(1) The admission of hordes of ill-educated and ill-disciplined immigrants from countries lower in the scale of progress than our own is a serious menace to the ideals and standards of living that we have at great cost evolved. Our own morals and manners are not firmly enough fixed to be sure of withstanding the downward pull of more primitive conceptions and habits. Their willingness to work for small wages lowers the remuneration of Americans; their contentment with wretched living conditions blocks our attempts to raise the general standard of life. Many of them are unappreciative of American ideals, easily misled by corrupt politicians, and thus a deadweight against political and social advance. We may, perhaps, disregard the poverty of the immigrant, if he is in good health and able to work; we may even disregard his lack of education, if he is mentally sound and reasonably intelligent. But if some practicable method could be devised to lessen radically the incoming stream of those who are low in their standards of living, we should be spared the social indigestion from which we now suffer. One feasible suggestion is to limit the number of immigrants annually admitted from each country to a certain small percentage of the number of natives of that country already resident here. In that way the total number could be restricted without offense to any nation, and those peoples most easily assimilated would be admitted in greatest proportions. In addition, naturalization should be permitted only after a number of years, during which the immigrant would be in danger of deportation for proved criminality, vicious indulgence, intemperance, shiftlessness, troublesome agitation, and other undesirable traits.
(2) The admission of peoples of very alien race to residence side by side with our own inevitably gives rise to friction and unpleasantness. However irrational it may be, there are instinctive antipathies and distrusts between the different racial stocks. The importation of the Negroes brought us a terrible racial problem, one for which there seems no satisfactory solution. White men as a class dislike living side by side with them, and fiercely resent intermarriage, which might ultimately merge the races, as it seems to be doing in South America. A general feeling of brotherhood and social democracy is greatly retarded by this racial chasm.[Footnote: Cf. J. M. Mecklin, Democracy and Race Friction.] It is earnestly to be hoped that Chinese, Japanese, Hindus, and other non-European races may not be admitted to residence here in any great degree; similar antipathies and resentments would be added to our existing discords. It is not that these races are inferior to our own, they are simply different; and however superficial the differences, they are just the sort of differences that cause social friction. Precisely the same argument would apply to the exodus of Americans and Europeans to Asiatic countries. A certain amount of intermingling of students, travelers, missionaries, traders, is highly beneficial, in the exchange of ideas and manners it stimulates; that the main racial stocks should remain apart, on their several continents, in that mutual respect and brotherhood that the superficial repugnancies of too close contact tend to destroy. The plan suggested at the close of the preceding paragraph would sufficiently avert these undesirable racial migrations.
IV. The woman-movement? The demand of women for a larger life and a recognition from men of their full equality has found expression recently, not only in the hysterical and criminal acts of British suffragettes, but in many soberer revolts against the traditional assignment of duties and privileges. We may agree at once in deploring the exclusion of women from any rights and opportunities which are not inconsistent with a wise division of labor, and that patronizing air of superiority shown toward them by so many men-a condescension not incompatible with tenderness and chivalry. Theirs has been the repressed and petted sex. Yet there are no adequate grounds for supposing that men are, on an average, really abler or saner or more reasonable naturally than women; that they are, indeed, in any essential sense different, except for the results of their different education and life, and such divergences as the differentiation of sex itself involves including an average greater physical strength.[Footnote: But cf. Munsterberg, Psychology and Social Sanity, p. 195] Men and women are naturally equals; with equally good training they can contribute almost equally to the world's work; they have an equal right to education, a useful vocation, and the free pursuit of happiness. But equal rights do not necessarily imply identical duties; there is a certain division of labor laid down by nature. Women alone can bear children, mothers alone can properly rear them; no incubators and institutions can supply this fundamental need. If women, in their eagerness to compete with men in other occupations, neglect in any great numbers this most difficult and honorable of all vocations, there will be a dangerous decline in the numbers and the nurture of coming generations. Moreover, if homes are not to be supplanted by boarding houses and hotels, the great majority of women must stay at home and do the work which makes a home possible. Home making and child rearing are the duties that always have been and always will be the lot of most women; and they are duties too exacting to permit of being conjoined with any other vocation.
On the other hand, the woman who has servants and rears no children should be pushed by public opinion into some outside occupation; women have no more right to idle than men. All unmarried women, when past the years that may properly be devoted to education, should certainly enter upon some useful vocation; and there is no reason why (with a few obvious exceptions) any occupation save the more physically arduous should be closed to such. Every girl should be prepared for some remunerative work, in case she does not marry or her husband dies leaving her childless. Such economic independence would, further, have the inestimable value that she would be under no pressure to marry in order to be supported and have an honorable place in the world; if she is trained to earn her living she will be free to marry only for love. If she does marry, and gives up her prior vocation to be housekeeper and child-rearer, she should be legally entitled to half her husband's earnings. The grave difficulty is that a woman needs to prepare herself both for her probable duties as housekeeper and mother, and also for her possible need of earning a living otherwise. Education in the former duties, that must fall to the great majority of women, cannot safely be neglected, as it is so largely today; the only general solution will be for unmarried women to adopt, as a class, the vocations for which less careful preparation is necessary.
The question of the ballot is not practically of great importance, first, because equal suffrage is coming very fast, whatever we may say, and, secondly, because it will make no great difference when it comes. There is no natural right in the matter; the decision in political affairs might well be left to half the population-when that half cuts so completely through all classes and sections-if the saving in expense or trouble seemed to make it expedient. The interests of women are identical with those of men. Women are, in most parts of this country, as well off before the law as men; they do not need the ballot to remedy any unjust discriminations. Moreover, the ballot will mean the necessity of sharing the burden of political responsibility. The women who look upon the right to vote as a plum to be grasped for, a something which they want because men have it, with no conception of the training necessary to exercise that right responsibly, are not fit to be trusted with it. It often seems that it were better to restrict our present trustful and generous right of suffrage to those who can show evidence of intelligence and responsibility, rather than to double the number of shallow and untrained voters.
But, on the other hand, there is reason to suppose that women, through their greater interest in certain goods, will materially accelerate some reforms-as, the sanitation of cities, the improvement of education, child-welfare legislation, the warfare against alcohol and prostitution. The actual results already attained where women vote are, on the whole, important enough to warrant the extension of the right, as a matter of social expediency. Moreover, the very increase in the number of voters makes the securing of power through bribery more difficult; and the entrance of women into politics will probably hasten their purification in many places. At any rate, the necessity of voting will tend to develop a larger interest among women in public affairs, to fit them better for the education of their children, and to do away with the lingering sense of the inferiority of women. Certain it is, finally, that an increasing number of women want the vote, and will not rest till they get it.
General: F. W. Taussig, Principles of Economics, chap. 54. W. E. Weyl, The New Democracy, book I. Adams and Sumner, Labor Problems, chap. XIII. C. B. Spahr, The Present Distribution of Wealth in the United States. Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, chap. XXV, secs. 6, 7. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 112, pp. 480, 679. The single tax: Henry George, Progress and Poverty; Social Problems. R. C. Fillebrown, The A.B.C. of Taxation. Outlook, vol. 94, p. 311. Shearman, Natural Taxation. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 112, p. 737; vol. 113, pp. 27, 545. H. R. Seager, Introduction to Economics, chap, XXVI, secs. 283-88. F. W. Taussig, op. cit, chap. 42, sec. 7. Arena, vol. 34, p. 500; vol. 35, p. 366. New World, vol. 7, p. 87. Free trade: North American Review, vol. 189, p. 194. Quarterly Review, vol. 202, p. 250. H. Fawcett, Free Trade and Protection. W. J. Ashley, The Tariff Problem. H. R. Seager, op. cit, chap. XX, secs. 211-17. F. W. Taussig, op. cit, chaps. 36, 37. Immigration: Jenks and Lauck, The Immigration Problem. H. P. Fairchild, Immigration. Adams and Sumner, Labor Problems, chap. III. F. J. Warne, The Immigrant Invasion. A. Shaw, Political Problems, pp. 62-86. North American Review, vol. 199, p. 866. Nineteenth Century, vol. 57, p. 294. Educational Review, vol. 29, p. 245. Forum, vol. 42, p. 552. Charities, vol. 12, p. 129. Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 16, pp. 1, 141. The woman question: J. S. Mill, The Subjection of Women. C. P. Gilman, Women and Economics. O. Schreiner, Woman and Labor. K. Schirmacher, The Modern Woman's Rights Movement. Jane Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace, chap. VII. F. Kelley, Some Ethical Gains through Legislation, chap. V. Outlook, vol. 82, p. 167; vol. 91, pp. 780, 784, 836; vol. 95, p. 117; vol. 101, pp. 754, 767. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 112, pp. 48, 191, 721. Century, vol. 87, pp. 1, 663. National Municipal Review, vol. 1, p. 620.
CHAPTER XXX
THE FUTURE OF THE RACE
In proportion as fair means are found and utilized for remedying the gross inequalities in the present distribution of wealth, and big fortunes disappear, it will become necessary for the State to undertake more and more generally the functions that have, during the last few generations, been largely dependent upon private philanthropy. This will be an advantage not merely in putting this welfare work upon a securer basis, but in enlisting the loyalty of the masses to the Government. Much of the energy and devotion which are now given to the labor-unions, because in them alone the workers see hope of help, might be given to the State if it should take upon itself more adequately to minister to the people's needs. The rich can get health and beauty for themselves; but the poor are largely dependent upon public provision for a wholesome and cheerful existence. Laissez-faire individualism has provided them with saloons; in the new age the State must provide them with something better than saloons. "Flowers and sunshine for all," in Richard Jefferies' wistful phrase-the State should make a determined and thoroughgoing effort, not merely to repress, to punish, to palliate conditions, but in every positive way that expert thought can devise and the people will vote to support, to add to the worth of human life. We may consider these paternal functions of government under three heads: the improvement of human environment, to make it more beautiful and convenient; the development, through educational agencies, of the mental and moral life of the people; and the improvement, by various means, of the human stock itself.