Sociology [pp. 303-323]

SOCIOL0G Y.
question would take a somewhat modified form: Will life be
worth living for children born of me? This question is, unfortunately, not put to themselves by the appropriate persons as it
would be if they had been taught sociology. The sociologist is
often asked if he wants to kill off certain classes of troublesome
and burdensome persons. No such inference follows from any
sound sociological doctrine, but it is allowed to infer, as to a
great many persons and classes, that it would have been better
for society, and would have involved no pain to them, if they
had never been born.
In further illustration of the interpretation which sociology
offers of phenomena which are often obscure, we may note the
world-wide effects of the advances in the arts and sciences which
have been made during the last hundred years. These improvements have especially affected transportation and communication; that is, they have lessened the obstacles of time and space
which separate the groups of mankind from each other, and
have tended to make the whole human race a single unit. The
distinction between over-populated and under-populated countries loses its sharpness, and all are brought to an average.
Every person who migrates from Europe to America affects the
comparative status of the two continents. He lessens the pressure in the country he leaves and increases it in the country to
which he goes. If he goes to Minnesota, and raises wheat there,
which is carried back to the country he left as cheap food for
those who have not emigrated, it is evident that the bearing
upon-social pressure is twofold. It is evident, also, that the
problem of social pressure can no longer be correctly studied if
the view is confined either to the country of immigration or the
country of emigration, but that it must embrace both. It is
easy to see, therefore, that the ratio of population to land with
which we have to deal is only in peculiar and limited cases that
ratio as it exists in England, Germany, or the United States.
It is the ratio as it exists in the civilized world, and every year
that passes, as-our improved arts break down the barriers between different parts'of the earth, brings us nearer to the state
of things where all the population of Europe, America, Australasia, and South Africa must be considered in relation to all
the land of the same territories, for all that territory will be
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