Let us now for a moment take up the consideration of a second physical characteristic of city populations—viz., stature. If there be a law at all in respect of average statures, it demonstrates rather the depressing effects of city life than the reverse. For example, Hamburg is far below the average for Germany. All over Britain there are indications of this law, that town populations are, on the average, comparatively short of stature. Dr. Beddoe, the great authority upon this subject, concludes his investigation of the population of Great Britain thus: "It may therefore be taken as proved that the stature of men in the large towns of Britain is lowered considerably below the standard of the nation, and as probable that such degradation is hereditary and progressive."
A most important point in this connection is the great variability of city populations in size. All observers comment upon this. It is of profound significance. The people of the west and east ends in each city differ widely. The population of the aristocratic quarters is often found to exceed in stature the people of the tenement districts. We should expect this, of course, as a direct result of the depressing influence of unfavorable environment. Yet there is apparently another factor underlying that—viz., social selection. While cities contain so large a proportion of degenerate physical types as on the average to fall below the surrounding country in stature, nevertheless they also are found to include an inordinately large number of very tall and well-developed individuals. In other words, compared with the rural districts, where all men are subject to the same conditions of life, we discover in the city that the population has differentiated into the very tall and the very short.
The explanation for this phenomenon is simple. Yet it is not direct, as in Topinard's suggestion that it is a matter of race or that a change of environment operates to stimulate growth. Rather does it appear that it is the growth which suggests the change. The tall men are in the main those vigorous, mettlesome, presumably healthy individuals who have themselves, or in the person of their fathers, come to the city in search of the prizes which urban life has to offer to the successful. On the other hand, the degenerate, the stunted, those who entirely outnumber the others so far as to drag the average for the city as a whole below the normal, are the grist turned out by the city mill. They are the product of the tenement, the sweat shop, vice, and crime. Of course, normally developed men, as ever, constitute the main bulk of the population, but these two widely divergent classes attain a very considerable representation.
We have seen thus far that evidence seems to point to an aggregation of the Teutonic long-headed population in the urban centers of Europe. Perhaps a part of the tall stature in some cities may be due to such racial causes. A curious anomaly now remains, however, to be noted. City populations appear to manifest a distinct tendency toward brunetness—that is to say, they seem to comprise an abnormal proportion of brunet traits, as compared with the neighboring rural districts. This tendency was strikingly shown to characterize the entire German Empire when its six million school children were examined under Virchow's direction. In twenty-five out of thirty-three of the larger cities were the brunet traits more frequent than in the country.
Austria offers confirmation of the same tendency toward brunetness in twenty-four out of its thirty-three principal cities. Farther south, in Italy, it was noted much earlier that cities contained fewer blonds than were common in the rural districts roundabout. In conclusion let us add, not as additional testimony, for the data are too defective, that among five hundred American students at the Institute of Technology in Boston, roughly classified, there were 9 per cent of pure brunet type among those of country birth and training, while among those of urban birth and parentage the percentage of such brunet type rose as high as 15.
It is not improbable that there is in brunetness, in the dark hair and eye, some indication of vital superiority. If this were so, it would serve as a partial explanation for the social phenomena which we have been at so much pains to describe. If in the same community there were a slight vital advantage in brunetness, we should expect to find that type slowly aggregating in the cities; for it requires energy and courage, physical as well as mental, not only to break the ties of home and migrate, but also to maintain one's self afterward under the stress of urban life.
From the preceding formidable array of testimony it appears that the tendency of urban populations is certainly not toward the pure blond, long-headed, and tall Teutonic type. The phenomenon of urban selection is something more complex than a mere migration of a single racial element in the population toward the cities. The physical characteristics of townsmen are too contradictory for ethnic explanations alone. To be sure, the tendencies are slight; we are not even certain of their universal existence at all. We are merely watching for their verification or disproof. There is, however, nothing improbable in the phenomena we have noted. Naturalists have always turned to the environment for the final solution of many of the great problems of nature. In this case we have to do with one of the most sudden and radical changes of environment known to man. Every condition of city life, mental as well as physical, is at the polar extreme from those which prevail in the country. To deny that great modifications in human structure and functions may be effected by a change from one to the other is to gainsay all the facts of natural history.
4. Inter-racial Competition and Race Suicide[191]
I have thus far spoken of the foreign arrivals at our ports, as estimated. Beginning with 1820, however, we have custom-house statistics of the numbers of persons annually landing upon our shores. Some of these, indeed, did not remain here; yet, rudely speaking, we may call them all immigrants. Between 1820 and 1830, population grew to 12,866,020. The number of foreigners arriving in the ten years was 151,000. Here, then, we have for forty years an increase, substantially all out of the loins of the four millions of our own people living in 1790, amounting to almost nine millions, or 227 per cent. Such a rate of increase was never known before or since, among any considerable population over any extensive region.
About this time, however, we reach a turning-point in the history of our population. In the decade 1830-40 the number of foreign arrivals greatly increased. Immigration had not, indeed, reached the enormous dimensions of these later days. Yet, during the decade in question, the foreigners coming to the United States were almost exactly fourfold those coming in the decade preceding, or 599,000. The question now of vital importance is this: Was the population of the country correspondingly increased? I answer, No! The population of 1840 was almost exactly what, by computation, it would have been had no increase in foreign arrivals taken place. Again, between 1840 and 1850, a still further access of foreigners occurred, this time of enormous dimensions, the arrivals of the decade amounting to not less than 1,713,000. Of this gigantic total, 1,048,000 were from the British Isles, the Irish famine of 1846-47 having driven hundreds of thousands of miserable peasants to seek food upon our shores. Again we ask, Did this excess constitute a net gain to the population of the country? Again the answer is, No! Population showed no increase over the proportions established before immigration set in like a flood. In other words, as the foreigners began to come in larger numbers, the native population more and more withheld their own increase.