Microplastic pollution in coastal

ecosystem off Mumbai coast, India Udai

Ram Gurjar & K.A Martin Xavier & Satya
Prakash Shukla & Ashok Kumar
Jaiswar & Geetanjali Deshmukhe &
Binaya Bhusan Nayak
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 Chemosphere 288 (2022) 132484

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Chemosphere
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/chemosphere

Microplastic pollution in coastal ecosystem off Mumbai coast, India

Udai Ram Gurjar a, K.A Martin Xavier a, *, Satya Prakash Shukla b, Ashok Kumar Jaiswar a,
Geetanjali Deshmukhe a, Binaya Bhusan Nayak a
a
Fisheries Resource Harvest and Post-Harvest Management Division, ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Education (CIFE), Mumbai, 400061, Maharashtra, India
b
Aquatic Environmental Management Department, ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Education (CIFE), Mumbai, 400061, Maharashtra, India

H I G H L I G H T S G R A P H I C A L A B S T R A C T

• Microplastics were observed in all the

studied water, sediments and biota
samples.
• MP abundance was relatively higher in
pelagic carnivorous species.
• The smaller size MPs (<250 μm) were
dominantly observed in GI tracts of
marine biota.
• Fish processing interventions to be fol­
lowed prior to consumption for reducing
the health risks.

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Handling Editor: Michael Bank Microplastics (MPs) are anthropogenic pollutants which can adsorb toxic substances from surrounding water and
absorb into the fish body. During the present study, MPs were observed in water, sediment, and gastrointestinal
Keywords: tracts of marine biota samples collected from the coastal waters of Mumbai, India. The mean abundances of MPs
Microplastics recorded in water samples 372 ± 143 items/liter and 9630 ± 2947 items/kg dry weight (DW) in sediment
Water and sediment
samples. The mean abundance of MPs in pelagic fish species varied from 6.74 ± 2.74 to 9.12 ± 3.57 items/
Pollution
individual and in the demersal species the values ranged from 5.62 ± 2.27 to 6.6 ± 2.98 items/individual. Shape-
Marine biota
wise, four type of MPs were observed in the surface waters, sediments and all studied species, predominantly
fibers, followed by fragments, pellets/beads, and films. Seven different colors of MPs (red, blue, black, trans­
lucent, brown, green, and yellow) were observed from studied samples. MPs of size below 250 μm formed the
dominant size in the surface water, sediments, and biota samples except Bombay duck and Malabar sole fish.
Based on Raman spectroscopy analysis, eleven types of plastic polymers identified from all studied samples.
Thus, presence of MPs in studied biota indicates the transfer of MPs through interlinked food chain/web to
higher trophic levels and the occurrence of MPs in the fish gut underlines the necessity of more studies on
processing interventions for reducing the microplastic contamination in fish for human consumption.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: martinxavier@cife.edu.in (K.AM. Xavier).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.132484
Received 11 July 2021; Received in revised form 26 September 2021; Accepted 4 October 2021
Available online 5 October 2021
0045-6535/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
U.R. Gurjar et al.
1. Introduction
Globally, plastic production has reached to 359 million metric tons in
2018 (Plastics Europe, 2019). Plastic pollution has become a serious
environmental concern. However, breaking down larger plastic items
into minute fragments (<5 mm-microplastics) has posed severe risk
(Andrady, 2015). Recently, microplastics (MPs) have been identified as
a significant emergent global issue that troubles the life under the sea as
well as human health (Wang et al., 2019). These MPs are the persistent
addition in the aquatic systems and potentially biomagnified in the
living organisms due to non-degradation by microorganisms (Yoshida
et al., 2016). Among all the aquatic faunas, fishes are most affected by
accidental ingestion of MPs. Generally, ingestion of MPs occurs through
direct consumption of MPs at the lower trophic level and reach higher
trophic levels via food chain (Nelms et al., 2018). Therefore, ingestion of
these tiny particles can lead to different abnormalities in the fish body,
such as false hunger satisfaction, physiological stress, reduced enzyme
production, pseudo satiation, reproductive complications, oxidative
stress, and slow growth rate (Espinosa et al., 2017; Jovanović, 2017).
MPs can also adsorb lethal and toxic substances from surrounding
seawater which can enter into the fish body (Reisser et al., 2014). The
ingestion of these particles leads to blockage of the digestive tract which
causing apart from other toxicity in the organisms (Jovanović, 2017).
Keeping in mind the detrimental effect of MPs on aquatic life and
humans, scientific research related to impact of MPs on the ecosystem
has become central issue of research (Shim and Thomposon, 2015). Thus
many reports have been published on the ingestion of MPs by pelagic,
demersal, estuarine, and freshwater biota (Lusher et al., 2013; Zhu et al.,
2019; Gurjar et al., 2021a). Every year, India generates 3.8 million tons
of domestic plastic waste materials (Ministry of Housing and Urban
Affairs, 2019). The Mumbai coast has been undergoing substantial
changes due to rising population, development in coastal areas, and
anthropogenic activities such as industrial and sewage discharge,
municipal solid wastes, tourism, waste from fishing activities (Takar
et al., 2020). In earlier reports, authors have conferred the MPs in beach
sediments golden anchovy and shrimp species along the studied region
(Jayasiri et al., 2013; Gurjar et al., 2021a, 2021b).
The widespread pressures of plastics, especially MPs in natural
habitats and trophic food chains have required regulatory and govern­
ment agencies to gadget targeted activities to mitigate and control
plastic pollution (Galgani et al., 2013). Since commercially exploited
fishes form the main route of MPs transfer from the ecosystem to
humans, an assessment of the rate of microplastic ingestion by the
diverse aquatic biota will help to understand the threats of microplastic
pollution on the ecosystem services and consumers. Along the studied
region small size fishes and shrimps are also consumed in dried form
without removing the gut and hence the availability of MPs in the gut
and their further involvement in the human food is worth reporting.
Further, the knowledge about the concentration of MPs is essential to
assess threat to the marine environment and aquatic organisms. Along
the studied region, limited studied has been performed on the micro­
plastic pollution in coastal beaches and fishes and even still no studies
has been carried out on MPs pollution in coastal sediments and waters.
In view of these facts, the present study was conducted to generate
baseline information on the site-specific microplastic pollution in the
coastal waters, sediments, and commercial fishes and shellfishes, in
order to the intensity of the impacts of microplastic pollution on the
ecosystem and coastal biota of the North eastern Arabian Sea, India.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Study area and sampling procedure
To conduct the present study, coastal areas of Mumbai were selected,
which receive a huge load of plastics waste through industrial and
sewage discharge, fishing activities, aqua tourism, and untreated
2
Chemosphere 288 (2022) 132484
domestic wastewater (Takar et al., 2020). For the study, pelagic species
(Bombay duck, Harpodon nehereus, and White sardine, Escualosa thor­
acata) and demersal species (Belanger croaker, Johnius belangerii;
Malabar sole fish, Cynoglossus macrostomus, and Kadal shrimp, Meta­
penaeus dobsoni) were harvested using a mechanized trawler (Institute’s
fishing research vessel) from the studied areas at depths up to 20 m
during September 2019 to February 2020 (Fig. 1). All collected samples
were kept in an icebox during transportation to the laboratory where
samples were stored in a deep freezer at − 20 ◦ C for further analysis.
Feeding type, habitat, and trophic level for studied species were
collected from the published literature and online data resource Fish­
Base (Froese and Pauly, 2019).
2.2. Gastrointestinal (GI) tracts digestion and filtration
In the laboratory, specimens were thawed; length and weight of in­
dividual specimens were noted and dissected. The gastrointestinal tracts
of all studied samples were carefully dissected out, weighed and stored
in labeled tubes. For the digestion or remove of the organic matter,
samples were kept for 24 h at room temperature after addition of 25–30
ml of 30% hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) into each glass tube, if natural
organic material is visible, add another 20 ml of 30% H2O2 and keep it
back for 12 h to complete the digestion of organic materials (Masura
et al., 2015). After digestion, 4.4 M NaI solution was added into sus­
pension to increase the density of the aqueous solution and kept back for
24 h to allow MPs to float. The clear and supernatant solution was sieved
through nitrocellulose filter paper having a pore size of 0.45 μm under
vacuum filtration and subsequently filtered samples were kept in indi­
vidual Petri dishes with lids and dried at room temperature for further
analysis.
2.3. Water and sediment sampling and analysis
During the study period, monthly water and sediment samples were
randomly collected from three different locations along the studied re­
gion (Fig. 1). Barrows et al. (2017) observed that the water sample
collected surface grab sampling has more MPs than the neuston net tow
sampling because during the sampling procedure the small sized MPs
passed through the mesh of neuston net (333 μm). Therefore, 30 L of
surface water (up to 50 cm depth) was collected using through iron sling
with a stainless steel bucket. The collected water was immediately
sieved through an iron mesh sieve (mesh size 5000 μm) in a steel drum
and covered. At the laboratory, three subsamples of water (each of 1 L)
were taken and filtered through 0.45 μm pore size nitrocellulose filter
paper and filtered materials were kept for digestion of organic matters
using the 30% H2O2. After digestion solutions were filtered through
0.45 μm pore size nitrocellulose filter paper under a vacuum filtration.
Thereafter, filtered samples were subsequently kept in individual Petri
dishes with lids and dried at room temperature for further analysis.
Sediments were sampled to a depths up to 20 m using a sediment
grab sampler from the study area. Further, a subsample of 500 g wet
weight was collected from each location, and mixed. The mixed sample
was dried in the oven at 60 ◦ C. From the dried sediment three sub­
samples each of 10 g were transferred into separate glass bottles and 30
ml of potassium metaphosphate (5.5 g/L) was added it and mixed for 30
min at a speed of 1000 RPM, using a stir bar to break up the clods
(Masura et al., 2015). Latter, the sediment solution was sieved through
5 mm sized mesh sieves and washed with filtered distilled water. In the
sieved materials, 4.4 M NaI solution was added for the density separa­
tion of MPs, treated with hydrogen peroxide, and filtered as described
previously.
2.4. Identification of microplastics
The materials retained on the filter papers were observed using an
Olympus stereo zoom microscope (SZX16 Model, India). The visual
U.R. Gurjar et al.
Fig. 1. Map showing the sampling locations in north eastern Arabian Sea.
assessment of MPs was made according to the shape, colour, and size of
the material, and the images were captured (Li et al., 2015; Gurjar et al.,
2021b). Raman spectroscopy was used to efficiently evaluate the MPs
polymer (Gurjar et al., 2021b; Dong et al., 2020a). Further, the sus­
pected particulates, on the filter paper were analyzed using laser Raman
spectroscopy to confirm the functional groups of plastic polymer.
2.5. Contamination control
During the experimental field sampling, glass bottles containing
filtered distilled water were kept open as blank field samples at each
sampling location. Altogether, eighteen blank field samples were used to
quantify the potential contamination during the field sampling proced­
ure. Two MP items were recorded from the eighteen field blank samples,
which was negligible as compared to the total number of MP items
recorded in the present study. A total of 36 laboratory blanks without
seawater, sediment, and gastrointestinal tract samples were used to
know the procedural contamination. To minimize the chance of MPs
contamination in the laboratory, all glass wares were rinsed twice with
ultrapure water, wore nitrile gloves and personnel cotton lab coat and
the samples were covered with aluminum foil to prevent air-borne
contamination during the entire process. The extraction of MPs from
all samples was performed under a fume hood and remained covered
with aluminum foil to prevent air-borne contamination during the lab­
oratory procedure. All the used chemicals and mixtures were filtered
through a filter paper having a pore size of 0.45 μm (Gurjar et al.,
2021a).
2.6. Statistical analysis
The obtained data were analyzed using the EXCEL (2013 version,
Microsoft) and SPSS software (version 20.0). One-way ANOVA was
performed to know the difference in size-wise microplastic abundance
between the studied marine species. Pearson correlation was used to
check the associations between microplastic abundance and the total
length, total weight, GI tract weight of studied samples.
3
Chemosphere 288 (2022) 132484
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Abundance of microplastics in water and sediments
MPs were observed in all the studied water and sediments samples
collected from Mumbai coast, where the abundances of MPs ranged from
165 to 547 items/liter in water and 4900–14,500 items/kg dry weight
(DW) in sediments. The MP items observed in sediments during the
present research, are in accordance with earlier findings (Bauerlein
et al., 2020; Leslie et al., 2017). In Dutch marine sediments, MPs ranged
from 479 to 13,931 items/kg DW (Bauerlein et al., 2020); 100 to 3600
particles/kg dry sediment were recorded from the Dutch North Sea coast
(Leslie et al., 2017). The Amsterdam urban canal water and sediment
contained 48–187 per liter and 68–10,500 particles/kg DW, respectively
(Leslie et al., 2017). The raw sewage influents collected from municipal
wastewater treatment plants in the Netherlands contained microplastic
concentrations of 68–910 particles/liter (Leslie et al., 2017). Dong et al.
(2020b) also recorded the higher abundance of MPs 7707 items/kg in
sediment collected from an urban lake in Wuhan city. MPs in the size
fraction between 63 and 5000 μm have been recorded in the sediment of
rivers Rhine and Main in ranged from 228 to 3763 and 786–1368
items/kg DW, respectively (Klein et al., 2015). The very high numbers of
MP with 75,000 particles/kg were recorded in the sediment of river
Mersey/Irwell (Hurley et al., 2018). Kim et al. (2015) studied MPs dis­
tribution in surface water of Soya Island, South Korea, and found, on
average, 46,334 ± 71,291 items/m2. The abundances of MPs were
recorded in water (334–1058 items/m3) and sediments (508–3987
items/kg DW) with the dominance of fiber in Fengshan river, Taiwan
(Tien et al., 2020). All these studies show that throughout the world,
sediments and waters of the sea, rivers, and lakes are contaminated with
microplastic pollution. Similarly, present study revealed that studied
region also polluted with MPs due to its huge population and various
anthropogenic activities such as abrasion of tires, fishing activities, in­
dustrial and sewage discharge into the coastal waters.
U.R. Gurjar et al. Chemosphere 288 (2022) 132484

3.2. Characteristics of microplastics in water and sediments recorded in the coastal water and sediments of Goa (Saha et al., 2021)
and southwest coast of India (Robin et al., 2020). The black MPs mainly
In the present study, smaller MPs less than 100 μm and 250 μm was might have come into the environment due to abrasion of tires on the
comparatively higher appeared in the coastal water than sediments, road surfaces as regular wear and tear (Wik and Dave, 2009). Colored
while MPs with size groups of greater than 250 μm was higher in coastal microplastic particles are commonly used in packaging, clothing, and
sediments than water (Fig. 2). Small sized MPs generated from the several other applications (Wang et al., 2017).
degradation of large plastic debris or direct discharge of primary MPs
after using related products (Cole et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2017; Lin
3.3. Abundance of microplastics in biota
et al., 2018). As plastic marine debris on coastal beaches and floating in
coastal water is exposed to solar UV radiation, it undergoes extensive
During the present study, 1725 MP particles were collected from the
weathering and progressively degrades it into smaller particles (Cooper
gastrointestinal tracts of 250 specimens of pelagic (Bombay duck, Har­
and Corcoran, 2010; Yakimets et al., 2004). Frei et al. (2019) observed a
podon nehereus and White sardine, Escualosa thoracata) and demersal
higher abundance of MPs with decreasing the particle size.
species (Belanger croaker, Johnius belangerii; Malabar sole fish, Cyn­
During the present study, four different morpho-types of MPs such as
oglossus macrostomu, and kadal shrimp, Metapenaeus dobsoni) and MPs
fibers, fragments, pellets/beads, and films were recorded from the sur­
were found in all the studied samples (Table 1). The results of the pre­
face water and sediment samples (Fig. 3). Fibres were most dominant in
sent study may not be directly comparable to other studies from
the coastal water and sediments of studied region, followed by frag­
different parts of the world due to methodological variations; however,
ments, pellet/beads and films (Fig. 4). Globally, fiber-shaped MPs
similar results on occurrence of MPs in all fishes was reported from the
represent the highest abundance of plastic in marine environments
Adriatic Sea (Anastasopoulou et al., 2018), R’ıo de la Plata estuary
(Walkinshaw et al., 2020). The more availability and distribution of
(Pazos et al., 2017) and Shanghai market (Jabeen et al., 2017).
fiber-shaped MPs shown a close association to the various anthropogenic
Comparatively lower ingestion was observed in fishes from the different
activities such as waste generated during washing of clothes, rope ma­
part of the globe such as Adriatic sea (Pellini et al., 2018), Tokyo Bay
terial used in the fisheries sector and textile fibres from domestic
(Tanaka and Takada, 2016); Mediterranean Sea (Nadal et al., 2016;
wastewater discharge, and other activities by the local human in the
Güven et al., 2017; Fossi et al., 2018; Giani et al., 2019), Kerala (Daniel
studied region (Takar et al., 2020; White et al., 2018; Andrady, 2011).
et al., 2020), North Pacific Central Gyre (Boerger et al., 2010), south­
The fragments might result from the degradation of larger plastic
west coast of India (Robin et al., 2020), south east Bay of Bengal (Kar­
products due to abrasion and weathering (Karthik et al., 2018). In
uppasamy et al., 2020), south east coast of India (James et al., 2020). In
contrast, film originates from mismanaged single-use plastic packaging
the present study, MPs abundance was found to be positively correlated
materials that are easily carried by winds and riverine discharge (Robin
(p < 0.01) with the total length, total weight and GI tract weight of
et al., 2020). On the other hand, pellets/beads resulted from the use of
individuals (SI Table 1), which suggests that the larger size of in­
microbeads in cosmetic and personal care products and accidental or
dividuals contained the more MPs than smaller ones (Gurjar et al.,
intentional spillage and disposal during their manufacture (White et al.,
2021b).
2018; Mintenig et al., 2017).
MPs were found in both pelagic and demersal species, but the MP
In the present study, seven different MPs colors (red, blue, black,
abundance was relatively higher in pelagic species, possibly due to
translucent, brown, green and yellow) were recorded with predominant
insignificant weight of these particles allowing them to restrict to
black color in coastal water and sediment samples (Fig. 5). The color of
pelagic realm and feeding behaviors of fishes. Thus, among the fishes
MPs is imperative in source detection (Veerasingam et al., 2016;
studied, an average higher abundance of MPs (9.12 ± 3.57 items/
Koongolla et al., 2018) and is an important ingestion cue for few or­
specimen) was recorded in Harpadon nehereus, a pelagic species and
ganisms that visually detect food (Maharana et al., 2020). Similar to the
lower in Cynoglossus macrostomus (5.62 ± 2.27 items/individual), a
present study, the proportion of black color MPs were abundantly
benthic species. As compared to benthic species, pelagic fishes required

Fig. 2. Size wise MPs observed in the water and sediment samples.

4
U.R. Gurjar et al. Chemosphere 288 (2022) 132484

Fig. 3. Different types and color of MPs recorded from studied samples. (a) Fibre with black color (b) Beads/pelllet with red color (c) Fragment of green color (d)
Fibre with brown color (e) Fragment with yellow color (f) Film with blue color.

more energy to swim; therefore, to get more food they mistakenly feed Sea (Anastasopoulou et al., 2018). Hossain et al. (2019) also recorded
upon MPs that look similar to their prey items. James et al. (2020) also 8.72 ± 1.54 and 5.80 ± 1.41 particles/individuals in the gut of Harpadon
reported higher abundance of MPs in pelagic species than demersal nehereus and Harpadon translucens, respectively from the Bay of Bengal.
species from the south east coast of India. In the current study, the
average number of MPs varied from 6.74 ± 2.74 to 9.12 ± 3.57 item­
3.4. Microplastics in gastrointestinal tracts
s/individuals in pelagic species and 5.62 ± 2.27 to 6.6 ± 2.98 item­
s/individuals in demersal species, which is relatively greater than most
3.4.1. Size of microplastics
of the earlier investigations conducted from different parts of the globe
In the present study, MP items were classified into four different size
(Nadal et al., 2016; Fossi et al., 2018; Herrera et al., 2019; James et al.,
categories, i.e., <100 μm, 101–250 μm, 251–500 μm, 501–1000 μm, and
2020). Further, the marine fishes inhabiting the shallow coastal waters
>1000 μm. The size-wise percentages of MPs in all studied species are
would have a higher chance of MPs ingestion than those living within
presented as follows (Fig. 6). The size wise number of MPs was found
the deep-sea environment because anthropogenic activities along shore
significantly different within the studied species and the number of MPs
areas lead to higher MPs concentrations in shallow areas (Pozo et al.,
with a size of <100 μm was highest in white sardine and shrimp fol­
2019). While compared with the present investigation, higher MPs
lowed by Belanger croaker, Bombay duck, and Malabar sole fish
abundance were recorded in Chelon auratus (9.5 items/fish) of the
(Table 2). In Cynoglossus macrostomus, size-wise (<100 μm) number of
Adriatic Sea and Solea solea (7.3 particles/fish) from the Mediterranean
MPs was observed significantly lower as compared to all other species,

5
U.R. Gurjar et al. Chemosphere 288 (2022) 132484

Fig. 4. Morpho type composition of MPs recorded in the sediment and water samples.

Fig. 5. Color wise composition of MPs recorded in the water and sediments. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred
to the Web version of this article.)

which might be due to differences in their preferred habitat and feeding
types. A higher number of small size MPs (<100 μm) recorded in white
sardine and shrimp might be due to their smaller body size, limited
choice of food items, and microplastic particle size similar to their prey
size (Hossain et al., 2019; Cole et al., 2013). The number of MPs with the
size of 251–500, 501–1000 and > 1000 μm were significantly (P < 0.05)
higher in Bombay duck, which may be due to their larger size of mouth,
body, and feeding behavior, which agreed with earlier findings of
Hossain et al. (2019). The number of MPs with the size of 501–1000 μm
did not show a significant (P > 0.05) difference between white sardine,
croaker, and sole fish.
3.4.2. Shape of microplastics
Concerning the characteristics, four different morphotypes of the
MPs were observed in the studied samples. The most common shape of
MPs was categorized as fiber, followed by fragments, pellet/beads, and
film (Fig. 3). In Cynoglossus macrostomus, fragments were dominantly
recorded while fiber types were dominant in all other species compared
to other MPs shapes (Fig. 7). The results of the present study align with
the result of earlier reports from the Mediterranean sea (Nadal et al.,
2016) and Bohai Sea (Dai et al., 2018), where different species of
shrimps and fishes dominantly ingested fibers (Gurjar et al., 2021b;
Hossain et al., 2020; Jabeen et al., 2017; Sathish et al., 2020). Globally,
fiber-shaped MPs are present in the highest abundance in the marine

6
U.R. Gurjar et al. Chemosphere 288 (2022) 132484

Table 1
Feeding characteristics, trophic level and occurrence of microplastics in marine biota and environments.
Sample details Habitat Trophic level Feeding Total length range Total weight range MP number/fish (Mean Occurrence
value type (mm) (g) ± SD) (%)

White sardine (Escualosa. Pelagic 3.16 ± 0.08 Planktivore 73–108 5.8–13.54 6.74 ± 2.74 100
thoracata)
Bombay duck (Harpodon Pelagic 4.10 ± 0.74 Carnivore 135–270 9.78–101 9.12 ± 3.57 100
nehereus)
Belanger croaker (Johnius Demersal 3.27 ± 0.32 Carnivore 72–195 4.5–92.81 6.42 ± 2.65 100
belangerii)
Kadal shrimp (Metapenaeus Demersal 3.50 ± 0.50 Omnivore 81–171 5.2–53.30 6.60 ± 2.98 100
dobsoni)
Malabar sole (Cynoglossus Demersal 3.30 ± 0.32 Omnivore 100–170 5.03–23.48 5.62 ± 2.27 100
macrostomus)
Water (MPs items/liter) – – – – – 372 ± 143 100
Sediment (MPs items/kg DW) – – – – – 9630 ± 2947 100

Fig. 6. Size wise ingestion of MPs recorded in the GI tracts of studied species.

Table 2
Size-wise variation in abundance of microplastics in different marine biota.
Size of MPs Numbers of MPs

Escualosa thoracata Johnius belangerii Harpodon nehereus Metapenaeus dobsoni Cynoglossus macrostomus

<100 μm 1.84 ± 0.13d 0.90 ± 0.12b 0.72 ± 0.10ab 1.30 ± 0.12c 0.42 ± 0.08a
<100–250 μm 1.54 ± 0.12b 1.82 ± 0.11b 1.66 ± 0.12b 2.54 ± 0.18c 0.84 ± 0.09a
251–500 μm 1.42 ± 0.13a 1.48 ± 0.09a 3.40 ± 0.23c 1.70 ± 0.13ab 1.98 ± 0.14b
501–1000 μm 1.14 ± 0.13b 1.18 ± 0.11b 1.60 ± 0.11c 0.72 ± 0.09a 1.02 ± 0.11ab
>1000 μm 0.80 ± 0.12b 1.04 ± 0.13bc 1.74 ± 0.15d 0.34 ± 0.07a 1.36 ± 0.13c

Values are expressed as mean ± SE; n = 50 each; Mean value in the same row with different superscripts are significantly different (P < 0.05).

environments (Walkinshaw et al., 2020). The more availability and
distribution of fiber-shaped MPs shown a close association to the various
anthropogenic activities such as fisheries activity, packaging of food
products, aqua tourism, domestic wastewater discharge, use of
microbeads in personal care products, waste generated during washing
of clothes and other activities in the studied region (Browne et al., 2011;
Takar et al., 2020).
3.4.3. Color of microplastics
In the current study, seven colors of MPs (red, blue, black, trans­
lucent, brown, green and yellow) were recorded from the studied
samples. The black color MPs were predominantly recorded in shrimp
(33.03%), Bombay duck (30.48%), and Malabar sole fish (29.54%),
while blue color was dominant in white sardine and Belanger croakers.
The green and yellow colors of MPs were observed only in the GI tracts
of Malabar sole fish, Belanger croaker and Bombay duck (Fig. 8).
Daniel et al. (2020) recorded six different colors (red, blue, green,
transparent, white, black) of MPs from inedible tissue (gills and viscera)
of pelagic fishes. Similar to findings of the present study, different colors
of MPs were recorded in different pelagic and demersal fishes from other
parts of the globe (Boerger et al., 2010; Daniel et al., 2020; Lusher et al.,
2013; Ory et al., 2017). Hossain et al. (2020) recorded five colors of MPs

7
U.R. Gurjar et al. Chemosphere 288 (2022) 132484

Fig. 7. Morpho type composition of MPs recorded in the GI tracts of studied species.

Fig. 8. Colour wise composition of MPs recorded in the GI tracts of studied species. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is
referred to the Web version of this article.)

(black, white, green, blue and red) in the gut of P. monodon dominant
with black color (48%). Plastic particles, particularly
yellow/pale-yellow colored pellets with irregular outer surfaces, may
imitate a certain degree of photo-oxidative weathering (Maharana et al.,
2020) and the clear and translucent colors of MPs are formed presum­
ably due to weathering and fading of plastic substances in the envi­
ronment (Herrera et al., 2019). Due to filter-feeding habits, fishes move
near to the surface of the water, where they ingest free-floating MPs
mistakenly, as they are visually similar to their prey items (Renzi et al.,
2018). The black and blue colors were selected through the feeding
strategies of European anchovy because they feed on the dark prey items
(Renzi et al., 2018). The blue colour is extensively used for
manufacturing fishing rope and nets to catch fishes (Sathish et al.,
2020). The color of plastic items affects their bioavailability because
they look similar to their prey items such as species of blue copepod (Ory
et al., 2017).
3.5. Plastic polymer in water, sediment and marine biota
The suspected microplastic particles were randomly selected and
analyzed using the Laser Raman Spectroscopy to validate polymer
functional groups. A total of eleven different plastic polymers was
identified from the studied samples of water, sediment, and biota
(Fig. 9). Among the biota samples, nine plastic polymers such as poly­
propylene, polyethylene, polystyrene, polyamide, nylon, polycarbonate,
polymethyl methacrylate, polyester, polyethylene terephthalate were

8
U.R. Gurjar et al.
Fig. 9. Raman spectroscopy results of microplastics obtained from the studied
(a) water, (b) sediment and (c) biota samples. Polypropylene (a, c) Polyethylene
(a, b, c) Polyvinyl chloride (b) Polystyrene (a, b, c) Polyethylene terephthalate
(b, c) Nylon 6 (a, b, c) Polycarbonate (a, b, c) Polyacrylamide (a, b) Polyester (a,
b, c) Poly methyl methacrylate (b, c) Polyamide (a, b, c).
recorded from GI tracts of the studied samples. Similar to the results of
the current study, ten plastic polymers were observed from the gut
contents of commercial fishes caught from of the Bohai sea (Wang et al.,
2021).
9
Chemosphere 288 (2022) 132484
The polymer analysis of water samples revealed the eight types of
MPs polymers such as polypropylene, polyethylene, polystyrene, poly­
amide, polyester, nylon, polycarbonate, polymethyl methacrylate.
However, from sediments samples, ten MPs polymers were recorded
except polypropylene. Similar to the present results, eleven types of
plastic polymer (polyethylene, polypropylene, α-cellulose, polyethylene
terephthalate, cellulose acetate, polyamide, polybutene, polymethyl
methacrylate, cellophane, polyurethane, and ethylene/ethyl acrylate)
were reported in water and sediment samples collected from the Yangtze
Estuary, China (Li et al., 2020). In the present study, MPs denser than
water such as polyamide, polyester, nylon, polycarbonate, polymethyl
methacrylate were also recorded from water samples. A possible reason
is that high-density particles can again enter the water column by
resuspension of bottom soils (Lambert and Wagner, 2018). Influenced by
offshore tides and nearshore circulation, the sediment resuspension in
tidal estuaries contributes to exchanging materials between water and
sediment phases (Shi et al., 1996). Thus, in this study, low-density
microplastic (polyethylene) was also observed in the sediment sam­
ples, which could be due to change in densities with biofouling and
weathering in the aquatic environment (Long et al., 2015).
3.6. Ecological significance of MPs
The white sardine feed on small planktonic organisms such as co­
pepods, cladocerans, fish larvae, mysids, diatoms, polychaete larvae,
which are the common prey items for various fish and shellfish species
(Froese and Pauly, 2019; Gurjar et al., 2017). Kadal shrimp feeds on
(diatoms, detritus, small crustaceans and polychaetes); Belanger croaker
feeds upon (shrimp and fishes); sole fish feeds on (diatoms, algae,
bivalve remains, gastropod remains, polychaetes, fish eggs, mysids,
copepods, and other crustacean) (Froese and Pauly, 2019) and Bombay
duck feeds on shrimps, small size fishes, sciaenids, and juveniles of fish
and shellfishes (Froese and Pauly, 2019; Balli et al., 2006). In the present
study, based on feeding behaviors, MPs were observed in planktivorous
(white sardine), carnivorous (Bombay duck and Belanger croaker), and
omnivorous species (kadal shrimp and Malabar sole fish). Thus, MPs in
water, sediment, fishes (pelagic and demersal) and different feeding
types of fishes showed a chance of transfer of MPs to higher trophic
levels in the aquatic ecosystems.
Copepods, common food items for many aquatic organisms are re­
ported to ingest MPs (Botterell et al., 2019). Accidental ingestion and
consuming the microplastic contaminated prey items were observed in
marine biota (Renzi et al., 2018; Gurjar et al., 2021a), probably leading
to transfer and accumulation at different trophic levels, a phenomenon
called trophic transfer (Welden et al., 2018). In the present study, it has
been observed that the carnivore species, Bombay duck have more MPs
than other carnivores (J. belangarii), plankton feeder (E. thoracata), and
omnivores species (C. macrostomus and M. dobsoni), while plankton
feeder species E. thoracata have more MPs than carnivores (J. belangarii),
and omnivores species (C. macrostomus and M. dobsoni). The findings of
the present study are similar to the results obtained for six fish species
exhibiting three different types of feeding habits from the coastal waters
of the southeast coast of India (Sathish et al., 2020) and eleven fish
species with four different kinds of feeding behaviors observed from the
South America waters (Pazos et al., 2017).
Trophic transfer of microplastic to upper the trophic level of the food
chain has been observed in several aquatic organisms (Nelms et al.,
2018). The availability of MPs in the plankton feeder fish has a chance of
MPs transfer to the higher trophic predators (Boerger et al., 2010). Thus,
Romeo et al. (2015) noted biomagnifications in the bluefin tuna, alba­
core, and swordfish along the Mediterranean Sea. The trophic transfer of
MPs has also been evidenced from Atlantic mackerels, Scomber scombrus
to gray seals, Halichoerus grypus (Nelms et al., 2018). The present study
observed that studied biota are inter-linked in the food web, so there are
increased chances of MPs transfer from one trophic level to another.
Generally, fish are consumed in fresh condition, while Bombay duck,
U.R. Gurjar et al.
white sardine, croakers, and shrimps are also consumed in dried form
(Bharda et al., 2017). Along with the studied region, Bombay duck,
white sardine, croakers, and shrimps are used for drying without
removing the digestive tract and therefore, the chance of trophic transfer
of MPs is more.
4. Conclusion
The present study assessed the microplastic concentration in the
water, sediment and marine organisms, revealed that MPs were found in
both pelagic and demersal species, but the MP abundance was relatively
higher in pelagic species. This illustrates that species inhabiting the
shallow coastal waters are more prone to ingestion of MPs because
anthropogenic activities along shore areas leading to higher MPs con­
centrations in coastal areas. The smaller size of MPs (<250 μm) was
dominantly observed in guts of studied species, suggested that need of
consumption of deveined and degutted shrimp and fish species. Even
though studies on trophic transfer of MPs have been accomplished but
the reports are limited; therefore especially site specific studies will
facilitate in a better understanding that will form baseline information
for an effective management of microplastic pollution in coastal
habitats.
CRediT author statement
Udai Ram Gurjar: Data investigation, Writing the initial draft prep­
aration K.A. Martin Xavier: Conceptualization Supervision- Reviewing
and Editing Satya Prakash Shukla: Advisor in sampling Geetanjali
Deshmukhe: supervision of microscopic analysis Ashok Kumar Jaiswar:
Gut analysis and reviewing Binaya Bhusan Nayak: Project administra­
tion supervision I also declare that all authors and tacitly or explicitly by
the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if
accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English
or in any other language, including electronically without the written
consent of the copyright-holder.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors are gratified to the Director of ICAR-Central Institute of
Fisheries Education, Mumbai for providing the necessary facilities and
support to the conduct the research work. The authors are also appre­
ciative the support and help received by the crew members of CIFE
vessel Narmada during the entire sampling period.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.132484.
Funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding
agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
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 XV
THE LAW OF CIVILIZATION AND DECAY[23]

Few more melancholy books have been written than Mr. Brooks
Adams’s Law of Civilization and Decay. It is a marvel of compressed
statement. In a volume of less than four hundred pages Mr. Adams
singles out some of the vital factors in the growth and evolution of
civilized life during the last two thousand years; and so brilliant is his
discussion of these factors as to give, though but a glimpse, yet one
of the most vivid glimpses ever given, of some of the most important
features in the world-life of Christendom. Of some of the features
only; for a fundamentally defective point in Mr. Adams’s brilliant book
is his failure to present certain phases of the life of the nations,—
phases which are just as important as those which he discusses with
such vigorous ability. Furthermore, he disregards not a few facts
which would throw light on others, the weight of which he fully
recognizes. Both these shortcomings are very natural in a writer who
possesses an entirely original point of view, who is the first man to
see clearly certain things that to his predecessors have been
nebulous, and who writes with a fervent intensity of conviction, even
in his bitterest cynicism, such as we are apt to associate rather with
the prophet and reformer than with a historian to whom prophet and
reformer alike appeal no more than do their antitypes. It is a rare
thing for a historian to make a distinct contribution to the philosophy
of history; and this Mr. Adams has done. Naturally enough, he, like
other men who break new ground, tends here and there to draw a
devious furrow.
 The book is replete with vivid writing, and with sentences and
paragraphs which stand out in the memory as marvels in the art of
presenting the vital features of a subject with a few master-strokes.
The story of the Crusades, the outline of the English conquest of
India, and the short tale of the rise of the house of Rothschild, are
masterpieces. Nowhere else is it possible to find in the same
compass any description of the Crusades so profound in its
appreciation of the motives behind them, so startling in the vigor with
which the chief actors, and the chief events, are portrayed. Indeed,
one is almost tempted to say that it is in the description of the
Crusades that Mr. Adams is at his best. He is dealing with a giant
movement of humanity; and he grasps not only the colossal outward
manifestations, but also the spirit itself, and, above all, the strange
and sinister changes which that spirit underwent. His mere
description of the Baronies set up by the Crusaders in the conquered
Holy Land, with their loose feudal government, brings them before
the reader’s eyes as few volumes specially devoted to the subject
could. It is difficult to write of a fortress and make a pen-picture
which will always stay in the mind; yet this is what Mr. Adams has
done in dealing with the grim religious castles, terrible in size and
power, which were built by the Knights of the Temple and the
Hospital as bulwarks against Saracen might. He is not only a scholar
of much research, but a student of art, who is so much more than a
mere student as to be thrilled and possessed by what he studies. He
shows, with a beauty and vigor of style not unbecoming his subject,
how profoundly the art of Europe was affected by the Crusades. It is
not every one who can write with equal interest of sacred
architecture and military engineering, who can appreciate alike the
marvels of Gothic cathedrals and the frowning strength of feudal
fortresses, and who furthermore can trace their inter-relation.
The story of the taking of Constantinople by the Crusaders who
followed the lead of the blind Doge Dandolo is told with an almost
brutal ruthlessness quite befitting the deed itself. Nowhere else in the
book is Mr. Adams happier in his insistence upon the conflict
between what he calls the economic and the imaginative spirits. The
incident sets well with his favorite theory of the inevitable triumph of
the economic over the imaginative man, as societies grow
centralized, and the no less inevitable fossilization and ruin of the
body politic which this very triumph itself ultimately entails. The
history of the English conquest of India is only less vividly told.
Incidentally, it may be mentioned that one of Mr. Adams’s many
merits is his contemptuous refusal to be misled by modern criticism
of Macaulay. He sees Macaulay’s greatness as a historian, and his
essential truthfulness on many of the very points where he has been
most sharply criticised.
Mr. Adams’s book, however, is far more than a mere succession of
brilliant episodes. He fully sees that the value of facts lies in their
relation to one another; and from the facts as he sees them he
deduces certain laws with more than a Thucydidean indifference as
to his own individual approval or disapproval of the development.
The life of nations, like any other form of life, is but one manifestation
of energy; and Mr. Adams’s decidedly gloomy philosophy of life may
be gathered from the fact that he places fear and greed as the two
forms of energy which stand conspicuously predominant; fear in the
earlier, and greed in the later, stages of evolution from barbarism to
civilization. Civilization itself he regards merely as the history of the
movement from a condition of physical distribution to one of physical
concentration. During the earlier stages of this movement the
imaginative man—the man who stands in fear of a priesthood—is, in
his opinion, the representative type, while with him, and almost
equally typical, stand the soldier and the artist. As consolidation
advances, the economic man—the man of industry, trade, and
capital—tends to supplant the emotional and artistic types of
manhood, and finally himself develops along two lines,—“the usurer
in his most formidable aspect, and the peasant whose nervous
system is best adapted to thrive on scanty nutriment.” These two
very unattractive types are, in his belief, the inevitable final products
of all civilization, as civilization has hitherto developed; and when
they have once been produced there follows either a stationary
period, during which the whole body politic gradually ossifies and
atrophies, or else a period of utter disintegration.
This is not a pleasant theory; it is in many respects an entirely
false theory; but nevertheless there is in it a very ugly element of
truth. One does not have to accept either all Mr. Adams’s theories or
all his facts in order to recognize more than one disagreeable
resemblance between the world as it is to-day, and the Roman world
under the Empire, or the Greek world under the successors of
Alexander. Where he errs is in his failure to appreciate the
fundamental differences which utterly destroy any real parallelism
between the two sets of cases. Indeed, his zeal in championing his
theories leads him at times into positions which are seen at a glance
to be untenable.
Probably Mr. Adams’s account of the English Reformation, and of
Henry VIII. and his instruments, is far nearer the truth than Froude’s.
But his view of the evils upon which the reformers as a whole waged
war, and of the spirit which lay behind the real leaders and spurred
them on, is certainly less accurate than the view given by Froude in
his Erasmus and Council of Trent. It can be partly corrected by the
study of a much less readable book—Mr. Henry C. Lea’s work on
The Inquisition. Yet Mr. Adams’s description of the English
Reformation is very powerful, and has in it a vein of bitter truth;
though on the whole it is perhaps not so well done as his account of
the suppression of the Templars in France. If he can be said to have
any heroes, the Templars must certainly be numbered among them.
He is at his best in describing the imaginative man, and especially
the imaginative man whose energy manifests itself in the profession
of arms. His description of the tremendous change which passed
over Europe during the centuries which saw, what is commonly
called, the decay of faith is especially noteworthy. In no other history
are there to be found two sentences which portray more vividly the
reasons for the triumph of the great Pope Hildebrand over the
Emperor Henry, than these:
“To Henry’s soldiers the world was a vast space peopled by
those fantastic beings which are still seen on Gothic towers.
These demons obeyed the monk of Rome, and his army,
melting from the Emperor under a nameless horror, left him
helpless.”
 His account of the contrast between the relations of Philip
Augustus and of Philip the Fair with the Church is dramatic in its
intensity. To Mr. Adams, Philip the Fair, even more than Henry VIII.,
is the incarnation of the economic spirit in its conflict with the Church;
and he makes him an even more repulsive, though perhaps an abler,
man than Henry. In this he is probably quite right. His account of the
hounding down of Boniface, and the cruel destruction of the
Templars, is as stirring as it is truthful; but he certainly pushes his
theory to an altogether impossible extreme when he states that the
moneyed class, the bourgeoisie, was already the dominant force in
France. The heroes of Froissart still lay in the future; and for
centuries to come the burgher was to be outweighed by king, priest,
and noble. The economic man, the man of trade and money, was, at
that time, in no sense dominant.
That there is grave reason for some of Mr. Adams’s melancholy
forebodings, no serious student of the times, no sociologist or
reformer, and no practical politician who is interested in more than
momentary success, will deny. A foolish optimist is only less noxious
than an utter pessimist; and the pre-requisite for any effort, whether
hopeful or hopeless, to better our conditions is an accurate
knowledge of what these conditions are. There is no use in blinding
ourselves to certain of the tendencies and results of our high-
pressure civilization. Some very ominous facts have become more
and more apparent during the present century, in which the social
movement of the white race has gone on with such unexampled and
ever-accelerating rapidity. The rich have undoubtedly grown richer;
and, while the most careful students are inclined to answer with an
emphatic negative the proposition that the poor have grown poorer, it
is nevertheless certain that there has been a large absolute, though
not relative, increase of poverty, and that the very poor tend to
huddle in immense masses in the cities. Even though these masses
are, relatively to the rest of the population, smaller than they formerly
were, they constitute a standing menace, not merely to our
prosperity, but to our existence. The improvement in the means of
communication, moreover, has so far immensely increased the
tendency of the urban population to grow at the expense of the rural;
and philosophers have usually been inclined to regard the ultimate
safety of a nation as resting upon its peasantry. The improvement in
machinery, the very perfection of scientific processes, cause great,
even though temporary, suffering to unskilled laborers. Moreover,
there is a certain softness of fibre in civilized nations which, if it were
to prove progressive, might mean the development of a cultured and
refined people quite unable to hold its own in those conflicts through
which alone any great race can ultimately march to victory. There is
also a tendency to become fixed, and to lose flexibility. Most
ominous of all, there has become evident, during the last two
generations, a very pronounced tendency among the most highly
civilized races, and among the most highly civilized portions of all
races, to lose the power of multiplying, and even to decrease; so
much so as to make the fears of the disciples of Malthus a century
ago seem rather absurd to the dweller in France or New England to-
day.
Mr. Adams does not believe that any individual or group of
individuals can influence the destiny of a race for good or for evil. All
of us admit that it is very hard by individual effort thus to make any
alteration in destiny; but we do not think it impossible; and Mr.
Adams will have performed a great service if he succeeds in fixing
the eyes of the men who ought to know thoroughly the problems set
us to solve, upon the essential features of these problems. I do not
think his diagnosis of the disease is in all respects accurate. I believe
there is an immense amount of healthy tissue as to the existence of
which he is blind; but there is disease, and it is serious enough to
warrant very careful examination.
However, Mr. Adams is certainly in error in putting the immense
importance he does upon the question of the expansion or
contraction of the currency. There is no doubt whatever that a nation
is profoundly affected by the character of its currency; but there
seems to be equally little doubt that the currency is only one, and by
no means the most important, among a hundred causes which
profoundly affect it. The United States has been on a gold basis, and
on a silver basis; it has been on a paper basis, and on a basis of
what might be called the scraps and odds and ends of the currencies
of a dozen other nations; but it has kept on developing along the
same lines no matter what its currency has been. If a change of
currency were so enacted as to amount to dishonesty, that is, to the
repudiation of debts, it would be a very bad thing morally; or, if a
change took place in a manner that would temporarily reduce the
purchasing power of the wage-earner, it would be a very bad thing
materially; but the current of the national life would not be wholly
diverted or arrested, it would merely be checked, even by such a
radical change. The forces that most profoundly shape the course of
a nation’s life lie far deeper than the mere use of gold or of silver, the
mere question of the appreciation or depreciation of one metal when
compared with the other, or when compared with commodities
generally.
Mr. Adams unconsciously shows this in his first and extremely
interesting chapter on the Romans. In one part of this chapter he
seems to ascribe the ruin of the Roman Empire to the contraction of
the currency, saying, “with contraction came that fall of prices which
first ruined, then enslaved, and finally exterminated the native rural
population of Italy.” This he attributes to the growth of the economic
or capitalistic spirit. As he puts it, “the stronger type exterminated the
weaker, the money-lender killed out the husbandman, the soldiers
vanished, and the farms on which they once flourished were left
desolate.”
But, curiously enough, Mr. Adams himself shows that all this really
occurred during the two centuries, or thereabouts, extending from
the end of the second Punic war through the reign of the first of the
Roman emperors; and this was a period of currency expansion, not
of currency contraction. Moreover, it was emphatically a period when
the military and not the economic type was supreme. The great
Romans of the first and second centuries before Christ were
soldiers, not merchants or usurers, and they could only be said to
possess the economic instinct incidentally, in so far as it is
possessed by every man of the military type who seizes the goods
accumulated by the man of the economic type. It was during these
centuries, when the military type was supreme, and when prices
were rising, that the ruin, the enslavement and the extermination of
the old rural population of Italy began. It was during these centuries
that the husbandmen left the soil and became the mob of Rome,
clamoring for free bread and the games of the amphitheatre. It was
toward the close of this period that the Roman army became an
army no longer of Roman citizens, but of barbarians trained in the
Roman manner; it was toward the close of this period that celibacy
became so crying an evil as to invoke the vain action of the
legislature, and that the Roman race lost the power of self-
perpetuation. What happened in the succeeding centuries,—the
period of the contraction of the currency and the rise of prices,—was
merely the completion of the ruin which had already been practically
accomplished.
These facts seem to show clearly that the question of the currency
had really little or nothing to do with the decay of the Roman fibre.
This decay began under one set of currency conditions, and
continued unchanged when these conditions became precisely
reversed. An infinitely more important cause, as Mr. Adams himself
shows, was the immense damage done to the Italian husbandman
by the importation of Asiatic and African slaves; which was in all
probability the chief of the causes that conspired to ruin him. He was
forced into competition with races of lower vitality; races tenacious of
life, who possessed a very low standard of living, and who furnished
to the great slave-owner his cheap labor. Mr. Adams shows that the
husbandman was affected, not only by the importation of vast droves
of slaves to compete with him in Italy, but by the competition with
low-class labor in Egypt and elsewhere. These very points, if
developed with Mr. Adams’s skill, would have enabled him to show in
a very striking manner the radical contrast between the present
political and social life of civilized states, and the political and social
life of Rome during what he calls the capitalistic or closing period. At
present, the minute that the democracy becomes convinced that the
workman and the peasant are suffering from competition with cheap
labor, whether this cheap labor take the form of alien immigration, or
of the importation of goods manufactured abroad by low-class
working-men, or of commodities produced by convicts, it at once
puts a stop to the competition. We keep out the Chinese, very
wisely; we have put an end to the rivalry of convict contract labor
with free labor; we are able to protect ourselves, whenever
necessary, by heavy import duties, against the effect of too cheap
labor in any foreign country; and, finally, in the civil war, we utterly
destroyed the system of slavery, which really was threatening the life
of the free working-man in a way in which it cannot possibly be
threatened by any conceivable development of the “capitalistic”
spirit.
Mr. Adams possesses a very intimate knowledge of finance, and
there are many of his discussions on this subject into which only an
expert would be competent to enter. Nevertheless, on certain
financial and economic questions, touching matters open to
discussion by the man of merely ordinary knowledge, his terminology
is decidedly vague. This is especially true when he speaks of “the
producer.” Now the producer, as portrayed by the Populist stump
orator or writer of political and economic pamphlets, is a being with
whom we became quite intimate during the recent campaign; but we
have found it difficult to understand at all definitely who this
“producer” actually is. According to one school of Populistic thinkers
the farmer is the producer; but according to another and more radical
school this is not so, unless the farmer works with his hands and not
his head, this school limiting the application of the term “producer” to
the working-man who does the immediate manual work of
production. On the other hand those who speak with scientific
precision must necessarily class as producers all men whose work
results directly or indirectly in production. Under this definition,
inventors and men who improve the methods of transportation, like
railway presidents, and men who enable other producers to work,
such as bankers who loan money wisely, are all themselves to be
classed as producers, and often indeed as producers of the most
effective kind.
The great mass of the population consists of producers; and in
consequence the majority of the sales by producers are sales to
other producers. It requires one set of producers to make a market
for any other set of producers; and in consequence the rise or fall of
prices is a good or a bad thing for different bodies of producers
according to the different circumstances of each case. Mr. Adams
says that the period from the middle of the twelfth to the middle of
the thirteenth centuries was an interval of “almost unparalleled
prosperity,” which he apparently ascribes to the expansion of the
currency, with which, he says, “went a rise in prices, all producers
grew rich, and for more than two generations the strain of
competition was so relaxed that the different classes of the
population preyed upon each other less savagely than they are wont
to do in less happy times.” It is not exactly clear how a rise in the
prices both of what one producer sells another, and of what he in
return buys from that other, can somehow make both of them rich,
and relax the strain of competition. Certainly in the present century,
competition has been just as severe in times of high prices; and
some of the periods of greatest prosperity have coincided with the
periods of very low prices. There is reason to believe that low prices
are ultimately of great benefit to the wage-earners. A rise in prices
generally injures them. Moreover, in the century of which Mr. Adams
speaks, the real non-producers were the great territorial feudal lords
and the kings and clergymen; and these were then supreme. It was
the period of the ferocious Albigensian crusades. It is true that it
ushered in a rather worse period,—that of the struggle between
England and France, with its attendant peasant wars and
Jacqueries, and huge bands of marauding free-companies. But the
alteration for the worse was due to a fresh outbreak of “imaginative”
spirit; and the first period was full of recurring plagues and famines,
besides the ordinary unrest, murder, oppression, pillage, and general
corruption. Mr. Adams says that the different classes of the
population during that happy time “preyed upon each other less
savagely” than at other times. All that need be said in answer is that
there is not now a civilized community, under no matter what stress
of capitalistic competition, in which the different classes prey upon
one another with one-tenth the savagery they then showed; or in
which famine and disease, even leaving war out of account, come
anywhere near causing so much misery to poor people, and above
all to the wage-earners, or working-men, the under strata and base
of the producing classes.
From many of the statements in Mr. Adams’s very interesting
concluding chapter I should equally differ; and yet this chapter is one
which is not merely interesting but soul-stirring, and it contains much
with which most of us would heartily agree. Through the cold
impartiality with which he strives to work merely as a recorder of
facts, there break now and then flashes of pent-up wrath and
vehement scorn for all that is mean and petty in a purely
materialistic, purely capitalistic, civilization. With his scorn of what is
ignoble and base in our development, his impatient contempt of the
deification of the stock-market, the trading-counter, and the factory,
all generous souls must agree. When we see prominent men
deprecating the assertion of national honor because it “has a bad
effect upon business,” or because it “impairs the value of securities”;
when we see men seriously accepting Mr. Edward Atkinson’s
pleasant theory that patriotism is of no consequence when compared
with the price of cotton sheeting or the capacity to undersell our
competitors in foreign markets, it is no wonder that a man who has in
him the stuff of ancestors who helped to found our Government, and
helped to bring it safely through the Civil War should think blackly of
the future. But Mr. Adams should remember that there always have
been men of this merely huckstering type, or of other types not much
higher. It is not a nice thing that Mr. Eliot, the president of one of the
greatest educational institutions of the land, should reflect discredit
upon the educated men of the country by his attitude on the
Venezuela affair, carrying his desertion of American principles so far
as to find himself left in the lurch by the very English statesman
whose cause he was championing; but Mr. Adams by turning to the
“History” of the administration of Madison, by his brother, Henry
Adams, would find that Mr. Eliot had plenty of intellectual ancestors
among the “blue lights” federalists of that day. Timothy Pickering
showed the same eager desire to stand by another country to the
hurt of his own country’s honor, and Timothy Pickering was a United
States Senator whose conduct was far more reprehensible than that
of any private individual could be. We have advanced, not
retrograded, since 1812.
This applies also to what Mr. Adams says of the fall of the soldier
and the rise of the usurer. He quite overstates his case in asserting
that in Europe the soldier has lost his importance since 1871, and
that the administration of society since then has fallen into the hands
of the “economic man,” thereby making a change “more radical than
any that happened at Rome or even at Byzantium.” In the first place,
a period of a quarter of a century is altogether too short to admit of
such a generalization. In the next place, the facts do not support this
particular generalization. The Germans are quite as military in type
as ever they were, and very much more so than they were at any
period during the two centuries preceding Bismarck and Moltke. Nor
is it true to say that “the ruler of the French people has passed for
the first time from the martial to the moneyed type.” Louis XV. and
Louis Philippe can hardly be held to belong to any recognized martial
type; and the reason of the comparative sinking of the military man in
France is due not in the least to the rise of his economic fellow-
countryman, but to the rise of the other military man in Germany. Mr.
Adams says that since the capitulation of Paris the soldier has
tended to sink more and more, until he merely receives his orders
from financiers (which term when used by Mr. Adams includes all
business and working-men) with his salary, without being allowed a
voice, even in the questions which involve peace and war. Now this
is precisely the position which the soldier has occupied for two
centuries among English-speaking races; and it is during these very
centuries that the English-speaking race has produced its greatest
soldiers. Marlborough and Wellington, Nelson and Farragut, Grant
and Lee, exactly fill Mr. Adams’s definition of the position into which
soldiers have “sunk”; and the United States has just elected as
President, as it so frequently has done before, a man who owes his
place in politics in large part to his having done gallant service as a
soldier, and who is in no sense a representative of the moneyed
type.
Again, Mr. Adams gloomily remarks that “producers have become
the subjects of the possessors of hoarded wealth,” and that among
capitalists the money-lenders form an aristocracy, while debtors are
helpless and the servants of the creditors. All this is really quite
unworthy of Mr. Adams, or of anyone above the intellectual level of
Mr. Bryan, Mr. Henry George, or Mr. Bellamy. Any man who has had
the slightest practical knowledge of legislation, whether as
Congressman or as State legislator, knows that nowadays laws are
passed much more often with a view to benefiting the debtors than
the creditors; always excepting that very large portion of the creditor
class which includes the wage-earners. “Producers”—whoever they
may be—are not the subjects of “hoarded wealth,” nor of anyone nor
anything else. Capital is not absolute; and it is idle to compare the
position of the capitalist nowadays with his position when his
workmen were slaves and the law-makers were his creatures. The
money-lender, by whom I suppose Mr. Adams means the banker, is
not an aristocrat as compared to other capitalists,—at any rate in the
United States. The merchant, the manufacturer, the railroad man,
stand just as the banker does; and bankers vary among themselves
just as any other business men do. They do not form a “class” at all;
anyone who wishes to can go into the business; men fail and
succeed in it just as in other businesses. As for the debtors being
powerless, if Mr. Adams knows any persons who have lent money in
Kansas or similar States they will speedily enlighten him on this
subject, and will give him an exact idea of the extent to which the
debtor is the servant of the creditor. In those States the creditor—
and especially the Eastern money-lender or “gold-bug”—is the man
who has lost all his money. Mr. Adams can readily find this out by the
simple endeavor to persuade some “money-lender,” or other “Wall
Street shark” to go into the business of lending money on Far-
Western farm property. The money-lender in the most civilized
portions of the United States always loses if the debtor is loser, or if
the debtor is dishonest. Of course there are “sharpers” among
bankers, as there are among producers. Moreover, the private, as
distinguished from the corporate, debtor borrows for comparatively
short periods, so that he is practically not at all affected by an
appreciating currency; the rise is much too small to count in the case
of the individual, though it may count in the long-term bonds of a
nation or corporation. The wage of the working-man rises, while
interest, which is the wage of the capitalist, sinks.
Mr. Adams’s study of the rise of the usurer in India and the ruin of
the martial races is very interesting; but it has not the slightest
bearing upon anything which is now happening in Western
civilization. The debtor, in America at least, is amply able to take
care of his own interests. Our experience shows conclusively that
the creditors only prosper when the debtors prosper, and the danger
lies less in the accumulation of debts, than in their repudiation.
Among us the communities which repudiate their debts, which
inveigh loudest against their creditors, and which offer the poorest
field for the operations of the honest banker (whom they likewise
always call “money-lender,”) are precisely those which are least
prosperous and least self-respecting. There are, of course,
individuals here and there who are unable to cope with the money-
lender, and even sections of the country where this is true; but this
only means that a weak or thriftless man can be robbed by a sharp
money-lender just as he can be robbed by the sharp producer from
whom he buys or to whom he sells. There is, in certain points, a very
evident incompatibility of interest between the farmer who wishes to
sell his product at a high rate, and the working-man who wishes to
buy that product at a low rate; but the success of the capitalist, and
especially of the banker, is conditioned upon the prosperity of both
working-man and farmer.
When Mr. Adams speaks of the change in the relations of women
and men he touches on the vital weakness of our present civilization.
If we are, in truth, tending toward a point where the race will cease to
be able to perpetuate itself, our civilization is of course a failure. No
quality in a race atones for the failure to produce an abundance of
healthy children. The problem upon which Mr. Adams here touches
is the most serious of all problems, for it lies at the root of, and
indeed itself is, national life. But it is hard to accept seriously Mr.
Adams’s plea that “martial” men loved their wives more than
“economic” men do, and showed their love by buying them. Of
course the only reason why a woman was bought in early times was
because she was looked upon like any other chattel; she was “loved”
more than she is now only as a negro was “loved” more by the
negro-trader in 1860 than at present. The worship of women during
the Middle Ages was, in its practical effects, worship of a very queer
kind. The “economic man” of the present day is beyond comparison
gentler and more tender and more loving to women than the
“emotional man” of the Middle Ages.
Mr. Adams closes with some really fine paragraphs, of which the
general purport is, that the advent of the capitalist and the economic
man, and especially the advent of the usurer, mark a condition of
consolidation which means the beginning of utter decay, so that our
society, as a result of this accelerated movement away from
emotionalism and towards capitalism, is now in a condition like that
of the society of the later Roman Empire. He forgets, however, that
there are plenty of modern states which have entirely escaped the
general accelerated movement of our time. Spain on the one hand,
and Russia on the other, though alike in nothing else, are alike in
being entirely outside the current of modern capitalistic development.
Spain never suffered from capitalists. She exterminated the
economic man in the interest of the emotional and martial man. As a
result she has sunk to a condition just above that of Morocco—
another state, by the way, which still clings to the martial and
emotional type, and is entirely free from the vices of capitalistic
development, and from the presence of the usurer, save as the
usurer existed in the days of Isaac of York. Soldiers and artists have
sunk lower in Spain than elsewhere, although they have had no
competition from the economic man. Russia is in an entirely different
position. Russia is eminently emotional, and her capitalists are of the
most archaic type; but it is difficult to say exactly what Russia has
done for art, or in what respect her soldiers are superior to other
soldiers; and certainly the life of the lower classes in Russia is on the
average far less happy than the life of the workingman and farmer in
any English-speaking country. Evidently, as Spain and Russia show,
national decay, or non-development may have little to do with
economic progress.
Mr. Adams has shown well that the progress of civilization and
centralization has depended largely upon the growing mastery of the
attack over the defence; but when he says that the martial type
necessarily decays as civilization progresses, he goes beyond what
he can prove. The economic man in England, Holland, and the
United States has for several centuries proved a much better fighter
than the martial emotionalist of the Spanish countries. It is Spain
which is now decaying; not the nations with capitalists. The causes
which make Russia formidable are connected with the extent of her
territory and her population, for she has certainly failed so far to
produce fighting men at all superior to the fighting men of the
economic civilizations. In a pent-up territory she would rise less
rapidly, and fall more rapidly, than they would; and her freedom from
centralization and capitalization would not help her. Spain, which is
wholly untouched by modern economic growth, suffers far more than
any English-speaking country from maladies like those of Rome in its
decadence; and Rome did not decay from the same causes which
affect modern America or Europe; while Russia owes her immunity
from a few of the evils that affect the rest of us, to causes
unconnected with her backwardness in civilization, and moreover
has worse evils of her own to contend with. The English-speaking
man has so far out-built, out-fought, and out-administered the
Russian; and he is as far as the poles away from the Roman of the
later Empire.
Moreover, instead of the mercenary or paid police growing in
relative strength, as Mr. Adams says, it has everywhere shrunk
during the last fifty years, when compared with the mass of armed
farmers and wage-earners who make up a modern army. The
capitalist can no longer, as in ages past, count upon the soldiers as
being of his party; he can only count upon them when they are
convinced that in fighting his battle they are fighting their own;
although under modern industrial conditions this is generally the
case. Again, Mr. Adams is in error in his facts, when he thinks that
producers have prospered in the silver-using, as compared with the
gold-using, countries. The wage-earner and small farmer of the
United States, or even of Europe, stand waist high above their
brothers in Mexico and the other communities that use only silver.
The prosperity of the wage-earning class is more important to the
state than the prosperity of any other class in the community, for it
numbers within its ranks two-thirds of the people of the community.
The fact that modern society rests upon the wage-earner, whereas
ancient society rested upon the slave, is of such transcendent
importance as to forbid any exact comparison between the two, save
by way of contrast.
While there is in modern times a decrease in emotional religion,
there is an immense increase in practical morality. There is a
decrease of the martial type found among savages and the people of
the Middle Ages, except as it still survives in the slums of great
cities; but there remains a martial type infinitely more efficient than
any that preceded it. There are great branches of industry which call
forth in those that follow them more hardihood, manliness, and
courage than any industry of ancient times. The immense masses of
men connected with the railroads are continually called upon to
exercise qualities of mind and body such as in antiquity no trade and
no handicraft demanded. There are, it is true, influences at work to
shake the vitality, courage, and manliness of the race; but there are
other influences which tell in exactly the opposite direction; and,
whatever may come in the future, hitherto the last set of influences
have been strongest. As yet, while men are more gentle and more
honest than before, it cannot be said that they are less brave; and
they are certainly more efficient as fighters. If our population
decreases; if we lose the virile, manly qualities, and sink into a nation
of mere hucksters, putting gain above national honor, and
subordinating everything to mere ease of life; then we shall indeed
reach a condition worse than that of the ancient civilizations in the
years of their decay. But at present no comparison could be less apt
than that of Byzantium, or Rome in its later years, with a great
modern state where the thronging millions who make up the bulk of
the population are wage-earners, who themselves decide their own
destinies; a state which is able in time of need to put into the field
armies, composed exclusively of its own citizens, more numerous
than any which the world has ever before seen, and with a record of
fighting in the immediate past with which there is nothing in the
annals of antiquity to compare.

FOOTNOTES:
[23] The Forum, January, 1897.
 XVI
REFORM THROUGH SOCIAL WORK—SOME
FORCES THAT TELL FOR DECENCY IN NEW
YORK CITY[24]

Any one who has a serious appreciation of the immensely

complex problems of our present-day life, and of those kinds of
benevolent effort which for lack of a better term we group under the
name of philanthropy, must realize the infinite diversity there is in the
field of social work. Each man can, of course, do best if he takes up
that branch of work to which his tastes and his interests lead him,
and the field is of such large size that there is more than ample room
for every variety of workman. Of course there are certain attributes
which must be possessed in common by all who want to do well. The
worker must possess not only resolution, firmness of purpose, broad
charity, and great-hearted sympathy, but he must also possess
common-sense sanity, and a wholesome aversion alike to the merely
sentimental and the merely spectacular. The soup-kitchen style of
philanthropy is worse than useless, for in philanthropy as
everywhere else in life almost as much harm is done by soft-
headedness as by hard-heartedness. The highest type of
philanthropy is that which springs from the feeling of brotherhood,
and which, therefore, rests on the self-respecting, healthy basis of
mutual obligation and common effort. The best way to raise any one
is to join with him in an effort whereby both you and he are raised by
each helping the other. This is what has been done in those factories
in Cleveland, Dayton, Pittsburg, and elsewhere, in which the
betterment of working life has been aimed at, and partially achieved,
through measures beneficial alike to employer and employed.
Any man who takes an active part in the varied, hurried, and
interesting life of New York must be struck, not only by the number of
the forces which tell for evil, but by the number of the forces which
tell for good. Of course most of these are not, in the narrow sense of
the term, philanthropic forces at all; but many of them are, and
among these there is the widest variety. In this paper it is only
possible to touch upon a very few of the ways in which philanthropic
work of worth is being done in New York City. It is necessary to
speak of individuals, because otherwise it would be impossible to
emphasize the widely different kinds of work which can thus be
done. These individuals are mentioned simply as typifying certain
phases, certain methods. There are countless others who could be
mentioned; it merely happens that these particular men have
occupied to advantage certain widely different parts of the great field
of usefulness.
Much can be done in downright charitable work, and there are
great fragments of our social life in which the work must be in part or
in whole charitable. The charity workers do an amount of good which
in some cases is literally inestimable. Yet, on the whole, it becomes
ever increasingly evident that the largest opportunity for work along
the lines of social and civic betterment lie with the independent
classes of the community—the classes which have not yielded to the
many kinds of downward pressure always so strong in city life.
Sometimes this work may take the form of an organized effort to
secure greater equality of opportunity. Sometimes the best way to
work is the oldest and simplest; that is, by trying the effect of
character upon character.
Political and social conditions are often closely interwoven, and
always tend to act and react upon one another. It is impossible to
have a high standard of political life in a community sunk in sodden
misery and ignorance; and where there is industrial well-being there
is at least a chance of its going hand in hand with the moral and
intellectual uplifting which will secure cleanliness and efficiency in
the public service. Politics have been entered by a good many
different doors, but in New York City Mr. F. Norton Goddard is
probably the only man who ever entered on the career of a district
leader by the door of philanthropy. Mr. Goddard, feeling he ought to
do something serious in life, chose a quarter on the East Side for his
experiment, and he entered upon it without the slightest thought of
going into politics, simply taking a room in a tenement house with the
idea of testing his own capacities and to find out if he was fit to do
what has grown to be known as “settlement work.” He speedily
became very much interested in the men with whom he was thrown
in contact, and also became convinced that he personally could do
most by acting, not in connection with others, but for his own hand.
After a few weeks he joined a small club which met at first in a single
room. From this one room sprang in the course of a couple of years
the Civic Club at 243 East Thirty-fourth Street, than which there
exists in all New York no healthier centre of energetic social and
political effort. Very speedily Mr. Goddard found himself brought into
hostile and embarrassing contact with that huge and highly
organized system of corruption, tempered with what may be called
malevolent charity, which we know as Tammany. Every foe of
decency, from the policy player to the protected proprietor of a law-
breaking saloon, had some connection with Tammany, and every
move in any direction resulted in contact of some sort with a man or
institution under Tammany’s control. Mr. Goddard soon realized that
organization must be met by organization; and, being a thoroughly
practical man, he started in to organize the decent forces in such
fashion as would enable him to check organized indecency. He
made up his mind that the Republican party organization offered the
best chance for the achievement of his object. As it then was,
however, the Republican organization of the district in question
served but little purpose save to deliver delegates in conventions,
and was under the control of men who, although some degrees
above the Tammany leaders, had no conception of running things on
the plane which Goddard deemed necessary. There were three
courses open to him: He could acquiesce helplessly; he could start
an outside organization, in which case the chances were a thousand
to one that it would amount to nothing; or he could make a