If no

effectively equilibrated when the states were formed. linguistic controversies occur in Belgium or Switzerland it is because the Teutonic and Gallic divisions entered the union already compactly organized or at least with their position clearly recognized and guaranteed. This again was possible here, as contrasted with the districts farther east, because the racial and linguistic regions were and are clearly set off from one another. Quite in contrast stand the Ruthenians of Galicia, whose position with reference to the Poles is approximately that of a subject race and whose desire for annexation to Russia is openly expressed. Similarly the Wallachs of Transylvania find themselves overridden by the Magyars and desire to unite with their brethren of the kingdom of Roumania.

In the complex system of modern exchange and economic interdependence community of language is almost as important a factor as it is in cultural and administrative concerns. Commerce was always a breaker of barriers and a standardizer, but never so much so as now. Kossuth, in founding the society for the promotion of Hungarian manufactures in 1844, did more for the national cause than he could then realize, for Hungarian economic independence has forced upon business interests the necessity of using the national language. Economic interest cannot of itself develop a contagious national enthusiasm but it can break down the original barriers of particularism and leave the way clear for psychic forces to do the rest later. If in the present generation Germans and Jews in Hungary not only speak Magyar and Magyarize their names but are also the most ardent of patriots the reason may be found in the formal acquiescence of German and Jewish merchants in the demand for the universal use of the Magyar language that followed the Hungarian national exhibition of 1875.

Almost without exception the problems of racial assimilation in Europe are those arising from the contacts of considerable masses where antagonistic types compete within the same political area and where the ultimate issue is one of mastery or subjection. The massing26 of populations in homogeneous

"Cf. Durkheim, "La densité dynamique," Les règles de la méthode sociologique, 139.

social groups makes the enforcement of a change of cultural standards difficult, as did isolation in the primitive age. Social forms and forces acquire self-sufficiency through their own volume and inclusiveness. Massing keeps alive traditions, it gives continuity to fashions and habits, and it perpetuates a reputable set of orthodox ideals and choices into which each generation grows unconsciously during the plastic period of childhood. If protected by the "cake of custom" group types retain their characteristics as persistently as masses of physical matter retain moisture, color, or odor when unpenetrated by light and air. Scatter a thousand individuals of a certain type among a thousand villages and they will soon resemble their neighbors. Mass them in a single village and they remain largely unmodified in the essentials of personal and social character.

But when we turn from the static groups of Europe and Asia to the nascent social bodies of the United States, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand or Australia the situation is changed because the conditions of social accretion are different. In each of these cases the original settlers formed a fixed kernel which has pretty definitely shaped the later standards of social action through language, traditions, and social ideals. Whatever accretions of population have since come in have not come as large bodies with fixed characters but have filtered in as individuals or small bodies which, percolating through the original mass, have been swallowed up by it. Lacking the momentum of organic groups they have usually conformed easily to established standards. If immigrants into the United States have, to use a current phrase, been easily "absorbed," it has not been because there has existed here a physical stock with superior fusing power, but because the immigrant has found a set of social forms and ideals to which he has usually been glad to conform but which in his isolation he could hardly have resisted if he would.

One need only instance the Jew to prove this point. Every device known to human ingenuity has been employed in continental Europe to compel him to conform to dominant standards and he has only become more obstinately a Jew.

In America, with full liberty to retain cherished interests, so far as legal and administrative measures were concerned, Jewish separateness has immediately and rapidly disintegrated. Judaism has been dealt with in Europe as a racial fact, which it is not, while in America it has been treated as a civilization, which it is. So eager are the Jews to become Americanized that many of their people labor persistently from the start to efface all traces of their alien descent.

This is of course particularly true of the younger generation. Children are morbidly sensitive to that ridicule to which variation from the ruling fashion subjects them. To speak a strange tongue, to wear strange garb, is to expose oneself to contumely among one's mates. Children of a dominant type also retain something of primitive man's aversion to the unfamiliar, and they are as merciless as primitive man or as animals in buffeting an oddity. It is not unusual to find children. of recent immigrants refusing to speak the language of their parents even in the home. The fact that migration to a new land has occurred suggests the inferiority of the old speech, customs, and values. To speak English and to wear American clothes is taken as a mark of belonging to the superior culture, since these things pertain to the ruling class. "When a people dominates others through its brilliancy," says Tarde, "others, who heretofore had imitated none but their forefathers, imitate it."27 On the woman's side of life, also, conformity to type is promoted by the desire to get into "society" where the standards are likely to be even more rigorous than those of the general community. The process of accommodation in this case is almost invariably unilateral rather than reciprocal, for the purpose is to cover up or erase all traits not in harmony with the prevailing type.

This strong pull toward conformity, however, is not wholly due to ambition for economic or social advancement. It is in most cases the mark of real psychic assimilation to a type deliberately chosen and ardently admired. In the later years of life there may come a mild revival of affection for the ances"Tarde, Laws of Imitation, 368.

tral type but this is little likely to become a ruling motive. Ratzenhofer's prediction that there may come in America a revival of national groups when population shall have become more dense and the struggle for existence more keen will arouse little fear in those intimately acquainted with American social forces. Such a contingency might arise if American nationality were based wholly or chiefly on ethnic instead of cultural and social interests. It is conceivable that particular racial bodies may retain a shadowy existence, but they are not likely to acquire anything but a conventional form, nor is their active influence likely to extend beyond the first or second generation.

Because denationalization has been voluntary and because assimilation has been welcomed with a zeal born of eager desire for assimilation, there has hitherto been little need for governmental action in any of the newer countries looking to its regulation. This state of affairs will continue only so long as and to the extent that native standards continue to dominate the population. Any pronounced attempt at coercive assimilation would probably result, as it has resulted abroad, in arousing that sort of reaction which exalts the principle of the oppressed nationality into a sacred cause. Opposition is the only agency that can drive national sentiment into the very core of a people's heart, for, like religious enthusiasm, patriotism flourishes on persecution. Almost the only attempt of this nature in the United States, that of the school laws of Wisconsin and Illinois in 1889, showed clearly the unwisdom of coercion in a democratic community.28 The use of coercive methods would destroy much of the spontaneous loyalty which now takes possession of the immigrant after a short residence in America. 29

This does not imply that society may safely assume a passive attitude toward assimilation. It is true that conditions in the United States have hitherto been such that little specific action was needed, for abundant land and a sparse population

"See an article by Mapel in the Educational Review, I, 52; also Vilas in the Forum, XII, 198.

"The enthusiasm for American ways shown by immigrants who have returned to Europe to reside after some years in America and their influence on their home communities has been graphically pictured by Mr. E. A. Steiner in his recent book, On the Trail of the Immigrant.

have made possible the process of percolation without special guidance. But with the coming of greater bodies of immigrants of markedly alien types and particularly with the growing aggregation of population in urban centers, the massing of unassimilated groups is not only possible but is already beginning. Thus in 1900 the proportion of foreign population in certain cities was most striking:

The situation is not so serious in these cities as it is where unassimilated populations meet in the districts of central Europe, owing to the fact that in nearly all cases the alien elements are of many stocks instead of two. But, while no one racial group predominates, it is nevertheless true that within single groups there is a growing tendency toward a separate, self-sufficient life little affected by American social influences except as these are brought to bear on children in the schools.

Furthermore, while in 1880 forty-one per cent of all immigrants came from English-speaking countries, in 1909 only ten per cent came from such countries. The mere numbers, however, are not necessarily significant. Between 1880 and 1909, 17,142,280 immigrants arrived, but the proportion of foreign-born in the whole country did not perceptibly increase between 1880 and 1900.30 The significant fact is that the newer immigrants, who are more remote from the American type than the Germans, Irish, and Scandinavians of the earlier period, are not so diffused that spontaneous assimilation will readily occur. 10 1880, 13.3 per cent; 1890, 14.7 per cent; 1900, 13.6 per cent.