or else makes them hopelessly dull. Shorter hours and opportuniti for recreation have become common in western Europe largely o this account, but factory work still tends to deaden the abilities millions of people in the great cities. A few, of course, who do the more interesting and skillful work are benefited, but the stimulus which comes to them by no means balances the harm that comes to the others.
(3) Such conditions give the manufacturing communities of western Europe a series of problems wholly different from those of the com mercial and agricultural sections. Strikes, labor reforms, the move ment for short hours, plans for community recreation and instruction, and the movement to induce city workers to move into the suburbs and have their own homes and gardens are only a few of the many activities that center in the great industrial cities. Such movements1 are most active in the great British cities, but are also prominent ins the continental manufacturing cities. Sometimes they take special, forms such as the old age pensions of Germany. Outside the area of intensive manufacturing, however, they diminish greatly in import tance. A map of manufacturing in Europe is almost a map of move, ments for social betterment.
(4) Another dangerous condition, which is due to many causes but which is most noteworthy in the manufacturing regions, is the decline in the size of the families of the more competent parts of the community.1 The scarcity of children in France and Ireland, to be sure, indicates the great importance of other causes beside modern industry and its accompanying high standards of living and love of extravagance. On. the whole, however, the area of few children extends from Scotland t Switzerland with a bulge eastward in Germany just as does the area intensive manufacturing. Of course small families are not in them selves a danger, especially if they prevent a country from lowering it standards of living. The danger lies in the fact that the competes families and the competent nations have few children, while the incom petent have many. Hence in the next generation, when the growing complexity of civilization will demand more people of high ability than ever before, there may be less than ever in proportion to the total population. In almost no occupation is the need for men of unusual ability increasing more rapidly than in businesi.
How this applies to the countries of Europe is shown in the excess of births over deaths. In France even before the Great War the births each year among every 1000 people exceeded the deaths by only 0.9.
Since the births are more numerous among the incompetent classes than among the people with thrift and ability, France was actually losing in the number of people competent to carry on business. In the other manufacturing portions of western Europe and also in Spain and Ireland the excess of births over deaths was less than 12 per thousand inhabitants. Even if the competent people were not diminishing in number, they were not increasing as rapidly as the rest of the population. Only in the Netherlands, the great commercial country of western Europe, was there an excess of births (15.2) comparable to that of the less progressive regions of Portugal (14.1), the Balkans (14.5 to 18.6), and Russia (16.7). In other words, the tendency before the Great War, and also now wherever things have gone back nearly to normal, is not only for the weakest elements in each nation to increase most rapidly, but for the weakest nations to increase much more rapidly than those that are more competent. If the tendencies shown before the war should persist 100 years the descendants of 1000 people would number only 1094 in France, compared with about 6200 in Bulgaria. In a hun dred years if the recent rate of increase should continue, which is not probable, Rumania would have about 45 million inhabitants, or more than France would then have, while Russia would have nearly 500 million, or more than all Europe at present.
Because of the rapid increase of population in northern, southern, and especially eastern Europe previous to the war, the backward nations were gradually invading and displacing those that are more advanced. For example, Asiatics were gradually pressing into Russia; Russians were moving westward; Germany was being invaded by Poles; while Germans moved westward into France, Britain, and across the seas. In 1913 there lived in Germany 919,000 Europeans from countries standing lower than Gerinany in the scale of civilization as described in an earlier chapter, and 317,000 from countries standing as high or higher. The same displacement of people with high standards of living by those with low standards is taking place in all manufacturing coun tries—in the United States most of all. Formerly, when people sup posed that mere numbers were an index of strength, this condition was regarded as an advantage. Now that the importance of quality rather than quantity is realized, Germany, France, and Great Britain, like the United States, are wondering what they ought to do to insure a strong mental as well as physical inheritance to future generations.