396 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



proportion of females to males among the foreign than among the 

 native element. Havelock Ellis, too, has observed that the criminal 

 instinct manifests itself with much greater frequency in the Irish 

 woman in Great Britain than when at home, and suggests that it is 

 due to a removal of domestic influence; his theory may perhaps be 

 accepted as a partial explanation of a like phenomenon in this coun- 

 try. It is a well-recognized sociological fact that crime is much 

 more prevalent where large aggregations of men are herded together 

 than in the country districts, and this also must be considered in cor- 

 relation with the further fact already noted that the alien population 

 is much more largely urban than the native. 



Mr. S. G. Fisher, in his work, The Making of Pennsylvania, says: 

 " As shown by statistics, the Germans in America, in proportion to 

 their numbers, have produced fewer remarkable and prominent men 

 than any other division of the people. The race itself is not de- 

 ficient, but when it isolates itself in an American community it is 

 cut off from the best development of that community, and also from 

 its old associates in Europe, and inevitably deteriorates." Elsewhere 

 he remarks that they are difficult of assimilation. That these state- 

 ments are in part well founded may notfbe questioned. And with 

 the increasing homogeneity of a people a deterioration, or at least a 

 check to advancement, must inevitably follow, as I have already 

 pointed out in the case of the South. But we have rid ourselves of 

 the notion that great men make history; great men may hasten or 

 retard a movement, but it is the larger, invincible force of popular 

 will which to-day moves the political and social world; which has 

 always moved it, and always will move it. It took the peasantry of 

 Europe ten centuries to shake off the thrall of serfdom. In the 

 eighth century no man, however great, could have freed the serfs; 

 in the fourteenth, no man, however great, could have restrained the 

 flow of liberalizing sentiment. The mills of God may grind slowly, 

 and also exceedingly small ; but " with patience he stands waiting, 

 with exactness grinds he all." 



The Germans form one of the best elements in the American 

 community; clannish they may be, given to herding together, and 

 yet, although frequently on the surface Germans even to the second 

 and third generation, retaining forms and ceremonials of the father- 

 land, they are, in fact, readily assimilable. They become assimilated 

 through American influence, newspapers, literature, society, busi- 

 ness, and in the second generation through American birth and educa- 

 tion, and become true Americans at heart. Their love for the father- 

 land has been transferred in even greater intensity to their foster 

 land. 



I have already noted the fact that the largest proportion of our 



