Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, February 1899
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Title: Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, February 1899
Author: Various
Editor: William Jay Youmans
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, FEBRUARY 1899 ***
Established by Edward L. Youmans
APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY
EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS
VOL. LIV
NOVEMBER, 1898, TO APRIL, 1899
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899
COPYRIGHT, 1899,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
VOL. LIV. ESTABLISHED BY EDWARD L. YOUMANS. NO. 4.
APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
FEBRUARY, 1899.
_EDITED BY WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. Vegetation a Remedy for the Summer Heat of Cities. By
STEPHEN SMITH, M.D., LL.D 433
II. Mivart's Groundwork of Science. By Prof. WM. KEITH
BROOKS 450
III. The Science of Observation. By CHARLES LIVY WHITTLE.
(Illustrated.) 456
IV. Death Gulch, a Natural Bear-Trap. By T.A. JAGGAR, Jr.
(Illustrated.) 475
V. The Labor Problem in the Tropics. By W. ALLEYNE IRELAND 481
VI. Principles of Taxation. XX. The Law of the Diffusion of
Taxes. Part II. By the Late Hon. DAVID A. WELLS 490
VII. The Great Bombardment. By CHARLES F. HOLDER. (Illustrated.) 506
VIII. The Spirit of Conquest. By J. NOVICOW 518
IX. A Short History of Scientific Instruction. II. By Sir
J.N. LOCKYER 529
X. The Series Method: a Comparison. By CHARLOTTE TAYLOR 537
XI. The Earliest Writing in France. By M. GABRIEL DE MORTILLET 542
XII. Sketch of Gabriel de Mortillet. (With Portrait.) 546
XIII. Correspondence: The Foundation of Sociology.--Evolution and
Education again.--Emerson and Evolution 553
XIV. Editor's Table: The New Superstition.--Emerson 557
XV. Scientific Literature 559
XVI. Fragments of Science 569
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
72 FIFTH AVENUE.
SINGLE NUMBER, 50 CENTS. YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00.
COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
Entered at the Post Office at New York, and admitted for
transmission through the mails at second-class rates.
[Illustration: GABRIEL DE MORTILLET.]
APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
FEBRUARY, 1899.
VEGETATION A REMEDY FOR THE SUMMER HEAT OF CITIES.
A PLEA FOR THE CULTIVATION OF TREES, SHRUBS, PLANTS, VINES, AND
GRASSES IN THE STREETS OF NEW YORK FOR THE IMPROVEMENT
OF THE PUBLIC HEALTH, FOR THE COMFORT OF SUMMER
RESIDENTS, AND FOR ORNAMENTATION.[1]
BY STEPHEN SMITH, M.D., LL.D.
One of the most prolific sources of a high sickness and death rate in
the city of New York is developed during the summer quarter. It has
been estimated that from three to five thousand persons die and sixty
to one hundred thousand cases of sickness occur annually in this city,
from causes which are engendered during the months of June, July,
August, and September. An examination of the records of the Health
Department for any year reveals the important fact that certain
diseases are not only more frequent during the summer quarter than at
any other time, but that they are far more fatal, especially in the
months of July and August, than during any other period of the year.
These are the "zymotic diseases," or those depending upon some form of
germ life. The following table illustrates the course of mortality
from those diseases in one year:
Month. Deaths.
January 541
February 475
March 476
April 554
May 584
June 798
July 1,433
August 1,126
September 791
October 522
November 460
December 504
It appears that during eight months of the year, excluding June, July,
August, and September, the average monthly mortality from "zymotic
diseases" was 452. Had the same average continued during the remaining
four months the total mortality from those diseases for that year
would have been 4,424; but the actual mortality was 7,764, which
proves that 3,340 persons were sacrificed during those four fatal
months to conditions which exist in the city only at that period of
the year. Still more startling is the estimate of the sickness rate
caused by the unhealthful conditions created in the summer months in
New York city. If we estimate that there are twenty cases of sickness
for every death by a zymotic disease there were 66,800 more cases of
sickness in the year above referred to than there would have been had
the sickness rate been the same in the summer as in the other months
of that year.
One of the saddest features of this high sickness and death rate
appears when we notice the ages of those who are especially the
victims of these fatal diseases. During the week ending July 9th last
there were 399 deaths from diarrhœal diseases, of which number 382
were children under five years of age. The following table taken from
the records of the Health Department show in a very striking manner
how fatal to child life are the conditions peculiar to our summer
season:
----------+------------------------------------------------
| DEATHS FROM DIARRHŒAL DISEASES.
|-----------+-----------+------------+-----------
MONTH. | Under one | Under two | Under five |
| year. | years. | years. | All ages.
----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------
January | 50 | 55 | 58 | 82
February | 47 | 51 | 58 | 75
March | 75 | 80 | 83 | 96
April | 82 | 91 | 97 | 108
May | 101 | 117 | 121 | 104
June | 387 | 430 | 436 | 467
July | 809 | 990 | 1,020 | 1,100
August | 464 | 565 | 697 | 762
September | 267 | 394 | 409 | 462
October | 114 | 148 | 154 | 190
November | 59 | 70 | 72 | 89
December | 57 | 62 | 64 | 82
----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------
These statistics demonstrate the extreme unhealthfulness of New York
during the summer, and the vast proportion of children who perish from
the fatal agencies which are then brought into activity. It is a
matter of great public concern to determine the nature of the
unhygienic conditions on which this excessive mortality depends, and
thus discover the proper remedial measures.
As high temperature is the distinguishing feature of the summer
months, we very naturally conclude that excessive heat is a most
important factor, if not the sole cause, of the diseases so fatal to
human life at this period. A close comparison of the temperature and
mortality records of any summer in this city demonstrates the direct
relation of the former to the latter. For illustration, we will take
the records of the Health Department during the past summer, selecting
diarrhœal diseases for comparison, as they prevail and are most fatal
at that season of the year. The table gives the total mortality from
these diseases and the mortality from those diseases of children under
five years of age. To the four months, June, July, August, and
September, are added May and October, for the purpose of showing the
gradual increase of the mortality from these diseases as the hot
weather approaches and its decline as the hot weather abates.
Key: TF. = Temperature (Fahrenheit)
--------------+------------+--------------+-------+-------+-------
| Total | Diarrhœal | | |
WEEK ENDING | diarrhœal |diseases under| Mean |Maximum|Minimum
| diseases. | five yrs. | TF. | TF. | TF.
--------------+------------+--------------+-------+-------+-------
May 7th | 10 | 8 | 52.4° | 72° | 47°
May 14th | 20 | 17 | 55.5° | 71° | 40°
May 21st | 14 | 12 | 63.3° | 86° | 52°
May 28th | 22 | 19 | 60.9° | 70° | 56°
June 4th | 18 | 16 | 65.8° | 76° | 54°
June 11th | 26 | 20 | 71.6° | 86° | 58°
June 18th | 36 | 32 | 73.0° | 89° | 59°
June 25th | 74 | 69 | 69.3° | 94° | 54°
July 2d | 170 | 164 | 78.6° | 94° | 67°
July 9th | 399 | 382 | 77.4° | 100° | 61°
July 16th | 330 | 321 | 71.1° | 91° | 57°
July 23d | 388 | 356 | 77.4° | 91° | 67°
July 30th | 380 | 353 | 78.5° | 95° | 70°
August 6th | 380 | 353 | 78.8° | 92° | 67°
August 13th | 342 | 306 | 73.9° | 90° | 65°
August 20th | 290 | 261 | 74.8° | 89° | 64°
August 27th | 268 | 246 | 76.6° | 93° | 63°
September 3d | 289 | 256 | 79.0° | 93° | 59°
September 10th| 283 | 255 | 74.0° | 92° | 58°
September 17th| 179 | 158 | 67.3° | 85° | 52°
September 24th| 193 | 167 | 68.7° | 90° | 52°
October 1st | 132 | 117 | 66.5° | 80° | 54°
October 8th | 90 | 78 | 69.6° | 81° | 53°
October 15th | 71 | 58 | 60.1° | 74° | 49°
October 22d | 54 | 42 | 55.9° | 71° | 44°
October 29th | 39 | 32 | 53.9° | 67° | 41°
--------------+------------+--------------+-------+-------+-------
Again, if we compare the temperature and mortality records for a
series of days instead of months, it will be noticed that the
mortality record follows the fluctuations of the heat record with as
much precision as effect follows cause. The summer heat generally
begins about the 20th of June and continues with varying intensity
until the 15th of September. Within that period we can select many
examples which strikingly illustrate the relations of temperature to
mortality. For example, the first heated term of the year before us
began on the 19th of June and lasted until the 26th of that month. The
two records are as follows:
-----+------------+----------
DAY. |Temperature.|Mortality.
-----+------------+----------
19th | 78° | 83
-----+------------+----------
20th | 80 | 100
-----+------------+----------
21st | 82 | 122
-----+------------+----------
22d | 80 | 116
-----+------------+----------
23d | 77 | 104
-----+------------+----------
24th | 68 | 119
-----+------------+----------
25th | 65 | 88
-----+------------+----------
On the 28th of June a second heated term began, when the temperature
rose to 80°, and continued above that figure until July 5th, a period
of eight days. The following is the record, including the temperature
in the sun:
----------+------------------------------
| TEMPERATURE
DAY. +-----------+-------+----------
| In shade. |In sun.|Mortality.
----------+-----------+-------+----------
June 28th | 80° | 118° | 118
----------+-----------+-------+----------
June 29th | 84 | 120 | 163
----------+-----------+-------+----------
June 30th | 85 | 124 | 191
----------+-----------+-------+----------
July 1st | 88 | 125 | 247
----------+-----------+-------+----------
July 2d | 87 | 128 | 351
----------+-----------+-------+----------
July 3d | 82 | 120 | 238
----------+-----------+-------+----------
July 4th | 84 | 122 | 227
----------+-----------+-------+----------
July 5th | 80 | 121 | 184
----------+-----------+-------+----------
It will be noticed that during the last heated period there was a more
prolonged high temperature than during the first, and that the
mortality of the second was higher for the same temperature than that
of the first. These facts are in accord with the history of our summer
months. The range of temperature increases as the season advances, and
the rate of mortality rises, owing to the diminished resisting power
to the effects of high heat on the part of the people, especially of
the children, the aged, and those already enfeebled by disease.
In order to fully understand the influence of heat and its effects
upon the public health, we must first notice the conditions regulating
the temperature of the body in health and disease.
The temperature of animals in a state of health is not a fixed
quantity, but has a limited range which depends upon internal and
external conditions not incompatible with health. In man the range of
temperature in health is fixed at 97.25° F. to 99.5° F. Any
temperature above or below these extremes, unless explained by special
circumstances not affecting the normal condition of the person, is an
indication of disease. This comparatively fixed temperature in health
is a remarkable feature of the living animal. When subjected to a
temperature above or below the extremes here given it will still
maintain its equilibrium. This fixed temperature under varying
conditions of heat and cold is due to a "heat-regulating power,"
inherent in the constitution of every animal, by which it imparts heat
when the temperature of the air is high and conserves heat when the
latter is low. The heat escapes from the body--1, by radiation from
the surface; 2, by transmission to other bodies; 3, by evaporation;
and 4, by the conversion of heat into motion. The surface of the body
furnishes the principal medium for the loss of heat by the first three
methods--viz., radiation, transmission, and evaporation. It is
estimated that 93.07 per cent of the heat produced escapes by the
processes of radiation, evaporation, conduction, and mechanical work.
The remaining heat units are lost by warming inspired air and the
foods and drinks taken. There are apparently other subtile influences,
so-called "regulators of heat," at work to preserve an equilibrium of
temperature in the animal body, but they are not well known. The
result of the operation of these forces is this--viz., if, by any
means, the heat of the body is increased, compensative losses of heat
quickly occur, and the normal temperature is soon restored; and if, on
the contrary, the loss of heat is unusually increased, the
compensative production of heat of the body at once follows, and the
equilibrium is at once restored. The important fact to remember is
this--viz., the production and loss of heat in the human organism when
in health and not subjected to too violent disturbing causes are so
nicely balanced that the temperature is always maintained at an
average of 98.6° F., the extremes being 97.25° F. and 99.5° F. "So
beautifully is this balance preserved," Parkes remarks, "that the
stability of the animal temperature in all countries has always been a
subject of marvel." If, however, anything prevents the operation of
the processes of cooling--viz., radiation, evaporation, and
conduction--the bodily temperature rises by the accumulation of heat,
and death is the result from combustion. In experiments in ovens a man
has been able to bear a temperature of 260° F. for a short period,
provided the air was dry so that evaporation could be carried on
rapidly. But if the air is very moist, and perspiration is impeded,
the temperature of the body rises rapidly, and the person soon
succumbs to the excessive heat. Another important fact is this, viz.,
the normal temperature of the young and of the very old is higher
than the middle-aged. The infant at birth has a temperature of 99° F.
to 100° F., and it maintains a temperature of 99° F. and upward for
several days. The variations of temperature from other causes are much
greater in children than in adults, as also the normal daily
variations of temperature. About the sixtieth year the average
temperature of man begins to rise, and approximates that of the
infant. In the young and old the "heat-regulating power" is more
readily exhausted, and hence continued high temperature is far more
fatal to these classes.
The first noticeable fact in regard to bodily temperature in disease
is that there are daily fluctuations as in health, but much more
extreme. In general, the remission of temperature in disease occurs in
the morning, and the exacerbation in the afternoon and evening; the
minimum is reached between six and nine o'clock in the morning, and
the maximum between three and six o'clock in the evening. In many
diseases the minimum temperature is not below 100° F., and usually it
is one or two degrees above that point, while the maximum has no
definite limit and may reach the dangerous height of 107° F. It should
be noticed that the highest daily temperature in disease, as in
health, occurs in the afternoon, when the temperature of the air in
summer is the greatest.
The conditions affecting the temperature of the body other than those
due to physiological conditions are very numerous. First and most
obvious is the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere. It is a
well-established fact that an average temperature of the air of 54° F.
is best adapted to the public health, for at that temperature the
decomposition of animal and vegetable matter is slight, and normal
temperature is most easily maintained. Every degree of temperature
above or below that point requires a more or less effort of the
heat-regulating power to maintain the proper equilibrium. Even more
potent in elevating the bodily temperature is the introduction into
the blood, whether by respiration or by direct injection, of putrid
fluids and the gases of decomposing matters. If this injection is
repeated at short intervals, death will occur with a high temperature.
The air of cities contains emanations, in hot weather, from a vast
number of sources of animal and vegetable decomposition, and the
inhalation of air so vitiated brings in contact with the blood these
deleterious products in a highly divided state which cause a fatal
elevation of temperature in the young, old, and enfeebled. The same
effect is produced by the air in close and heated places, as in
tenement houses, workshops, schoolhouses, hospital wards, and other
rooms where many persons congregate for hours. Air thus charged with
poisonous gases becomes more dangerous if the temperature of the
place is raised, as happens almost daily in the summer months in
cities.
From the preceding facts we may conclude that, as long as the body
continues in health, the "heat-regulating power," which constantly
tends to preserve an equilibrium of temperature, is capable of
resisting the ordinary agencies that, operating externally or
internally, exaggerate the heat-producing conditions, and thus destroy
the individual. But if the person is suffering from a disease which
weakens the "heat-regulating power" these deleterious agencies, which
the healthy person may resist, will readily overpower the already
quite exhausted heat-regulating forces, and he perishes by combustion.
It is very evident that in an organism having complicated functions,
like that of man, and subject to such a multitude of adverse
influences, the balance between health and disease must be very nicely
adjusted. Too great an elevation or too great a depression of
temperature may destroy the "heat-regulating power," and disease or
death will be the consequence. Or this "heat-regulating power" may be
weakened or destroyed by causes generated within the body, or received
from without, and the heat-producing agencies are then under
influences which may prove to be powerfully destructive forces.
It will not now be difficult to understand in what manner high
temperature affects the public health of large cities. Evidently in
the _direct_ action of heat upon the human body we have the most
powerful agency in the production of our great summer mortality. While
sunstroke represents the maximum direct effect of solar heat upon the
human subject, the large increase of deaths from wasting chronic
diseases and diarrhœal affections, of children under one year of age
and persons upward of seventy years of age, shows the terrible effects
of the prevailing intense heat of summer upon all who are debilitated
by disease or age and thereby have their "heat-regulating power"
diminished. The fact has been established by repeated experiment that
when solar or artificial heat is continually applied to the animal the
temperature of its body will gradually rise until all of the
compensating or heat-regulating agencies fail to preserve the
equilibrium, and the temperature reaches a point at which death takes
place from actual combustion. In general, a temperature of 107° F. in
man would be regarded as indicating an unfavorable termination of any
disease. In persons suffering from sunstroke the temperature often
ranges from 106° F. to 110° F., the higher temperature appearing just
before a fatal termination.
The _indirect_ effects of heat appear in the production of poisonous
gases which vitiate the air and render it more or less prejudicial to
health. Decomposition of all forms of refuse animal and vegetable
matter proceeds with far greater rapidity during the summer quarter
than during other months of the year. Among the early results of
summer heat is the damage to food. Milk retailed through the city, the
sole or chief diet of thousands of hand-fed infants, undergoes such
changes as to render it not only less nutritious but also hurtful to
the digestive organs. The vegetables and fruits in the markets rapidly
deteriorate and become unfit for food. Meats and fish quickly take on
putrefactive changes which render them more or less indigestible. The
effect of this increase of temperature upon the refuse and filth of
the streets, courts, and alleys, upon the air in close places, in the
tenement houses, and upon the tenants themselves is soon perceptible.
The foul gases of decomposition fill the atmosphere of the city and
render the air of close and unventilated places stifling; while
languor, depression, and debility fall upon the population like a
widespread epidemic. The physician now recognizes the fact that a new
element has entered into the medical constitution of the season. The
sickly young, the enfeebled old, those exhausted from wasting
diseases, whose native energies were just sufficient to maintain their
tenure of life, are the first to succumb to this pressure upon their
vital resources. Diarrhœal diseases of every form next appear and
assume a fatal intensity, and finally the occurrence of sunstroke (or
heat-stroke) determines the maximum effects of heat upon the public
health. The sickness records of dispensaries and the mortality records
of the Health Department show that a new and most destructive force is
now operating, not only in the diseases above mentioned, but in nearly
all of the diseases of the period. Fevers, inflammatory diseases, and
others of a similar nature run a more rapid course, and are far less
amenable to treatment. This is due, in the opinion of eminent medical
authority, to the addition of the heat of the air to the heat of the
body. Indeed, the only safety is in flight from the city to the
country and to cool localities, as the seashore or the mountains. The
immediate improvement of those suffering from affections of the city
when transferred to the country is often marvelous, and shows
conclusively how fatal is the element of heat in its direct and
indirect effects upon the residents of the city.
Let us next consider the causes of high temperature in the city of New
York. It is a well-established fact that the temperature of large and
densely populated towns is far higher than the surrounding country.
This is due to a variety of causes, the chief of which are the absence
of vegetation; the drainage and hence the dryness of the soil; the
covering of the earth with stone, bricks, and mortar; the aggregation
of population to surface area; the massing together of buildings; and
the artificial heat of workshops and manufactories. The difference
between the mean temperature of the city at Cooper Institute and at
the Arsenal, Central Park, for a single month, illustrates this fact.
Another striking difference between the temperature of these two
points of observation is that the range is much greater at Central
Park than at Cooper Institute, the temperature falling at night more
at the former than at the latter place. The effect of vegetation is to
lower the temperature at night, while brick and stone retain the heat
and prevent any considerable fall of temperature during the
twenty-four hours. It may be said of New York that it has all the
conditions of increased temperature above given in an intensified
form. It has a southern exposure; all of its broad avenues run north
and south; the surface is covered with stone, brick, and asphalt; it
is destitute of vegetation except in its parks, which have a very
limited area compared with the needs of the city; its buildings are
irregularly arranged and crowded together so as to give the largest
amount of elevation with the least superficial area; ventilation of
courts, areas, and living rooms is sacrificed; its ill-constructed and
overcrowded tenement houses, especially of certain districts, have the
largest population to surface area of any city in the civilized world.
To these natural and structural unfavorable sanitary conditions must
be added the enormous production of artificial heat in dwellings. When
the summer temperature begins to rise the solar heat is constantly
added to the artificial heat already existing. The temperature of the
whole vast mass of stones, bricks, mortar, and asphalt gradually
increases, with no other mitigation or modification than that caused
by the inconstant winds and occasional rainstorms. And the evils of
high temperature are yearly increasing as the area of brick, stone,
and asphalt extends. The records of sunstroke during the past few
years is appalling, both on account of the number of cases and their
comparative increase. If no adequate remedy is discovered and applied,
the day would not seem to be distant when the resident, especially if
he is a laborer, will remain in the city and pursue his work during
the summer at the constant risk of his life.
Turning now to consider the question of the measures which are best
adapted to protect the present and future population of New York from
the effects of high summer temperatures, we are met by many
suggestions of more or less value. The more important methods proposed
are: a large supply of public baths; the daily flushing of the streets
with an immense volume of river water; recreation piers; excursions to
the seashore; temporary residence in the country, etc. But these are
for the most part temporary expedients, applicable to individuals, and
are but accessory to some more radical measure which aims to so change
the atmospheric conditions that excessive heat can not occur. The
real problem to be solved may be thus stated: How can the temperature
of the city of New York be so modified during the summer months as to
prevent that extreme degree of heat on which the enormous sickness and
death rate of the people depend? Discussing the subject broadly from
this standpoint, it becomes at once evident that we must employ those
agencies which in the wide field of Nature are designed to mitigate
heat and purify the air and thus create permanent climatic conditions
favorable for the habitation of man.
It requires but little knowledge of the physical forces which modify
the climate of large areas of the earth's surface to recognize the
fact that vegetation plays a most important part. And of the different
forms of vegetation, trees, as compared with shrubs, plants, vines,
and grasses, are undoubtedly the most efficient. This is due to the
vast area of surface which their leaves present to the air on a very
limited ground space. The sanitary value of trees has hitherto been
practically unrecognized by man. With the most ruthless hand he has
everywhere and at all times sacrificed this most important factor in
the conservation of a healthful and temperate climate. He has found,
too late, however, that by this waste of the forests he has by no
means improved his own condition. The winters have become colder, the
summers hotter; the living springs have ceased to flow perpetually;
the fertilizing streams have disappeared; the earth is deeply frozen
in winter and parched in summer; and, finally, new and grave diseases
have appeared where formerly they were unknown.
It is well understood that the temperature in a forest, a grove, or
even a clump of trees, is cooler in summer and warmer in winter than
the surrounding country. Man and animals alike seek the shade of
groves and trees during the heat of the day, and are greatly refreshed
and revived by the cool atmosphere. The difference between the
temperature of the air under and among the branches of a single tree,
densely leaved, and the surrounding air, on a hot day, is instantly
realized by the laborer or traveler who seeks the shade. The
thermometer in the sun and shade shows a difference of twenty, thirty,
and forty degrees, and in the soil a difference of ten to eleven
degrees. The reverse is true in winter. The laborer and traveler
exposed to the cold of the open country find in the forest a degree of
warmth quite as great as in a building but imperfectly inclosed.
Railroad engineers inform us that they have occasion to use far less
fuel in passing through forests in winter than in traversing the same
distance in the open country. When the ground in the fields is frozen
two or three feet deep, its temperature in the forest is found above
the freezing point.
Forests and even single trees have, therefore, a marked influence upon
the surrounding atmosphere, especially during the summer, and they
evidently tend to equalize temperature, preventing extremes both in
summer and winter. Hence they become of immense value as sanitary
agencies in preserving equality of climatic conditions.
It is believed by some vegetable physiologists that trees exert this
power through their own inherent warmth, which always remains at a
fixed standard both in summer and winter. "Observation shows," says
Meguscher,[2] "that the wood of a living tree maintains a temperature
of from 54° to 56° F., when the temperature stands from 37° to 47° F.
above zero, and that the internal warmth does not rise and fall in
proportion to that of the atmosphere. So long as the latter is below
67° F., that of the tree is always highest; but, if the temperature of
the air rises to 67° F., that of the vegetable growth is the lowest."
Since, then, trees maintain at all seasons a constant mean temperature
of 54° F., it is easy to see why the air in contact with the forest
must be warmer in winter and cooler in summer than in situations where
it is deprived of that influence.[3]
Again, the shade of trees protects the earth from the direct rays of
the sun, and prevents solar irradiation from the earth. This effect is
of immense importance in cities where the paved streets become
excessively heated, and radiation creates one of the most dangerous
sources of heat. Whoever has walked in the streets of New York, on a
hot summer's day, protected from the direct rays of a midday sun by
his umbrella, has found the reflected heat of the pavement
intolerable. If for a moment he passed into the dense shade of a tree,
he at once experienced a marked sense of relief. This relief is not
due so much to the shade as to the cooling effect of the vaporization
from the leaves of the tree.
Trees also have a cutaneous transpiration by their leaves. And
although they absorb largely the vapor of the surrounding air, and
also the water of the soil, they nevertheless exhale constantly large
volumes into the air. This vaporization of liquids is a frigorific or
cooling process, and when most rapid the frigorific effect reaches its
maximum. The amount of fluid exhaled by vegetation has been, at
various times, estimated with more or less accuracy. Hales[4] states
that a sunflower, with a surface of 5.616 square inches, throws off at
the rate of twenty to twenty-four ounces avoirdupois every twelve
hours; a vine, with twelve square feet of foliage, exhales at the rate
of five or six ounces daily. Bishop Watson, in his experiments on
grasses, estimated that an acre of grass emits into the atmosphere
6.400 quarts of water in twenty-four hours.
It is evident, therefore, that vegetation tends powerfully to cool the
atmosphere during a summer day, and this effect increases in
proportion to the increase of the temperature. The influence of trees
heavily leaved, in a district where there is no other vegetation, in
moderating and equalizing the temperature, can not be overestimated.
The amount of superficial surface exposed by the foliage of a single
tree is immense. For example, "the Washington elm, of Cambridge,
Mass., a tree of moderate size, was estimated several years since to
produce a crop of seven million leaves, exposing a surface of two
hundred thousand square feet, or about five acres of foliage."
Trees regulate the humidity of the air by the process of absorption
and transpiration. They absorb the moisture contained in the air, and
again return to the air, in the form of vapor, the water which they
have absorbed from the earth and the air. The flow of sap in trees for
the most part ceases at night, the stimulus of light and heat being
necessary to the function of absorption and evaporation. During the
heated portions of the day, therefore, when there is the most need of
agencies to equalize both temperature and humidity, trees perform
their peculiar functions most actively. Moisture is rapidly absorbed
from the air by the leaves, and from the earth by the roots, and is
again all returned to the air and earth by transpiration or exudation.
The effect of this process upon temperature and humidity is thus
stated by Marsh: "The evaporation of the juices of the plant by
whatever process effected, takes up atmospheric heat and produces
refrigeration. This effect is not less real, though much less sensible
in the forest than in meadow and pasture land, and it can not be
doubted that the local temperature is considerably affected by it. But
the evaporation that cools the air diffuses through it, at the same
time, a medium which powerfully resists the escape of heat from the
earth by radiation. Visible vapor or clouds, it is well known, prevent
frosts by obstructing radiation, or rather by reflecting back again
the heat radiated by the earth, just as any mechanical screen would
do. On the other hand, clouds intercept the rays of the sun also, and
hinder its heat from reaching the earth." Again, he says, upon the
whole, their general effect "seems to be to mitigate extremes of
atmospheric heat and cold, moisture and drought. They serve as
equalizers of temperature and humidity."
Again, let us notice the effects of trees upon malarial emanations.
The power of trees, when in leaf, to render harmless the poisonous
emanations from the earth has long been an established fact. Man may
live in close proximity to marshes from which arise the most
dangerous malaria with the utmost impunity, provided a grove intervene
between his home and the marsh. This function of trees was known to
the Romans, who enacted laws requiring the planting of trees in places
made uninhabitable by the diffusion of malaria, and placed groves
serving such purposes under the protection of some divinity to insure
their protection. It is a rule of the British army in India to select
an encampment having a grove between the camp and any low, wet soil.
Finally, trees purify the atmosphere. The process of vegetable
nutrition consists in the appropriation by the plant or tree of
carbon. This element it receives from the air in the form principally
of carbonic acid, and in the process of digestion the oxygen is
liberated and again restored to the air, while the carbon becomes
fixed as an element of the woody fiber. Man and animals, on the
contrary, require oxygen for their nutrition, and the supply is in the
air they breathe. Carbon is a waste product of the animal system, and,
uniting with the oxygen, is expired as carbonic acid, a powerful
animal poison. A slight increase of the normal quantity of carbonic
acid in the air renders it poisonous to man, and continued respiration
of such air, or a considerable increase of the carbonic acid, will
prove fatal. The animal and vegetable world, therefore, complement
each other, and the one furnishes the conditions and forces by which
the other maintains life and health. "Plants," says Schacht, "imbibe
from the air carbonic acid and other gaseous or volatile products
exhaled by animals, developed by the natural phenomena of
decomposition. On the other hand, the vegetable pours into the
atmosphere oxygen, which is taken up by animals and appropriated by
them. The tree, by means of its leaves and its young herbaceous twigs,
presents a considerable surface for absorption and evaporation; it
abstracts the carbon of carbonic acid, and solidifies it in wood
fecula, and a multitude of other compounds. The result is that a
forest withdraws from the air, by its great absorbent surface, much
more gas than meadows or cultivated fields, and exhales proportionally
a considerably greater quantity of oxygen. The influence of the
forests on the chemical composition of the atmosphere is, in a word,
of the highest importance."[5]
In large cities, where animal and vegetable decomposition goes on
rapidly during the summer, the atmosphere is, as already stated, at
times saturated with deleterious gases. At the period of the day when
malaria and mephitic gases are emitted in the greatest quantity and
activity, this function of absorption by vegetation is most active and
powerful. Carbonic acid, ammoniacal compounds, and other gases,
products of putrefaction, so actively poisonous to man, are absorbed,
and in the process of vegetable digestion the deleterious portion is
separated and appropriated by the plant, while oxygen, the element
essential to animal life, is returned to the air. Trees, therefore, in
cities, are of immense value, owing to their power to destroy or
neutralize malaria, and to absorb the poisonous elements of gaseous
compounds, while they render the air more respirable by emitting
oxygen.
The conclusion from the foregoing facts is inevitable that one of the
great and pressing sanitary wants of New York city is an ample supply
of trees. It is, in effect, destitute of trees; for the unsightly
shrubs which are planted by citizens are, in no proper sense, adequate
to the purpose which we contemplate. Its long avenues, running north
and south, without a shade tree, and exposed to the full effect of the
sun, are all but impassable at noonday in the summer months. The
pedestrian who ventures out at such an hour finds no protection from
an umbrella, on account of the radiation of the intense heat from the
paved surface. Animals and man alike suffer from exposure in the
glowing heat. Nothing mitigates its intensity but the winds or an
occasional rainstorm. And when evening comes on, the cooling of the
atmosphere produced by vegetation does not occur, and unless partially
relieved by favoring winds or a shower the heat continues, but little
abated, and the atmosphere remains charged with noxious and
irrespirable gases. It is evident that shade trees, of proper kinds,
and suitably arranged, supply the conditions necessary to counteract
the evils of excessive heat. They protect the paved streets and the
buildings largely from the direct rays of the sun; they cool the lower
stratum of air by evaporation from their immense surfaces of leaves;
they absorb at once the malarious emanations and gases of
decomposition, and abstract their poisonous properties for their own
consumption; they withdraw from the air the carbonic acid thrown off
from the animal system as a poison, and decomposing it, appropriate
the element dangerous to man, and give back to the atmosphere the
element essential to his health and even life.[6]
And we may add that cultivated shade trees in New York would be an
artistic and attractive feature of the streets. Every citizen enjoys
trees, as is evident from the efforts made to cultivate them
throughout the city.
It is frequently alleged that trees can not be successfully cultivated
in cities on account of the gases in the soil. There are ample proofs
to the contrary. The city of Paris strikingly illustrates the
possibility of cultivating a large variety of trees in the streets and
public places of large cities when the planting and cultivation is
placed under competent authority. In our own country the cities of New
Haven and Washington are examples of the successful cultivation of
trees to an extent sufficient to greatly modify the summer
temperature. Authorities on landscape gardening and forestry sustain
the view that under proper supervision by competent and skilled
persons a great variety of trees, shrubs, plants, and vines can be
cultivated in the streets and public places of this city. Mr.
Frederick Law Olmstead, to whom the city is so much indebted for his
intelligent supervision of Central Park in its early period, warmly
supported a movement to cultivate trees, shrubs, plants, and vines in
the streets of New York. Dr. J.T. Rothrock, the very able and
experienced Commissioner of Forestry of Pennsylvania, under date of
October 10, 1898, speaking of the proposed plan of securing the
cultivating trees in the streets of this city, remarks: "I think it an
excellent measure, and I am sure that during the torrid season the
more tree shade you have the fewer will be your cases of heat
exhaustion. It is idle to say, as is often said in this country, that
trees can not be made to grow in our cities. Under existing conditions
the wonder is, not that trees look unhealthy in most cities, but that
any of them manage to live at all. It is perfectly well known that the
city of Paris has thousands of trees growing vigorously under such
surroundings as the American gardener would think impossible. Two
things are necessary to success--viz., first, the kinds of trees to
endure city life must be found; and, second, select from among them
such as are adapted by their size and shape to each special place."
Mr. Gifford Pinchot, of the Division of Forestry, Department of
Agriculture, Washington, writes under date of December 2, 1898:
"Street trees are successfully planted in great numbers in all of the
most beautiful cities of the world. Washington and Paris are
conspicuous examples. That such trees succeed is largely due to the
great care taken in setting them out. The attractiveness of cities has
come to be reckoned among their business advantages, and nothing adds
to it more than well-selected, well-planted, and well-cared-for trees.
On the score of public health trees in the streets of cities are
equally desirable. They become objectionable only when badly selected
and badly maintained."
In a recent paper on Tree Planting in the Streets of Washington, Mr.
W.P. Richards, surveyor of the District of Columbia, remarks that,
under the plan adopted, "tree planting has never been at an
experimental stage" in that city. "Washington was a city of young
trees during the seventies, and in the spring of 1875 more than six
thousand trees were planted, consisting of silver maples, Norway
maples, American elms, American and European lindens, sugar maples,
tulip trees, American white ash, scarlet maples, various poplars, and
ash-leaved maples.... A careful count was made of the trees in 1887,
and by comparing this with the number of trees since planted and those
removed, there is found to be more than seventy-eight thousand trees,
which if placed thirty feet apart would line both sides of a boulevard
between Washington and New York. These consist of more than thirty
varieties." Mr. Richards adds: "The planting and care of trees in
Washington grows from year to year, and the future will probably
demand more skill and judgment than in years past. About twenty
thousand dollars is spent annually, most of it in the care of old
trees. From one to three thousand young trees are planted during the
spring and fall of each year. The nursery has several thousand of the
best varieties ready for planting."
The opinions of these authorities and the success of the work in
Washington, now extending over a quarter of a century, determine
beyond all question the feasibility and practicability of successfully
cultivating trees in the streets of cities. And if any one doubts the
power of trees cultivated in the streets to change the temperature of
a city let him calculate the amount of foliage which the seventy-eight
thousand trees, when full-grown, will furnish the city of Washington,
taking as his basis the fact that a single tree, the Washington elm,
at Cambridge, Massachusetts, when in full leafage, equals five acres
of foliage, and that one acre of grass emits into the atmosphere 6.400
quarts of water in twenty-four hours, a powerfully cooling process.
We have, finally, to consider through what agency the proposed
cultivation of trees in the city of New York can be accomplished most
rapidly and successfully. Three methods may be suggested, viz.: 1.
Encourage citizens each to plant and cultivate trees on his own
premises. 2. Organize voluntary "tree-planting associations," which
shall aid citizens or undertake to do the work at a minimum cost. 3.
Place the work under the entire supervision and jurisdiction of public
authority. The first method has been on trial from the foundation of
the city, and its results are a few stunted apologies for trees which
are useless for sanitary purposes and unsightly for ornamentation. The
average citizen is entirely incompetent either to select the proper
tree or to cultivate it when planted. Tree-planting associations have
proved useful agencies in exciting a popular interest in the subject,
and in aiding citizens in the selection of suitable trees and in
cultivating them. The Tree-Planting and Fountain Society of Brooklyn,
under the very able management of its accomplished secretary, Prof.
Lewis Collins, is a model organization of the kind, and has
accomplished a vast amount of good in this field in that city. But it
may well be questioned if we have not reached a period of sanitary
reform in cities when a work of the kind we contemplate in New York
should not be undertaken by the strong arm of the city government, as
a matter of public policy, and carried steadily forward to its
completion. The growth of the greater city is far too rapid in every
direction to await the slow movements of the people under the pressure
of voluntary organizations. The best work can be done in those
outlying districts where the streets are as yet but sparsely built
upon, and the soil has been undisturbed. Again, it is of the utmost
importance that a work of this kind, which will largely prove one of
city ornamentation, should be under the exclusive direction of a
skilled central authority having ample power and means to harmonize
every feature of the work from the center of the city to its remotest
limits. Finally, the successful cultivation of trees and other
vegetation in our streets can be successfully carried on only by
experts in the art of tree culture, who devote their entire time and
energies to these duties, and are sustained by the power of the city
government. Mr. Frederick Law Olmstead remarks, "Not one in a hundred
of all that may have been planted in the streets of our American
cities in the last fifty years has had such treatment that its species
would come to be if properly planted and cared for." Mr. Richards, in
the paper referred to on Tree Planting in the Streets of Washington,
makes the following statement: "The selection, planting, and care of
all trees in the streets of Washington are under the direction of the
District authorities; individual preferences and private enterprises
are not allowed to regulate this improvement, as is generally done in
other cities. Moreover, the city has its own nursery, where seeds
planted from its own trees grow and supply all the needed varieties."
It is apparent that to accomplish such a work as we propose the
undertaking must be placed under the jurisdiction of a department of
the city government, skilled in the performance of such duties, fully
equipped with all needful appliances, and clothed with ample power and
supplied with the financial resources necessary to overcome every
obstacle. Fortunately, we have in our Department of Parks an organized
branch of the city administration endowed with every qualification for
the performance of these duties. The charter provides as follows: "It
shall be the duty of each commissioner ... to maintain the beauty and
utility of all such parks, squares, and public places as are situated
within his jurisdiction, and to institute and execute all measures for
the improvement thereof for ornamental purposes and for the beneficial
uses of the people of the city, ... and he shall have power to plant
trees and to construct, erect, and establish seats, drinking
fountains, statues, and works of art, when he may deem it tasteful or
appropriate so to do." At the head of this service is "a landscape
architect, skilled and expert, whose assent shall be requisite to all
plans and works or changes thereof respecting the conformation,
development, or ornamentation of any of the parks, squares, or public
places of the city, to the end that the same may be uniform and
symmetrical at all times."
The conclusion seems inevitable that public policy requires that, in
the interests of the health of the people and the comfort and
well-being of that large class of the poor who can not escape the
summer heat by leaving the city, the jurisdiction of the Park
Department should be extended to all trees, shrubs, plants, and vines
now and hereafter planted and growing in the streets of New York, and
that said department should be required to plant such additional
trees, shrubs, etc., as it may from time to time deem necessary and
expedient for the purpose of carrying out the intent and purpose of
such act which should be declared to be to improve the public health,
to render the city comfortable to its summer residents, and for
ornamentation.
"He who plants a tree, he plants love;
Tents of coolness, spreading out above
Wayfarers, he may not live to see.
Gifts that grow are best,
Hands that bless are blest.
Plant. Life does the rest."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In 1872, while a Commissioner of Health, I had occasion to examine
and report on the causes of the high death rate during the summer
months in the city of New York. The chief cause was determined to be
the excessive heat which characterizes those months. It was
recommended in the report to the Board of Health that legislation be
secured empowering and requiring the Department of Parks to plant and
cultivate trees, shrubs, plants, and vines in all the streets,
avenues, and public places in the city. A bill was drafted and
introduced into the Legislature, but it did not become a law, and no
further effort has been made to secure such legislation. Meantime, two
tree-planting societies have been established, one in the Borough of
Brooklyn and the other in the Borough of Manhattan, which are
endeavoring to awaken public interest to the importance of planting a
suitable number and variety of trees in the streets for purposes of
ornamentation. The aim of this paper, which is largely based on the
report of 1872, is to revive the project of giving the Department of
Parks jurisdiction over the trees in the streets, and require it to
plant and cultivate additional trees, shrubs, plants, and other forms
of vegetation for the improvement of the public health and for the
purpose of ornamentation.
[2] Man and Nature. G.P. Marsh, New York, 1872.
[3] It is interesting to notice, in this connection, the remark of
Angus Smith, that a temperature of 54° F. is important in the
decomposition of animal and vegetable matter.
[4] Public Parks. By John H. Rauch, M.D., Chicago, 1869.
[5] Les Arbres, quoted by Marsh.
[6] The late Dr. Francis remarked that he had noticed a marked
increase in the fatality of diseases in sections of the city after the
removal of trees and all vegetation.
MIVART'S GROUNDWORK OF SCIENCE.[7]
BY PROF. WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS.
If books like this by Professor Mivart, who holds that "the groundwork
of science must be sought in the human mind," help to teach that the
greatest service of science to mankind is not "practical," but
intellectual, they are worthy the consideration of the thoughtful,
even if this consideration should lead some of the thoughtful to
distrust Mivart's groundwork, or to doubt whether it is firm enough
for any superstructure.
Many, no doubt, think the desire to know a sufficient groundwork for
science, believing that they wish to know in order that they may
rightly order their lives; but the school to which Mivart belongs
tells them all this is mere vulgar ignorance, since the groundwork of
science is, and must be, something known, rather than a humble wish to
know.
According to Mivart, the groundwork of science consists of truths
which can not be obtained by reasoning, and can not depend for their
certainty on any experiments or observations alone, since whatever
truths depend upon reasoning can not be ultimate, but must be
posterior to, and depend upon, the principles, observations, or
experiments which show that it is indeed true, and upon which its
acceptance thus depends. The groundwork of science must therefore be
composed, he says, of truths which are self-evident; and he assures us
that, if this were not the case, natural knowledge would be mere
"mental paralysis and self-stultification."
He would tell the wayfarer who, having been lost among the mountains,
comes at last upon a broad highway winding around the foothills and
stretching down over the plain to the horizon, that an attempt to go
anywhere upon this road is "mere paralysis," unless he knows where it
begins and where it ends. He would have told the ancient dwellers upon
the shores of the Nile that their belief that they owed to the river
their agriculture, their commerce, their art and science, and all
their civilization, was mere self-stultification, because they knew
nothing of its sources in the central table-land.
May not one believe, with Mivart, that the scientific knowledge which
arises in the mind by means of the senses through contact with the
world of Nature, thus arises by virtue of our innate reason, and yet
find good ground for asking whether physical science may not have
something useful and important to tell us about the mechanism and
history of this innate reason itself? Is proof that our reason is
innate, or born with us, proof that it is ultimate or necessary or
beyond the reach of improvement and development by the application of
natural knowledge? May not this reason itself prove, perhaps, to be a
mechanical _phenomenon_ of matter and motion, and a part of the
discoverable order of physical causation; and may not science some
time tell us how it became innate, and what it is worth?
Questions of this sort are easy to ask but hard to answer; for many
hold our only way to reach an answer to be _to find out_ by scientific
research and discovery. While this method may be too slow for _a
priori_ philosophers, may it not be wise for those who, being no
philosophers, know of no short cut to natural knowledge, to admit
that, while they would like to know more, they have not yet learned
all there is to learn? If this suspension of judgment is indeed
self-stultification, the case of many students is hard, though they
may not really find themselves so helpless as they are told that they
must be; for he who is told by the learned faculty that he is
paralyzed need not be greatly troubled if he finds his powers for
work as much at his command as they were before.
The modern student has heard so many versions of the story of the
two-faced shield that he is much disposed to suspect that many of the
questions which have so long divided "philosophers" may be only new
illustrations of the old fable, and he asks whether there need be any
real antagonism between those who attribute knowledge to experience
and those who attribute it to our innate reason.
There are men of science who, seeing no good reason to challenge
Plato's belief that experience, creating nothing, only calls forth the
"ideas" which were already dormant or latent in the mind, do
nevertheless find reason to ask whether exhaustive knowledge of our
physical history may not some time show how these dormant "ideas" came
to be what they are. They ask whether errors may not be judgments
which lead us into danger and tend to our physical destruction, and
whether it may not be because a judgment has, in the long run, proved
preservative in the struggle for existence that we call it true. May
not, for example, the difference between the error that the stick half
in water is bent and the truth that the stick in air is straight, some
time prove to be that the savage who has rectified his judgment has
speared his fish, while he who has not has lost his dinner?
So long as we can ask such questions as this, how can we be sure that
because a judgment is no more than might have been expected from us,
as Nature has made us, at our present intellectual level, it is either
necessary or ultimate or universal? Things that are innate or natural
are not always necessary or universal, for while reason is natural to
the mind of man, some men are unreasonable, and a few have been even
known to be illogical.
It therefore seems clear that another view of the groundwork of
science than that set forth by Professor Mivart is possible, for many
believe that this groundwork is to be found in our desire to know what
we do not yet know, rather than in things known; and they believe they
wish to know in order that they may learn to distinguish truth from
error, and walk with sure feet where the ignorant grope and stumble.
Many books are profitable and instructive even if they fail to
convince; and the question which a prospective student of Mivart's
book is likely to ask is whether it is consistent with itself; for if
the author has not so far made himself master of his subject as to
state his case without palpable contradiction, no one will expect much
help from him. It is a remark of Aristotle, in the Introduction to the
Parts of Animals, that while one may need special training to tell
whether an author has proved his point, all may judge whether he is
consistent with himself, and the attempt to learn whether Mivart's
book is consistent may not greatly tax our minds.
He tells us that many men of science are "idealists"; and he says that
idealism, being mere self-stultifying skepticism, must be refuted and
demolished before we can begin our search for the groundwork of
science or be sure that we know anything. It would have surprised
Berkeley not a little to be told that his notions are the very essence
of skepticism, for the good bishop tells us again and again that his
only motive in writing is to make an end of idle skepticism, once for
all, that they who are no philosophers, but simple, honest folks, may
come by their own and live at ease.
There is little ease, and less justice, even at this late day, for the
man of science who insists that he is neither an idealist nor a
materialist nor a monist, but a naturalist; and that it will be time
enough to have an opinion as to the relation between mind and matter
when we find out; but many will, no doubt, be pleased to hear that the
crime of which they are now suspected is no longer "materialism," but
"idealism," for the public attaches no odium to the idealist, whatever
may be Professor Mivart's verdict. Still all must feel an interest in
the exposure of the weakness of idealism, since we have been told, by
many shrewd thinkers, that Berkeley's statement of the case, while
inconclusive, is unanswerable; although they hold that it is lack of
experimental evidence which stands in the way of either its acceptance
or its refutation.
Mivart begins his treatment of idealism by a simple and satisfactory
summary, pages 36-38, of Berkeley's Principles, but he forgets it on
the next page, for it is no exaggeration to assert that the "idealism"
which he refutes is a mere parody on that which he has just given his
readers, and something that no sane man would dream of holding.
For example, he admits, on page 38, that nothing "can be more absurd
than the criticism of those persons who say that idealists, to be
consistent, ought to run up against lamp-posts, fall into ditches, and
commit other like absurdities." On page 47 he undertakes to show, "by
the natural spontaneous judgment of mankind," that external material
bodies exist "of themselves, and have a substantial reality in
addition to that of the qualities we perceive; because the spontaneous
judgment of mankind accords with what even animals learn through their
senses. A wide river is an objective obstacle to the progress of a
man's dog, as well as to that of the dog's owner."
One who compares the extract from page 38 with this from page 47 can,
so far as I can see, reconcile them only by one of these hypotheses:
1, that Mivart holds a wide river to afford proof of reality which is
not afforded by a ditch; or, 2, that the dog which does not run
against lamp-posts affords evidence of the reality of Nature which is
not afforded by a man in the same circumstances; or, 3, that "nothing
can be more absurd than the criticism of these persons" who reason
like Professor Mivart.
While sometimes right and sometimes wrong, like the rest of us, the
apostle of tar water was no fool, although the groundwork of Mivart's
science, in the book before us, is the assertion that idealists
idiotically deny everything which they have not perceived, and hold
that the external world has no existence.
It is hard to see how words could be clearer than those in which
Berkeley repudiates all nonsense of this sort. "I do not argue," says
he, "against the existence of any one thing that we apprehend, _either
by sense or by reflection_. That the things I see with my eyes and
touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least
question. I am of a vulgar cast, simple enough to believe my own
senses, and to take things as I find them. To be plain, it is my
opinion that the real things are the very things that I see and feel,
and perceive by my senses. I can not for my life help thinking that
snow is white and fire hot. And as I am no skeptic with regard to the
nature of things, so neither am I as to their existence. That a thing
should be really perceived by my senses, and at the same time not
really exist, is to me a plain contradiction. Wood, stone, fire,
water, flesh, iron, and the like things, which I name and discourse
of, are things I know. Away, then, with all that skepticism, all those
ridiculous philosophical doubts! I might as well doubt of my own being
as of the being of those things I actually see and feel."
Mivart lays great stress upon the opinion of men in general as a
refutation of idealism; and as Berkeley also says he is content to
appeal to the common sense of the world, it may be well to ask what
the verdict of "plain, untutored men" is, even if we doubt whether
such a jury is the highest tribunal.
"Ask the gardener," says Berkeley, "why he thinks yonder cherry tree
exists in the garden, and he shall tell you, because he sees it and
feels it."
Mivart holds it one thing to see, and quite another matter to know
that we see, for he says that while we see and feel the "qualities" of
things by those "lower faculties" which we share with the "brutes," we
perceive the "substance" in which these qualities inhere, by certain
"higher faculties," which, whether represented in the brutes by latent
potencies or not, have been "given" to man in their completeness, and
not slowly and gradually built up from low and simple beginnings in
the brutes.
The question we are to ask the gardener is, therefore, something to
this effect: Whether he thinks the cherry tree exists because he sees
it and feels it, or because, when he sees it and feels it, he knows
that he does so?
If he weighs his words will he not ask how he can know that he does
see it and feel it unless he knows that he does so? I, myself, am no
philosopher; but, to my untutored mind, Mivart's distinction between
things perceived by _sense_, and things _perceived_ by sense, seems a
mere verbal difference of accent and emphasis, rather than a
fundamental distinction.
As most men use the word, "mind" implies consciousness of that sort
which Mivart calls self-consciousness, and while there is no reason
why those who choose should not so use the word as to include
unconscious or "subconscious" or "conscientious" cerebration, most
plain, untutored men prefer to use words as their neighbors do.
If long waiting on Nature has given to the old gardener more
shrewdness than we commonly find in those whose pursuits are less
leisurely, he may say that, while he knows the tree is there because
he has planted it and tended it and watched it grow, it now falls on
his eyes day after day, without attracting his notice, unless
something about it which calls for his skill _catches_ his eye, and
_commands_ his _attention_.
If we see reason to believe that this difference is a matter of words
and definitions, rather than a real difference in kind; if we fail to
find any sharp dividing line between unperceived cerebration and
"mind," is not this, in itself, enough to lead even Macaulay's
schoolboy to ask whether mind may not be a slow and gradual growth
from small beginnings, and a co-ordinated whole, to the common
function of which all its parts contribute, rather than a "gift" of
"lower faculties" and "higher faculties"?
We must ask, however, whether mechanical explanations of mind are in
any way antagonistic to the conviction that it is a gift. May not one
study the history of the mechanism of mind, and the way this mechanism
works, in a spirit of profound and humble gratitude to the Giver of
all good gifts?
Is the lamentable prevalence, among plain untutored men, of the notion
that mechanical explanations of Nature are inconsistent with belief
that all Nature is a gift, to be laid to the charge of the men of
science?
Is it not rather the poisonous fruit of the ill-advised attempts of
"philosophers" like Professor Mivart to teach that a gift can not be a
gift at all unless it is an arbitrary interruption to the law and
order of physical Nature.
FOOTNOTE:
[7] The Groundwork of Science. A Study of Epistemology. By St. George
Mivart, M.D., Ph.D., F.R.S. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1898.
THE SCIENCE OF OBSERVATION.
BY CHARLES LIVY WHITTLE.
This is an era of observation; in many fields and in divers countries
the study of Nature from a strictly scientific standpoint is being
prosecuted with results which are rapidly increasing our knowledge of
the universe. This modern growth has come about as the natural rebound
of the suppressed energy that has been held forcibly under subjugation
during the last two thousand years, at a time when the closing echoes
of the warfare between the literal interpretation of the Scriptures
and science have ceased.
A review of this long battle with the forces of the Catholic and
Protestant churches on the one hand, arrayed against a relatively few
investigators, scattered through the last ten centuries, on the other
hand, shows a record on which none can look without regret. As far as
we are able to learn, there was little opposition to the study of
science before the collection and translation of the old manuscripts
now constituting the Alexandrian version of the Bible and the
consequent upbuilding of the Jewish church. The remains of ancient
Egyptian civilization show that science prior to that period, as
measured by the discoveries in physics and astronomy, had attained no
inconsiderable prominence; and had this people endured until the
present time, uninfluenced by the strife that for many centuries
racked the inhabitants of the eastern hemisphere, we should to-day be
far more advanced in our understanding of the universe.
In the more progressive countries, at least, the breaking of the
shackles in which the investigating mind had been imprisoned for so
long has led not only to a greater number of scientific workers, but
also to an increase in the fields of observation. The methods of
investigation have likewise undergone a transformation. In place of
deductive reasoning, even as late as a few decades in the past,
conclusions and generalizations are now founded on lines of thought
more largely inductive. Men of middle age are able to recall the time
when even our leading institutions of learning required instruction in
several branches of science to be given by one teacher. It was
possible twenty-five years ago for a man of great ability to master
the essentials of the leading sciences and to teach them, but under
the present stimulus for investigation no one can hope to excel in
more than one subject. It has thus come about that in place of the
many-sided teacher of science we now have in our larger universities
specialists in every subject. As the work of research progresses, the
specialist--for example, in geology--is compelled by the increased
scope of the information on his subject to select one branch of
geology of which he shall be master. The chair of geology is now split
up into economic, glacial, and mining geology, paleontology, etc., and
specialists are required in each division. This breaking up is true of
most other sciences. In this labyrinth of specialized subjects, and
the maze of technical terms rendered necessary thereby, the people as
a whole can only grope in darkness; but out of this bewildering
condition of affairs, from the mass of facts collected, and the
resulting generalizations and theories, there may be culled the kernel
of one important principle by means of which these facts are
ascertained and the generalizations made. The growth of science and
its ever-ramifying divisions, and the gradual establishment of new
methods of investigation, have brought forth what may be termed the
science of observation; and it is through an application of the above
principle that the people may be taught correctly to interpret Nature,
and, by their new habit of thought, to free the brain from the tangle
of superstition which is still present with most of us.
A knowledge of how to observe natural phenomena and to draw correct
inferences therefrom has been the product of slow growth, while
through long custom, in matters closely pertaining to our daily life,
there has been observation on strictly scientific principles for
centuries. Stated succinctly, natural phenomena are due to causes, one
or more, simple or complex. These causes are the laws of the universe,
and to arrive at an understanding of them we must free our minds of
any bias and study phenomena experimentally in the laboratory, or in
our daily contact with Nature. In this way a mass of facts will be
gathered by the systematic observer which will be found to fall into
natural groups, and by inductive reasoning the laws governing each
group may be learned. It is not possible for mankind as a whole to
investigate in this exhaustive manner; but it is important that the
method of arriving at the laws of Nature be understood. Many and, in
fact, most phenomena met with in some of the sciences, particularly
those having to deal with the earth, are susceptible of correct
interpretation without attempting broad generalizations, if the
principles of scientific observation are brought to bear upon their
solution, and it is our purpose to show by practical examples drawn
from Nature how elementary students may attack and solve some of the
simple problems met with on every side. It is proposed to use for
illustration simple phenomena pertaining to the earth, drawn from
geology and its newly constituted sister science, physical geography.
These two sciences perhaps afford the greatest range of phenomena,
which are accessible to every one, in whatsoever part of the earth he
may reside. No part of the land surface is wanting in problems which
demand explanation, and which may be attacked from the standpoint of
the geologist or physical geographer, or both.
One of the most pronounced departures taking place in
preparatory-school education at the present time is to be found in the
prominence given to these subjects, not only in the schoolroom, but by
practical experience in the laboratory of Nature, among the hills and
mountains, as well. The object of this departure is twofold: the first
and most important is to train the young early to observe phenomena
and to interpret them; the second, in a narrower sense, is purely
educational. The one inculcates a habit of thought that will be of
inestimable advantage in pursuing future study; the other, without
taking into consideration the element of mental training, constitutes
instruction in concrete things that are matters of general education.
Before the student in the introductory schools is brought in contact
with problems in the field, it is essential that he receive text-book
or oral instruction in some of the geological processes giving rise to
the phenomena to be studied later out of doors. In practical teaching
the student is taken on excursions into the region not far removed
from the school. At first some simple geological facts are shown him,
often on a very small scale, but embodying principles which, when
understood, lead to a ready interpretation of larger problems. Step by
step the first principles are amplified by a larger and more varied
class of examples, until the student is able logically to apply the
reasoning in explanation of simple problems to the solution of the
greater problems in physical geography and geology. In the absence of
such excursions, I shall introduce a series of photographs carefully
arranged to lead the reader along the same line of reasoning up to
similar broad conclusions--a method which, if not so satisfactory and
instructive, will at least have an educative value.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--QUARRY SHOWING FRESH AND WEATHERED ROCKS.]
Our first excursion will be to a locality where an open cut has been
made for the purpose of carrying on quarrying operations. The
accompanying photograph has been so taken as to include both the top
and the bottom of the quarry (Fig. 1). Let us first inspect the rock
in the lower part of the quarry. The existence of planes of fracture,
or joints, crossing the rock in various directions, dividing it into
blocks, early attracts our attention. The stone appears dark-colored,
tough, and is seen to be made up of two or three different minerals:
one is black, cleaves readily into thin plates of a translucent
nature, and we easily recognize it as an iron-bearing mica, or
isinglass. Another is white, and cleaves or breaks in two directions,
making angles of about ninety degrees; this we know as common
feldspar. The third is less easily recognized as pyroxene, another of
the many minerals containing iron. Having tested our knowledge of
mineralogy, we will look about and see if all the rock exposed is
like that at the bottom of the quarry. As we ascend from the point
indicated by the lower hammer, we notice that the dark blue rock
gradually takes on a rusty hue, and its toughness has become less.
Going still higher, the rusty character increases, and along joints
the rock is so lacking in coherency as to fall to pieces when struck a
light blow with a hammer. The central portions of the blocks, however,
after we have removed the outer shell of rusty material, are seen to
be like the lower rock. In the middle foreground of the picture there
are shown several bowlders derived from above, which are merely these
residual cores, and are known as bowlders of disintegration. These are
also shown in place near the top of the picture at the extreme left.
Near the top of the quarry, at a point marked by the upper hammer, the
solid rock gives place to a rusty mass of loose material, traversing
which the cracks may still be seen, and in which there are few
indications of the solid rock[8] (see Fig. 2). This loose material
when carefully examined is found to be made up of exactly the same
minerals as the dense rock below, but we notice that the mica and
pyroxene are rusty and that the feldspar is stained yellowish brown.
The pyroxene in particular is very much changed, and quickly crumbles
away in the hand. It is clear that there is every stage between the
solid rock and the incoherent powder at the surface of the ground. The
joint planes crossing the solid rock below may still be observed
traversing the decayed portion, and also many rounded areas of rock,
which are seen to be identical with the stone at the bottom of the
quarry.[9]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--DETAILED VIEW OF A PORTION OF QUARRY SHOWING
WEATHERED ROCK.]
How shall the facts before us be explained? It has been shown that the
dense rock and the loose material are the same mineralogically, and
grade from one into the other, and it is certainly rational to suppose
that the latter is merely a changed form of the first. Some force must
have been at work on the solid rock, destroying its coherency and
converting it into loose sand. If we inspect the powdered rock, it
will become apparent that this change has been brought about mainly by
the process of weathering: surface water, with its ever-present acid
impurities, has brought about the partial decay of the pyroxene and
mica and caused the disintegration of the upper part of the rock.
Water has not only attacked the rock from the upper surface, but has
penetrated to considerable depths along the joint planes, working
inward toward the center of each block until the mass becomes
completely disintegrated. This process explains the concentric shells
about cores of unaltered rock, each representing original joint
blocks, which are seen in the second photograph. All our excursions
into the field will show that this is not an isolated case, for
wherever a ledge is exposed to our view there will be found a zone of
weathered rock, varying in thickness from mere films to many feet.
By this process the greatest part of the materials constituting soils
is formed, and the flora and fauna of the earth are rendered possible.
Upon such products of decay the food supply of running water
manifestly depends in a large measure, as will be pointed out on our
next excursion; and were the scope of this article somewhat larger, it
would be easy to show that the rock decay seen in our photograph has
taken place in a length of time measured by something like ten
thousand years. If all rock decayed as easily, and if the rate of
decomposition, as determined here, held good for great distances from
the surface, mountains two miles in height would become a prey to the
force of chemical action in six and a half million years. We can not,
however, give a time equivalent for the destruction of a mountain
range, since decay, and consequent disintegration, is only one of the
many forces acting to sap the strength of solid rocks and to tear them
asunder. The above figures are given merely to make plain that the
time necessary to accomplish the leveling of a mountain chain is but a
small part of the earth's existence as such, great as this period may
seem from the standpoint of human history.
We shall, if possible, time the second excursion immediately after a
heavy rain, and we shall select for our objective point a place where
the rain water, in its efforts to reach a stream, is forced to run
down some steep declivity. Under such circumstances, the carrying
power of the water will be very great, and we shall hope to find
evidence of its work in transporting the products of rock weathering
and other material broken up by the action of frost. A little
diligence will soon reward us with the evidence which we seek. A local
inequality of the ground, perhaps only a few feet across, is found
filled with water--a minute, temporary lake caused by the recent heavy
rainfall. Such little water bodies are extremely common, but the
accompanying geological phenomena are, notwithstanding, none the less
interesting, and the conclusions to be drawn from the evidence thus
presented are none the less valuable.
If we examine the pool critically, it will be noticed that its shore
line is cut by a little channel along which the overflow makes its
escape. Further investigation will show that at another point along
the shore, especially if we are fortunate enough to visit the locality
very soon after a rain, there is a small rivulet entering the pool;
and also that the entering stream is discolored with mud and carries
more or less sand, while the escaping stream is nearly clear, and is
free from all traces of coarse, sandy material. It is therefore
evident that the sediment brought in by the stream has been left
behind in the pool, and of course will be found deposited at its
bottom, and it will appear that the only explanation of the inability
of the water further to transport its burden is to be found in the
fact that water loses nearly all its motion, and therefore its
transporting power, on entering a stagnant pool. These are elementary
truths, but an amplification of such simple phenomena is often fully
capable of accounting for the most stupendous results.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--TEMPORARY WET-WEATHER DELTA.]
Having made these observations, let us look at the form assumed by the
sediment when it is forced to fall to the bottom. At the point where
the stream enters the pool there is seen an accumulation of material
having a nearly level upper surface, presenting a scalloped or
lobe-shaped outer margin, upon which the stream may be seen flowing
and entering the water at one of the lobes. Other channels, though
unoccupied by water, also lead to similar lobes. If we watch closely,
we may be able to witness the growth of this body of sand, called a
delta, as the falling sediment rapidly increases the size of the lobe;
and also to perceive that as soon as the lobe is built out
considerably in advance of the main body of sand, it will be easier
for the stream to enter the water on one side of the scallop, thus
abandoning its old mouth. In this manner the stream moves from one
place to another, successively building the little scallops and
continually carving new channels for itself. Fig. 3 is a photograph of
such a delta, some three feet across, taken after the water had been
drained away, and reveals its form in a characteristic manner. As we
watch its growth, it will become evident that only the coarsest
material transported by the stream goes to make up the delta, and that
the clay and finest sand are deposited farther away, where the water
is more quiet, or else pass out in the stream draining the pool. Let
us look about a little. Not far from our miniature lake there are
several others. In some the size of the delta is much larger in
proportion to the area of the pool than is the case with the one first
studied. We find in some cases that the stream has progressively built
its delta completely across the old water surface. Taking a thin piece
of board or a large knife, we can easily cut vertically through this
sand deposit, thus exposing what is called a geological section. The
sand grains of which the deposit is largely composed are seen to be
arranged in layers nearly horizontal, and these layers are found to be
due to alternations of sediment varying in fineness. This phenomenon
is called stratification, and is what we should expect of the action
of gravity operating on material of different sizes and densities
suspended in a body of water. It has been found inexpedient to attempt
to show a photograph of this section, owing to the smallness of the
subject, but the same phenomena may be observed on a much larger scale
in Fig. 5, which will be described below.
A few rods away the stream that feeds the pool has its origin. The
sediment carried by the water and going to build up its delta has its
source in part in a neighboring bank made up of material derived from
solid rock by weathering, similar to that shown on our first
excursion, and partly from older water deposits. Steep channels exist
in the disintegrated rock, which represent the material removed by the
fast-flowing rain water.
Now what geological phenomena have we observed at this locality? In
the first place, it has become clear that running water possesses the
power of transporting sediment. In the second place, this sediment has
been deposited wherever the velocity of the water has been materially
checked. The sediment has been laid down in horizontal layers under
the influence of gravity. Furthermore, the material of which the delta
is composed has been shown, in part at least, to have been derived
from a solid rock such as forms our mountains. In our first excursion
we saw that chemical change promoted disintegration; in our second,
running water is observed seizing upon these products of decay,
transporting them and building them into stratified deposits in the
first convenient pool. A level-topped delta is first formed, which may
or may not grow to fill the pool in which it is born. Some of the
pools have become filled, while the delta as such has disappeared; it
has grown into a tiny sand plain.
Let us see if the work performed by these temporary rivulets is
typical of running water in general. For this purpose we shall visit a
spot where a river enters some considerable body of water such as a
lake. Let us inspect the river. Its water is sluggish, discolored by
organic matter derived from decaying vegetation, and for some distance
up stream from its mouth it meanders slowly across a flat, marshy area
or meadow. If we also visit the spot at a time when the river is
swollen by heavy rains or melting snows, the presence of this organic
matter will be masked by the turbidity of the water; we shall learn
that only in the freshet seasons does the water attain sufficient
velocity to carry any visible load of sand and clay. The upper end of
the lake will be found to be shallow, muddy, and water lilies will
have discovered congenial surroundings. At another part of the lake
the outflowing water appears clear as crystal; the sediment brought in
by the river has manifestly been deposited in the lake, as was the
case in our little pool. The marsh at the upper end, of course, is
merely another delta, slow growing in this instance, grass-covered,
but as surely encroaching on the water area as in the earlier
examples. When an entering stream is normally of great transporting
power, owing to steep slopes down which it rushes, the form of its
delta is not unlike the one first described.
With the data already gathered, we can not escape from the conclusion
that the growth going on at the head of the lake will in time, if
present conditions continue to exist, push its way forward until it
has occupied the whole water area. The sediment which is now deposited
therein will then be transported across the plain, and will be carried
along until another body of water is reached. Further search will
bring to light the fact that there are plenty of examples showing all
stages between the simple delta and the completely filled lake. The
innumerable marshes and meadows which characterize the northern part
of the United States are fine examples of lakes which have perished in
this manner.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--A COMMON FORM OF LARGE DELTA.]
Our next excursion will be made to the locality shown in Fig. 4, which
is a sketch of a large delta occurring at a considerable height above
the general level of the country, although at the present time the
delta is not in vicinity of water.[10] It will be evident to the
reader that it differs in no important particular, excepting size,
from our little type specimen formed in a pool. Its level top and
frontal lobes are to-day nearly as strongly marked as at the time it
was made. The reader will have little difficulty in picturing the
original conditions of its formation in some ancient lake. This old
lake did not endure until the inflowing streams had filled it to a
level plain, but for some reason, which it is unnecessary for us to
consider, the water was permitted to escape, leaving the delta perched
on the valley side. Such deltas are very common, and we find them in
all stages, from simple beginnings, as above, to the completed sand
plain.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--GEOLOGICAL CROSS-SECTION OF A DELTA.]
The sand of which our first delta was composed has already been
referred to as arranged in horizontal layers. In order to verify our
conclusions regarding the origin of this delta, let us seek for an
opportunity to observe its internal structure, and to compare it with
that observed in the first example. It may happen that the opportunity
does not exist at this immediate locality, but a little way off a
similar deposit occurs, and a beautiful section has been uncovered by
the vigorous attacks of a steam shovel. This section has already been
referred to on page 464, as illustrating the structure of the sand
layers making up the tiny delta, as well as water deposits in general,
and is reproduced here as Fig. 5. The reader will observe in this
picture many familiar features common to railroad excavations. The
upper part of the geological section thus exposed is somewhat masked
by a downfall of sand and loam, and the lower part is also hidden by
the same materials. Along the central part, however, the sand and
gravel may be seen arranged in horizontal layers of a varying
thickness. A close inspection of the uppermost layers will detect a
variation in coarseness among the different strata. Such alternations
of layers of coarse and fine material are due to differences in the
transporting power of the running water that brought the sand and
pebbles to their present resting place; the coarse gravel and pebbles
were carried by fast-flowing rivers, and the fine sand by streams of
less rapidity and consequently less transporting power. Beds of this
character ordinarily correspond closely in time with alternating
periods of great rainfall or snow melting and the summer seasons. The
pebbles of which the coarse layers are composed, as we should expect,
are far from spherical, and the operation of gravity on such bodies,
as they fall to the floor of a lake or ocean, is to cause them to
arrange themselves with their flat surfaces horizontal and parallel to
one another. In the example before us this fact is apparent, and
affords the basis for another line of reasoning by which all such
stratified deposits, however great their magnitude, are to be referred
to the same source--namely, stream-transported materials derived from
a decaying and wasting land surface, laid down in water under the
influence of gravity.
We have now arrived at a most important and far-reaching
generalization so far as the work performed by running water is
concerned, and its action in filling our lakes and ponds; and we have
learned by observation on a small scale the means by which such
deposits may be recognized. Let us apply these means of recognition to
the phenomena shown by our large rivers and the more enduring oceans
into which they drain. In the same manner that we have studied the
little pool and larger lake, we will look into the work done by the
great waterways of our continents, selecting as a type of such streams
the mighty Mississippi. Careful measurement has shown that this river
annually transports two hundred million tons of sediment mechanically
suspended. What becomes of this enormous quantity of sand and clay,
equal to a cubic mile in a little over a century, as it is swept into
the waters of the Gulf of Mexico? For this purpose we have only to
visit the region about its mouth to become acquainted with the almost
impotent struggles that have been made by our Government during the
last fifty years in an effort to keep the river below New Orleans, in
part at least, confined to its present channels; and to study the
chart of that portion of the Gulf coast prepared by the United States
Coast and Geodetic Survey (see Fig. 6). We have not forgotten the
little lobes; their method of growth, and the general form of our
first-seen delta, shown in Fig. 3. In viewing the phenomena at the
mouth of the Mississippi, it is no longer necessary for our present
purposes to make a detailed study, since it will become apparent at
once that the river is doing the work on a larger scale typified by
the performance of the tiny stream flowing into its temporary pool. In
place of the little delta with its still smaller lobes, the
Mississippi has deposited at its mouth an enormous delta, thousands of
square miles in area, and its bifurcating arms may be seen building
out several scallops for miles into the waters of the gulf. For
centuries these long lobes have been building in advance of the delta
front. The arms gradually become clogged with sediment, a new passage
to the ocean is opened on the sides, where deposition will begin at a
new point, producing a lobe as before. Situated many miles up the
river, it is to-day the great fear of New Orleans that its only
navigable arm to the sea will thus be closed to that commerce upon
which the life of the city depends.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--THE DELTA OF THE MISSISSIPPI.]
Only a portion of the sediment brought in by the river goes to form
its delta; a large part of the finest material, such as clay, is
transported by temporary and permanent currents thousands of miles
away, where it is deposited in the more quiet waters of the ocean. In
this manner the Mississippi has been shown to deposit a cubic mile of
mechanically transported material in a little over a century. What
shall we say of the effects produced on the continents and oceans by
thousands of rivers, each doing its proportionate share of work and
acting through millions of years? Two main results must follow, unless
interruptions occur: the lower elevations and the magnificent mountain
ranges, which rear their lofty heads above the permanent snow line,
will be divided into minor peaks; valleys will be carved out; the
whole land surface will slowly waste away, at first rapidly, at last
slowly, and be transported to the oceans, where it will form great
horizontal beds differing in no essential particular, excepting size,
from those shown in Fig. 5--great deposits that are merely deltas on a
large scale. The geologist, however, finds no evidence to indicate
that at any time in the earth's history have these theoretical results
taken place. Land masses, of continental dimensions, have not been
allowed thus to waste entirely away to a general flatness on account
of the interruptions caused by elevation--the bodily lifting of great
areas of rock, even out of the ocean floor, to become mountains or
plateaus, in some cases higher than any point in this country. If our
observations thus far and those yet to be made serve to make this
clear, one of the objects of this article will have been
accomplished. It is to be hoped that our observations have made plain
the processes of rock disintegration and water transportation; that in
the oceans all these materials are eventually deposited in beds
horizontally arranged, composed of such products of decay in the
condition of sand and mud. We have only to point out the proof that
great land masses, composed of water-deposited materials, have been
lifted from the ocean to become continents and mountain ranges.
As the ocean deposits slowly accumulate in layers to beds of many
thousands of feet in thickness, the lower parts are gradually
subjected to greatly increased pressure produced by the overlying
beds. During this time waters of a varying temperature, carrying,
chemically dissolved, great quantities of lime, silica, and iron
oxide, are allowed free circulation through them. These conditions
promote chemical change: much silica (the mineral quartz), lesser
amounts of carbonate of lime (the mineral calcite), and iron oxide are
precipitated about the loose sand grains, firmly cementing them
together into a solid rock. A cycle has thus been completed; the dense
rocks composing a continent have passed by the process of weathering
into incoherent sand and clay, which, when transported to the ocean
floor, become again converted into solid rock.
Historical records prove that during the last three thousand years
there have taken place many changes in the ocean's level. Old islands
have disappeared; new ones have emerged above the surface of the
water. Great stretches of seacoast exist at the present time which
within the historical period have been covered by the ocean. Even at
the present writing we are witnessing the gradual submergence of some
parts of the earth and the rising of others; terraces on the northern
Atlantic coast may be seen along the hillsides many feet above the
present level of the ocean--all of which go to show that the
relationship of the land to the water is an unstable one. These are
the evidences of continental growth and depressions from the
historical standpoint, and the validity of the data upon which the
belief is founded can not be shaken. The evidence from the geological
side is overwhelming, but before we speak of this it will be well once
more to say a word as to the causes of continental uplift.
From an original fluid globe possessing a high temperature, the earth
has now cooled down to a degree sufficiently low to permit the
formation of a thick rock crust. Underneath this crust an approach to
the old surface temperatures is still maintained, and the existence of
a certain degree of fluidity is demonstrated to us from time to time
by the phenomenon of volcanism. Successive zones of cooling took
place. The outer part could only conform to a shrinking interior by
wrinkling, folding, or bodily lifting considerable areas above the
general level. An adjustment of strains thus set up would take place
either with or without folding of the strata. These initial wrinkles
gave rise to our first mountains, and the continuation of these
conditions at the present time is as surely nourishing mountain growth
as at any time in the past. In this way the fluctuations of the
ocean's level, above referred to, alone are to be explained, and such
form but temporary rises and falls in the history of a continent.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--MOUNTAIN SHOWING ROCK FOLDING.]
The rate at which an ocean bed is raised to form a mountain range is,
no doubt, a variable one; always slow, often interrupted, but seldom
or never violent. During this time the strata usually undergo crushing
and folding; stretching takes place, and displacements of the rocks,
or faulting, are not uncommon. As an example of the wrinkling that the
strata may suffer under these conditions, the reader is referred to
the beautiful symmetrical fold shown on the side of a mountain in the
Appalachians (Fig. 7). Similar folding is the rule, but often immense
areas are raised to great heights above the ocean without disturbing
the horizontal position of the beds (see Fig. 8). Coincident with the
emergence of the rocks from beneath the water, there begin the
attacks of the forces operating to destroy them. Hand in hand there go
on growth and destruction. The two may keep an even pace; either may
obtain the mastery. In the one case, lack of considerable elevation
and flatness result; in the other, great altitudes may be attained.
The rivers may cut their valleys downward as fast as the land rises,
or the down-cutting may be relatively slower. In any case, after a
given land mass has attained its greatest height above the sea, the
larger rivers soon cut their channels down as far as river cutting is
possible--namely, to within a few feet of sea level. With relatively
rapid elevation, soft rocks, and large rivers, the resultant valley
takes the form of a cañon, examples of which are found along the
courses of the Colorado and the Yellowstone Rivers (see Fig. 8).[11]
Valleys of this nature soon lose their steep sides by the action of
weathering and all that this implies, and pass into a more open state,
like that shown in Fig. 9.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--HORIZONTAL ROCKS, GRAND CAÑON OF THE
COLORADO.]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--MOUNT STEPHEN, SHOWING ITS HORIZONTAL ROCKS.]
These views have been selected in order that a comparison of this type
of mountain structure may be made with that shown in Fig. 6. The
points of resemblance between the two sections exposed, one by a steam
shovel, the other by river action, are the horizontal position of the
strata and the alternations of beds of unlike character. The
differences are mainly that the beds making up the mountain show that
they are built up of alternating layers of sand (now converted into a
sandstone) and clay (now in the condition of a slate). Are not these
the products of a decayed continent? Is their position to be explained
otherwise than along the lines already stated? Our only difficulty in
readily accepting this conclusion is founded on a hereditary belief,
born in ignorance and nourished to maturity by superstition, that the
earth came into existence as we see it to-day, the surface dissected
by valleys in which the rivers find established courses to the sea;
possessing a multiplicity of highland and lowland, granite mountains
and marble hills, as a result of some plan carried into effect as a
creative act. Science has revealed the impossibility of this
interpretation. Considered in the light of evolution, acting through
an immense period of time, by means of the processes already
enumerated, the diversity of land form is made plain to us, and the
ever-varying characters of rock structure and composition are in the
main made easy of comprehension. Viewed in the light of the foregoing
pages, and illustrating as they do land form and the greater part of
the earth's crust, the rock structures revealed on the sides of the
mountains and cañons, as well as the broader valley itself, take on a
new and more intelligent interest. High and enduring as the mountains
may appear, resistant as their solid rocks may seem, they are doomed
as mountains to the same fate that their own structure and composition
prove to have overtaken earlier mountains before them.
The earth has known no cessation in this cycle of decay, deposition,
and elevation; again and again have continental masses been raised
from the ocean floor only to become a prey to the forces that destroy
them. These cycles will continue--mountain ranges will fade away and
new ones will be born. A more permanent relationship between the
lowland, the upland, and the ocean level will never be attained until
the forces that warp and wrinkle the earth's crust shall have ceased
forever.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] The position of the solid rock is shown by the hammer at the
extreme right, standing vertically.
[9] This photograph represents a more detailed view of the quarry wall
seen in Fig. 1. The relation of the two views will be understood by
observing the positions of the hammers, which are in the same place in
both photographs. These photographs, as well as some of the others
that follow, were taken by Mr. John L. Gardner, 2d, for the purpose of
illustrating these pages.
[10] In order to obtain this sketch, a survey was made of the delta,
and from the information thus gathered a model was constructed out of
clay. The dimensions of the delta are about one thousand by seven
hundred feet.
[11] The bottom of the cañon at this point is between four and five
thousand feet below the flat surfaces in the foreground--a sheer
descent of nearly a mile.
* * * * *
M. Henri Bourget, of the Toulouse (France) Observatory, has
called attention in Nature to a common phenomenon which he
believes has not been mentioned in any scientific book. If
one end of a bar of metal is heated, but not enough to make
the other end too hot to be held in the hand, and then
suddenly cooled, the temperature of the other end will rise
till the hand can not bear it. All workmen who have occasion
to handle and heat pieces of metal, he says, know this.
DEATH GULCH, A NATURAL BEAR-TRAP.
BY T.A. JAGGAR, JR., PH.D.
Cases of asphyxiation by gas have been very frequently reported of
late years, and we commonly associate with such reports the idea of a
second-rate hotel and an unsophisticated countryman who blows out the
gas. Such incidents we connect with the supercivilization of the
nineteenth century, but it is none the less true that Nature furnishes
similar accidents, and that in regions far remote from the haunts of
men. In the heart of the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, unknown to either
the tourist or the trapper, there is a natural hostelry for the wild
inhabitants of the forest, where, with food, drink, and shelter all in
sight, the poor creatures are tempted one after another into a bath of
invisible poisonous vapor, where they sink down to add their bones to
the fossil records of an interminable list of similar tragedies,
dating back to a period long preceding the records of human history.
It was the writer's privilege, as a member of the expedition of the
United States Geological Survey of the Yellowstone Park, under the
direction of Mr. Arnold Hague, to visit and for the first time to
photograph this remarkable locality. A similar visit was last made by
members of the survey in the summer of 1888, and an account of the
discovery of Death Gulch was published in Science (February 15, 1889)
under the title A Deadly Gas Spring in the Yellowstone Park, by Mr.
Walter Harvey Weed. The following extracts from Mr. Weed's paper
indicate concisely the general character of the gulch, and the
description of the death-trap as it then appeared offers interesting
material for comparison with its condition as observed in the summer
of 1897.
Death Gulch is a small and gloomy ravine in the northeast corner of
the Yellowstone National Park. "In this region the lavas which fill
the ancient basin of the park rest upon the flanks of mountains formed
of fragmentary volcanic ejecta, ... while the hydrothermal forces of
the central portion of the park show but feeble manifestations of
their energy in the almost extinct hot-spring areas of Soda Butte,
Lamar River, Cache Creek, and Miller Creek." Although hot water no
longer flows from these vents, "gaseous emanations are now given off
in considerable volume." On Cache Creek, about two miles above its
confluence with Lamar River, are deposits of altered and crystalline
travertine, with pools in the creek violently effervescing locally.
This is due to the copious emission of gas. Above these deposits "the
creek cuts into a bank of sulphur and gravel cemented by this
material, and a few yards beyond is the _débouchure_ of a small
lateral gully coming down from the mountainside. In its bottom is a
small stream of clear and cold water, sour with sulphuric acid, and
flowing down a narrow and steep channel cut in beds of dark-gray
volcanic tuff. Ascending this gulch, the sides, closing together,
become very steep slopes of white, decomposed rock.... The only
springs now flowing are small oozes of water issuing from the base of
these slopes, or from the channel bed, forming a thick, creamy, white
deposit about the vents, and covering the stream bed. This deposit
consists largely of sulphate of alumina.... About one hundred and
fifty feet above the main stream these oozing springs of acid water
cease, but the character of the gulch remains the same. The odor of
sulphur now becomes stronger, though producing no other effect than a
slight irritation of the lungs.
"The gulch ends, or rather begins, in a scoop or basin about two
hundred and fifty feet above Cache Creek, and just below this was
found the fresh body of a large bear, a silver-tip grizzly, with the
remains of a companion in an advanced stage of decomposition above
him. Near by were the skeletons of four more bears, with the bones of
an elk a yard or two above, while in the bottom of the pocket were the
fresh remains of several squirrels, rock hares, and other small
animals, besides numerous dead butterflies and insects. The body of
the grizzly was carefully examined for bullet holes or other marks of
injury, but showed no traces of violence, the only indication being a
few drops of blood under the nose. It was evident that he had met his
death but a short time before, as the carcass was still perfectly
fresh, though offensive enough at the time of a later visit. The
remains of a cinnamon bear just above and alongside of this were in an
advanced state of decomposition, while the other skeletons were almost
denuded of flesh, though the claws and much of the hair remained. It
was apparent that these animals, as well as the squirrels and insects,
had not met their death by violence, but had been asphyxiated by the
irrespirable gas given off in the gulch. The hollows were tested for
carbonic-acid gas with lighted tapers without proving its presence,
but the strong smell of sulphur, and a choking sensation of the lungs,
indicated the presence of noxious gases, while the strong wind
prevailing at the time, together with the open nature of the ravine,
must have caused a rapid diffusion of the vapors.
"This place differs, therefore, very materially from the famous Death
Valley of Java and similar places, in being simply a V-shaped trench,
not over seventy-five feet deep, cut in the mountain slope, and not a
hollow or cave. That the gas at times accumulates in the pocket at the
head of the gulch is, however, proved by the dead squirrels, etc.,
found on its bottom. It is not probable, however, that the gas ever
accumulates here to a considerable depth, owing to the open nature of
the place, and the fact that the gulch draining it would carry off the
gas, which would, from its density, tend to flow down the ravine. This
offers an explanation of the death of the bears, whose remains occur
not in this basin, but where it narrows to form the ravine, for it is
here that the layer of gas would be deepest, and has proved sufficient
to suffocate the first bear, who was probably attracted by the remains
of the elk, or perhaps of the smaller victims of the invisible gas;
and he, in turn, has doubtless served as bait for others who have in
turn succumbed. Though the gulch has doubtless served as a death-trap
for a very long period of time, these skeletons and bodies must be the
remains of only the most recent victims, for the ravine is so narrow
and the fall so great that the channel must be cleared out every few
years, if not annually. The change wrought by the water during a
single rainstorm, which occurred in the interval between Mr. Weed's
first and second visits, was so considerable that it seems probable
that the floods of early spring, when the snows are melting under the
hot sun of this region, must be powerful enough to wash everything
down to the cone of _débris_ at the mouth of the gulch." Mr. Arnold
Hague, on the occasion of his visit, was more successful in obtaining
evidence of the presence of carbonic-dioxide gas. He writes: "The day
I went up the ravine I was able in two places to extinguish a long
brown paper taper. The day I was there it was very calm, and where I
made the test the water was trickling down a narrow gorge shut in by
shelving rocks above."
It was at noon on the 22d of July in the summer of 1897 that we made
camp near the mouth of Cache Creek, about three miles southeast of the
military post and mail station of Soda Butte. In company with Dr.
Francis P. King I at once started up the creek, keeping the left bank,
that we might not miss the gulch, which joins the valley of Cache
Creek from the southern side. We had a toilsome climb through timber
and over steep embankments, cut by the creek in a loose conglomerate,
and after going about a mile and a half we noticed that some of these
banks were stained with whitish and yellow deposits of alum and
sulphur, indicating that we were nearing the old hot-spring district.
Soon a caved-in cone of travertine was seen, with crystalline calcite
and sulphur in the cavities, and the bed of the creek was more or less
completely whitened by these deposits, while here and there could be
seen along the banks oozing "paint-pots" of calcareous mud, in one
case inky black, with deposits of varicolored salts about its rim, and
a steady ebullition of gas bubbles rising from the bottom. In other
cases these pools were crystal clear, and always cold. The vegetation,
which below had been dense close to the creek's bank, here became more
scanty, especially on the southern side, where the bare rock was
exposed and seen to be a volcanic breccia, much decomposed and stained
with solfataric deposits. A mound of coarse _débris_ seen just above
on this side indicated the presence of a lateral ravine, which from
its situation and character we decided was probably the gulch sought
for. A strong odor of sulphureted hydrogen had been perceptible for
some time, and when we entered the gully the fumes became oppressive,
causing a heavy burning sensation in the throat and lungs. The ravine
proved to be as described, a V-shaped trench cut in the volcanic rock,
about fifty feet in depth, with very steep bare whitish slopes,
narrowing to a stony rill bed that ascended steeply back into the
mountain side.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW, LOOKING DOWNSTREAM, OF LOWER PART OF
DEATH GULCH.]
Climbing through this trough, a frightfully weird and dismal place,
utterly without life, and occupied by only a tiny streamlet and an
appalling odor, we at length discovered some brown furry masses lying
scattered about the floor of the ravine about a quarter of a mile from
the point where we had left Cache Creek. Approaching cautiously, it
became quickly evident that we had before us a large group of huge
recumbent bears; the one nearest to us was lying with his nose between
his paws, facing us, and so exactly like a huge dog asleep that it did
not seem possible that it was the sleep of death. To make sure, I
threw a pebble at the animal, striking him on the flank; the distended
skin resounded like a drumhead, and the only response was a belch of
poisonous gas that almost overwhelmed us. Closer examination showed
that the animal was a young silver-tip grizzly (_Ursus horribilis_); a
few drops of thick, dark-red blood stained his nostrils and the ground
beneath. There proved to be five other carcasses, all bears, in
various stages of decay; careful search revealed oval areas of hair
and bones that represented two other bears, making a total of eight
carcasses in all. Seven were grizzlies, one was a cinnamon bear
(_Ursus americanus_). One huge grizzly was so recent a victim that
his tracks were still visible in the white, earthy slopes, leading
down to the spot where he had met his death. In no case were any marks
of violence seen, and there can be no question that death was
occasioned by the gas. The wind was blowing directly up the ravine
during our visit, and we failed to get any test for carbonic acid,
though we exhausted all our matches in the effort, plunging the flames
into hollows of the rill bed in various parts of its course; they
invariably burned brightly, and showed not the slightest tendency to
extinguish. The dilution of the gas in such a breeze would be
inevitable, however; that the gas was present was attested by the
peculiar oppression on the lungs that was felt during the entire
period that we were in the gulch, and which only wore off gradually on
our return to camp. I suffered from a slight headache in consequence
for several hours.
[Illustration: LOOKING DOWN THE GULCH--THE LATEST VICTIM, A LARGE
SILVER-TIP GRIZZLY.]
There was no difference in the appearance of the portion of the gulch
where the eight bears had met their end and the region above and
below. A hundred yards or more up stream the solfataric deposits
become less abundant, and the timber grows close to the brook; a short
distance beyond this the gulch ends. No bodies were found above, and
only bears were found in the locality described. It will be observed
that Weed's experience differs in this respect from ours, and the
appearance of the place was somewhat different: he found elk and small
animals in addition to the bears, and describes the death-trap as
occupying the mouth of the basin at the head of the gulch, above the
point where the last springs of acid water cease. The rill observed by
us has its source far above the animals; indeed, it trickles directly
through the worm-eaten carcass of the cinnamon bear--a thought by no
means comforting when we realized that the water supply for our camp
was drawn from the creek only a short distance down the valley.
It is not impossible that there may be two or three of these gullies
having similar properties. That we should have found only bears may
perhaps be accounted for on the ground that the first victim for this
season was a bear, and his carcass frightened away all animals except
those of his own family. For an illustration of a process of
accumulation of the bones of large vertebrates, with all the
conditions present necessary for fossilization, no finer example can
be found in the world than Death Gulch; year after year the snow
slides and spring floods wash down this fresh supply of entrapped
carcasses to be buried in the waste cones and alluvial bottoms of
Cache Creek and Lamar River. Probably the stream-formed conglomerate
that we noted as we ascended the creek is locally filled with these
remains.
The gas is probably generated by the action of the acid water on the
ancient limestones that here underlie the lavas at no great depth;
outcrops of these limestones occur only a few miles away at the mouth
of Soda Butte Creek. This gas must emanate from fissures in the rock
just above the bears, and on still nights it may accumulate to a depth
of two or three feet in the ravine, settling in a heavy, wavy stratum,
and probably rolling slowly down the bed of the rill into the valley
below. The accompanying photographs were made during our visit.
THE LABOR PROBLEM IN THE TROPICS.
BY W. ALLEYNE IRELAND.
A great deal of space has been devoted in American magazines and
newspapers recently to the question of how this country has become a
colonial power. Destiny and duty, strength and weakness, accident and
design, honesty and corruption have been called on by writers, singly
and in various combinations, to bear the responsibility of the new
departure in the national policy.
Whatever interest such speculations may possess for the student who
seeks to discover in the events of history some indication of the
evolution of national character, there can be little doubt that the
eyes of the people at large are turned in another direction.
What are our new possessions worth? is the question which intelligent
men of all classes are beginning to ask; and it is not surprising, in
view of the comparative isolation of this country in the past, that
there are few who have sufficient confidence in their own opinion to
answer the query.
In England, whose colonial and Indian empire embraces nearly one
fourth of the population of the globe, there is an astounding lack of
knowledge in relation to colonial affairs; and those who follow the
debates in the House of Commons will have noticed that when the
colonies are the subject under discussion the few members who remain
in their seats seldom fail to exhibit a degree of ignorance which must
be most disheartening to the able and learned Colonial Secretary.
It is not to be wondered at, then, that in the United States, where
the people have been too much occupied with the problems continually
arising at home to pay any attention to affairs which, until very
recently, have appeared entirely outside the range of practical
politics, there should be few men who have given their time to that
careful study of tropical colonization which alone can impart any
value to opinions in regard to the practical issues involved in the
colonial expansion of this country. Discussion of the subject has
been almost entirely along the line of the possible effects of the new
policy on the political institutions and popular ideals of the United
States, and little has been written which may be said to throw any
light on the problem of tropical colonization _per se_.
A residence of ten years in the tropical colonies of France, Spain,
Holland, and Great Britain--a period during which I devoted much time
to the study of colonial affairs--leaves me of opinion that there are
two points in regard to which discussion is peculiarly opportune: 1.
The value of the Philippines and Puerto Rico as a field for the
cultivation of those tropical products which are consumed in the
temperate zones. 2. The value of the islands as a market for products
and manufactures of the temperate zones.
It will at once be seen that only in so far as the islands are
valuable in the former respect can they be important in the latter,
for in the absence of production there can not be any considerable
consumption of commodities.
The first point to be considered, and it is the one to which I shall
confine myself in the present article, is by what means the productive
possibilities of Puerto Rico and the Philippines can be developed.
Basing my calculation on official reports covering a number of years,
I find that the average value _per capita_ of the annual exports of
native products from a number of tropical colonies selected by me for
the purpose of this inquiry is as follows:
Trinidad $26.48
British Guiana 34.26
Martinique 23.48
Mauritius 20.28
Dominica 7.28
St. Vincent 7.68
Ceylon 7.24
Montserrat 7.89
An examination of these figures will serve to show that the value of
the colonies in the first column, measured by the standard of their
productiveness, is three times that of the colonies in the second
column. Reference to the population returns of the colonies named
discloses the fact that in the colonies in the first column the
population contains a very large proportion of imported contract
laborers and their descendants, while in the other colonies
practically the whole population is home-born for at least two
generations.
A moment's reflection will show the importance of the comparison
instituted above, and if the space at my command permitted a more
extensive analysis of the trade of tropical colonies, it could be
demonstrated that the theory holds good, almost without exception,
that of tropical countries those only are commercially valuable in
which a system of imported contract labor is in force.
There are one or two colonies (Barbados is the most striking example)
in which the pressure of population is so great that the labor supply
suffices for the utmost development of which the country is capable;
but such instances are rare.
The experience of England in governing tropical colonies is frequently
cited by those who favor the so-called imperial policy for the United
States as a proof that tropical colonization in itself presents no
difficulties which can not be overcome by enlightened administration.
It would be difficult to point out in just what manner Great Britain
derives any benefit from her tropical possessions, but her experience
confirms the theory I have stated above--that the commercial
development of tropical colonies is possible only where there is an
extraordinary density of population or where a system of imported
contract labor is in force.
A glance through the list of Great Britain's tropical colonies will
serve to prove the correctness of this theory. Imported contract labor
is used in British Guiana, Trinidad, Jamaica, Queensland, the Fiji
Islands, the Straits Settlements, and Mauritius; while the pressure of
population is extreme in Lagos and Barbados, which support
respectively 1,333 and 1,120 persons to the square mile.
The remaining tropical colonies of Great Britain--using the term
"tropical colony" in its strictest sense--are the Gold Coast, Sierra
Leone, Gambia, Hongkong, St. Helena, British Honduras, Grenada, St.
Vincent, St. Lucia, Antigua, St. Kitts-Nevis, Dominica, Montserrat,
and a few islands in the Pacific which are insignificant commercially.
A careful examination of the British trade returns shows that the
total export and import trade between the United Kingdom and all the
British tropical colonies in 1896 reached a value of $146,000,000, and
that of this sum $121,000,000 represented trade with the tropical
colonies which employ imported contract labor and with Lagos and
Barbados. In other words, the trade between the United Kingdom and
those British tropical colonies where free labor is used and where
there is no great pressure of population made up less than eighteen
per cent of the total trade with the British tropical colonies.
It would appear from the facts I have given that the commercial
development of those parts of the tropics where the population is
sparse will be dependent on the importation of labor from more densely
peopled areas.
If the question is approached from an entirely different standpoint
the necessity of contract labor in the tropics becomes more strikingly
apparent. The development of the tropics will be in the direction of
agriculture rather than manufacturing, and the requirements of
tropical agriculture in respect of labor are most arbitrary. It is not
sufficient that the labor supply is ample, in the ordinary sense of
the word; it must be at all times immediately available.
Thus, a mine owner whose men go out on strike is, briefly, placed in
this position: He will lose a sum of money somewhat larger than the
amount of profit he could have made during the period of the strike
had it not occurred. His coal, however, is still there, and is not
less valuable--indeed, in the case of a prolonged strike, may actually
be more valuable--when the strike is over; work can easily be resumed
where it was dropped, and during the idle days the ordinary running
expenses of the mine cease. The greater part of the loss sustained in
the instance I have supposed is not out-of-pocket loss, but merely the
failure to realize prospective profits.
On the other hand, a sugar estate in the tropics spends about eight
months out of the twelve in cultivating the crop, and the remaining
four in reaping and boiling operations. By the time the crop is ready
to reap many thousands of dollars have been expended on it by way of
planting, weeding, draining, and the application of nitrogenous
manures. If from any cause the labor supply fails when the cutting of
the canes is about to commence, every cent expended on the crop is
wasted; and if for want of labor the canes which are cut are not
transported within a few hours to the mills, they turn sour and can
not be made into sugar. It will thus be seen that in the case of
sugar-growing a perfectly reliable labor supply is the first
requisite.
The same might be said of the cultivation of tea, coffee, cocoa,
spices, and tropical fruits.
This problem--the securing of a reliable labor supply--has been solved
in the case of several of the tropical possessions of England by the
importation of East Indian laborers under contract to serve for a
fixed period on the plantations.
As, in my opinion, the East Indian contract laborer will play an
important part in the development of the tropics, I describe in detail
the most perfect system of contract labor with which I am acquainted,
that existing at the present time in the colony of British Guiana. The
system of imported indentured labor which is in force in many of the
British colonies has been referred to frequently, both in this country
and in England, as "slavery," "semislavery," "the new slavery." The
use of such terms to describe such a system indicates a complete
ignorance of the facts. As some of the best-informed journals in this
country, in noticing my writings on tropical subjects, have fallen
into this error, I hope that the description I give here, which is
based on several years' experience of the actual working of the
system, will serve to convince the readers of this article that the
indenture of the East Indian coolie in the British colonies is no more
a form of slavery than is any contract entered into between an
employer and an employee in this country.
When the British Guiana planter was informed by the home Government
in 1834 that four years later slavery would be entirely abolished
throughout the British Empire, he foresaw at once that unless a new
source of labor was thrown open a very short time would elapse before
the cane fields would fall out of cultivation. He listened, not
without some irritation, to the assurances of the agents of the
Antislavery Society that as soon as the slaves were freed they would
work with redoubled energy, and that the labor supply, instead of
deteriorating, would, in fact, improve. The planters knew better, and
began at once to arrange for the importation of contract labor. With
the year 1834 began the period of apprenticeship for the slaves, prior
to their complete emancipation four years later.
During this time, and before the imported labor sufficed for the needs
of the plantations, several estates were ruined and fell out of
cultivation because the apprenticed laborers would not work.
On October 11, 1838, the governor of the colony, Henry Light, Esquire,
issued a proclamation to the freed slaves. The proclamation stated
that the governor had learned with regret that the labor of the freed
slaves was irregular; that their masters could not depend on them;
that they worked one day and idled the next; that when they had earned
enough to fill their bellies they lay down to sleep or idled away
their time; that they left their tasks unfinished, and then expected
to be paid in full for them.
In the meanwhile the planters imported labor from the West Indian
Islands, Malta, Madeira, China, and Germany; and eventually the system
of immigration from India was organized.
The system is under the control of the Indian Council in Calcutta on
the one hand and the British Guiana Government and the Colonial Office
on the other. In Georgetown, the capital of the colony, is the
immigration department, under the management of the immigration agent
general, who has under him a staff of inspectors, subagents, clerks,
and interpreters, all of whom must speak at least one Indian dialect.
In Calcutta resides the emigration agent general, also an official of
the British Guiana Government, who has under him a staff of medical
officers, recruiting agents, and clerks.
Each year the planters of British Guiana send in requisitions to the
immigration department stating the number of immigrants required for
the following year. These requisitions are examined by the agent
general, and if, in his opinion, any estate demands more coolies than
the extent of its cultivation justifies, the number is reduced. As
soon as the full number is decided on, the agent in Calcutta is
informed, and the process of recruiting commences. The laborers are
secured entirely by voluntary enlistment. The recruiting agents go
about the country and explain the terms offered by the British Guiana
planters, and those men and women who express their willingness to
enter into a contract are sent down to Calcutta at the expense of the
colony.
On arrival in Calcutta they are provided with free food and quarters
at the emigration depot until such time as a sufficient number are
assembled to form a full passenger list for a transport. During the
period of waiting, which may extend to several weeks, a careful
medical inspection of the laborers is made, and all those who may be
deemed unfit for the work of the estates are sent back to their homes
at the expense of the colony. Prior to embarkation the coolies are
called up in batches of fifteen or twenty, and the emigration agent or
a local magistrate reads over to them in their own language the terms
of the indenture. Each one is then given an indenture ticket on which
the terms of indenture are printed in three dialects. The agent
general affixes his signature to each ticket; and a special provision
in the laws of British Guiana makes his signature binding on the
planters who employ the coolies. The ticket thus constitutes a
contract valid as against either party in the courts of the colony.
The coolies have the right to carry with them any children they may
wish, and those under twelve years of age are exempt from indenture.
The transportation is effected in sailing vessels, which are for the
time being Government transports. The reason why steamers are not
employed is that sailing vessels are found to be much healthier, and
that the long sea voyage has an excellent effect on the immigrants.
The regulations governing the voyage are very strict. As far as the
coolies are concerned, the ship is in charge of a medical officer. The
captain of the ship, the officers, and the crew are all under the
command of the doctor, except in so far as the actual sailing of the
vessel is in question. The vessel has ample hospital accommodation, a
complete dispensary in charge of a qualified dispenser, and all the
arrangements must be passed by a Government inspector before the ship
is given her clearance. The food to be furnished during the voyage is
specified by law. The bill of fare consists chiefly of bread, butter,
rice, curry, sago, condensed milk, and fresh mutton, a number of sheep
being carried on the ship.
Every morning and evening the doctor makes an inspection of the
vessel, and enters in his log-book all essential details, such as
births, deaths, cases treated in the hospital, and so forth.
On arrival in the colony the coolies are allotted to the different
estates. The coolie is bound to remain for five years on the
plantation to which he is allotted, and to work during that time five
days a week, the day's work being seven hours. In return for this the
planter must furnish him with a house free of rent, and built in such
a way as to meet the requirements of the inspector of immigrants'
dwellings in regard to ventilation, size, and water supply; and no
immigrants are sent to any estate until these houses have been
inspected and passed as satisfactory. The planter must also furnish on
the estate free hospital accommodation and medical attendance, and in
addition provide free education for the children of indentured
immigrants.
The medical officers are Government servants, and the colony is
divided into districts, each of which has its own doctor, who is
compelled by law to visit each estate in his district at least once in
forty-eight hours and examine and prescribe for all immigrants
presenting themselves at the hospital.
The planter is further bound to pay a minimum daily wage of
twenty-four cents to each man and sixteen cents to each woman. This
appears at first sight a very small sum, but when it is taken into
account that a coolie can live well on eight cents a day it will be
seen that the wage is three times the living expense, a rate very
rarely paid to agricultural laborers in any part of the world.
That the coolies do, in fact, save considerable sums of money will be
seen when the statistics of the immigration department are examined.
These records show that during the years 1870 to 1896 38,793
immigrants returned to India after completing their terms of
indenture, and that they carried back with them to their native land
over $2,800,000. At the end of 1896 there were over five thousand East
Indian depositors in the British Guiana Government Savings Bank and
the Post-Office Savings Bank, with a total sum of more than $450,000
to their credit.
At the end of five years the indentured coolie becomes absolutely
free. He may cease work, or, if he prefer it, remain on the estates as
a free laborer. The whole colony is open to him, and he may engage in
any trade or profession for which he may be fitted. If he remains for
five years longer in the colony, even though he be idle during the
whole of that time, he becomes entitled to a grant of land from the
Government. The law in this respect has been recently changed. All
coolies who came to the colony prior to 1898 have the choice at the
end of ten years of a free grant of land or an assisted passage back
to their native place.
It may be objected by those persons who are unacquainted with the
system that all this sounds very well on paper, but that the
opportunities for fraud and oppression must be very frequent, and,
human nature being what it is, very frequently taken advantage of, to
the injury of the coolies' interests. Such charges have, in fact, been
made from time to time, but they have, on investigation, proved to be
unfounded, or, at the worst, highly exaggerated. The treatment of the
indentured immigrants in British Guiana was the subject of a Royal
commission of inquiry in 1870. The appointment of the commission
followed a series of charges made by a certain Mr. Des Voeux, a
magistrate in the colony, in a letter to Earl Granville, at that time
Secretary of State for the Colonies.
The commission visited the colony and conducted a most searching
inquiry. Hundreds of witnesses were examined, and the commissioners
visited several estates, without giving any warning of their
intentions, and questioned many of the coolies as to their treatment.
Mr. Des Voeux entirely failed to substantiate his charges; and Sir
Clinton Murdoch, the chairman of the emigration board--a permanent
department of the Colonial Office--in referring to the report of the
commission in a blue book issued in 1872, said: "It may, I think, be
considered that the report of the commissioners is generally
satisfactory, both as regards the magistracy, the planters, and the
immigrants. Many defects in the system and mode of working it are no
doubt pointed out, but they are defects caused by errors of judgment,
by insufficiency of the law, or by want of foresight, not by
intentional neglect or indifference to the well-being of the people,
still less by oppression or cruelty. The vindication of the magistracy
and of the medical officers appears to be complete, and the fair
dealing and kindness of the managers toward the immigrants is
acknowledged."
The laws have been amended, the Government inspection has been made
more complete, and to-day it is impossible that any abuse of power on
the part of the planters can pass unnoticed.
To give an instance of the effectiveness of the Government
supervision--each estate is compelled by law to keep pay lists
according to a form specified by the immigration department, in which
the name of each indentured immigrant must be entered with a record of
each separate day's work during the five years of the indenture. Thus,
if the pay list shows that in a certain week a man worked only two
days out of the legal five, it must also show the reason why he did
not work on the other three days. It may have been that the man was in
the hospital, in which case the letter "H" must appear opposite his
name for those days; or he may have been granted leave of absence,
when the letter "L" would account for him. These pay lists are
inspected by a Government officer twice a month, and any faults
disclosed by the examination become the subject of a severe reprimand
from the agent general, followed in the case of persistent neglect by
the cutting off of the supply of coolies.
So minute are the records of the immigration department that were an
application made to the agent general for information regarding some
particular indentured coolie, that official could without difficulty
supply the name of the man's father and mother, his caste, age,
native place, with the same information in regard to the man's wife.
He could also make out an account showing every day the man had worked
during the term of his indenture, and the reasons why he had not
worked on the other days, with the exact amount earned on each working
day. In addition to this he could state how many days the man had
spent in the estate's hospital and what was the matter with him on
those occasions, besides furnishing a copy of every prescription made
up for the man in the estate's dispensary.
A striking evidence of the desire of the Government to protect the
coolies from ill treatment of any kind is afforded by the rule of the
immigration department that, if any overseer on an estate is convicted
of an offense against an indentured immigrant, the dismissal of the
offender is demanded, and each estate in the colony is warned that if
it employ the man the supply of immigrants will be cut off.
The coolies are given every facility to complain of ill-treatment or
breach of contract on the part of the planters, for, in addition to
the opportunity afforded by the regular visits of the subagents, the
right is secured to them by law of leaving any estate without
permission in order to visit the agent general or the nearest
magistrate; and either of these officials has the power to issue all
process of law free of cost to any coolie who satisfies him that there
is a _prima facie_ cause of complaint.
Such, in brief, are the features of the East Indian immigration system
of British Guiana.[12]
Those who approach the question of the labor supply for the American
colonies with an unprejudiced mind will see that there is nothing in
the system I have described which is at variance with the principles
of the American people.
All that is required to make such a system a boon both to the employer
and to the laborer is that the officials charged with the inspection
of the system and the protection of the immigrants' interests should
be intelligent, honest, and fearless in the discharge of their duties.
FOOTNOTE:
[12] To those who are interested in the subject of indentured labor in
the tropics, the following statistics, compiled by me from official
sources, may be of interest. The figures relate to British Guiana:
Year.
|Number of indentur'd laborers imported from India.
| |Number of time-expired immigrants who returned to India.
| | |Value in dollars of money and ornaments
| | |carried back to India by returning immigrants.
| | | |Number of East Indian depositors in the
| | | |Gov't Savings Bank.
| | | | |Total amount of their deposits, in
| | | | |dollars.
| | | | | |Number of planters convicted
| | | | | |of offenses against
| | | | | |immigrants.
| | | | | | |Death rate per 1,000 among
| | | | | | |indentured laborers.
| | | | | | | |General death rate
| | | | | | | |of the colony.
----+------+------+--------+------+--------+--+------+-------------------
1886| 4,796| 1,889| 111,775| 5,558| 425,956| 9| 27.40| 25.56
1887| 3,928| 1,420| 92,613| 5,821| 438,600| 4| 23.20| 32.41
1888| 2,771| 1,938| 95,074| 5,904| 457,886| 1| 19.73| 29.27
1889| 3,573| 2,042| 112,124| 6,802| 513,220| 1| 12.57| 28.13
1890| 3,432| 2,125| 142,611| 7,269| 558,734| 3| 20.40| 39.80
1891| 5,229| 2,151| 134,225| 6,398| 515,246| 2| 20.40| 37.00
1892| 5,241| 2,014| 97,529| 6,085| 527,203| 1| 25.20| 39.00
1893| 4,146| 1,848| 104,763| 6,179| 544,420| 1| 24.91| 35.00
1894| 9,585| 1,998| 113,308| 6,128| 529,161| 2| 24.22| 33.53
1895| 2,425| 2,071| 119,289| 4,950| 453,950| 1| 20.36| 29.58
1896| 2,408| 2,059| 76,470| 4,520| 434,759| 1| 16.50| 24.10
----+------+------+--------+------+--------+--+------+-------------------
PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.
BY THE LATE HON. DAVID A. WELLS.
XX.--THE LAW OF THE DIFFUSION OF TAXES.
PART II.
Attention is next asked to an analysis of the incidence of taxation,
what is mainly direct, on processes and products, and on the machinery
by which one is effected and the other distributed, and at the outset
the following propositions in the nature of economic axioms are
submitted, which it is believed will serve as stepping stones to the
attainment of broad generalizations.
Thus, property is solely produced to supply human wants and desires;
and taxes form an important part of the cost of all production,
distribution, and consumption, and represent the labor performed in
guarding and protecting property at the expense of the State, in all
the processes of development and transformation. The State is thus an
active and important partner in all production. Without its assistance
and protection, production would be impeded or wholly arrested. The
soldier or policeman guards, while the citizen performs his labor in
safety. As a partner in all the forms of production and business, the
State must pay its expenses--i.e., its agents, for their services; and
its only means of paying are through its receipts from taxation.
Taxes, then, are clearly items of expense in all business, the same as
rent, fuel, cost of material, light, labor, waste, insurance, clerical
service, advertising, expressage, freight, and the like, and on
business principles they find their place on the pages of profit and
loss; and, like all other expenses which enter into the cost of
production, must finally be sustained by those who gratify their wants
or desires by consumption. Production is only a means, and consumption
is the end, and the consumer must pay in the end all the expenses of
production. Every dealer in domestic or imported merchandise keeps on
hand, at all times, upon his shelves, a stock of different and
accumulated taxes--customs, internal revenue, State, school, and
municipal--with his goods; and when we buy and carry away from any
store or shop an article, we buy and carry away with it the
accompanying and inherential taxes.
Any primary taxpayer, who does not ultimately consume the thing taxed,
and who does not include the tax in the price of the taxed property or
its products, must literally throw away his money and must soon become
bankrupt and disappear as a competitor; and accordingly the tax
advancer will add the tax in his prices if he understands simple
addition. How rapidly bankruptcy would befall dealers in imported
goods, wares, and merchandise in the United States who did not
strictly observe this rule will be realized when one remembers that
the average tax imposed by its Government (in 1896) on all dutiable
imports is in excess of fifty per cent.
When Dr. Franklin was asked by a committee of the English House of
Commons, prior to the American Revolution, if the province of
Pennsylvania did not practically relieve farmers and other landowners
from taxation, and at the same time impose a heavy tax on merchants,
to the injury of British trade, he answered that "if such special tax
was imposed, the merchants were experts with their pens, and added the
tax to the price of their goods, and thus made the farmers and all
landowners pay their part of the tax as consumers."
Taxes uniformly levied on all the subjects of taxation, and which are
not so excessive as to become a prohibition on the use of the thing
taxed, become, therefore, a part of the cost of all production,
distribution, and consumption, and diffuse and equate themselves by
natural laws in the same manner and in the same minute degree as all
other elements that constitute the expenses of production. We produce
to consume and consume to produce, and the cost of consumption,
including taxes, enters into the cost of production, and the cost of
production, including taxes, enters into the cost of consumption, and
thus taxes levied uniformly on things of the same class, by the laws
of competition, supply, and demand, and the all-pervading mediums of
labor, will be distributed, percussed, and repercussed to a remote
degree, until they finally fall upon every person, not in proportion
to his consumption of a given article, but in the proportion his
consumption bears to the aggregate consumption of the taxed community.
A great capitalist, like Mr. Astor, bears no greater burden of
taxation (and can not be made to bear more by any laws that can be
properly termed tax laws) than the proportion which his aggregate
individual consumption bears to the aggregate individual consumption
of all others in his circuit of immediate competition; and as to his
other taxes, he is a mere tax collector, or conduit, conducting taxes
from his tenants or borrowers to the State or city treasury. A whisky
distiller is a tax conduit, or tax collector, and sells more taxes
than the original cost of whisky, as finds proof and illustration in
the fact that the United States imposes a tax of one dollar and ten
cents per gallon on proof whisky which its manufacturer would be very
glad to sell free of tax for an average of thirteen cents per gallon.
The tax, furthermore, is required to be laid before the whisky can be
removed from the distillery or bonded warehouse and allowed to become
an article of merchandise. Tobacco in like manner can not go into
consumption till the tax is paid. In Great Britain, where all tobacco
consumed is imported, for every 3_d._ paid by the consumer, 2.5_d._
represents customs duties or taxes. In Russia it is estimated that the
Government annually requires of its peasant producers one third the
market value of their entire crop of cereals in payment of their
taxes, and fixes the time of collecting the same in the autumn, when
the peasant sells sufficient of his grain (mainly for exportation),
and with the purchase money meets the demands of the tax collector.
Can it be doubted that the sums thus extorted enter into and form an
essential part of the cost of the entire crop or product of the land?
It is, therefore, immaterial where the process of manufacture takes
place; the citizens of a State pay in proportion to the quantity which
they consume. The traveler who stops at one of the great city hotels
can not avoid reimbursing the owner for the tax he primarily pays on
the property; and the owner, in respect to the taxation of his hotel
property, is but a great and effective real-estate and diffused tax
collector. Again, the farmer charges taxes in the price of his
products; the laborer, in his wages; the clergyman, in his salary; the
lender, in the interest he receives; the lawyer, in his fees; and the
manufacturer, in his goods.
The American Bible Society is always in part loaded with the whisky
and tobacco taxes paid by the printers, paper-makers, and
book-binders, or by the producers of articles consumed by these
mechanics, and reflected and embodied in their wages and the products
of their labor according to the degree of absence of competition from
fellow-mechanics who abstain from the use of these and other taxed
articles.
These conclusions respecting the diffusion of taxes may be said to be
universally accepted by economists so far as they relate to the
results of production before they reach the hands of the final
consumers; but they are not accepted by many, as Mr. Henry George has
recently expressed it, in respect to taxes on special profits or
advantages on things of which the supply is strictly limited, or of
wealth in the hands of final consumers, or in the course of
distribution by gift, and finally in respect to taxes on land. But a
little examination would seem to show that all of these exceptions are
of the kind that are said to prove the rule. _Special profits_ and
advantages in this age of quick diffusion of knowledge and intense
competition are exceedingly ephemeral, and are mainly confined to
results which the State with a view of encouraging removes for a
limited time from the natural laws of competition by granting patents,
copyrights, and franchises. Of things which are strictly limited in
respect to supply, what and where are they? Only a very few can be
specified: ivory, Peruvian guano, whalebone, ambergris, and the pelts
of the fur seal. Of wealth in the process of transmission, or in the
hands of final consumers, it is not _tangible_ wealth unless it is
_tangible_ property, which conforms under any correct system of
taxation to the principles of taxation; and if any one advocates the
taxation of the right to receive property which has already been
taxed, he in effect advocates a double exaction of one and the same
thing. If it be asked, Will an income tax on a person retired from
business be diffused? the answer, beyond question, must be in the
affirmative, if the tax is uniform on all persons and on all amounts,
and is absolutely collected in minute sums. Would any one pay the same
price for a railroad bond which is subject to an income tax as he
would for it if it was free from tax? If one's land is taxed, either
in the form of rent or income, will not the tenant have the burden
primarily thrown upon him? And, finally, will not the consumer of the
tenant's goods pay through or by reason of such consumption?
Respecting the incidence of the tax on mortgages, it does not make any
difference how mortgages are taxed--no earthly power can make the
lender pay it. If the borrower would not agree to pay the tax, the
lender would not loan him money, and whenever possible loans would be
foreclosed and payment insisted upon if the borrower should refuse to
pay the tax.
Let us next subject to analysis the incidence of the so-called
taxation of land. Considered _per se_ (or in itself), land, in common
with unappropriated air and water, has no value; and it can not in any
strict sense be affirmed that we tax land; and when such affirmation
is made, its only legitimate and justifiable meaning is that we tax
the value of land; which value is due entirely to the amount of
personal property (in the sense of embodied labor) expended upon it,
and the pressure or demand of such property or labor to use, possess,
and occupy it.
Vattel, in his Law of Nations, enunciates as a self-evident and
irrefutable proposition that "Nature has not herself established
property, and in particular with regard to lands. She only approves
this introduction for the advantage of the human race."
One of the most striking examples of evidence in illustration and
proof of this proposition is to be found in an incident, which has
heretofore escaped attention, which occurred during a debate in the
Senate of the United States in 1890 on a bill for revision of duties
on imports, in respect to the article borax (borate of soda). Formerly
the world's supply of this mineral substance, which enters largely
into industrial processes and medicine, was limited, and mainly
derived from certain hot springs in Tuscany, Italy; but within a
comparatively recent period it has been found that it exists in such
abundance in certain of the desert regions of California, Nevada, and
Arizona, that it can be gathered with the minimum of labor from the
very surface of the ground. Were a single acre of similar desert to be
found in any section of a country enjoying the most ordinary
privileges in respect to transportation and water supply, it would be
a source of wealth to its proprietor. But under existing
circumstances, although thousands and thousands of acres of this land
can be bought with certain title from its owner--the Federal
Government--for two dollars and twenty-five cents an acre, no one
wants it at any price; and the prospective demand for it has not yet
been sufficient to warrant the Government in instituting even a survey
as a preliminary to effecting a sale. In the Senate debate above
alluded to it was proposed to increase the duty on imported borax,
with the expectation that a consequent increase in its domestic price
would afford sufficient profit to induce such construction of roads
and such a supply of water and labor on the borax tracts of the
deserts as to enable them to become property.[13]
In the oases of the deserts of North Africa and Egypt the value of a
tract of land depends very little upon its size or location, but
almost exclusively upon the number of the date-bearing palms, the
result of labor, growing upon it, and the quality of their fruit. John
Bright on one occasion stated that if the land of Ireland were
stripped of the improvements made upon it by the labor of the
occupier, the face of the country would be "as bare and naked as an
American prairie."
An exact parallel to this state of things is afforded in the case of
lands of no value reclaimed from the sea and made valuable, as has
been often done in England, Holland, and other countries, by embodying
labor upon them in the shape of restraining embankments and the
transportation and use of filling material. Again, the value of
springs or running streams of water is generally limited and of little
account. But when, through direct labor, or the results of labor, the
water is collected in reservoirs and made the instrumentality of
imparting power to machinery, or conducted through conduits to centers
of population which otherwise could not obtain it, it becomes
extremely valuable, and capable of being sold in large or small
quantities. Another similar illustration is to be found in the case of
atmospheric air, which in its natural and ordinary state has no
marketable value, but when compressed by labor embodied in the form of
machinery and made capable of transmitting force, it at once becomes
endowed with value and can be sold at a high price.
An opinion entertained and strongly advocated by not a few economic
writers and teachers of repute (more especially in Europe, but not in
the United States)[14] is, that taxes on land do not diffuse
themselves, but fall wholly on the landowner, and that there is no way
in which he can throw it off and cause any considerable part of them
to be paid by anybody else. The concrete argument in support of this
opinion has been thus stated: "When land is taxed, the owner can not,
as a general rule, escape the tax, for the reason that, to get rid of
the tax, the price of the land or of the rent must be raised the full
amount of the tax, and the only way in which this can be done is by
reducing the supply or quantity offered in market, or else by
increasing the demand. The supply of land can not be reduced, and the
demand being created by capital and population, both of which are
beyond the control of the landowner, he can do nothing to raise the
price of land, and hence can not get rid of the tax. It may be stated,
then, as a general rule, that a tax on land, or on any commodity the
supply of which is limited absolutely, must be paid by the owner. It
is possible to suggest cases in which, through combination of owners
and the necessities of consumers, a demand may be created strong
enough to raise the price to the full amount of such tax, but it is
doubted if such cases ever really occur."[15]
The source of the contention on this important economic and social
question, and the difficulty in the way of the attainment of
harmonious conclusions, is due to a nonrecognition of the fact that
land is taxed under two conditions, and can not be taxed otherwise.
Thus, if a person holds land for his exclusive use or enjoyment, and
consumes all of its product, a tax on such land, which has been
characterized by some economists as its "pure rent," will not diffuse
itself, because it is a tax on personal enjoyment or final
consumption. The same is the case when a portion of a river or lake or
its shore is rented for fishing for the purposes of sport. A like
result will also follow, in a greater or less degree, from the
inability or unwillingness of tenants, as has been often the case in
Ireland, to pay rent sufficient to reimburse the landowner for
interest on his investment of capital and cost of repairs. But if one
employs land as an instrumentality for acquiring gain through its
uses, the taxation of land must include the taxation of its uses--its
contents, all that rests upon it, all that is produced, sold,
expended, manufactured, or transported on it--and all such taxes will
diffuse themselves. On the other hand, if the taxation of land under
such circumstances and conditions does not diffuse itself, then the
taking is simply a process of confiscation, which if continued will
ultimately rob the owner of his property, and is not governed by any
principle.
It is indeed difficult to see how a theory so wholly inapplicable to
fact and experience as that of the nondiffusion of taxes on
land--which makes property in land an exception to the rule
acknowledged to be applicable to all other property--could originate
and be strenuously maintained to the extent even of stigmatizing any
opposite view "as so very superficial as scarcely to deserve a
refutation."[16] No little of confusion and controversy on this
subject has arisen from the assumption that land specifically, and the
rent of land, constitute two distinct and legitimate subjects for
taxation, when the fact is just the contrary. The rent of land is in
the nature of an income to its owner; and it is an economic axiom that
when a government taxes the income of property it in reality taxes the
property itself. In England and on the continent of Europe land is
generally taxed on its yearly income or income value, and these taxes
are always considered as land taxes. Alexander Hamilton, in discussing
the taxation of incomes derived directly from property, used this
language: "What, in fact, is property but a fiction, without the
beneficial use of it? In many instances, indeed, the income is the
property itself." The United States Supreme Court, in its recent
decision of the income tax (1895), also practically indorsed this
conclusion. To levy taxes on the rent of land and also upon the land
itself is, therefore, double taxation on one and the same property,
which in common with all other unequal and unjust taxes can not be
diffused; and for this reason should be regarded as in the nature of
exactions or confiscation, concerning the incidence of which nothing
can be safely predicated. In short, this whole discussion, and the
unwarranted assumption involved in it and largely accepted, is an
illustration of what may be regarded as a maxim, that the greatest
errors in political economy have arisen from overlooking the most
obvious facts or deductions from experience.
With a purpose of further elucidating this problem, attention is asked
first to its consideration from an "abstract," and next from a
practical standpoint of view. Let us endeavor to clearly understand
the common meaning of the word "_rent_." It is derived from the Latin
_reddita_, "things given back or paid," and in plain English is a word
for price or hire. It may be the hire of anything. It is the price we
pay for the right of exclusive use over something which is not our
own. Thus we speak of the rent of land, of buildings and apartments,
of a fishery, of boats, of water, of an opera box, of a piano, sewing
machines, furniture, vehicles, and the like. In Scotland at the
present time farmers hire cows to dairymen, who pay an agreed-upon
price by the year or for a term of years for each cow, and reimburse
themselves for such payment and make a profit on the transaction by
the sale of the products of the animal. This hire is called a rent,
and is clearly the same in kind as the rent of land. We do not apply
the word "hire" to the employment of men, because we have a separate
word--"wages"--for that particular case of hire. Neither do we apply
the word "rent" in English to the hire of money, because we have
another separate word--"interest"--which has come into special use for
the price paid for the loan or hire of money. But in the French
language the word _rent_ is habitually and specially used to signify
the price of the hire money, and that of "_rentes_" to investments of
money paying interest; the French national debt being always spoken of
as "_les rentes_"; while the men who live on the lending of money, or
capital in any form, are called "_rentiers_."
The question next naturally arises, Why is it necessary to set up any
special theory at all about the natural disposition of the price which
we pay for the hire of land, any more than about the price we pay for
the hire of a house, of furniture, of a boat, of an opera box, or of a
cow? The particular kind of use to which we put each of these various
things is no doubt very different from the kind of use to which we put
each or all the others. But all of these uses resolve themselves into
the desire we have to derive some pleasure or some profit by the
possession for a time of the right of exclusive use of something which
is not our own, and for which we must pay the price, not of purchase,
but of hire.
The explanation of this curious economic phenomenon is to be found in
the assumption and positive assertion on the part of not a few
distinguished economists that the truly scientific and only correct
use of the term "rent" is its application to the "income derived from
things of all kinds of which the supply is limited, and can not be
increased by man's action."[17] As a rule, economists who accept this
definition confine its application to the hire of land alone, although
it professes to include other things, "of all kinds," to which the
same description applies--namely, that they can not be increased in
quantity by any human action. There are, however, no such other things
specified, and in any literal sense there are no such other things
existing, unless water and the atmosphere be intended.
Now, although it is indisputably true that man by his action can not
increase the absolute or total quantity of land, any more than of
water and air, appertaining to the whole globe on which we live, there
is practically no limitation to the degree of value which man's action
can impart to land, and which is the only thing for which land is
wanted, bought, or sold, and which, as already shown, can be truly
made the subject of taxation. The tracts of land on the earth's
surface which are of no present marketable value are its deserts, its
wildernesses, the sides and summits of its mountains, and its
continually frozen zones, where no results of labor are embodied in or
reflected upon it; while, on the other hand, its tracts of greatest
value are in the large cities and marts of trade and commerce, as in
the vicinity of the Bank of England, or in Wall Street, where the
results of labor are so concentrated and reflected upon land that it
is necessary to cover it with gold in order to acquire by purchase a
title to it and a right to its exclusive use. The difference between
land at twenty-five dollars an acre and twenty-five dollars a square
foot is simply that the latter is or may be in the near future covered
or surrounded by capital and business, while the former is remote from
these sources of value. One of the greatest possible, perhaps
probable, outcomes of the modern progress of chemistry is that through
the utilization of microbic organizations the value of land as an
instrumentality for the production of food may be increased to an
extent that at the present time is hardly possible of conception.
Again, in the case of air and water, although their total absolute
quantity can not be increased, their available and useful quantity in
any place, as before shown, can be by the agency of man, and their use
made subject to hire or rent.
Consideration is next asked to the question at issue from what may be
termed its practical standpoint. We have first a proposition in the
nature of an economic axiom, that the price of everything necessary
for production, or the hire of anything--land, money, and the
like--without which the product could not arise, is, and must be,
without exception, a part of the cost of that product; second, that
all levies of the State which are worthy of being designated as taxes
constitute an essential element of the cost of all products. The rent
of an opera box, given to obtain a mere pleasure, constitutes a part
of the fund out of which the musicians are paid, and if they are not
so paid they will not play or sing. The rent given for the right to
fish on a certain part of a river or its shores is a part of the cost
of producing the fish as a marketable commodity. If a house is hired
for the purpose of conducting any business in it, the price of that
hire does most certainly enter into the cost of that business,
whatever it may be, assuming that the use of the house is a necessity
for carrying it on. As no man will produce a commodity by which he is
sure to lose money, or fail to obtain the ordinary rate of profit, the
tax must be added to the price, or the production will cease. If a
uniform tax is imposed on all land occupied, it will be paid by the
occupier, because occupation (house-building) will cease until the
rent rises sufficiently to cover the tax. The landlord assesses upon
his tenants the tax he has paid upon his real estate; each tenant
assesses his share upon each of his customers; and so perfect is this
diffusion of land taxation that every traveler from a distant part of
the country who remains for even a single day at a hotel pays, without
stopping to think about it, a portion of the taxes on the building,
first paid by the owner, then assessed upon the lessees, and next cut
up by them minutely in the _per diem_ charge. But of course neither
the owner nor lessee really escapes taxation, because a portion of
somebody else's tax is thrown back upon them.
Is it possible to believe that in a city like New York, where less
than four per cent of its population pay any direct tax on real
estate, or in a city like Montreal, where the expenses of the city are
mainly derived from taxes on land and the building occupancy of land,
the great majority of the inhabitants of those cities are exempt from
all land taxation? In China, where, as before shown, the title or
ownership of all land vests in the emperor, and the revenue of the
Government is almost exclusively derived from taxation of land in the
form of rent, does the burden of tax remain upon the owner of the
land? If the tax in the form of rent is paid in the products of the
land, as undoubtedly it is in part, will not the cost of the
percentage of the whole product of the land that is thus taken
increase to the renter the cost of the percentage that is left to him;
or, if the product is sold for money with which to pay the tax rent,
will not its selling price embody the cost of the tax, as it will the
cost of every other thing necessary for production? To affirm to the
contrary is to say that the price which the Chinese farmer pays for
the right of the exclusive use of his land is no part of the crops he
may raise upon it.
Consider next the assertion of those who maintain the nondiffusion
theory that taxes on land are paid by the owners because the supply
of land can neither be increased nor diminished. In answer to it we
have the indisputable fact that the owners of land, whenever taxes are
increased, attempt to obtain an increased rental for it if the
circumstances will permit it. And the very attempt tends to increase
the rent. Nothing but adverse circumstances, such as diminishing
population or commercial and industrial distress, can prevent a rise
in the rental of land on which the taxes are increased; and in the
case of dwellings and warehouses the rise is almost always very
prompt, because no man will erect new dwellings or warehouses unless
their rent compensate fully the increase of taxation. And in any
prosperous community, in which population increases in the natural
ratio, there must be a constant increase of dwellings and warehouses
to prevent a rise of rent, independent of higher wages and higher
taxation. In no other occupation is capital surer of obtaining the
average net remuneration than in the erection of dwellings and
warehouses, and nothing but lack of general prosperity and diminishing
population can throw the burden of taxation on real estate or its
owners, without the slightest attempt at combination on their part. If
the owners of land are not reimbursed for its taxation by its
occupants, new houses "would not be erected, the old ones would wear
out, and after a time the supply would be so small that the demand
would raise rents, and house building begin again, the tax having been
transferred to the occupier."
It is pertinent at this point to notice the averment that is
frequently made, that cultivators of the soil can not incorporate
taxes on the land in the price of their products, because the price of
their whole crop is fixed by the price at which any portion of it can
be sold in foreign markets. In answer to this we have first the fact
that, to give the population of the world an adequate supply of food
and other agricultural products, it is not only necessary that all the
land at present under cultivation shall continue to be so employed,
but further that new lands shall each year be brought under
cultivation, or else the land already cultivated shall be made more
productive.
The population of the world steadily increases, notwithstanding wars,
epidemics, and all the evils which are consequences of man's ignorance
and of his improper use of things, his own faculties included. Hence,
in case of increased taxation on land, the cultivator of the soil is
generally enabled to transfer easily and promptly the burden of the
tax to the purchasers of the products he raises, without abandoning
the cultivation even of the least productive soil.
Furthermore, the exports of many agricultural products are due not to
the cheapness of their cost of production, but to the variations which
occur in the productiveness of the crops of other countries. M.
Rouher, a French economist, and for a period a minister of commerce,
thoroughly investigated this matter, and proved by incontestable data
that almost invariably when the yield of breadstuffs in Europe was
large in the country drained by the Black and Baltic Seas, it was
small in the countries drained by the Atlantic. This variation in the
yield of agricultural crops forces the countries where crops are
deficient to purchase from those where they are abundant, or who have
a surplus on hand from previous abundant harvests. In the United
States, when the harvests are abundant, the American farmers, rather
than sell below a certain price, keep a portion of their crops on hand
until bad crops in Europe produce a foreign demand, which has to be
supplied at once. Under such circumstances those who hold the surplus
stock of breadstuffs, or any other product, would control the price,
and not the foreigners who stand in need of it. The only check, then,
to the cupidity of the holders of breadstuffs is the competition
between themselves, which invariably suffices to prevent any undue
advantage being taken of the necessities of the countries whose
harvests are deficient. These bad crops occur frequently enough to
consume all the surplus of the countries that produce in excess of
their own wants. In fact, this transient, irregular demand is counted
upon and provided for by producers just as much so as the regular home
demand--hence is one of the elements that regulate production and
control prices.
At this point of the discussion it is desirable to obtain a clear and
true idea of the meaning or definition of the phrase "diffusion of
taxes." As sometimes used in popular and superficial discussions, it
is held to imply that every tax imposed by law distributes itself
equitably over the whole surface of society. Such implication would,
however, be even more fallacious than an assumption that every
expenditure made by an individual distributes itself in such a way
that it becomes equally an expenditure by every other individual. On
the other hand, a fair consideration of the foregoing summary of facts
and deductions would seem to compel every mind not previously warped
by prejudice to accept and indorse the following as great fundamental
principles in taxation: _First_, that in order to burden equitably and
uniformly all persons and property, for the purpose of obtaining
revenue for public purposes, it is not necessary to tax primarily and
uniformly all persons and property within the taxing district.
_Second_, equality of taxation consists in a uniform assessment of the
same articles or class of property that is subject to taxation.
_Third_, taxes under such a system equate and diffuse themselves; and
if levied with certainty and uniformity upon tangible property and
fixed signs of property, they will, by a diffusion and repercussion,
reach and burden all visible property, and also all of the so-called
"invisible and intangible" property, with unerring certainty and
equality.
All taxation ultimately and necessarily falls on consumption; and the
burden of every man, under any equitable system of taxation, and which
no effort will enable him to avoid, will be in the exact proportion or
ratio which his aggregate consumption maintains to the aggregate
consumption of the taxing district, State, or community of which he is
a member.
It is not, however, contended that unequal taxation on competitors of
the same class, persons, or things diffuses itself whether such
inequality be the result of intention or of defective laws, and their
more defective administration. And doubtless one prime reason why
economists and others interested have not accepted the law of
diffusion of taxes as here given is that they see, as the practical
workings of the tax systems they live under, or have become
practically familiar with, that taxes in many instances do seem to
remain on the person who immediately pays them; and fail to see that
such result is due--as in the case of the taxation of large classes of
the so-called personal property--to the adoption of a system which
does not permit of equality in assessment, and therefore can not be
followed by anything of equality in diffusion. Such persons may not
unfairly be compared to physicists, who, constantly working with
imperfect instruments, and constantly obtaining, in consequence,
defective results, come at last to regard their errors as in the
nature of established truths.[18]
According to these conclusions, the greatest consumers must be the
greatest taxpayers. The man also who evades a tax clearly robs his
neighbors. The thief also pays taxes indirectly, for he is a consumer,
and must pay the advanced price caused by his own roguery for all he
consumes, although he does steal the money to pay with. Idlers and
even tramps pay taxes, but the amount that they indirectly pay into
the fund is much less than they take out of it. People are sometimes
referred to or characterized as non-taxpayers, and in political
harangues and socialistic essays measures or policies are recommended
by which certain persons or classes, by reason of their extreme
poverty, shall be entirely exempt from all incidence or burden of
taxation. Such a person does not, however, exist in any civilized
community. If one could be found he would be a greater curiosity than
exists in any museum. To avoid taxation a man must go into an
unsettled wilderness where he has no neighbors, for as soon as he has
a companion, if that companion be only a dog, which he in part or all
supports, taxation begins, and the more companions he has, the greater
improvements he makes, and the higher civilization he enjoys, the
heavier will be the taxes he must pay.
Taxes _legitimately_ levied, then, are a part of the cost of all
production, and there can be no more tendency for taxes to remain upon
the persons who immediately pay them than there is for rents, the cost
of insurance, water supply, and fuel to follow the same law. The
person who wishes to use or destroy the utility of property by
consumption to gratify his desires, or satisfy his wants, can not
obtain it from the owners or producers with their consent, except by
gift, without giving pay or services for it; and the average price of
all property is coincident with the cost of production, including the
taxes advanced upon it, which are a part of its cost in the hands of
the seller. Again, no person who produces any form of property or
utility, for the purpose of sale or rent, sustains any burden of
legitimate taxation, although he may be a tax advancer; for, as a tax
advancer, he is the agent of the State, and a tax collector from the
consumer. But he who produces or buys, and does not sell or rent, but
consumes, is the taxpayer, and sustains a tax in his aggregate
consumption, where all taxation must ultimately rest. In short, no
person bears the burden of taxation, under an equitable, legitimate
system, except upon the property which he applies to his own exclusive
use in ultimate consumption. The great consumer is the only great
taxpayer.
Finally, a great economic law pointed out by Adam Smith, which has an
important and almost conclusive bearing upon this vexed problem of the
diffusion of taxes, should not be overlooked--namely, his statement in
The Wealth of Nations that "_no tax can ever reduce for any
considerable time the rate of profit in any particular trade, which
must always keep its level with other trades in the neighborhood_." In
other words, taxes and profits, by the operation of the laws of human
nature, constantly tend to equate themselves. Man is always prompted
to engage in the most profitable occupation and to make the most
profitable investment. And since the emancipation from feudalism with
its sumptuary laws, legal regulations of the price of labor and
merchandise, and other arbitrary governmental invasions of private
rights, individual judgment and self-interest have been recognized as
the best tests or arbiters of the profitableness of a given investment
or occupation. The average profits, therefore, of one form of
investment, or of one occupation (as originally shown by Adam Smith),
must for any long period equal the average profits of other
investments and occupations, whether taxed or untaxed, skill, risk,
and agreeableness of occupation being taken into consideration.[19]
Natural laws will, accordingly, always produce an equilibrium of
burden between taxed and untaxed things and persons. There is a level
of profit and a level of taxation by natural laws, as there is a level
of the ocean by natural laws. In fact, all proportional contributions
to the State from direct competitors are diffused upon persons and
things in the taxing jurisdiction by a uniformity as manifest as is
the pressure upon water, which is known to be equal in every
direction.
A word here in reference to the popular idea that the exemption of any
form of property is to grant a favor to those who possess such
property. This idea has, however, no warrant for its acceptance. Thus,
an exemption is freedom from a burden or service to which others are
liable; but in case of the exclusion of an entire class of property
from primary taxation, no person is liable, and therefore there is no
exemption. An exclusion of all milk from taxation, while whisky is
taxed, is not an exemption, for the two are not competing articles, or
articles of the same class. It is true that highly excessive taxation
of a given article may cause another and similar article, in some
instances, to become a substitute or competing article; and hence the
necessity of care and moderation in establishing the rate of taxation.
We do not consider that putting a given article into the free list,
under the tariff, is an exemption to any particular individual; but if
we make the rate higher on one taxpayer or on one importer of the same
article than on another taxpayer or importer, we grant an exemption.
We use the word "exemption," therefore, imperfectly, when we speak of
"the exemption of an entire class of property," as, for example, upon
all personal property; for if the removal of the burden operates
uniformly on all interested, or owning such property, then there can
be no primary exemption.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] "Senator Paddock: I should like to ask the Senator from Nevada
if, in the region of country where borax is found, by reason of
finding it the land in the particular State or Territory is
appreciated in value on account of its existence.
"Senator Stewart: Not at all.
"Senator Paddock: The value then given to it is all in
labor."--_Congressional Record, July, 1890._
[14] "In America, where there has been but little serious study of
taxation, the few writers of prominence are, remarkable to relate,
almost all abject followers of Thiers," the French economist and
statesman, who claimed to have invented the term "diffusion" of taxes.
[15] "Our conclusion is, that under actual conditions in America
to-day the landowner may virtually be declared to pay in the last
instance the taxes that are imposed on his land, and that at all
events it is absolutely erroneous to assume any general shifting to
the consumer. In so far as our land tax is a part of a general
property tax, it can not possibly be shifted; in so far as it is more
or less an exclusive tax, it is even then apt to remain where it is
first put--on the landowner."--_Seligman: Incidence of Taxation, p.
99._
[16] Seligman. Shifting and Incidence of Taxation.
[17] Professor Marshall.
[18] In a like experience the Duke of Argyll, in his work The Unseen
Foundations of Society, finds an explanation of the so-called theory
of Ricardo, that the rent which a farmer of agricultural land pays as
the price of its hire--that is to say, the price which he pays for the
exclusive use of it--is no part of the cost of the crops he may raise
upon it; a conclusion that can not be possibly true, unless it be also
true that rent is paid for something that is not an indispensable
condition of agricultural production. "Thus rights are in their very
nature impalpable and invisible. They are not material things, but
relations between many material things and the human mind and will.
The right of exclusive use over land is a thing invisible and
immaterial, as other rights are, and, although it is, and has been
since the world began, the basis of all agricultural industry, it is a
basis impalpable and invisible, whereas the material visible
implements and tools, whose work depends upon it, are all visible and
palpable enough, and all of which would never be were we to see them
without the invisible rights upon which they depend. All of the
former, in their place and order, are instruments of production; all
of them catch the eye, and may easily engross the attention. On the
other hand, if we are induced to forget those other elements, which
are equally essential instruments of production, merely because they
are out of sight, then our deception may be complete, and fallacies
which become glaring when memory and attention are awakened may find
in our half-vacant minds an easy and even a cordial reception."
Adam Smith may be fairly considered as having fully committed himself
beyond all controversy in his great work, The Wealth of Nations, to
the principle that taxes, with a degree of infallibility, diffuse
themselves when they are levied uniformly on the same article; and he
even goes so far as to admit that a tax upon labor, if it could be
uniformly levied and collected, would be diffused, and that the
laborer would be the mere conduit through which the tax would pass to
the public treasury. Thus he says, "While the demand for labor and the
price of provisions, therefore, remain the same, a direct tax upon
wages can have no other effect than to raise them somewhat higher than
the tax."
The German economist Bluntschli, who has carefully studied this
question of the final incidence of all just and equitable taxes, is in
substantial agreement with the above conclusions, but prefers to use a
different term for characterizing such finality than consumption, and
expresses himself as follows: "In the end taxes fall on _enjoyments_.
Hence the amount of each man's enjoyments and not his income is the
justest measure of taxation." (Bluntschli, vol. x, p. 146.)
M. Thiers, the French statesman and economist, was also a believer and
earnest advocate of the theory of the diffusion of taxes, and lays
down his principles in the following words: "Taxes are shifted
indefinitely, and tend to become a part of the price of commodities,
to such an extent that every one bears his share, not in proportion to
what he pays the state, but in proportion to what he consumes." And in
his book Rights to Property he thus illustrates the method in which
taxation diffuses itself: "In the same manner as our senses, deceived
by appearances, tell us that it is the sun which moves and not the
earth, so a particular tax appears to fall upon one class, and another
tax upon another class, when in reality it is not so. The tax really
best suited to the poorest member of society is that which is best
suited to the general fortune of the state; a fortune which is much
more for the possession and enjoyment of the poor man than it is for
the rich; a fact of which we are never sufficiently convinced. But of
the manner, nevertheless, in which taxes are divided among the
different classes of the state, the most certain thing we can say is:
That they are divided in proportion to what each man consumes, and for
a reason not generally recognized or understood, namely, that taxes
are reflected, as it were, to infinity, and from reflection to
reflection become eventually an integral part of the prices of things.
Hence the greatest purchasers and consumers are everywhere the
greatest taxpayers. This is what I call '_diffusion of taxation_,' to
borrow a term from physical science, which applies the expression
'diffusion of light' to those numberless reflections, in consequence
of which the light which has penetrated the slightest aperture spreads
itself around in every direction, and in such a manner as to reach all
the objects which it renders visible. So a tax which at first sight
appears to be paid directly, in reality is only advanced by the
individual who is first called upon to pay it."
[19] As applied to the wages of labor, the truth of this principle is
equally incontestable. "The sewing girl performing her toilsome work
by the needle at one dollar a day, the street sweeper working the mud
with his broom at a dollar and a half, the skilled laborer at two and
three dollars, the professor at five, the editor at five or ten, the
artist and the songstress at ten or five hundred dollars a day are all
members of the working classes, though working at different rates. And
it is only the difference in their effectiveness that causes the
difference in their earnings. Bring them all to the same point of
efficiency, and their earnings also will be the same."--_W. Jungst,
Cincinnati._
John Locke, in his treatise On the Standard of Value, treats of
taxation, and shows conclusively that if all lands were nominally free
from taxation, the owners of lands would proportionally pay more taxes
than now, because the same amount of money must continue to be
collected in some form, and the average profits of lands would only be
equal to the average profits of other investments; and further, that
the expense and annoyance (another form of expense) would be increased
if the tax were exclusively levied in the first instance upon personal
property; and hence the landowner would be burdened with his
proportion of the unnecessary expense and annoyance. He also shows
that you may change the form of a uniform tax, but that you can not
change the burden; and that the change will increase the burden, if
the new system is more expensive and annoying than the old. Locke
wrote nearly a century before Adam Smith published his Wealth of
Nations, and it would seem probable that Smith acquired his ideas
relative to the average profits of investments from Locke.
THE GREAT BOMBARDMENT.
BY CHARLES F. HOLDER.
A thin stratum of air, an invisible armor of great tenuity, lies
between man and the menace of possible annihilation.
The regions of space beyond our planet are filled with flying
fragments. Some meet the earth in its onward rush; others, having
attained inconceivable velocity, overtake and crash into the whirling
sphere with loud detonation and ominous glare, finding destruction in
its molecular armor, or perhaps ricocheting from it again into the
unknown. Some come singly, vagrant fragments from the infinity of
space; others fall in showers like golden rain; all constituting a
bombardment appalling in its magnitude. It has been estimated that
every twenty-four hours the earth or its atmosphere is struck by _four
hundred million_ missiles of iron or stone, ranging from an ounce up
to tons in weight. Every month there rushes upon the flying globe at
least twelve billion iron and stone fragments, which, with lurid
accompaniment, crash into the circumambient atmosphere. Owing to the
resistance offered by the air, few of these solid shots strike the
earth. They move out of space with a possible velocity of thirty or
forty miles per second, and, like moths, plunge into the revolving
globe, lured to their destruction by its fatal attraction. The moment
they enter our atmosphere they ignite; the air is piled up and
compressed ahead of them with inconceivable force, the resultant
friction producing an immediate rise in temperature, and the shooting
star, the meteor of popular parlance, is the result.
[Illustration: IDEAL VIEW OF THE EARTH AS IT IS BOMBARDED BY THE
ESTIMATED FOUR HUNDRED MILLION METEORITES EVERY TWENTY-FOUR
HOURS.[20]]
A simple experiment, made by Joule and Thomson, well illustrates the
possibility of this rise in temperature by atmospheric friction. If a
wire is whirled through the air at a rate of one hundred and
seventy-five feet per second, a rise of one degree, centigrade, will
be noticed. If the revolutions are increased to three hundred and
seventy-two feet per second, the elevation will be 5.3° C. If the
temperature increases as the square of the velocity, a rate of speed
of twenty miles per second would develop a temperature not far from
360,000° C., which is probably far less than that at the surface of
the ordinary meteor as it is seen blazing through our atmosphere. If
the meteor is small it is often consumed by the intense heat
generated; but larger fragments, owing to their velocity and the fact
that they are poor conductors of heat and burn slowly, reach the
surface and bury themselves in the sea or earth. But few escape the
inevitable consequences of the contact, and of the untold millions
which have struck the earth within the memory of man but five hundred
and thirty have been seen to fall. The phenomena associated with the
plunging meteor is most interesting. A blaze of light, as the
terrific heat ignites the iron, announces its entrance into our
atmosphere. It may be red, yellow, white, green, or blue, all these
hues having been observed. Then follows the explosion, caused by the
contact with the air piled up ahead, and in certain instances a loud
detonation or a series of noises is heard, which may be repeated
indefinitely until the meteoric mass is completely destroyed, and
drops, a shower of disintegrated particles, which fall rattling to the
ground.
The blaze of light does not continue to the earth, nor does the
meteor, should it survive, strike the ground with the velocity with
which it entered the atmosphere, as the latter often arrests its
motion so completely that it drops upon the earth by its own weight,
well illustrated by the meteorites of the Hesslefall, which dropped
upon ice but a few inches thick, rebounding as they fell. Thus the
atmosphere protects the inhabitants of the globe from a terrific
bombardment by destroying many of the largest meteorites, reducing the
size of others before they reach the surface and arresting the
velocity so that few bury themselves deeply in the soil.
The writer observed a remarkable meteor in 1894. It entered our
atmosphere, apparently, over the Mojave Desert, in California, and
exploded over the San Gabriel Valley, though without any appreciable
sound, and after the first flash disappeared, leaving in the air a
large balloon-shaped object of yellow light which lasted some moments,
presenting a remarkable spectacle. In this instance the meteor had
probably exploded or been consumed, leaving only the light to tell the
story, the atmospheric armor of the earth having successfully warded
off the blow.
Viewing the facts as they exist, the earth, a seeming fugitive mass
flying through space, vainly endeavoring to break the bonds which bind
it to the sun, hunted, bombarded with strange missiles hurled from
unseen hands or forces from the infinity of space, it is little wonder
that the ancients and some savage races of later times invested the
phenomena with strange meanings. It requires but little imagination to
see in the flying earth a living monster followed by shadowy furies
which hurl themselves upon it, now vainly attempting to reach the
air-protected body or again striking it with terrific force, lodging
deep in its sides amid loud reverberation and dazzling blaze of light.
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