if these new stocks are not only sound physically but alert mentally, then we shall develop a new race here, worthy to carry on the ideals and traditions of the founders of this country. But if the material fed into the melting pot is a polyglot assortment of nationalities, physically, mentally and morally below par, then there can be no hope of producing anything but an inferior race. It is often said that each of the different alien peoples coming here has something to contribute to American civilization; that we shall be the gainers, not the losers, in the long run. That many of our immigrants have something to contribute is true. But we want desirable additions to, and not inferior substitutes for the good we already have. There is nothing in biological discovery or principles which would lead us to hope that only the virtues of the races which are going to make up the future American will survive, and the vices be eliminated. In fact, the vices and the undesirable qualities are just as likely to survive as the virtues. We have, of late years, not been getting the best of Europe.

The immigration question is usually discussed from its economic, its political, its industrial sides. Yet its racial aspects are infinitely more important. The character of the future American race is to be determined by the aliens who are landing on our shores day by day. As Dr. Lothrop Stoddard has stated the case, "the admission of aliens should, indeed, be regarded just as solemnly as the begetting of our own children, for the racial effect is essentially the same." And Major General Leonard Wood summed up the Melting Pot problem clearly and briefly when he said: "The American cement has about all the sand it will stand."

The statement of Aristophanes, above quoted, finds a parallel in the words of one of the best-known of modern writers on heredity, Professor Karl Pearson. "You can not change the leopard's spots, and you can not change bad stock to good. You may dilute it; spread it over a wide area, spoiling good stock, but until it ceases to multiply it will not cease to be."

IMMIGRATION AND THE NEED OF LABOR

A stock argument against immigration restriction is the "need of labor." Many, if not most, of the evils which have resulted from the enormous and practically unselected immigration of the past twenty-five years have been due to the reckless greed for "cheap labor" on the part of large industrial, railroad and mining "interests" in this country. These "interests" have set pocket book above patriotism. They have been regardless of every consideration other than that of speeding-up their factories, their railroad construction and their mine output. To those who realize that cheap foreign labor is often so cheap that it is dear at any

price; that it is usually, in the long run, socially and politically very expensive; that a tremendously rapid development of our country is by no means altogether desirable, and that every immigrant is to play a part in the formation of the future American race, this matter of cheap alien labor presents wholly different aspects.

As Dr. Madison Grant has recently said, if the only object sought is a quick development of our country; if within a generation we want to exploit all our natural resources; to have huge industrial plants at every turn; to build railroads and highways paralleling and criss-crossing each other in a fine-meshed network, then it is doubtless true that a huge supply of cheap foreign labor will be needed. But is this "need of labor" any adequate reason for admitting aliens by the wholesale, without giving any thought to the question whether they are going to be intelligent, law-abiding, constructive citizens? Any industrial triumph; any phenomenal exploitation of our resources; any remarkable accomplishment in the development of transportation which can be achieved only by means of such labor, will eventually be paid for with a price which will involve political and racial disaster.

The vital question is not how fast can we possibly develop this country, but how best can we develop it. We have been assuming that we could safely admit as many immigrants as can be industrially assimilated; as can, somehow or other, scrape up a living here, or, failing that, can be supported by our charitable organizations. But the real questions are: how many can be politically assimilated; how many can be thoroughly Americanized; and what sort of contribution are they likely to make in the development of our future race? The need of more "hands" to do our labor has been dinned into our ears for decades. "Hands across the sea" are the cheapest, so we have been importing them. Let us not forget that we are importing not "hands" alone but bodies and hereditary tendencies also. It is of vital consequence that the quality of these human beings who come to us from other lands should be of the best, so that they shall not injure but improve our stock. Every day that passes witnesses the landing on our shores of aliens whose coming here is absolutely certain to result in a deterioration of the mental and physical standards of the American race of the future.

There are doubtless many who, like the present writer, are not employers of labor, nor daily wage-earners, nor economists, who may, nevertheless, have certain views on this matter which are entitled to consideration. To those who belong to this group the question arises whether any American industry which can not

prosper without a constant supply of cheap foreign labor is really worth preserving in a country which boasts of the high standards of living of its wage-earners and the high character of its citizenship. For any indispensable work which can be done by relatively low-grade and unintelligent men and women there would be a sufficient supply of labor from the natural increase of those who are already residents of this country. Somewhat higher wages would probably have to be paid in certain cases and for a while, but if the price were too high, American inventive ingenuity would very soon solve the difficulty by means of labor-saving machinery. If a "cheap" man becomes too expensive, machinery inevitably takes his place. It would doubtless be far better and safer for the United States to enter upon a period of slower industrial development, with a labor supply recruited from the loins of its own population and from a carefully sifted and limited foreign immigration, than to drive ahead at its previous speed, with its industrial development stimulated by means which will inevitably result in a lowering of our political and racial standards. Furthermore, it is generally agreed even among anti-restrictionists that the majority of aliens now coming in are unfitted, by training or temperament, for common labor.

The late General Francis A. Walker laid emphasis upon one point which deserves mention, again and again, when the argument is made that we need cheap labor to do certain disagreeable and degrading jobs. No job, said General Walker, is too cheap or too mean for a self-respecting man to do. In the early days all our work was done by Americans, and none of it was neglected on the ground that it was degrading. The same thing is true in many of our country districts to-day, wherever there are native Americans who depend on themselves to do the necessary daily task. It was not until ignorant and unskilled aliens began to come in in considerable numbers, and took up the lower grades of unskilled labor, that these jobs began to be considered beneath the dignity of self-respecting Americans.

WILL DISTRIBUTION OF IMMIGRANTS SOLVE OUR DIFFICULTIES?

Anti-restrictionists wilfully, and some restrictionists ignorantly, argue that a better distribution of our immigrants will solve our problem of assimilation. The difficulty, it is claimed, is not that there are too many aliens but that they do not go to the right places. Our arriving immigrants naturally flock to the large cities, where their compatriots are already congregated, and where rough construction work and odd jobs are more easily found. Much is said about the need of farm labor, yet even if many thousands of aliens were actually distributed where there is a lack of

farm laborers, the majority of them would not be effective. What our great farming districts need is highly intelligent labor, skilled in American farming methods, and able to manage modern agricultural machinery. Ignorant, unskilled, non-English-speaking foreigners, who know little beyond the use of a primitive hoe, are not wanted.

It is significant that at the last annual session of the Farmers' National Congress, with delegates from over thirty states in attendance, the following resolution was unanimously adopted:

Resolved, That we are unalterably opposed to the proposed diversion and distribution of aliens over the farming districts until immigration is rigidly restricted, numerically or otherwise.

In a recent issue of the Southern Textile Bulletin, emphatic protest was made against the importation of foreign textile labor into the South. "We do not counsel violence," the paper says, "but if violence is necessary to rid our mills of these foreigners, it were better to have violence now than to see our operatives forced to live and work alongside a disreputable foreign element.

In his able and timely article, "Throwing away our Birthright," in the North American Review for February, 1922, Mr. William Roscoe Thayer states that "all attempts to distribute immigrants according to certain localities have thus far failed." The case is cited of a serious effort made some twenty years ago by the Italian Ambassador to the United States, Baron Mayor des Planches, to plant colonies of Italians in the Southern States. The scheme was unsuccessful. Two other specific instances of attempted distribution come to mind. One is the case of the importation of a shipload of picked immigrants by the State of South Carolina, every one of whom had disappeared within a few months. The other is that of the more recent importation of Mexican laborers into the Southwest during the war. These aliens were admitted under special conditions to do certain agricultural work, and were later to return to their own country. Most of these men also disappeared and could not be sent home again. In other words, while it may in certain cases be possible to distribute aliens, the matter of keeping them where they are sent is a wholly different matter. In the final analysis, on however large a scale it may be carried out, and however effective it may seem to be, distribution, as President Roosevelt put it in one of his messages to Congress, "is a palliative, not a cure." It can never solve our immigration problems.

SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS1

By Professor WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER
BUSSEY INSTITUTION, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

LECTURE III. PART 2. BEES SOLITARY AND SOCIAL

The Meliponine, or stingless bees, are a very peculiar group of nearly 250 species, all confined to warm countries. Fully four fifths of the species occur only in the American tropics and only about one fifth in the Ethiopian, Indomalayan and Australian regions. All the Old World and the majority of the Neotropical forms belong to the genus Trigona; the remainder of the American species are placed in a separate genus, Melipona. The stingless bees are much less hairy and much smaller than the bumble-bees. Some of the species of Trigona measure less than 3 mm. in length and are therefore among the smallest of bees. The colonies vary greatly in population in different species. According to H. von Ihering, those of Melipona may comprise from 500 to 4,000, those of Trigona from 300 to 80,000 individuals. The name stingless as applied to these insects is not strictly accurate, because a vestigial sting is present. It is useless for defence, however, so that many of the species are quite harmless and are called "angelitos" by the Latin-Americans. But some forms are anything but little angels. When disturbed they swarm at the intruder, bury themselves in his hair, eye-brows and beard, if he has one, and buzz about with a peculiarly annoying, twisting movement. Others prefer to fly into the eyes, ears and nostrils, others have a penchant for crawling over the face and hands and feeding on the perspiration, or bite unpleasantly, and a few species spread a caustic secretion over the skin. On one occasion in Guatemala large patches of epidermis were thus burned off from my face by a small swarm of Trigona flaveola.

There are three morphologically distinct castes. The queen differs from the worker in the smaller head, much more voluminous abdomen, more abundant pilosity, and in the form of the hind legs, the tibiæ of which are reduced in width and furnished with bristles also on their external surfaces, while the metatarsi are elongate, rounded and apically narrowed. The worker, therefore, really represents the typical female of the species morphologically, except that she is sterile, whereas the queen, except in her ovaries,