in part from their exposure to some of those ruthless waves of conquest which have gone so long and so thoroughly over Ireland, and of which the resultant passive mood has as plainly passed below memory into dulled instinct and habit, as does the active mood, still recurrent in the Irishman, into protest or policy. Where the local patriciate has been exterminated once and again, the heads and flower of families slain, the women in every sense ruined, that community, that city, as history shows, may too often need centuries to recover. That such cities do recover, contemporary Germany bears witness; but her cities still speak of themselves as only recovering in this generation of ours from the Thirty Years' War nine generations ago. Viking conditions produce but small literary output; and as for the poor Celt, he reads his newspaper, but no longer sings; he has been through the board-schools of memory, so no longer remembers nor thinks. Dundee, with a population five or six times greater than that of Perth, has fewer booksellers, and these with smaller aggregate business; but an abundant and well-diffused weekly press, not only innocuous as such literature goes, but fairly strong in a vein of local color, rustic rather than urban, and of domestic sentiment, of which J. M. Barrie's pleasing writings may be taken as the characteristic blossom. The real expression of Dundee in literature, that of its essential tragedy, of the industrial and even earlier depression of woman, I take to be the "Song of the Shirt," and this not only as symbol, but in fact. For here Tom Hood, whose name and kindred are still with us, and whose first writings appeared in our local press, spent two or three unhappy formative years of adolescence, and thus must have first laid in those impressions of the misery of the woman worker, which he had.of course opportunity of elaborating in his maturer life in London. Our few figure painters, too, have in the main the kindred tragic note, which indeed seems inevitable in our day along with observing and interpreting powers in any form. III. Our survey is still far from ended; and, as becomes the theme set me, its darker side has been the more prominent, so that some of the specific conditions both past and present which have made for deterioration in this particular example of town life should be made plain. I am well aware that these historic examples from Scotland do not fit to any American city, though it has always seemed to me there is plenty of work for the historical observer and interpreter in America too. My whole point has been to insist upon the necessity of a local and Regional Survey of geographic and historic conditions, and of the resultant social qualities and defects together, as complemental, as interchangeable so far also. I plead that sociologists must labor like geological and ecological surveyors, and this over the length and breadth of their lands, and of the world, and must thence educe conclusions which may be the start point for fresh comparisons. In this task it is better to begin with the smaller and simpler cities, not the greater and complexer; hence I have chosen Perth and Dundee rather than Edinburgh and Glasgow, Paris and London; and I see I might have made my points clearer had I chosen simpler and smaller cities, younger ones also. In adopting this treatment I am not denying the possibility of a more general and more comprehensive grasp of city problems; but I do strongly plead that this should follow, not precede, a survey, an intimate personal knowledge of many cities. As an indication of this more general method of treatment, I may be permitted to refer to my various papers on Civics in the three volumes of "Sociological Papers," the recent organ of the Sociological Society of London, as also to one or two briefer notes in its present "Sociological Review." As an example of complemental practical endeavor my City Development (Outlook Tower, Edinburgh, 1904) may be indicated. As convener of the "Cities Committee" of the Sociological Society, I shall be glad to hear from any who may be interested in that necessary, and I doubt not approaching, Survey of Cities in which it is our ambition to take an active part. PART THREE Obstacles to Race Progress in the THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DECREASING PROPORTION OF CHILDREN BY W. S. ROSSITER, CHIEF CLERK OF THE UNITED STATES CENSUS ALCOHOLISM AS A CAUSE OF INSANITY BY CHARLES L, DANA, M.D., NEW YORK CITY; PROFESSOR OF NERVOUS DISEASES, CORNELL MEDICAL COLLEGE. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ENFORCEMENT OF LAW BY CHAMPE S. ANDREWS, ESQ., THE INVASION OF FAMILY LIFE BY INDUSTRY SECRETARY NATIONAL CONSUMERS' League, NEW YORK CITY THE INSTABILITY OF THE FAMILY BY J. P. LICHTENBERGER, Ph.D., THE MORAL INFLUENCE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN SOCIETY |