34 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Italian slopes, where less than one fifth attain this moderate height, 

 is sufficient proof.* The progressive decline goes on still further 

 as we go south, as our map of Europe has indicated, away down 

 to the toe of Italy's boot. Could demonstration in mathematics 

 he more certain that here in the Tyrol we have a case of an in- 

 crease of stature due to race alone ? One of the most persistent 

 traits of the Teuton is his bodily height. We in America, among 

 the tallest people in the world, owe much of our advantage in this 

 respect to our Teutonic lineage. The rest is due to the high level 

 of prosperity enjoyed by the people in the United States as a 

 whole. 



REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 



By franklin SMITH. 

 PART SECOND. 



I HAVE already shown how modern trade and professional cor- 

 porations are a reversion to feudal corporations, which were 

 the natural and spontaneous product not of legislative wisdom 

 and philanthropy, but of chronic disorder, and how, for a time, 

 they provided security for despised and plundered toilers, and 

 promoted the growth of civilization. While pointing out the 

 astonishing absurdity involved in the revival of such obsolete 

 institutions in an age devoted almost exclusively to industrial 

 life a life based upon peace and the largest liberty compatible 

 with justice I described some of their more flagrant economic 

 evils, the inevitable fruits of their alliance with the state and of 

 their establishment of despotic monopolies. I shall now give an 

 account of some of their moral evils, the fruits also of the same 

 despotism ; and though it will, as before, be confined chiefly to the 

 plumbers, because they are the most powerfully organized and 

 the most completely protected, it applies with like fidelity to all 

 other trade and professional corporations sheltered behind a stat- 

 ute or a code of tyrannical rules and regulations. 



An optimistic essayist of the National Association of the Mas- 

 ter Plumbers may boast that " protection has not only elevated 

 the trade and eliminated from our ranks the incompetent and 

 unworthy," but has " reached out and enhanced man's highest 

 good, and given humanity the greatest benefactions of the age." 

 He may boast also that in consequence of these noble fruits of 

 protection, " the plumber receives the esteem, respect, and honor 



* Details are given in Mittheiluugen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, vol. 

 xxi, 1891, p. 69 se^. 



