"Very well. You're sure it's not too heavy for you?" he asked anxiously, as her wrists bent a little with the weight.
"Oh, no, indeed," said Dosia quickly, turning to go. At that moment the white cat, jumping down from the table in front of her, rubbed itself against her skirts, and she stumbled slightly.
"Take care!" cried Girard, grasping the shaking pitcher over her slight hold of it.
Their hands touched—for the first time since the night of disaster, the night of her trust and his protection. The next instant there was a crash; the fragments of the jug lay upon the kitchen floor, the water streaming over it in rivulets.
"Dosia!" called the frightened voice of Lois from above.
"Yes, I'm coming," Dosia called back. "There's nothing the matter!" She had run from the room without looking up at that figure beside her, snatching a glass of water automatically from the dining-table as she passed by it. Fast as her feet might carry her, they could not keep pace with her beating heart.
When the telephone-bell rang a moment after, it was to confirm the tidings given before. Justin was in Chicago.
TO BE CONCLUDED
Few branches of sociological investigation have more practical importance, or present a greater number of problems, difficulties, and interesting speculative questions, than the branch that deals with the complex, varied, and often inexplicable phenomena of suicide. When we consider the fact that more than ten thousand persons take their own lives in the United States every year, that more than seventy thousand die annually by their own hands in Europe, and that the suicide rate is constantly and rapidly increasing throughout the greater part of the civilized world, we are forced to admit that, from the view-point of vital economy at least, the subject is one of the utmost gravity. In 1881 the annual suicide rate of the United States was only 12 per million of the population, and our total number of suicides was only 605; last year our suicide rate had risen to 126 per million, and our suicides numbered 10,782. If the present rate of increase be maintained, we shall lose by suicide, in the next five years, nearly as many lives as were lost by the Union armies in battle in the five years of the Civil War. We are already losing annually from this cause more men than were killed on the Union side in the three great battles of Gettysburg, Spottsylvania, and the Wilderness taken together.
Statisticians have estimated that, in the world as a whole, there is a suicide every three minutes, and we know, with an approximation to certainty, that there is a suicide every six minutes and a half in Europe and the United States alone. Suicide has cost France 274,000 lives since 1871, Germany 158,000 since 1893, and the United States 120,000 since 1890. I need hardly point out the practical importance of the questions that present themselves in connection with this abnormal and apparently unnecessary waste of human life. Among such questions are: Upon what general and world-wide conditions does suicide depend? Are any of its causes removable? What are the reasons for the steady and progressive increase of self-destruction in civilized countries? Is suicide controlled or affected by any natural laws, and, if so, by what laws? These are all questions of practical importance, because upon the answers to them depends the possibility of economizing human life and increasing the sum total of human happiness. But the subject is one of deep interest, entirely apart from its practical importance.
In some of its aspects, suicide raises psychological questions which bristle with difficulties, but which, nevertheless, pique the curiosity and demand explanatory answers. Why, for example, is the rate of suicide strictly dependent everywhere upon season and weather? Why is the tendency to self-destruction lessened by war? What is the explanation of suicide in the face of impending death, when there is still a fair chance of escape, or when the natural death that is threatened would involve less suffering than the act of self-destruction? What is the mental state of the hundreds of persons who kill themselves every year upon what would seem to be absurdly inadequate provocation—of the man, for example, who commits suicide because his wife declines to get out his clean underclothes, or the woman who takes poison because she has received a comic valentine? In its religious aspect, why is the tendency to suicide greatest among Protestant Christians and least among Mohammedans and Jews? In its racial aspect, why is the suicide rate of Japan eight times that of Portugal, and the rate of American whites eight or ten times that of full-blooded American blacks? Why do the Slavs of Bohemia kill themselves at the rate of 158 per million, while the Slavs of Russia commit suicide at the rate of only 31 per million? Why do emigrants, going to a new country, carry their national suicide rates with them, and maintain such rates, with little or no alteration, long after their environment has completely changed? These questions may not have great practical importance, but, from the view-point of the psychologist and the sociologist, they are full of speculative interest.
When we study the phenomena of suicide asthey appear in the light of statistics, we are struck by the fact that among the general and world-wide conditions that limit or control the suicidal impulse are weather and war. Other factors, such as education, religion, or economic status, may seem to be more influential, if observation be limited to a single nation or a single continent; but if a comprehensive survey be made of the whole world, weather and war will be seen to take a prominent place among the few agencies that affect uniformly the suicidal tendency.
As soon as accurate and trustworthy statistics of self-destruction became available in Europe, sociologists began to study the question whether suicide is controlled or regulated in any way by natural laws, and, if so, whether cosmical causes, such as climate, temperature, season, and weather, have any perceptible influence upon the suicide rate. It was soon discovered that the tendency to self-destruction is greatest in the zone lying between the fiftieth and fifty-fifth parallels of north latitude. South of forty-three degrees the annual suicide rate is only 21 per million, and north of fifty-five degrees it is only 88 per million; but between the parallels of forty-three and fifty it rises to 93 per million, and between fifty and fifty-five it reaches its maximum of 172 per million. The suicide belt, therefore, lies in the north temperate zone, where the climate is most favorable to human development and happiness. This fact, however, does not prove that a moderate and equable climate predisposes to suicide. Things may coexist without being in any way related to each other, and the frequency of suicide in the north temperate zone may be due wholly to the fact that the zone in question is the home of the most cultivated races and the seat of the highest and most complicated civilization. In this zone the struggle for life is fiercest, the interference with natural laws is most extensive, and the physical and emotional wear and tear of the economic contest is most acutely felt. It is more than probable, therefore, that the high rate of suicide in the north temperate zone is due to the civilization, rather than to the climate, of that region. This phase of the subject need not be discussed at length, because all competent authorities agree that climate, in its relation to suicide, is not a controlling or determining factor.
A very different state of affairs appears, however, when we bring the suicide rate into correlation with season and weather. Long ago, before accurate statistics made a scientific investigation of the subject possible, there was a widely prevalent popular belief that dark and dismal months of the year, and gloomy, rainy, or uncomfortable weather, predisposed mankind to self-destruction, and that the suicide rate was highest in November or December, and lowest in spring or early summer.
The French philosopher Montesquieu went so far as to explain the supposed frequency of suicide in London by connecting it with English rains and fogs. It was only natural, he argued, that unhappy people should kill themselves in a country where the autumnal and winter months were so dark, and where there was so much gloomy, depressing weather. When, however, investigators began to study the subject in the light of accurate statistics, when they grouped suicides by months and compared one month with another, they were surprised to find that the tendency to suicide was greatest, not in the gloomy and depressing months of November and December, but in the bright and cheerful month of June. In 1898 Dr. Oscar Geck, of Strasburg, published statistics of about 100,000 suicides that took place in Prussia in the twenty-year period between 1876 and 1896. They showed that, so far at least as Prussia was concerned, suicides invariably attained their maximum in June and their minimum in December. There was a constant rise in the suicide curve from January to the end of June, and a constant decline from June to the end of the first winter month.
Durkheim, of Paris, and Dr. Gubski, of St. Petersburg, who are among the most recent investigators of the subject, assert that, so far as the seasonal distribution of suicides is concerned, the figures for Prussia hold good throughout Europe. June is everywhere the suicide month, and December is everywhere the month in which self-destruction is least frequent. Durkheim gives tabulated statistics for seven of the principal countries of Europe, which show conclusively that, in point of predisposing tendency to suicide, the four seasons stand in the following order: summer first, spring second, autumn third, and winter last.[17]Even in Russia, which differs most from the rest of Europe in ethnology and economic status, the seasonal distribution of suicidesis the same. Dr. Gubski's statistics show that of every thousand Russian suicides, 328 take place in summer, 272 in spring, 215 in autumn, and 185 in winter. If we divide the year into halves, and group the suicides in semi-annual periods, we find that 600 occur in the pleasant spring and summer months and only 400 in the gloomy months of winter and fall.
A study of American statistics brings us to almost exactly the same result. In September, 1895, Dr. Forbes Winslow, of New York, read a paper before the medico-legal congress which was then in session in that city upon the subject of "Suicide as a Mental Epidemic." The statistics which he submitted showed that in the United States, as in Europe, suicide reaches its maximum in June and falls to its minimum in December. The average annual number of American suicides in June is 336 and in December 217. If we divide the year into halves and compare the figures of the semi-annual periods with those of Russia, the correspondence is almost startling.
Notwithstanding the immense difference between the population of Russia and that of the United States, in environment, in education, in religion, in inherited character, in temperament, and in civilization generally, the mysterious law that controls the seasonal distribution of suicides operates in America exactly as it operates in the great empire of the Slavs. In Russia, out of every thousand suicides, the number who kill themselves in the fall-and-winter half of the year is precisely 400; in America it is 386. In Russia, the proportion per thousand in the spring-and-summer half of the year is 600; in America it is 614. There is a slightly greater tendency to spring-and-summer suicide in the United States than in Russia, but the variation is only a little more than one per cent., and taking into consideration the great difference between the oppressed and ignorant peasants of Russia, and the free, well-educated citizens of our own country, the practical identity of their seasonal suicide rates seems to me a most extraordinary social and psychological fact.
This, however, is by no means a complete statement of the problem involved in the seasonal distribution of suicides. Spring and summer are the suicide seasons, not only among the closely related nationalities of Europe and the United States, but among the ethnologically alien peoples of the Far East. The reports of the Statistical Bureau of Japan show that between 1899 and 1903 the average annual number of suicides was 8,840. They were distributed through the year as follows: winter 1,711, spring 2,475, summer 2,703, fall 1,951. If we divide the year into halves, we find that 59 per cent. of the Japanese suicides occur in the spring and summer months and only 41 per cent. in the months of fall and winter. This corresponds almost exactly with the annual distribution of suicides in the United States, in Russia, and in Europe as a whole. The seasonal percentages may be shown in tabular form as follows:[18]
UnitedStatesRussiaEuropeJapanper cent.per cent.per cent.per cent.Spring and summer61605959Fall and winter39404141
It thus appears that the tendency of mankind to commit suicide in spring and summer, rather than in fall and winter, is quite as strongly marked in Japan as it is in Europe and America. Despite all differences of character and environment, the suicidal impulses of Yankee, muzhik, and coolie are governed by the same law.
The evidence above set forth, and much more for which I cannot here find space, seems conclusively to establish the fact that, throughout the civilized world, the pleasantest seasons of the year are most conducive to suicide. The question then arises, Does this rule hold good if applied to the pleasantest days of the pleasantest seasons? In other words, is the tendency to suicide greater on clear, dry, and sunny days in June than on dark, cloudy, and rainy days in June? Professor Edwin G. Dexter, of the University of Illinois, published in thePopular Science Monthly, in April, 1901, a long and interesting paper entitled "Suicide and the Weather," in which he gave the result of a comparison between the police records of 1,962 cases of suicide in the city of New York and the records of the New York Weather Bureau for all the days on which these suicides occurred. His comparisons and computations, which seem to have been made with great thoroughness and care, show not only that the tendency to suicide is greatest in the spring and summer months, but that it is most marked on the clearest, sunniest, and pleasantest days of those months. To state his conclusions in his own words: "The clear, dry days show the greatest number of suicides, and the wet, partly cloudy days the least; and with differences too great to be attributedto accident or chance. In fact, there are thirty-one per cent. more suicides on dry than on wet days, and twenty-one per cent. more on clear days than on days that are partly cloudy."
It thus appears that, as a rule, the tendency to suicide, throughout the civilized world, is greatest in the pleasantest seasons of the year; that it is everywhere greatest in the pleasantest month of the pleasantest season; and that in New York City it is greatest on the clearest and sunniest days of the pleasantest month. From the point of view of science, therefore, it is perfectly reasonable and absolutely accurate to say on a beautiful, sunny day in early June, "This is regular suicide weather."
Now, what is the explanation of this world-wide tendency to self-destruction in the seasons, months, and days when life would seem to be best worth living? The cause, whatever it be, can have no connection with race, religion, history, political status, or geographical location, because it acts uniformly among peoples as widely different, in all these respects, as the Russians, the Italians, the Americans, and the Japanese. It is evidently a cosmic cause, but what is its nature?
Some investigators have suggested that the suicidal tendency is dependent on heat; but June is not the hottest month, nor is December the coldest. Durkheim has tested this conjecture by comparing temperatures with suicides in France, Italy, and Prussia. He finds that, in all three of these countries, suicides reach their maximum in June and their minimum in December, while the temperature does not rise to its maximum until July and does not fall to its minimum until January.[19]Moreover, if heat were a predisposing cause of suicide, we should find the suicide rate of Europeans much higher in the tropics than it is in the north temperate zone; but such is not the case. Heat, therefore, as a possible cause, must be eliminated. Other writers, including Dr. Gubski, have called attention to the very close relation between suicide and light. It is true that daylight, if measured by hours, has its minimum in December and its maximum in June, in precise correspondence with the seasonal rates of suicide; but what about the equinoctial periods of March and September?
If light be the efficient cause, the tendency to suicide should be as great at the time of the fall equinox as it is at the time of the spring equinox; but this is not the case. Two hundred and seventy-two suicides out of every thousand occur in the vernal equinoctial period and only two hundred and fifteen in the autumnal equinoctial period, and this proportion holds good throughout the whole northern hemisphere. Light, therefore, must also be eliminated.
Morselli suggests that suicide is influenced by the first heat of early spring and summer, which "seizes upon the organism not yet acclimated and still under the influence of the cold season." But is there any such thing as winter debility, and, if so, why should it last until June? Many physicians, on the other hand, assert that during the period of early summer the organism, instead of being debilitated, is working at a high tension, that every function of mind and body is then more active than at any other period of the year, and, that, consequently, there is then greater liability to sudden mental and physical collapse. But there is no evidence to show that suicides, generally, are caused by seasonal overtension and subsequent collapse.
Goldwin Smith thinks that with the revival of vitality in the spring and early summer "all feelings and impressions become more lively," those that impel to suicide among the rest. But if all the feelings "become more lively," why do not the stimulated sensations of joy and pleasure on a beautiful day in June overcome, or at least evenly balance, the stimulated sensations of suffering and unhappiness?
None of these explanations is at all satisfactory, and it seems to me that the solution of the problem is to be found, not in the mere physical action of light, heat, or weather on the human body, but in the influence of the whole environment on the human mind. Sir Arthur Helps was the first, so far as I know, to suggest that the increased tendency to suicide in spring and summer is due to a psychological rather than a physical cause. Speaking, in "Realmah," of the fact that suicides are more frequent on pleasant days than on unpleasant ones, he says: "Perhaps it is because, on these beautiful days, the higher powers seem to be more beneficent; and the wretch overladen with misery thinks that he can trust more to their mercy."
This explanation is little more satisfactory than the others; but it does, nevertheless, recognize and take into account the influence of the environment on a preëxisting emotional state. It errs only in interpretation. The smiling, happy, joyous aspect of Nature in June does not inspire the unhappy man with confidence in the beneficence and mercyof the higher powers. On the contrary, it shows him that the higher powers pay no attention at all to his feelings and have no sympathy whatever with his grief. The blue skies, sunshine, leafy trees, and singing birds, which make up the environment of June, add to the happiness of the man who is happy already, but they intensify, by contrast, the misery of the man who is already miserable. In November and December, when all is dark, bare, and cheerless, Nature seems to be in sympathy with the unhappy man's mood, and from that voiceless, pitying sympathy of the great World-Mother he derives a certain sustaining comfort and consolation. In June his mood is the same, but the mood of Nature has changed. The great World-Mother no longer sympathizes with his grief, but laughs him to scorn with her sunshine, her blossoming flowers, her leafy trees, and her jubilation of mating birds. He looks about him and thinks: "Everybody is happy, everything is rejoicing. I am the solitary exception; I am the only living thing that is out of place." And then there comes upon him a heartbreaking sense of loneliness, a feeling of complete isolation, as if the great, happy world had cast him off and gone on its way singing. He has thought of suicide before—he has thought of it often; and now, when the world, in its triumphant gladness, ignores his very existence, when there is no longer sympathy, nor pity, nor any further hope of a share in the happiness that he sees about him, it seems to him that the time for self-destruction has come. Whether he be a Russian, an American, or a Japanese, he can observe and he can feel: and when he sees that the whole world is jubilant, while he himself is wretched, he becomes more acutely conscious than ever before of his loneliness and misery, and resolves to give up the struggle and get out of the way of the world's laughing, singing, summer-carnival procession. He ends his life; and in some Russian, American, or Japanese table of statistics his death adds one more to the suicides in June.[20]
The close relation that exists between suicide and war was first brought to my attention by the sudden and remarkable decrease of suicide in the United States in 1898, the year of the war with Spain. Instead of increasing that year, as it had every previous year for more than a decade, the number of suicides decreased suddenly from 6,600 to 5,920, a falling off of 680 cases. Then, when the war in the Philippines followed the war in Cuba, the number was again reduced by 580 cases. When, however, in 1900, we began to lose interest in the Philippines and to think of our own home troubles and trials, the number of suicides rose suddenly from 5,340 to 7,245, an increase of 1,905 cases in two years. The decrease in the suicide rate during the war was nearly 16 per cent., and the increase after the war about 23 per cent.
This struck me as a phenomenon interesting enough to warrant investigation, and I began study of it by looking up the statistics of suicide in the national capital. It seemed to me that if the decrease in 1898 was due to a general economic cause, it would not be particularly noticeable in the city of Washington, for the reason that Washington is not a manufacturing or business center. If, on the other hand, the fall in the suicide rate was really due to the war as a specific cause, it would be most marked at the nation's capital, where the war attracted most attention and created most excitement. I went to the District Health Office and made an examination of the suicide records for a term of six years, beginning with 1895 and ending with 1900. I found not only that the depression in the Washington suicide curve was precisely synchronous with that of the national suicide curve, but that it was much deeper, amounting, in fact, to a sudden decrease of fifty per cent.
As suicides are tabulated in the Health Office of the District of Columbia by months, I was able to ascertain, furthermore, that the decrease began, not in the first month of the year, but in the spring months, when the war excitement became epidemic. Normally, the suicide rate should have risen, from January to June, in accordance with the seasonal law; but, instead of so doing, it fell rapidly at the very time when it should have been approaching its maximum. The colored population of the city, taken separately, was affected in the same way and to an even greater degree, the number of suicides among the blacks falling off fifty-six per cent., as compared with fifty per cent. among the whites. The number of suicides in both races remained low throughout the year 1899, and then rose suddenly in 1900, an almost precise correspondence with the suicide curve of the nation as a whole.
During our Civil War the suicidal tendency was affected in the same way,but to a much greater extent. I have not been able to find mortality statistics of the whole country for the period in question, but in New York City the average rate of suicide in the five years of the Civil War was forty-two per cent. lower than the average for the five preceding years, and forty-three per cent. lower than the average for the five subsequent years. In the State of Massachusetts, where accurate statistics were kept, the number of suicides decreased seventeen per cent. in the five-year period from 1861 to 1865, as compared with the five-year period from 1856 to 1860.
In Europe the restraining influence of war upon the suicidal impulse is equally marked. The war between Austria and Italy in 1866 decreased the suicide rate of each country about fourteen per cent. The Franco-German war of 1870-71 lowered the suicide rate of Saxony 8.0 per cent., that of Prussia 11.4 per cent., and that of France 18.7 per cent. The reduction was greatest in France, because the German invasion of that country made the war excitement there much more general and intense than it was in Saxony or Prussia.
An explanation of the decrease of suicide in time of war may be found, perhaps, in the power that any strong excitement has to change the current of thought and substitute one emotion for another. Suicide, among civilized peoples, is largely due to morbid introspection and long brooding over real or imaginary trouble; and anything that takes a man's mind away from his own unhappiness, and gives him a keen interest in things or events about him, weakens his suicidal impulse. An unhappy man might resolve to end his life, and might load a revolver with the intention of shooting himself; but if he should happen to see a couple of his neighbors fighting in his front door-yard, he would probably lay the revolver aside, for a time, and watch the combat. The cause of his unhappiness would still remain, but the current of his thought would suddenly be diverted into a new channel and his despondency would give way to the excitement of a fresh and vivid interest. War acts upon men in the same way, but with greater force.
Then, too, war restrains suicide by strengthening the bonds of social sympathy and drawing large masses of people more closely together. The unhappy man always thinks of himself as lonely, isolated, and out of harmony with his environment; but when, as a result of the victories or defeats of war, he finds himself participating in the triumph or sharing the grief of thousands of other persons, the mere consciousness of sympathetic association with his fellow-men becomes a source of comfort and consolation to him and makes his life more endurable. But war is not the only agency that exerts a restraining influence upon self-destruction. Any great calamity which causes intense public excitement, and which at the same time draws people together in friendly sympathy and coöperation, lowers the suicide rate. The calamity may greatly intensify suffering, and may make life, for a time, almost intolerable; but it does not increase the number of persons who try to escape from life; on the contrary, it reduces it.
A striking illustration of this fact was furnished by San Francisco in 1906. Before the earthquake and fire of April 18 the suicides in that city averaged twelve a week. After the earthquake, when the whole population was homeless, destitute, and exposed to hardships and privations of every kind, there were only three suicides in two months. The decrease, therefore, in the suicide rate was more than 97 per cent. This surprising result of a disheartening and depressing calamity was due partly to the excitement of life under new and extraordinary conditions, and partly to the feeling, which every man had, that he was enduring and working with a host of sympathetic comrades, and not suffering and striving alone. If life were always vividly interesting, as it was in San Francisco after the earthquake, and if all men worked and suffered together as the San Franciscans did for a few weeks, suicide would not end ten thousand American lives every year, as it does now.
The dependence of suicide upon such conditions as age, sex, occupation, and religion does not offer any problem as difficult and baffling as that involved in the relation of suicide to weather, nor any as curious and suggestive as that which connects suicide with war; but there is hardly a phase of the subject that does not present some more or less interesting question. The researches of Durkheim and Gubski show that, after the period of childhood, the tendency to suicide increases steadily with advancing age. In France, for example, if the population be segregated in groups comprising all persons ten to twenty years of age, all persons twenty to thirty years of age, all persons thirty to forty years of age, and so on, by decades, the annual number of suicides per million rises as follows: first group 56, second group 130, third 155, fourth 204, fifth 217, sixth 274, seventh 317, and the rate finally reaches its maximum in the group that comprises persons more than eightyyears of age.
In the United States, the rate increases from 128 per million, in the age group comprising persons under forty-five, to 300 per million in the age group comprising persons over sixty-five. The figures vary in different countries, according to the hereditary national suicide tendencies; but the steady increase with advancing age is common to all. These statistics would seem to support the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer, and to prove that the longer one lives the less one wants to live; but it must not be forgotten that the suicide rate is a measure of exceptional unhappiness, not of the general welfare.
In the suicidal tendencies of the sexes there is, as might be expected, a very great difference. In all countries and in all parts of the world, suicides among women are far less frequent than among men. The ratio varies from one to two to two to five. This difference is generally attributed to the supposed fact that women are sheltered and protected by men, as well as by their domestic environment, and that, consequently, they suffer less from the wear and tear of life; but I doubt very much the adequacy of this explanation. The life of women, in the world at large, is quite as hard as that of men, and often harder. In the higher and wealthier classes of society women may be, and doubtless are, sheltered and protected; but in the poorer classes they take their full share of the suffering, even if they do not bear the brunt of the struggle.
The hundreds of Russian women who between 1877 and 1885 were exiled to eastern Siberia for political offenses had no shelter or protection whatever, and must necessarily have suffered more than the exiled men from the hardships and privations of banishment; and yet, I am quite sure that I understate the fact when I say that the number of suicides among the men was at least five times greater than it was among the women. The exiled men themselves admitted to me that when it came to the endurance of suffering against which no fight could be made and from which there was no escape, the women were greatly their superiors. The infrequency of self-destruction among women, as compared with that among men, seems to me to be due, not to their comparative immunity from suffering, but to three other causes, namely, first, a greater power of patient, passive endurance, when there is no fight to be made; second, a mind and heart that are more influenced by feelings and beliefs that may be called religious; and, third, a peculiar capacity for self-restraint and self-preservation, based on the maternal instinct, that is, on closer and more intimate relations with, stronger love for, and greater devotion to young children.
A study of the relation that suicide bears to occupation discloses some interesting and noteworthy facts. The first is that soldiers, both in Europe and in the United States, must be put in a class by themselves, for the reason that the suicide rate of army officers and men is so much higher than that of the populations to which they belong that they can hardly be included in the same category. In Prussia, for example, the proportion of military suicides to civilian suicides is 1½ to 1; in England 2½ to 1; in Italy 5 to 1; in Austria 10 to 1; and in Russia nearly 11 to 1. Even in the United States, the tendency of soldiers to kill themselves is 8½ times that of adult men in civil life.
This disproportionately high suicide rate in armies is not easy of explanation. In countries where military service is compulsory, and where inexperienced young men, torn suddenly from their families, are subjected to rigorous discipline in a strange and uncongenial environment, the suicidal impulse may be intensified by homesickness, loneliness, humiliation, and the monotony of camp or barrack life; but in our own country, where the army is filled by voluntary enlistment, and where the relations between officers and men are fairly sympathetic and cordial, there would seem to be fewer reasons for unhappiness and suffering than in the military service of Italy, Austria, or Russia. The American soldier is generally well taken care of and well treated; and while his life, in time of peace, is not exciting, it is easier and less monotonous than that of a factory operative, and it is hard to understand why he should be abnormally disposed to self-destruction. His suicidal tendency, however, is reduced by war, just as that of the civil population is, and for the same reasons.
Statistics of self-destruction are not yet accurate and detailed enough to enable us to determine the relation that suicide bears to business employment; but it may be said, in a general way, that the occupations in which the suicide rate is lowest are those that involve rough manual labor out of doors and employ men of comparatively little educational culture, such as miners, quarrymen, shipwrights, fishermen, gardeners, bricklayers, and masons. Next come farmers, shopkeepers, and town artisans. And at the head of the list, with the highest suicide rate ofall, are physicians, journalists, teachers, and lawyers. The tendency of these professional classes to commit suicide is from one and a half to three times as great as that of the population generally.
Clergymen, however, who also constitute an educated professional class, have a suicide rate which is only half that of the population as a whole, and this is undoubtedly due to the restraining influence of religion, which is much stronger in clergymen than in laymen. The relation of suicide to religion raises a number of curious and interesting questions, but, unfortunately, the religious factor is so involved with other factors in the complicated problem of self-destruction that it is almost impossible to isolate it so as to study it alone. For example, the suicide rate of Protestant Christians in the northern part of Ireland is twice that of Roman Catholics in the southern part; but here education comes in as a complication: the Protestants are generally better educated than the Catholics, and their higher suicide rate may be due to their education and not to the form of their religion. In Europe generally, the tendency to suicide is much greater among both Protestants and Catholics than among Jews; but here education, race, and economic condition all come in as complicating factors, so that it is impossible to credit the Jewish faith alone with the lower rate. In view, however, of the fact that the suicide rate of the Protestant cantons in Switzerland is nearly four times that of the Catholic cantons, it seems probable that Catholicism, as a form of religious belief, does restrain the suicidal impulse. The efficient cause may be the Catholic practice of confessing to priests, which probably gives much encouragement and consolation to unhappy but devout believers, and thus induces many of them to struggle on in spite of misfortune and depression.
The Salvation Army, in attempting to lessen self-destruction by opening "anti-suicide bureaus" in large cities, and by inviting persons who are contemplating suicide to visit these bureaus and talk over their troubles, is virtually introducing a system of confession which, so far as this particular evil is concerned, resembles that of the Catholic Church.
In view, however, of the conflicting nature of the evidence, and the extreme difficulty of disentangling religious factors from other important factors, I doubt the possibility of drawing any trustworthy conclusions with regard to the dependence of suicide upon religious belief. It may be said, as a matter of record, that the tendency to self-destruction is greatest among Protestant Christians, next largest among Roman Catholics and Orthodox Greeks, and lowest among Mohammedans and Jews; but the differences are not certainly due to religion.
The dependence of suicide upon nationality and race presents a number of problems of great interest, but of extraordinary difficulty and complexity. I can state a few of these problems, but I cannot solve any of them.
Among the highest suicide rates in Europe are those of Saxony and Denmark, and among the lowest those of Italy, Portugal, and Spain. You may perhaps conclude, from this, that the tendency to self-destruction is much greater among the Slavs and Scandinavians of the north than it is among the Latin peoples of the south, and that the differences are due to latitude or race; but your specious generalization is shattered when you discover that the suicide rates of Norway and Russia, both northern countries inhabited by Scandinavians and Slavs, are almost as low as those of Italy, Portugal, and Spain, all southern countries inhabited by Latins.
From an ethnological point of view, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are nearly homogeneous Scandinavian states, and we should therefore expect their suicide rates to be nearly if not quite identical; but the rate of Denmark is twice that of Sweden and three times that of Norway.
The Slavs of Bohemia do not differ ethnologically from the Slavs of Dalmatia, but the suicide rate of the one group is 158 per million, while that of the other is only 14 per million. Saxony is not far away, geographically, from Belgium; but the suicide rate of the former is 324 per million, while that of the latter is only 128 per million.
I am unable to offer even a conjectural solution of the problems involved in the differences thus shown to exist between populations that are ethnologically identical, or that stand at nearly the same level of educational culture and economic well being.
The extremely high suicide rate of the Germanic peoples long ago attracted the attention of European sociologists, but, so far as I know, it has never been satisfactorily explained. If it were limited to adults it might possibly be attributed to economic causes, particularly to the rapid development of manufacturing industry, which seems everywhere to increase the suicidal tendency; but self-destruction in Germany is almost as common among children as among grown people. Between 1883 and1903 there were 1,125 suicides among the pupils of the public schools in Prussia alone, and most of them were of boys and girls under fifteen years of age. An investigation made by the ministry of public instruction showed that this prevalence of suicide among children was not due to the conditions of modern life in cities, inasmuch as the proportion of cases was fully as large in places of the smallest size as in crowded centers of population. It seemed to be due, rather, to an inherent suicidal tendency in the race.
Racial characteristics, however, do not by any means account for the extraordinary differences in suicide rates that we find among the European peoples, as shown in the following table:[21]
In Dalmatia (about 1896)14European Russia (1900)31Bulgaria (about 1900)118
In Norway (1901-'05)65Sweden (1900-'04)142Denmark (1901-'05)227
In Spain (1893)21Portugal (1906)23Italy (1901-'05)64France (1900-'04)227
In Austria (1902)173Prussia (1902-'06)201Saxony (1902-06)324Bavaria (1902-'06)141
In Ireland (1906)34Scotland (1905)65England and Wales (1906)100Australasia (1903)121United States (1907)126
In Japan (1905)209
It is difficult to assign definite or satisfactory reasons for the wide differences shown in the above table. Skelton has suggested that the low suicide rates of certain countries are due to emigration, "which provides an outlet for a great deal of misery and constitutes a hopeful alternative to suicide"; but this conjecture, although ingenious, is hardly supported by the facts. It might perhaps explain the low suicide rates of Italy and Ireland, but it does not account for the equally low suicide rate of the Russian peasants, who emigrate hardly at all, nor for the extremely high suicide rate of the Germans, who emigrate in large numbers. Neither does it throw any light upon the persistence of national suicide rates long after emigration. The generalization that seems to harmonize and explain the greatest number of facts is that suicide is most prevalent in countries where education goes hand in hand with highly developed manufacturing industry. In Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Russia the people have little education, manufacturing industries are feebly developed, and the suicide rate is low. In Saxony the percentage of illiteracy is very small, more than half of the population work in factories, and the suicide rate is the highest in Europe. I do not dare to assert that even this rude generalization is warranted by the facts; but, if it were sustained, it would seem to show that suicide is a by-product of the great, complicated machine that we call modern civilization.
Whatever may be the reasons for differences in national suicide rates, and whatever may be the causes that have produced them, there is little doubt, I think, that the rates themselves are true manifestations of national character, and that they are as permanent as the character of which they are an outcome. When, therefore, a people migrates from one place to another, it takes both its character and its suicide rate to the new location. This is clearly apparent in the vital statistics of immigrants who come from various parts of Europe to the United States. Such immigrants, as a rule, prosper here and become happier here, but the increased prosperity and happiness do not greatly affect the suicidal tendencies that they had when they were poor and wretched in their original homes. Even their descendants, born in America, keep substantially unchanged the suicide rates that they have inherited, with their character, from their European ancestors. The Germans who came here forty or fifty years ago brought a high suicide rate with them, and their descendants maintain it. The Irish, on the contrary, brought a low suicide rate to this country, and their children have it still. In the following table will be found the suicide rates of a few nationalities in Europe and of their descendants in the United States.[22]