Mr. Booth, "when we bring the death-rate into account this law no longer
holds."

With the poor living under bad conditions in crowded homes the net
increase is diminished. To those of us who are hopeful of improvement by
eugenics it is pleasing to note that Mr. Booth--somewhat unlike Mr. Kidd
in his well-known "Social Evolution"--is optimistic in his conclusion
that "on the whole it may fairly be expected that concurrently with a
rising standard of health we may see a fall in birth-rate as well as
death-rate, and thus have no cause to fear, as the result of better
sanitation, that the largest natural increase in population will ever be
contributed by the lowest class." So the heritage of the city may grow
not only in quantity but also in quality.

From PROFESSOR W.I. THOMAS
(Professor in the University of Chicago, U.S.A.)

From the standpoint of its applicability to new countries like America,
Professor Geddes' programme is inadequate because of its failure to
recognise that a city under these conditions is formed by a rapid and
contemporaneous movement of population, and not by the lapse of time.
[Page: 136] The first permanent white settler came to Chicago precisely
one hundred years ago, and the city has a population at present of about
two and a quarter millions. It is here not a question of slow historic
development but of the rapid drifting towards a certain point, of a
population from all quarters of the globe, and the ethnological
standpoint therefore becomes of more importance than the historical.

PROFESSOR GEDDES' reply