9 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ence, but they all contain the fundamental ideas of American 

 liberty. This influence of physical environment still goes on, 

 and in subduing the wilderness the pioneer abandons the habits 

 of the Old World and takes up those of the New. Thus the con- 

 tinent forced the conditions of its conquest. 



Herbert Spencer, in his Principles of Sociology, states that 

 the earlier development was at the mercy of the physical en- 

 vironment, while civilized man has reduced Nature to subjec- 

 tion. As society progresses, new factors come in to modify the 

 physical organization, which Spencer calls the super-environ- 

 ment or social environment. Spencer claims that the social en- 

 vironment is more powerful than the physical environment. The 

 men who settled this country had a social history behind them, 

 and the institutions that they brought here greatly influenced 

 their children. What I said in regard to the physical environ- 

 ment may also be said of the social environment. The immi- 

 grants did not come in bands, but individually, and the social 

 environment had full play. During the colonial period the im- 

 migrants were chiefly English, and the English stamp was upon 

 the institutions which they planted here. So it has not been a 

 mingling of institutions, but foreigners have assimilated the 

 institutions already established here. 



One of the chief influences of the social environment is edu- 

 cation. This is very important, as so many ignorant come. It is 

 important to know how receptive these people are to our institu- 

 tions. This will depend upon their power to learn our language, 

 and upon the standard of intelligence of the native country. Out 

 of the 15,000,000 foreigners who landed here between 1820 and 

 1850, forty per cent came from English countries. This propor- 

 tion is growing less, as in 1891 only twenty-two per cent came 

 from English countries, while from all German countries the 

 proportion is thirty-one per cent. A new difficulty may arise 

 here, in that people of other languages may now find communi- 

 ties where their own language is spoken ; but this can hardly be 

 urged as an objection, for, in the case of the German immigrants, 

 they come from a country with a high standard of education. 

 We depend upon our school system to reach the immigrants and 

 prepare them for citizenship. The parents can not be reached by 

 the schools directly, so the system must exert its influence upon 

 the children of the immigrants. The eleventh census shows that 

 the foreign-born element of school age between five and seventeen 

 years is 900,000. The second generation, or native born of for- 

 eign parents, is 12,400,000, and the number of immigrants foreign 

 born above seventeen years is 8,332,000. This shows that the 

 problem is very favorable, as, for every hundred who can not 

 come under the influence of our schools, there are one hundred 



