Social Psychology
Chapter 14: The Fields of Custom Imitation
Edward Alsworth Ross
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Custom rules certain segments of life
THERE appear to be certain fields of life, such as industry, business, and the advancement of science, where merit rules; other fields, like dress, personal adornment, display, luxury, equipage, and amusements, which are the happy hunting-grounds of novelty; and, finally, certain fields, like language, ceremony, ritual, worship, government, relations of races, sexes, and classes, in which custom prevails. These last are the fossil-bearing strata of society, the relic-yielding, river-drift caves. No other fields yield so much to the explorer in quest of materials for reconstructing the past.
If we investigate why custom rules in one department of life and not in another, we come upon certain general truths.
I. A survival is not kicked aside until it gets in the way.
Just as a settler tolerates the stumps in the pasture till he wants to plough it up, so we put up with the debris of the past until it seriously incommodes us; then we clear it away. In India caste lines are held rigid until railway eating-houses come in. Then, when it is eat with the low-caste man or go hungry, the caste lines begin to bend. Ganges water is religiously drunk till modern sanitation
Where there is sharp competition, custom cannot thrive
(255) provides a supply of better water near at hand. On the same principle a vestigial organ - pineal gland, third eyelid, vermiform appendix - held in the firm clasp of heredity, is reproduced indefinitely until a moment comes when it begins seriously to hinder survival; then natural selection seizes upon it and roots it up.[1] Now, effete customs cannot live on in a field like warfare, where the spearmen who come out against Gatlings perish and with them their belated style of fighting; or industry, where those who cling to the hand-tool in 'he age of the machine starve; or business, where the merchant who does without telephone, typewriter, or the loose-leaf system fails; or the professions, where resistance to the use of ether or anti-toxin brings ruin. In all such fields it is not necessary that all become open-minded. Competition forces the pace. If one out of twenty is progressive enough to adopt the happy innovation, the other nineteen are obliged to follow suit or abandon the field entirely. Even religion starts forward under this spur, and the interdenominational rivalry for members and popular favor obliges conservatives themselves to lower the bars of creed. On the other hand, fields like ceremony (curtsey, wedding, coronation), festivals (Halloween, St. Valentine's Day, rolling Easter
(256) eggs), forms of address (Madam = My lady, Good-by = God be with you), modes of spelling, riddles, proverbs, and everything pertaining to children (lullabies, Mother Goose, " King's x," " King's Cruse ... .. Tit-tat-toe "), being untested by competition, are full of survivals. Government departments, missing the enlivening prick of competition, cling to antiquated procedure. The commonplace, uneducated woman is ingenious, experimental, and open to novelty, only during the brief period when she is competing with other maidens for masculine favor. Once she has achieved a fixed status as wife she is probably content to do as her mother did.
The alcoves of social life become cobwebbed with custom
2. Custom rules in the less accessible fields.
In the recesses of the home, live on practices that could not endure the open air. The way a man tills his field is more subject to invidious comparison than the way a woman washes her dishes or cares for her babies. Cookery, kitchen utensils, table manners, personal ablutions, courtship, christening, nameday and birthday observances, family ceremonies and festivals, are ruled by tradition because they are private. So long as the making of garments is a household art, costume may show great stability. Thus, some believe that the shaggy sheepskin mantle and the close-fitting woollens of the Bulgarians still hint, amid the vine and the olive, of the bleak Central Asian home of the race.
3. Collective habits are more stable than individual habits.
The reason is that they cannot be dropped by man after en man, but must await concerted abandonment or modi- fication. However bad the old highway has become, no single teamster can afford to survey a road for himself;
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Festivals of remote origin are usually of wide observance
On the survival of criminal festivals, Fererro [3] remarks:" We see, therefore, that collective crime has opposed a greater resistance than individual crime to the progress of civilization. But why have these criminal festivals endured so long, while individual customs have been undergoing transformation?" "A crowd of men is always more afraid of the new, more conservative, than are the men who compose it. For that reason a usage is more stable and less subject to variation in proportion to the number of men who observe it." " Every one can observe that it is easy for a man to change his individual habits, but that the habits of a family, being more fixed, are changed with greater difficulty." " But fixed as family customs are, they are unstable enough if we compare them to the usages of large aggregates, to the whole population of a city, for example. In all Europe, in Italy, France, and Germany, some of the cities still celebrate the festivals of the Middle Ages, occasionally even Roman festivals, which plunge a whole population every year into the past again. The costumes, the banners, and the signals, everything in these festivals is old, and no one would be satisfied to use anything modern in them, for all their beauty would then seem to vanish. We find yet more superannuated usages when we consider still larger human aggregates; for while in the usages of a city we find survivals of its history, in the usages common to all civilized men we find survivals of the ancient primitive life, customs which appertain to the savage period. Of such, for example, is the worship of ancestors." " The rites relating to it have been nearly entirely abandoned, yet these rites, which exist no
(259) longer in individual practice, still survive as a general usage among all Roman Catholic peoples, for the ceremony of the day of the dead is nothing else than a survival from the ancient ancestral religion.
"A mass of men is thus always more afraid of novelty than the men that compose it: these may change their feelings and their ideas, but they come together; the feelings and ideas acquired by the individuals will have no influence, or but little, upon their conduct. What is the cause of this contradiction? Man . . . hates all novelty and tries to preserve everything that exists - his ideas and feelings - so long as he can, without changing them. Yet, when very strong necessities urge him, man . . . changes his habits and his ideas, and rebels against institutions and laws he had once venerated; but it is always a painful task, a disagreeable effort for every man. . . . Difficult as this change may be for each man, it is still more so when a collective usage is concerned; for then the opinion of all the other men to the same effect and imitation reenforce the neophoby natural to man. The struggle is not only against one's own conservative instincts, but also against the fear of being alone in neglecting a usage which all others observe.[4] For these usages to pass away there must, therefore, be causes acting upon the whole mass of those who observe them, producing gradual decadence. Now these causes would naturally act more slowly than those which produce individual changes of manners, ideas, etc.; they
(260) will act more slowly, too, as the aggregate of men subject to their influence is greater.
" So the genesis of criminal festivals is explained. When crimes become the object of legal repression and then of moral repulsion, men begin, each on his own account, to abstain from committing them. . , . . But these criminal festivals, to which the ancient liberty and the ancient glory of crime have given rise, being usages common to a whole tribe or people, enjoy the advantage of the greater ter stability in collective usages. . . . Thus, the Dahomeyan, who is no longer a cannibal, becomes an anthropophagist again in the great public festivals that are celebrated after a victory; the East Indians slay men upon the foundations of a palace, but only when great public edifices are a-building; and the inhabitants of Sumatra, gentle enough in their ordinary customs, solemnly eat their old men, in the belief that they are thereby observing the most sacred of their duties as sons."
Immigrants quit their personal ways sooner than their communal ways
Roberts[5] shows that in the coal regions the Sclavs do not Americanize their corporate practices as rapidly as their individual practices. "The Sclav religiously observes the days on which the saints are commemorated and invariably takes a holiday. On sacred seasons of the year, such as Easter and Christmas, they are at great trouble to commemorate the historical events which form the basis of the Christian religion. On Easter, tombs are constructed in churches and a semi-military religious organization associated with the Church assigns quaternions of its members to guard them. Relays succeed each other for a period equal to that during which Christ is said to have remained in the grave. On Easter also mem-
(261) -bers carry baskets laden with provisions to the Church that the priest may bless them, and when they are brought home again the family sit down to the consecrated feast. At Christmas time, members of the Church go from door to door carrying emblems of the nativity and recite the story of the miraculous birth. Accompanying them are grotesque figures, representing the enemies of the Church, which add mirth to the visitations. These parties take up collections which are turned over to the priest. On Easter and Christmas a solemn procession is formed, when sacred relics are carried, and the members, chanting, march around the church or along the aisles. On Ascension Day branches of trees are cut down and hung over the doors of the houses and around the pictures of sacred personages in the homes."
" As the Sclavs gain in numbers and confidence they give greater publicity to their native customs and peculiarities. Troops of men will, on idle days, amuse themselves by playing a childish game which affords them much amusement. They carry charms and sacred relics with greater publicity than they did in former years. They do not enjoy their frolics and weddings with the same privacy as in the early years of their life in the coal fields." "Last Fourth of July, a company of Tyrolese paraded the streets with a hand-cart drawn by men, in which was placed a barrel of lager. Over it stood a comrade, goblet in hand and crowned with a garland of laurels, singing some jargon, while sitting on the rear end of the vehicle was another fellow with an accordion. Along the streets they marched to the strains of music and at intervals they stopped to drink the good beverage they celebrated in song. It was an imitation of the honor paid Bacchus
(262) which was one of the most joyous festivities of ancient Rome." The greater obstinacy of the drinking of liquor at banquets or in "treating" than in private drinking is another illustration of the principle.
4. Habits of consumption aye more stable than habits of production.
There are a number of reasons for this. The former,being more private, are less subject to unfavorable comparison and criticism. Competition obliges one to change his ways of producing, but not his diet, costume, beverages, or house architecture. A large proportion of producers work under direction, but as consumer one is a free man. As children we consume long before we produce. Finally, our recollection of a form of enjoyment or consumption ("the old swimmin' hole," "pies like mother used to make ") is more vivid and lasting than our recollection of a manner of doing work.
Habits of consumption constitute the standard of living, which may become so imperious as to overrule the sex and family instincts and exercise a salutary check upon the growth of population. The stubbornness with which men cling to their customary standard of living is emphasized by Mrs. Mead:[6] "At the other extreme of society is found the class that has not yet developed wants of a qualitative character. Included here are all who are still in a caste system; for example, the Chinese, the coolies, the European peasantry. From generation to generation they cat the same food, dwell in the same houses, wear the same clothing, work at the same trades, and indulge in the same pleasures. The Hindoo who starves to death during the famine rather than eat wheat,
(263) and the Italian who imports macaroni and olives, and who puts up with expensive adulterated articles rather than change his diet, are characteristic of the class. To them must be added the degenerate element of our city slums. On the borders is the backwoodsman, who, in his isolation, has become inured to the hardships of his life and indifferent to the advances made in comfortable living. He is contented with a ham-and-egg diet, and he has implicit belief in the superiority of everything home-made, from soap to butter, and from shock mattress to clothes. In general, education for the lower class must mean the excitation of new wants."
Laborers may accomodate earnings to cost of living rather than cost of living to earnings
The inelasticity of habits of consumption explain I certain economic paradoxes. Says Weil, of Mexico: [7] " The low wages, however, appear to be largely the result of the ignorance and improvidence of the natives, and it is somewhat questionable whether higher daily wages would permanently benefit the peon, unless at the same time his standard of life rose. The experience of railroad companies and other employers of labor in Mexico has been that higher daily wages increase idleness, and that, if the wages for a day's work be doubled, the number of working days will be halved. It is also a fact confirmed by the experience and observation of many employers that the amount of labor performed bears no direct relation to the wages, and that even where work is done by the task instead of by the day the promise of additional remuneration will seldom result in an increased output." Says our consul[8] of the working class
(264) of Ecuador: "The working class in the main lives for to-day, letting to-morrow take care of itself. This class works sufficiently to earn a subsistence, but exhausts no energies in efforts at accumulation. The cause is an example handed from age to age and generation to generation. The tendency is to fall into a beaten track, to do things now as they were done last year, or ten or fifty years ago. They are not hostile to innovations and new things; but they do not seek them, and only accept them when it is easier to accept them than to cast them aside. . . . There are no signs that either the rate of wages or the general condition of the working class will be changed for many years to come. When there is a great change, it must result from external influences. The working class appears to be much more contented with its condition here than the same class in those countries where a greater degree of intelligence and a higher order of civilization abounds."
Ease of exploiting a custom-bound people
Among a custom-bound people the problem of exploitive government is simple. So long as they do not threaten the laboring man's customary comforts, the ruling classes can absorb all the rest of the social income without exciting a revolt. With railroads, mines, plantations, and factories, they may multiply the national output by three, yet cede the masses no share in the new prosperity. Such, generally speaking, is the technique of exploitation in the South American countries. On the other hand, where the working classes have become discontented and outreaching and ambitious, it is necessary for the ruling class to concede them a share in the increase of social income. Discontent and restlessness and striving to better one's condition, penetrating society to the very
(265) bottom, is the only adequate guarantee for the permanence of democratic government.
Asiatic immigrants will borrow our skill sooner tha our standards of living
It is their relative immobility of consumption that makes the unrestricted immigration of Asiatics so menacing to the future of our country. The coolies, acquiring our industrial methods - and consequently our earning power - ere they have accepted our standards of living, would multiply at a higher rate than Americans, and would therefore tend to supplant the native stock. Elsewhere the writer has said: Suppose Asiatics flock to this country and, enjoying equal opportunities under our laws, learn our methods and compete actively with Americans. They may be able to produce and therefore earn in the ordinary occupations, say three-fourths as much as Americans; but if their standard of life is only half as high, the Asiatic will marry before the American feels able to marry. The Asiatic will rear two children while his competitor feels able to rear but one. The Asiatic will increase his children to six under conditions that will not encourage the American to raise more than four. Both, perhaps, are forward-looking and influenced by the worldly prospects of their children; but where the Oriental is satisfied with the outlook, the American, who expects to school his children longer and place them better, shakes his head.
By freer multiplication Asiatics will replace Americans
Now, to such a competition there are three possible results. First, the American, becoming discouraged, may relinquish his exacting standard of decency and begin to multiply as freely as the Asiatic. This, however, is likely to occur only among the more reckless and worthless elements of our population. Second, the Asiatic may catch up our wants as well as our arts, and acquire
(266) the higher standard and lower rate of increase of the American. This is just what contact and education are doing for the French Canadians in New England, for the immigrants in the West, and for the negro in some parts of the South; but the members of a great culture race like the Chinese show no disposition, even when scattered sparsely among us, to assimilate to us or to adopt our standards. Not until their self-complacency has been undermined at home and an extensive intellectual ferment has taken place in China itself will the Chinese become assimilable elements. Thirdly, the standards may remain distinct, the rates of increase unequal, and the silent replacement of Americans by Asiatics go on unopposed until the latter monopolize all industrial occupations, and the Americans shrink to a superior caste able perhaps by virtue of its genius, its organization, and its vantage of position to retain for a while its hold on government, education, finance, and the direction of industry, but hopelessly beaten and displaced as a race. In other words, the American farm hand, mechanic, and operative might wither away before the heavy influx of a prolific race from the Orient, just as in classic times the Latin husbandman vanished before the endless stream of slaves poured into Italy by her triumphant generals.
5. Custom is powerful in matters of feeling.
Feelings outlive their causes
This is because there are no objective or logical tests to emancipate us from a transmitted emotional attitude. In comparison with beliefs and practices, loves and hatreds, admiration and contempt are inveterate. Recall the hereditary vendettas of Corsica, Calabria, Scotland, and Kentucky. Think of the tenacity of popular attachment to effete dynasties like the Stuarts and the Bourbons.
(267) Says Bryce:[9] "The Franks in Gaul during the seventh and eighth centuries were as fierce and turbulent a race as the world has ever seen. Their history is a long record of incessant and ferocious strife. From the beginning of the seventh century the Merwing kings, descendants of Clovis, became, with scarcely an exception, feeble and helpless. Their power passed to their viziers, the Mayors of the Palace, who from about A.D. 638 onwards were kings de facto. But the Franks continued to revere the blood of Clovis, and when, in 656, a rash Mayor of the Palace had deposed a Merwing and placed his own son on the throne, they rose at once against the insult offered to the ancient line; and its scions were revered as titular heads of the nation for a century longer, till Pippin the Short, having induced the Pope to pronounce the deposition of the last Merwing and to sanction the transfer of the crown to himself, sent that prince into a monastery."
Beliefs can be controverted but not feelings
That feudal loyalty dies slowly may be seen in the affection of Scottish Highlanders for their clan chief long after English law had transformed him into a grasping, relentless landlord, and in the hereditary tie that in Old Japan bound a samurai line to a daimyo line. National friendships and enmities tend to become inveterate, as witness the traditional feeling between the French and the Poles on the one hand, between the French and English on the other. The Irishman's hatred of the "Saxon" passes undiminished from parent to child, and even bears transplantation to American soil. The writer once saw an Englishman and a Scotchman. in the presence of ladies, come to blows over a chance
(268) allusion to a battle between their peoples six centuries ago!
Past events shape the present chiefly through the feelings they inspired
Inter-race feelings survive time and change. Recall the undying antipathy between Spaniard and Moor, Kurd and Armenian, Turk and Macedonian. The relation between Boer and Kaffir is an open sore, the color line in our South is far from fading away, and people still bait the Jews "because they crucified the Saviour." Though their Mogul masters have long been dust, the Bengali still cringe like spaniels under the tone of command. Inter-class feelings are hard to uproot. Witness the persistence of Brahminical disdain, of seigniorial pride, of plantation manners, of Helot crouch, and peasant deference. Inter-confessional feelings live long. Scratch a Scotchman and you come upon an antipathy to the Church of England that goes back to the persecution of the Covenanters, Claverhouse, and the Massacre of Glencoe. The "No Popery" fanaticism of the English masses is a heritage from the fires of Smithfield, the Spanish Armada, and the Bloody Assizes. The riots between Orangemen and Catholics that once convulsed American cities show how an antipathy may keep its vitality for two centuries.
Relations between men and women governed by ancient standardized sentiments
Inter-sex feelings, such as male overbearingness or female mistrust, long outlast the state of things to which they correspond. Chivalry and dependence are still the standard sentiments between young men and women, even though they have nothing more to go on than rescuing the young lady from a mouse or giving her superfluous aid in alighting from a car. Hence, endless posing and attitudinizing. Man insists on protecting and woman on clinging as in the rude and parlous times before the
(269) ubiquitous policeman. Between youth and maid a "Platonic friendship" is impossible, not because it goes against their nature, but because it clashes with the dominant tradition that any liking between them must be sentimental.
Why mode of disposing of the dead is a race characteristic
Strong feeling about the disposal of the dead makes us, against our better judgment, resist cremation. The mode of disposal (burial, burning, embalming, hanging in trees, exposure to birds, throwing into the sacred river) is for each people so characteristic and stable that by this mark alone ethnologists and archaeologists can trail a race across wide stretches of time and space. Feelings about the gods is long-lived.[10] Instance the reappearance of Christianity in France after the submergence of religion during the Revolution. Dostoiewsky tells a story of the Russian who on becoming enlightened broke the icons that adorned the altar, put out the candles, and then replaced the icons with the works of atheistic philosophers, after which the candles were piously relighted! Likewise, the Religion of Humanity founded by Comte retains the familiar emotions, but gives them a new object. The feeling for an ideal lasts because it is awakened so early. The reason why great men of action so often give their mothers the credit for their eminence is that a sublime character is grounded not on moral principles, but on moral admirations and detestations, i.e., on personal ideals, and these are aroused in
(270) us by our mothers in the tender years before the father's influence becomes strong. The love that native-born colonials cherish for the mother country is usually transmitted to them through their mothers. It has been suggested that the absence of the filial feeling for Holland among the South African Boers is due to the fact that the first settlers were wived with forlorn orphan girls, sent out from the poorhouses of Holland, who naturally had no tender memories or warm feeling for the motherland to pass on to their children.
Feeling cannot be overcome by argument
Discussion is more destructive to hold-over beliefs than to hold-over feelings. Argument carries the outworks of pretext, but finds that they mask the impregnable inner citadel of "I like this!" "I hate that!" Only by vivid images and impressions that excite counter feelings is it possible to extirpate a superannuated sectarian feud, class antipathy, or race prejudice. No force of logic can kill these inherited venoms; but they may be neutralized by wider contacts and fresh experiences.
6. Institutions of control -law, government, religion, ceremony, and mores - are fossiliferous.[11]
The agencies of control need the prestige of age
All these endeavor to bind the will of man to social requirements. In this difficult and ticklish undertaking nothing helps like prestige; and, of all the prestiges, that of great antiquity is for most men the strongest and most reliable.
Archaism of law
The archaic spirit of law is shown by the appeal to precedent, the fiction that the law is immemorial custom, the venerable "trial by jury," the uncouthness of legal phraseology, the ancient forms of procedure, the retention of wigs, gowns, seals, and criers. Says John Stuart Mill
(271) of English law in the time of Bentham: [12] " The law came to be like the costume of a full-grown man who had never put off the clothes made for him when he first went to school. Band after band had burst, and as the rent widened, then, without removing anything except what might drop off of itself, the hole was darned, or patches of fresh law were brought from the nearest shop, and stuck on. Hence, all ages of English history have given one another rendezvous in English law: their several products may be seen all together, not interfused, but heaped upon one another, as many different ages of the earth may be read in some perpendicular section of its surface; the deposits of each successive period not substituted, but superimposed on those of the preceding. And in the world of law, no less than in the physical world, every commotion and conflict of the elements has left its mark behind in some break or irregularity of the strata. Every struggle which ever rent the bosom of society is apparent in the disjointed condition of the part of the field of law which covers the spot; nay, the very traps and pitfalls which one contending party set for another are still standing; and the teeth, not of hyenas only, but of foxes and all cunning animals, are imprinted on the curious remains found in these antediluvian caves."
Archaism of government
The archaic spirit of government is seen in the clinging to traditional policy (Will of Peter the Great, Balance of Power, the Temporal Power, Monroe Doctrine); in the place conceded to classes long since decayed (the landed nobility in the British House of Lords); in the appeal to distant precedent and musty charters for the settlement of the rights and duties of to-day; in the hold
(272) of profligate dynasties; in that magical power of legitimacy which restored the French and Spanish Bourbons, and, when Germany, Italy, and Hungary attained unity or independence, made a crown the rallying point; in the blending of contradictions seen in constitutional monarchy, in the legalizing of revolutions, in the legitimating of usurpers, in the interpretation of written constitutions. Government, moreover, is full of survivals - court dress, court etiquette, regalia, titles, emblems of authority, royal polygamy, etc.
Archaism of organized religion
The archaic spirit of religion is attested by the use of flint knives in sacrifice or circumcision long after metal knives have come in, and of the fire drill for kindling the sacrificial flame after flint and tinder have become known; in the higher sanctity ascribed to candles over other illuminants; in the retention of Koptic in the liturgy of the Abyssinian Christians, of the Old Bactrian of the Zend-Avesta in Parsee worship, of the Arabic of the Koran among non-Arabic Mohammedans, of ancient Hebrew in the Jewish services, of Latin in Catholic worship, of Old English in Bible and Prayer Book; in the preference for the faulty King James version of the Bible; in the emphasis laid on Apostolic Succession; in the difficulty of bringing the Westminster Confession abreast of current Presbyterian thought; in the settlement of disputed points by appeal to the Bible or to the Fathers.[13]
Ceremony, too, is full of outworn symbols, gestures
(273) and picture actions of forgotten meaning, obsolete words, etc. To the folk-historian a marriage service, a royal coronation, the drinking of healths, or the rite of extreme unction is a museum of antiquity.
Only outworn and noxious traditions should be discredited
The reason why institutions of control are so full of survivals is that such institutions work the better the older they grow, which is not true of a construction in syntax, a funeral service, a pattern of tool or garment. Devices in the field of control, however crude at first, improve with age like wine. A duty enjoined in the old sacred books or the precept of an ancient sage binds us more than would the same if it came to us unhallowed by time. Crown and royal blood win for the Emperor Dom Pedro an obedience that his republican successors in Brazil can command only by military force. To ask religion, government, law, or morality to make extensive and thoroughgoing changes in a single generation is to ask an army to form a new line in the face of the enemy. There are cases in which the discrediting of tradition is like picking out the mortar that holds together the fabric of society. The immediate fruit of the French Revolution, as of the Protestant Reformation, was anarchy and the dissolution of morals. The withering interrogation of all maxims, doctrines, and ideals by men without a sense of the past may lead to a denial of everything save one's own will.
SUMMARY
By making the twentieth man master of the situation, competition produces a high death rate among outgrown customs.
The spirit of tradition is strong in everything pertaining to the home.
He travels farthest who travels alone. Everything in which men must move together is liable to fall behind the times.
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Men will change their manner of working sooner than their manner of living.
When custom-bound men exploit richer opportunities, they enlarge their family rather than raise their standard of living.
For this reason the competition between races in the same area assumes two forms. The higher race may outdo the lower, or the lower may underlive the higher.
Feelings between races, nations, classes, sects, and sexes rarely correspond to the contemporary situation, but reflect some bygone situation.
Institutions of control are rich in survivals, because the prestige of age aids in control.
EXERCISES
1. Why is the official creed of a denomination less elevated in respect to infant damnation or eternal punishment than the personal creed of the average member?
2. Why do woman's legal rights lag behind her generally acknowledged moral rights?
3. Why is it a mistake to send the Indian girl back to her tribe when she finishes school?
4. Is our noisy manner of celebrating Independence Day on a level with the present taste of the American people?
5. Is the Jewish love of large families suited to a remote or to a present situation ?
6. If you were trying to induce Jews and Christians, Orangemen and Catholics, Germans and Slavs, Poles and Lithuarians, to sink their enmities and unite in a labor movement, how would you proceed ?
7. Why is it that our immigrants save so much more and " get ahead" so much sooner than the American born?
8. Why is it that as soon as the Chinese in Hawaii "adopt an American manner of life, they cease to be a depressing factor in the labor market"?
