428 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
around church and chapel. Generally speaking, there is no attempt at any division of work, or intelligent co-operation between these private almsgivers and the poor-law officials. When the attempt succeeds, charitable workers agree that cases of chronic destitution shall be left to the poor-law officials to deal with in their institutions, while they undertake the more constructive work of restoring to independence those families or individuals who have fallen under the stress of some special misfortune or of granting pensions to those among the old whose circumstances claim special consideration.
There is such a large field open to voluntary charity in supplementary and pioneer work that it is deplorable to see it wasting its energies in doing less efficiently the work which the machinery of the poor-law has been created to do. The waste of money and energy, the rivalry between the different agencies, call urgently for some means of organization. No very rigid control could be at- tempted, for experience has taught that charity will rather die than submit itself to authority, while the spontaneity and elasticity of voluntary charity is of the greatest value in finding out new needs and devising new remedies. But some advisory board might modify the present waste and confusion, co-ordinate the various charities, and lay down definite lines of demarkation between the work of the poor-law and that of voluntary charity. HELEN BOSANQUET, in Inter- national Quarterly, June-September, 1903. A. B.
The American People. The twelfth census, taken in 1900, enumerated in the states and territories, not including Indian Territory, Alaska, and Hawaii, 75,568,686 souls. Since the year 1820 no less than 20,901,816 have come to our shores as immigrants, of whom 10,356,644 were living here in 1900. Of what ethnic elements is this foreign-born population composed? The chief American stock in colonial days was English. Before the Civil War the immigration was chiefly of English and Irish. Then began a great German immigration, followed by a large arrival of Scandinavians. During the last ten years the immigration from western Europe has fallen off, while that from southern and eastern Europe has increased.
The question of real interest is : Will the American people of the future be on the whole English, or Celtic, or Teutonic, or Latin, or Slavic ; or will it be a new amalgam of all these elements? The census statistics classified according to ethnic groupings shows that in the United States 42.9 per cent, of the foreign- born are of English-Teutonic stock, and 20.9 per cent, are Celts. Practically 75 per cent, of the foreign-born in America are of English-Teutonic and Celtic stocks. When we remember that the English people was created by the amalgama- tion of Teutonic with Celtic blood, we see how little there is to expect that the American people will ever be anything but essentially English.
The ethnic groupings of our foreign-born represent all three of the great racial subdivisions of the population of Europe. The white race is of two great sub- races, the Eur-African and the Eur-Asian. The Eur-African is so called because its habitat since prehistoric times has been Mediterranean Africa and western Europe. The Eur-Asian is so called because it has dwelled in central and eastern Europe and western Asia. The Eur-African race is dolichocephalic and the Eur- Asian brachycephalic. The Eur-African race is further subdivided into two great branches, namely, the Mediterranean and the Baltic. The Mediterranean man is short in stature and of dark complexion, and is represented by the Italians, Greeks, Spaniards, the black-eyed Welch, and black-haired and black-eyed Irish. The Baltic race is tall, fair, light-eyed, and light-haired, and is represented by the Saxons, Scandinavians, Danes, and Rhenish Germans. The vast majority of the American people have been of the Baltic race, but now we are getting relatively large numbers of the Mediterranean and Eur-Asian stocks.
The mental complexion of the American people can best be understood if we look at the three European racial varieties. The Mediterranean stocks are emo- tionally quick, easily excited, and easily quieted. The Baltic peoples are slower to awaken, but their feelings are more persistent. The Eur-Asian stocks are slow, contemplative, and tender-hearted. The imagination with them is sentimental,
