Mainland United States Research Articles

Social Mobility of Puerto Ricans

Upward mobility is possible to an immigrant group if the institutions of the host society are open to social change and the immigrants’ culture encourages social mobility. The Author tests his assumption by analyzing the Census statistics of 1950 and 1960 for the New York metropolis concerning Puerto Ricans. The conclusion is that in New York between 1950 and 1960 the children of Puerto Rican migrants, at least, were upwardly mobile: they attained some high school education, certain white collar jobs, and, to a lesser extent, higher income. Puerto Rican parents, however, are stil poor, and so are their childen. But if the experience of the decade studied can be a basis for prediction, the possibility of achieving a social class distribution similar to that of other groups in the city is very real for the Puerto Rican migrants in their own remaining life spans and those of their children. The article examines one metropolitan area. Its finding corroborate those discussed by John J. Macisco, Jr. regarding mobility patterns of the Pueto Ricans in the total United States mainland.

CYTOTAXONOMY OF THE SPECIES AND INTERSPECIFIC HYBRIDS OF THE GENUS AGROPYRON IN CANADA AND NEIGHBORING AREAS

A cytotaxonomic treatment is given for 10 native species, 4 introduced species, and 8 natural interspecific hybrids of the genus Agropyron Gaertner that occur in Canada. Five of the native Agropyron species, one introduced species, and one natural interspecific hybrid are also found in Alaska. Eight of the native species, the four introduced species, and four natural interspecific hybrids are present in the mainland United States. Four additional native species and five additional introduced species that occur in the mainland United States are considered briefly.Nomenclatural proposals include: Agropyron dasystachyum (Hook.) Scribn. var. riparium (Scribn. & Smith) Bowden; Agropyron × pseudorepens Scribn. & Smith (pro sp.) nm. pseudorepens and nm. vulpinum (Rydb.) Bowden (A. dasystachyum × A. trachycaulum); and Agropyron × brevifolium Scribn. (pro sp.) (A. scribneri × A. violaceum).Voucher specimens are cited for chromosome number determinations of the native and introduced Agropyron species and some natural and artificial interspecific hybrids. Chromosome numbers are reported for the first time for A. violaceum (2n = 28), A. yukonense (2n = 28), the natural hybrids A. × pseudorepens nm. pseudorepens and nm. vulpinum (2n = 28), A. dasystachyum × A. spicatum (2n = 21), and A. violaceum × A. yukonense (2n = 28), and four artificial interspecific hybrids. Seven natural hybrids and four artificial hybrids are reported for the first time.

Some Economic Aspects of Puerto Rican Migration to the United States

T HE migration of Puerto Ricans to the continental United States (primarily to the New York City region) represents a most striking and important example of population redistribution. The purpose of this study is not only to chronicle some of its important aspects, but also to make use of a fruitful method for relating migration to economic incentives. In it we treat population from the point of view of its function as labor supply; consequently this is a study of net migration. The movement of population from Puerto Rico to the United States mainland provides us with an unusual natural experiment something which is very hard to find in the social sciences in that both the source and receiving areas of movement are readily definable, and information is available over a series of years. Perhaps it is crude to think of the United States and Puerto Rico as points which are receiving and source areas of migration, respectively, but a study of the geographical distribution of the origins and destinations of migrants must follow this preliminary analysis. Of course, since Puerto Rico is politically a part of the United States there are no legal barriers to hinder the flow of population. The theoretical framework which forms the basis of this examination is straightforward. It assumes that migrants change homes in order to improve their lifetime earning prospects; against the expected gains from moving must be balanced various pecuniary and non-pecuniary costs. Examples of the pecuniary costs readily come to mind. Among the most important are transportation and the loss of earnings to migrants while they are travelling and initially unemployed in the receiving country. Nonpecuniary costs involve, among other things, the psychological discomforts of changing social environments. We should expect that changes in the difference between the gain and cost of moving will affect the quantity of migration, and, over the length of time considered in this paper, that the pecuniary factors have fluctuated more widely and systematically than the non-pecuniary. Therefore, a discussion of the migration primarily in economic terms should prove fruitful. The basic model we have used is inspired by a simple empirical observation: in the short run, relative hourly wage rates in the source and receiving areas appear to have but little effect on population flows, but employment rates or job availabilities have an important effect. Consider a potential migrant.' He will probably derive some notion of the gain to him from moving by observing the interregional pattern of wage rates over some length of time, and he is unlikely to be influenced greatly by day-to-day, or even year-to-year fluctuations in these rates. But having decided that the longrun gains outweigh the long-run costs, the potential migrant must decide exactly when to quit his old job and board plane or boat. This will probably depend largely on the difficulty of financing the trip. It is not surprising that, especially when funds for moving are scarce, fluctuations in the short-run cost of migration will be closely associated with fluctuations in migration, itself.2

Puerto Rican Dairying: A Revolution in Tropical Agriculture

FOR the better part of two decades dairying has been firmly established as the second agricultural industry of Puerto Rico. A quarter of a century ago, dairy farming was commercially insignificant; today, the income from this industry more than twice exceeds the combined income from two traditional and better-known crops-coffee and tobacco. Among the major agricultural commodities of the Commonwealth (milk, sugar, livestock, coffee, vegetables, tobacco, and fruit), fluid milk is the only one whose commercial production has steadily and consistently increased both in quantity and in value during the past decade (Fig. 1). The growth of commercial dairying in Puerto Rico is one manifestation of a cultural fusion that has been in process since the beginning of American occupation of the island, in 1898. The Puerto Ricans, historically rooted in Spanish culture, are now linked through their semiautonomous government with the politics and economics of Anglo-America. Dairying offers an example of this cultural dualism, which, to borrow a phrase from Abel Plenn, permeates nearly every phase of Puerto Rican life.' It is part of a rapid socioeconomic transformation that has characterized postwar Puerto Rico. Commercial dairying also represents a break away from the traditional pattern of plantation agriculture. The development of dairying transcends the earlier Spanish and American exploitive colonial commercialism. It is the first significant beginning on the island of the strong and independent agricultural mercantilism that is characteristic of North America and Western Europe, and it constitutes one of the first major productive efforts made by Puerto Ricans for their home market. As in the continental United States, the dairy operator in Puerto Rico usually lives on the farm, owns or leases the land he uses, and often is engaged in the production of commodities other than forage for his cattle. Milk is sold primarily in the urban centers. Commercial dairying is as complicated and sensitive a business in Puerto Rico as it is in the mainland United States, and

Contributions of Plant Pest Control Programs The Need For A Strong Plant Quarantine

I am very pleased to have been asked to participate in this series of papers and to discuss the need for a strong plant quarantine program as one aspect of a concerted effort that needs to be made against introduced plant pests. Actually, the need to protect against further introductions of foreign pests is clearly evident to anyone who is aware that many of the major insects and diseases in this country are of foreign origin. Many of the foreign pests now established in the U. S. that we are having to contend with have been residing with us for many, many years, having arrived prior to the establishment of a Federal quarantine effort. Some of them are thoroughly intrenched in our economy and have practically become a way of life, involving an option of crop losses or costly control programs. More recent arrivals, since we have had a plant quarantine service, such as the golden nematode, the European chafer, the khapra beetle, the Mediterranean fruit fly, and the peek-a-boo appearances of the melon fly and the oriental fruit fly indicated that pests have been able to pierce the best defenses we could mount against them. We do not know when, where, or how these entries may have occurred. We do know that we are being constantly exposed to the dangers of plant pest entry through channels that are recognized to exist with travel and commerce with foreign countries and in the like movement of people and goods from our off-shore areas to the mainland United States.

Point Roberts, Washington—: the Problem of an American Exclave

POINT ROBERTS, WASHINGTON—THE PROBLEM OF AN AMERICAN EXCLAVE Julian V. Minghi* University of Washington, Seattle Point Roberts, Washington, although little known, is, as a result of the delineation of the United States-Canadian boundary along the 49th parallel in 1846, a very unusual political-geographic phenomenon. At the tip of a peninsular projection of the Fraser lowlands, Point Roberts' land connections with the United States are through Canadian territory. Physical connections by water, although entirely within United States' sovereignty, are unimportant , as in the absence of adequate moorage facilities on the Point, this mode of transportation is hardly ever used. Where the only convenient approach is through the territory of another country the term "pene-exclave" has been coined to describe the situation.1 Occupying 4.1 square miles, Point Roberts is administered as a township in Whatcom County, but because it is only ten miles south of the Fraser River it has been affected by the presence and overflow of metropolitan Vancouver. For the first half-century the Point remained conveniently a military reserve , but when settlers arrived in the 1890's its military status was soon lost. By the 1930's some of the richer Canadians from Vancouver had built summer homes near its beaches, and after the war this trend continued. The completion of the Deas Island road tunnel under the Fraser Delta in 1959 intensified still further the Point's growing economic link with Canada. By replacing a ferry and secondary road connection, the new tunnel and associated thruway have improved the access of the whole lower Delta area to Vancouver, bringing Point Roberts within almost a half hour's drive of downtown, and consequently well within commuting distance of a major Canadian urban center, yet it remains almost an hour's drive from the nearest United States mainland point on the other side of Boundary Bay (Fig. 1.) A telling measure of growing Canadian economic dominance is the fact that Canadian property owners now outnumber American by over five to one. For the 240 American permanent residents, the physical separation of this pene-exclave from its national territory is of basic importance. The abnormally high cost, both to the residents for personal services and to American administrative agencies for public services, results from the crucial time-distance factor separating supply and demand, and also from the fact that the potential market area in the intervening Canadian zone can in no * Now University of Connecticut, Storrs, Conn. The field work associated with this paper was carried out in the summer of 1959 while the author was employed as a planning assistant with Whatcom County, Washington. 1 G. S. S. Robinson, "Exclaves," Annals of the Association of American Geographers , IL (September, 1959), p. 283. 29 way defray the cost because American goods and services move through this empty economic space without picking up or unloading part-freights. In a sense this empty space may be compared with the Laurentian Shield which has a similar effect on Canadian east-west transportation costs. The consequent lack of adequate public services, and the inflated prices of retail goods and services detrimentally affect both American and Canadian inhabitants on the Point. A notable example can be found in the extraordinarily long and costly daily journey to Blaine, Washington, for the resident children whose parents insist on an American education. The economic inconveniences of non-contiguity are somewhat offset by the advantages resulting from the uniqueness of the political milieu. The difference in liquor laws between Washington and British Columbia offers the people from north of the 49th parallel (now referred to as the attic) a two hour extension of drinking time on the Point. The nocturnal southward migration produces a considerable source of income for the taverns of Point Roberts. Moreover, the boundary serves to give the Point's American citizens a labor monopoly, protected from Canada by the United States' immigration restrictions, and from the United States' mainland by the prohibitive cost of distance. At the same time, the proximity of, and easy access to the growing Vancouver metropolis have combined with the Point's own advantages of a sunny scenic setting with safe and unpolluted beaches, to revolutionize...

The Changing Role of Rural Industries in the Australian Economy: A Geographic Assessment

THE CHANGING ROLE OF RURAL INDUSTRIES IN THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY: A GEOGRAPHIC ASSESSMENT Craig Duncan* University of Queensland, Brisbane The rural industries have long been accorded a favored place in the Australian economy. Today, several factors threaten the accepted role of these industries. It is the purpose, in this paper, to examine this role, and to seek a reappraisal in terms of the changes which are taking place. Throughout the paper, the expression "rural industries" is used to designate the industries which are essentially a part of the rural landscape. The agricultural, pastoral, and dairying industries are listed in official statistics as the three main rural industries. In the statistical year 1958-59, for example , they accounted for 97 per cent of the total net value of rural production , contributing 12 per cent, 15 per cent and 0.5 per cent, respectively, to the net value of all production within Australia.1 In terms of the implications of the word "rural," trapping and forestry should also be included among the rural industries; but in the official statistics , these are classified as non-rural primary. Because they account for only 2 per cent of the net value of all production, it is expedient to exclude them from consideration here. Australia has an area of 2,971,000 square miles, about that of the mainland United States. Approximately 15 per cent of the population is classed as rural. This is the basic setting for the rural industries, which effectively occupy only about 64 per cent of the total land area. Most of the occupied land area, in turn, is described as "rural holding," with 95 per cent being "used for grazing, lying idle, etc."2 Intensive forms of occupance, including urban, are to be found on only 5 per cent of the occupied land area. As a consequence, intensive and therefore more remunerative uses of the land are extremely limited in location. They are to be found in remarkably contrasting juxtaposition to the extensive forms which surround them. One locational characteristic of intensive use which results from this, is a high degree of selectivity of soil and situation; another is the development, in many cases with but little zonal grading, in the midst of elemental forms of rural activity. Such selectivity and lack of grading are features of immaturity in rural occupancy. Yet the very nature of this immaturity belies the true economic significance of the rural industries to Australia. Rural productivity, for the most part, capitalizes on the extensiveness of land areas rather than * Visiting Associate Professor, Oregon State University, 1961-62. 1 Commonwealth Statistician, Canberra, 1960. The net value of production is the value at place of production, less the value of materials used in the process of production. The use of official statistics throughout this paper is here acknowledged. 2 Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia No. 46, 1960, Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Canberra, p. 948. 21 TABLE 1 Net Value of Rural and Total Production for Selected Statistical Years 1892-1960* (£1000) Year Rural Production Total, All Industries Rural Production as % of Total 1892 1902 1912 1922 1932 1942 1952 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 I960" 56,300 60,700 111,700 201,400 121,100 190,600 783,282 872,366 913,076 1,023,990 848,293 943,474 1,014,273 96,100 114,600 188,400 344,400 252,400 557,500 1,954,804 2,413,670 2,611,290 2,854,710 2,771,553 2,972,289 3,289,561 59 53 59 59 48 34 40 36 35 36 31 32 31 * Gross value from 1891 to 1921-22. Prior to 1922, figures are for years ending previous December. ** Subject to revision. on the intensiveness of production, and provides a more than adequate volume of commodities for a population which has only recently reached ten millions. In Table 1, the relation between the value of rural and total industrial production is tabulated. Rural industries, although increasing in both value (and volume) are contributing a decreasing amount relative to the net value of Australian production.3 Regionally the disparity between rural production and total industrial production is greatest...

Evaluation of Available Supplies in the Western United States, in Relation to Desalinization

This article evaluates the available water supply in the western U.S., along with the use of desalinization plants. Insofar as the United States mainland is concerned, it seems that there will be no substantial need or opportunity to use desalinization plants along the Pacific Coast. A need for these plants may develop along the Texas Gulf Coast when the lower‐cost natural waters are fully utilized. Inland in the seventeen western states, there will develop a great need for additional sources of water. This is an area with substantial quantities of saline waters, where agriculture, especially irrigated agriculture, has a prominent or predominant role in the present economy of each state. As natural freshwaters become fully developed, it will be difficult for agriculture, because of costs, to compete with urban and industrial demands for water. Any solution to water problems involving the production of freshwater from saline waters will have to be within the price range of those who need the water for irrigation. It seems that the high costs of disposing waste saline water from desalinization plants may, in many instances, offer an added problem in the use of inland saline waters as a source of freshwater. Lower costs for methods of extracting freshwater from the sea and inland saline waters are definitely needed.

INDUSTRIAL TAX EXEMPTION IN PUERTO RICO*

DURING THE PAST TEN YEARS the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has lifted itself above the horizon of almost universal poverty. This economic metamorphosis is principally attributable to an embryonic industrial revolution in the form of an influx of mainland United States manufacturing firms. To the degree that industrialization is the corporeal substance of Puerto Rico's recovery, industrial tax exemption is viewed on the island as its principal spiritual progenitor. That so much credit is given to industrial tax exemption will come as a surprise to those who are familiar with the history of this fiscal device on the mainland United States, where it is viewed as ineffective, perverse, inequitable, and even unethical. How industrial tax exemption can be so universally maligned in public finance literature, and yet gain congenial and widespread support in Puerto Rico has served as the raison d'etre for a comprehensive inquiry into the industrial tax exemption program on the island. This new assessment appears to have timely social significance, moreover, because of the paramount interest within recent years in raising the level of living of underdeveloped areas. Industrialization is an integral part of many developmental programs, and this raises the issue of the desirability of using subsidies in order to attract capital from the more advanced countries. This study indicates that tax exemption in Puerto Rico has served as an effective inducement in attracting mainland capital. But the aggregate cost of the tax subsidy, on the other hand, has been inordinately high. The principal cost-incurring disadvantages of tax exemption are: (1) The direct revenue loss is sizable, but is largely concealed and indeterminate. (2) Tax exemption lacks selectivity to a marked degree. (3) The administration of tax exemption is difficult and burdensome. (4) Tax exemption tends to become permanent and to proliferate to other taxable areas of the economy as well as to other political areas. (5) Tax exemption frustrates the achievement of a fair distribution of the tax load. What emerges as a policy conclusion for Puerto Rico is that the shortcomings of the tax subsidy

INCIDENCE OF DERMATOSES IN OFFICE PRACTICE IN HAWAII

In 1941 I classified¹1,171 consecutive diagnoses made in the office practice of dermatologists in Honolulu. These indicated that the dermatoses seen in Hawaii did not differ greatly from those seen in mainland United States.² The purpose of this report is to supplement that series with an additional 2,777 consecutive diagnoses made after the adjustment to war conditions had occurred, and to compare the incidence of certain conditions before the war and during it. EXPLANATORY COMMENT As noted in the previous report,¹there is a widespread impression that the dermatoses seen in Hawaii are different from those seen on the mainland. This, it appears, is not true. There is also a widespread impression that the climate of Hawaii is tropical, or nearly so; this is likewise not true. Hawaii's climate is subtropical, by which is meant "temperate" in the literal — not the