The present immigration problem is fundamentally economic, a conflict of economic interests. It is to the interest of the alien to come, and to that of the steamship companies and the employers of cheap labor in large batches to have him come. It is to the interest of the workmen already here to restrict immigration and to protect, in so far as it can now be done, the American scale of wages. The social, political, criminological, and even eugenic aspects of the immigrant's influence on American life and institutions have been dwelt upon both by the advocates and the opponents of restriction. These aspects have been in some ways overemphasized. The debate on restriction hinges essentially on the industrial and economic aspects of the situation.

So also does the problem of distribution and assimilation. Many regard distribution of immigrants over the country, to get them where natural resources call for them and to relieve the congestion of the crowded cities of the northeastern states, as the essential first step toward real assimilation to American standards and ideals and to ultimate amalgamation. The "melting pot" is to be the whole country. A different note is struck by those leaders of the dominant races of the newer immigration who are beginning to question the need or the desirability of a nationwide reduction of all nationalities to a common psychological "American" type—who rather look with approbation upon the possibility that the United States may become a land of many languages, many diverse national group-ideals, each hyphenated by historical association with an Old World people and an Old World tradition. Still other thoughtful students hold that assimilation is not in any case the primary problem, but that, with little regard to relative assimilability of different races, the main task is to secure such a diminution of the immigrant tide as shall enable the people of the United States to make their contribution to civilization before they are swamped in foreign numbers and foreign social and economic poverty.

Whatever may be thought of immigration restriction in general, the policy of Chinese exclusion meets with practically universal approval. The California Japanese problem is one, however, that cannot be so easily settled, even temporarily. It has not claimed

the attention it deserves for the reason that it has been regarded in the light of a Pacific Coast, and therefore a sectional, problem springing out of local conflicts of economic interest and temporarily involving the federal government in a delicate situation. It is in abeyance for the time being but it is fraught with difficulties and dangers to international peace and comity that demand most careful and calm study by unbiased persons.

The whole ethics of the immigration question will be found on final analysis to turn on the pivot of national resources whether the United States can maintain an open-door policy without itself rapidly approaching the Old World conditions of overpopulation, class friction, and low standards of living, which are the main causes of the swelling tide of aliens pouring in upon us. Looked at in this way, immigration is only one aspect of the larger population problem. In any case it will soon be settled. The population problem is one of centuries; this is one of decades. Compared with problems of sex and of race, immigration is a temporary matter. But that does not make it unimportant to the destiny of the country.

When the history of the twentieth century comes to be written, from a standpoint far enough away in time to enable it to be seen in due perspective, it is not unlikely that the pronounced change in the social, political, and economic position of women will be described as one of the most characteristic features of the whole era. Every period is an era of change, but some are more so than others, and it is difficult to escape the conviction that ours is a time of peculiarly rapid and pronounced transformation of social and ethical ideals, especially of the ideals in the light of which the character of men and women, respectively, is measured, and the morality of existing relations between the sexes judged. To many people the woman movement, in this or that aspect, seems to have developed with even greater suddenness than is the case. That is perhaps the reason why even many intelligent persons see no more of the unrest and breaking up of old standards and accepted traditions than may be involved in woman's demand for equal political rights. Where the world's

standards and thought have been largely the product of masculine sentiment and logic, in which heretofore woman's economic and social position has usually caused her to acquiesce, although often, very probably, not without secret, or with but mildly expressed, misgivings or resentment, it was natural and certain that women would be very slow consciously and openly to question the old ideals. And before the leaven of the democracy ideal had worked its way into social ethics it was not likely that men would come to a consciousness of the complex set of difficulties and maladjustments that are now so insistently coming to the foreground and which for want of a better term we call the woman problem, although from certain points of view it is no more a woman problem than a man problem.

It is not possible to summarize in a few paragraphs the elements of a problem that is as wide as this one, which touches at every point biological, economic, political, educational, psychological, and ethical— the life of a whole sex, and by that token, of two whole sexes. The woman movement doubtless will produce some waste products, many temporary discomforts, especially to men, and most especially to those men who are either ignorant or contemptuous of the question, discomforts due to unsettled standards, relations, and organization. Like every great evolutionary change it doubtless involves society in certain dangers, as well as promises of great gains. In any case it is certain that the world's notions of woman, and what she ought to be and do, are undergoing unprecedentedly rapid change to-day, and that problems and most puzzling questions of economy and ethics are appearing where none were before. The condition of the woman worker in industry, and in the home too, and efforts to regulate the conditions of employment, either in her own interest or that of her children, are important practical questions of social economy. Such matters, however, demanding immediate action as they often do, are nevertheless incidental to the larger ethical problem of woman's capacity for varied careers, of her right to work, and to such work as she may find herself adapted to, of her duty as child-bearer and nurturer, of widening and heightening her interests, of the introduction of scientific

management and organization into domestic economy, of the possibility, or desirability, of harmonizing woman's duty and joy as mother with economic productivity outside the home, and, most basic of all, of securing for her an economic independence which shall insure to her a real ethical responsibility as a human individual. Whether, by some process not now discernible, women are to be eliminated from industry and the professions and dedicated exclusively to wifehood and motherhood; whether they are to work outside the home till married, then to break their economic and industrial habits and relations squarely off and retire to the drawing room or the kitchen, as the case may be; or whether, as Charlotte Perkins Gilman has long and ably advocated, division of labor, specialization, scientific organization, are to be extended to domestic economics, and woman, as woman, freed from the tradition that housework or house management is her one God-given function - these are questions that are sure to have increasing discussion, and which are even now weaving new designs into the social fabric.

Intimately connected with the woman question, and from one point of view a part of it, is the problem of marriage and divorce. Since the publication of the famous Report on Marriage and Divorce by the United States Commissioner of Labor in 1886, there has been much agitation of the divorce question in this country, an agitation for stricter statutes, matched at the same. time by a strong movement in England for more liberal legislation. With the publication in 1908-1909 by the United States Census Bureau of a special report bringing the statistics of marriage and divorce down to 1906, popular solicitude has increased, at equal pace with the divorce rate itself. Sharp difference of opinion has arisen as to what is a proper attitude toward divorce. Demands for uniform divorce laws in the several states, for reduction in the number of legal grounds for divorce, and for the reform of court procedure have been numerous, and from sources regarded as of high authority. On the other hand, there is strong opposition to any radical diminution of the opportunity to break the bonds of an unsuccessful marriage. There is, of course, every degree of opinion from that of those who advocate

unlimited and free divorce to those who would follow the state of South Carolina and the doctrine of the Catholic Church in forbidding divorce altogether. Evidences of an increasing strain on the bonds of matrimony, of increasing unrest and dissatisfaction at the present status of the institution, and of a highly unsettled condition in the organization of the family are not lacking. Some attribute all this to a decline in moral sense and stamina, to increasing materialism and selfishness, to a deplorable lack of religious feeling; others to the growth of democracy, the development of a stronger sense of individuality and personality in women, to a growing economic independence of women and profound changes in the economic relations of the family, to education, or sometimes the lack of it, and to the general growth of an ethics of rationalism and social utilitarianism. Ecclesiastical doctrines, popular conceptions, and rationalistic views of marriage, and consequently of divorce, are seemingly hopelessly at variance. Thus the problem is far more than a question of court procedure, of securing an immediate diminution in the amount of divorce through uniform statutes or the like, or even of the reform of marriage and registration laws so that a precipitate entrance into the matrimonial state will not be so easy as now. It is one of the deepest problems of social ethics, in which many economic and psychological factors are involved, and in which different social viewpoints-individual or social, a priori or scientific, democratic or class, ecclesiastical or rationalistic are bound to lead to conflicting conclusions.

Since the marriage relation in the Western world was for so many centuries under church control, it is necessary to study the historical conflict between State and Church, between ecclesiasticism and rationalism, over the question. Marriage under Roman Law, the early Christian doctrine, the development of Canon Law control, the influence of the Reformation, the final embodiment of Catholic doctrine, and modern Protestant modifications must all necessarily be examined. So too must the ethics of the diverse historical views. The history of divorce, of marriage and divorce law, and of marriage forms, must claim some attention; and finally the modern rationalistic and evolutionary