121
United States (1907) 126

VI. ASIATICS

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