev. de l'act. pop., January, 1910. R.B.MCC.

Evolution of Consciousness.-(1) Consciousness is a product of evolution which continues in a higher form the movement which is manifest in all earlier adaptations. (2) As soon as consciousness was fully evolved the direction of all adaptation was radically modified. (3) If any scientific explanation of human life is to be attained it must be based on a thoroughgoing study of consciousness. The social sciences have sought in vain to base themselves on a general doctrine of organic evolution. Human adaptation is determined in character by consciousness, which must be taken as a cause of physical events, and which makes a desired pattern of the world and shapes environment to fit. Therefore McDougall's demand to rewrite psychology from the standpoint of the instincts is unjustifiable.-Chas. H. Judd, Psychological Review, March, 1910. L.L.B.

Professor Albion W. Small is giving a course of ten open lectures before the University of Chicago during the Spring quarter on "The Relations of the Social Sciences." The lectures are as follows: "The Unity of Social Science," "The Disunity of the Social Sciences," "The Sociological Reassertion of the Unity of Social Science," "The Center of Orientation in Social Science," "The Social Sciences as Terms of One Formula," "The Descriptive Phase of Social Science," "The Analytical Phase of Social Science," "The Evaluative Phase of Social Science," "The Constructive Phase of Social Science," "The Future of Social Science."

Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology.— The first number of this journal appeared May 1. It is the first journal of this sort to be published in English, though various European countries have a number of such publications. It is to be issued bimonthly. The editor-in-chief is James W. Garner, of the University of Illinois, and the editorial director is Colonel Harvey C. Carbaugh, Chicago. The associate editors are Charles F. Amidon, Frederic B. Crossley, Charles A. DeCourcey, Charles A. Ellwood, Frederick R. Green, Charles R. Henderson, Francis J. Heney, Charles H. Huberich, John D. Lawson, Orlando F. Lewis, Edward Lindsey, Adolf Meyer, Frank H. Norcross, Roscoe Pound, Richard A. Sylvester, Arthur W. Towne, John H. Wigmore, and Lightner Witmer. The journal is published at 87 Lake St., Chicago.