The sun., 1912-07-14
DR.. MAX NORDAU SEES
DANGER IN CITY LIFE
\ Growing Cause of Dcgcncra.
ton. Crime and Insanity,
lie Finds.
DRAIN on THE COUNTRY
All Europe Affected by the
Stress of Intensive Modcrn
Culture.

LoNpoN. Julv O. Dr. Max Nordau
has contriyItcd parcr on the problem
of degeneration To tie Hibbori Journa'
Ilo deals with the iucrcaso of insanity
and crime and with those mildcr forms
of degeneration which arc ",hc most
dangerous for the community, because
their des, ,ructivc influence only gradually
makes itself felt: discusses ono of the
great causes Of the degeneration-auto.
INVESTIGATION and organic wear and tear
through fatigue consequent on over
cxertion-and points to the danger of the
town. He says:
In ever greater numbers the popula-
ton makes its way from the country to
the town. to exchange agricultural occu-
pations for labor in workshops and fac
tories The number of people that dwell
in towns of over 100000 inhabitants 10
everywhere swclling everywhere among
civilized nations the tendency appears to
transform a people that lives on the land
and raises natural products into people
of great cities, producing differentiated
goods.
The process produces wealth and the
world economy sets this on a level with
happiness a manifest illusion.
Extreme State interveni ion in the sense
Of the sociaisiic programme would rescue
tho individual from the overexertion and
fatigue that make him n progenitor Of de-
generates.
"Snce. however. il seems chimcricaito
look for "a realization Of the integral
socialstic programme at any date to
which We can now look forward-modest
tentative measures like Mr.. Lloyd Georges
old age insurance are Of no efficiency
We mus, regard this theoretically con-
ccivablc remedy for degeneration as prac-
tically inapplicabe."
Degeneration. continues DIR. Nordau.
has its chief home in the large town. He
says:
THE large town gives the highest per-
centagc of crime. insanity, and constitii-
tional diseases; the large town is the
focus Of all the frenzies of fashion, all
hysterical alterations of public opinion.
all anarchical movements in politics.
I social customs. morality. II is in the
large town that cclibacy and childless-
ness are most to be found.
"Thc stunted forms that we meet in the
slums Of East and Southeast London are
the descendants of the gigantic peasants
of Saxon Sussex of Danish and Nor
wcgian Hertford, of Jutic Kent and of
Anglican Northumberland In the large
town families which had originally tho
! finest constitution disappear in four or
! five generations if they are not renewed
I 10y "A continual infusion of fresh blood
I from the country
'In London and Paris s-the young cities
of America cannot here come into Ques-
ton there are probably not n hundred
persons who can show pedigree of
$50 years consisting on both sides OF
ancestors horn in London or Paris.
The large town j. an abyss in which
the population that pours in from the
whole country and from foreign lands
oozcs and tricklcs away. Dr.. Nordau
continues:
Blu, for that inflow from without it
would bc extinct in about a century and
"A half. since its population is now re-
newcd out of its own resources. For the
present the country population is still
capable of feeding the large towns.
But the day will come when the de-
populated country will have no more
reinforcements to bo-tow on the great
city, and then the danger of national
degeneration will have come very near TO
us. This danger will b. European in its
scope, since one people after another
is adopting the larG" town civilization
and the whit" race has no more bar
barians in reserve to stop into the weak
cncd ranks and fiji up their ranks"
In the stress Of intensive modern cul-