EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS Edward Alsworth Ross is nationally one of the best-known men here represented. He was born at Virden, Illinois, in 1866; was graduated from Coe College, Iowa, in 1886; and then continued his education in Berlin and Johns Hopkins. He has been professor of economy, sociology, and kindred subjects at many universities, including Indiana University, Cornell, Leland Stanford, Junior, the University of Nebraska, and, since 1906, the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of many books and magazine articles, among the most noteworthy of the former, perhaps, being "Sin and Society," "Social Psychology," "Latter Day Sinners and Saints," and "The Changing Chinese." The selection here chosen is from the last named book. The style is like the man, forceful, trenchant, and abounding in life. Mr. Ross's tall, rugged, muscular figure and forceful gestures are familiar to the lovers of lectures in Wisconsin, and all who have been fortunate enough to hear him, whether in regular classes at the University, or in extension or other lecture work, will recall his striking appearance as they read the clear, clean-cut statements in this selection. THE CONFLICT OF ORIENTAL AND WESTERN CULTURES IN CHINA From "THE CHANGING CHINESE." Chapter I. Copyright, 1911, by the Century Co. China is the European Middle Ages made visible. All the cities are walled and the walls and gates have been kept in repair with an eye to their effectiveness. The mandarin has his headquarters only in a walled fortress-city and to its shelter he retires when a sudden tempest of rebellion vexes the peace of his district. The streets of the cities are narrow, crooked, poorly-paved, filthy, and malodorous. In North China they admit the circulation of the heavy springless carts by which alone passengers are carried; but, wherever rice is cultivated, the mule is eliminated and the streets are adapted only to the circulation of wheel-barrows and pedestrians. There is little or no assertion of the public interest in the highway, and hence private interests close in upon the street and well-nigh block it. The shopkeeper builds his counter in front of his lot line; the stalls line the streets with their crates and baskets; the artisans overflow into it with their workbenches, and the final result is that the traffic filters painfully through a six-foot passage which would yet be more encroached on but for the fact that the officials insist on there being room left for their sedan chairs to pass each other.