Hardly anything gives rise to more confusion than discussing the “struggle for existence” without a clear understanding of the relativity of all struggle to conditions and standards. When you say, “The struggle for existence is a good thing,” the thoughtless infer that the harsher it is the better. On the other hand, when you say, “The struggle for existence (under misery conditions) is degrading,” the thoughtless of another bias conclude that it ought to be abolished and life made comfortable to all, regardless of achievement. We need a struggle, with standards to arouse exertion and to shut out incompetence; and these standards should be the highest in social requirement, and their enforcement the most humane that we are able to establish. I take it that we are trying to pass from low standards and brutal or haphazard means of enforcement to a higher condition in both respects. We need to distinguish rather sharply between moderate hardship and a really degrading poverty, or, if you please, between poverty and misery,[60] between a state in which social standards _can_ be maintained and one in which they inevitably break down. The latter means general retrogression, and is accompanied by conditions, such as ignorance, disease and vice, which are destructive of biological standards as well as social. The former permits that real but not brutal struggle for existence which is a part of the life of every people and essential as a guarantee against degeneration. Is it not true that moderate economic hardship acts as a frontier, a fighting-line, where fundamental standards, both biological and social, are maintained, and hardy and humane types of men are developed? There are kinds and degrees of difficulty, sufficient to be exacting but not enough to be destructive, that test and sift and reinvigorate the people who pass through them. The case of the present immigrant to America is not so different from that of the pioneer as we are apt to think. He also comes from a crowded place to a place of opportunity, and strives by a bold venture to better his condition and enlarge the boundaries of life. Some succeed and some fail; accident, we must admit, plays a great part. Many of the attendant conditions are unfair and demoralizing—as was the case with the pioneers. Nevertheless, the general outcome, even as things go now (and we may hope to make them go much better), is the fostering of vigorous types. The history of those who have been in this country for two or three generations makes this fairly evident.