The average
deviation
of white pupils is 7; of colored 6.
Applied Eugenics by Roswell H. Johnson and Paul Popenoe
In other words, the number of children
is limited to the number whom the minister can afford to bring up on his
inadequate salary. ]
Against this it might be argued that the desired result will never be
wholly attained, because the most effective means of birth control
involve some expense, and because their effective use presupposes a
certain amount of foresight and self-control which is not always found
among the lower strata of society.
Despite certain dangers accompanying a widespread dissemination of the
knowledge of how to limit births, it seems to be the opinion of most
eugenists that if free access to such information be not permitted that
at least such knowledge ought to be given in many families, where it
would be to the advantage of society that fewer children be produced.
Such a step, of course, must be taken on the individual responsibility
of a doctor, nurse or other social worker. A propaganda has arisen
during recent years, in the United States, for the repeal of all laws
which prohibit giving knowledge about and selling contraceptives.
Whether or not it succeeds in changing the law it will, like the
Bradlaugh-Besant episode, spread contraception widely. This propaganda
is based largely on social and economic grounds, and is sometimes
unscientific in its methods and avowed aims. But whatever its nature may
be, there seems little reason (judging from analogy in European
countries) to believe that it can be stopped.
The "infant mortality movement" also has an effect here which is rarely
recognized. It is a stock argument of birth control propagandists that a
high birth-rate means a high rate of infant mortality; but A. O. Powys
has demonstrated that cause and effect are to some extent reversed in
this statement, and that it is equally true that a high rate of infant
mortality means a high birth-rate, in a section of the population where
birth control is not practiced. The explanation is the familiar fact
that conception takes place less often in nursing mothers. But if a
child dies early or is bottle-fed, a new conception is likely to occur
much sooner than would otherwise be the case. By reducing infant
mortality and teaching mothers to feed their babies naturally, the
infant mortality movement is thereby reducing the birth-rate in the
poorer part of the population, a eugenic service which to some extent
offsets the dysgenic results that, as we shall show in the last chapter,
follow the "Save the Babies" propaganda.
With the spread of the birth control and infant mortality movements one
may therefore look forward to some diminution of the differential
element in the birth-rate, together with a further decline in that
birth-rate as a whole.
Such a situation, which seems to us almost a certainty within the next
decade or two, will not change the duty of eugenics, on which we have
been insisting in this chapter and, to a large extent, throughout the
present book. It will be just as necessary as ever that the families
which are, and have been in the past, of the greatest benefit and value
to the country, have a higher birth-rate. The greatest task of eugenics,
as we see it, will still be to find means by which the birth-rate among
such families can be increased. This increase in the birth-rate among
superior people must depend largely on a change in public sentiment.
Such a change may be brought about in many ways. The authority of
religion may be invoked, as it is by the Roman Catholic and Mormon
churches[127] whose communicants are constantly taught that fecundity is
a virtue and voluntary sterility a sin. Unfortunately their appeal fails
to make proper discriminations. Whatever may be the theological reasons
for such an attitude on the part of the churches, its practical eugenic
significance is clear enough.
Nothing can be more certain than that, if present conditions continue,
Roman Catholics will soon be in an overwhelming preponderance in the
eastern United States, because of the differential birth-rate, if for no
other reason; and that the Mormon population will steadily gain ground
in the west. Similarly, it is alleged that the population of France is
gradually assuming the characteristics of the Breton race, because that
race is the notably fecund section of the population, while nearly all
the other components of the nation are committing race suicide (although
not so rapidly as is the old white stock in New England). Again, the
role of religion in eugenics is shown in China, where ancestor worship
leads to a desire for children, and makes it a disgrace to be childless.
A process analogous to natural selection applies to religions much as it
does to races; and if the Chinese religion, with its requirement of a
high birth-rate, and the present-day American Protestant form of the
Christian religion, with its lack of eugenic teaching, should come into
direct competition, under equal conditions of environment, it is obvious
that the Chinese form would be the eventual survivor, just because its
adherents would steadily increase and those of its rival would as
steadily decrease. Such a situation may seem fanciful; yet the leaders
of every church may well consider whether the religion which they preach
is calculated to fill all the needs of its adherents, if it is silent on
the subject of eugenics.
The influence of economic factors on the birth-rate is marked. The
child, under modern urban conditions, is not an economic asset, as he
was on the farm in earlier days. He is an economic liability instead.
And with the constant rise of the standard of living, with the increase
of taxation, the child steadily becomes more of a liability. Many
married people desire children, or more children, but feel that they can
not have them without sacrificing something that they are unwilling to
sacrifice.
Analysis of this increase in the cost of children, reveals not less than
five main elements which deserve attention from eugenists.
1. It costs more to clothe children than it used to. Not only does
clothing of a given quality cost more now than it did a decade or two
ago, but there are more fabrics and designs available, and many of
these, while attractive, are costly and not durable. Compliance to
fashion has increasingly made itself felt in the clothing of the child.
2. It costs more to feed them than it used to. Not only has food for
everyone increased in price, but the standards for feeding children
have been raised. Once children were expected to be content with plain
fare; now it is more frequently the custom to give them just what the
rest of the family eats.
3. The cost of medical attention has increased. All demand more of the
doctors now than they did in the last generation. The doctors are able
to do more than they formerly could, and particularly for his children,
every man wants the best that he can possibly afford. Hence medical
attendance for a child is constantly becoming more costly, because more
frequent; and further, the amount of money which parents spend on
medical attendance for their children usually increases with any
increase in their income.
4. The cost of domestic labor is greater. Most kinds of domestic service
have more than doubled in price within the memory of relatively young
people. Moreover, it is gradually being realized that a high standard is
desirable in selecting a nurse for children. As a fact, a children's
nurse ought to have much greater qualifications than the nurse whose
duty is to care for sick adults. If a mother is obliged to delegate part
of the work of bringing up her children to some other woman, she is
beginning to recognize that this substitute mother should have superior
ability; and the teachers of subconscious psychology have emphasized the
importance of giving a child only the best possible intellectual
surroundings. Ignorant nursemaids are unwillingly tolerated, and as the
number of competent assistants for mothers is very small, the cost is
correspondingly high. An increase in the number of persons trained for
such work is to be anticipated, but it is likely that the demand for
them will grow even more rapidly; hence there is no reason to expect
that competent domestic help will become any less costly than it is now.
5. The standards of education have risen steadily. There is perhaps no
other feature which has tended more to limit families. Conscientious
parents have often determined to have no more children than they could
afford to educate in the best possible way. This meant at least a
college education, and frequently has led to one and two-child families.
It is a motive of birth control which calls for condemnation. The old
idea of valuable mental discipline for all kinds of mental work to be
gained from protracted difficult formal education is now rejected by
educational psychologists, but its prevalence in the popular mind serves
to make "higher education" still something of a fetish, from which
marvelous results, not capable of precise comprehension, are
anticipated. We do not disparage the value of a college education, in
saying that parents should not attach such importance to it as to lead
them to limit their family to the number to whom they can give 20 years
of education without pecuniary compensation.
The effect of these various factors in the increasing cost of children
is to decrease fecundity not so much on the basis of income of parents,
as on the basis of their standards. The prudent, conscientious parent is
therefore the one most affected, and the reduction in births is greatest
in that class, where eugenics is most loth to see it.
The remedy appears to be a change in public opinion which will result in
a truer idea of values. Some readjustments in family budgets are called
for, which will discriminate more clearly between expenditure that is
worth while, and that which is not. Without depriving his children of
the best medical attention and education, one may eliminate those
invidious sources of expense which benefit neither the children nor
anyone else,--overdressing, for instance. A simplification of life would
not only enable superior people to have larger families, but would often
be an advantage to the children already born.
On the other hand, the fact that higher standards in a population lead
to fewer children suggests a valuable means of reducing the birth-rate
of the inferior. Raise their low standards of living and they will
reduce their own fertility voluntarily (the birth control movement
furnishing them with the possibility). All educational work in the slums
therefore is likely to have a valuable though indirect eugenic outcome.
The poor foreign-speaking areas in large cities, where immigrants live
huddled together in squalor, should be broken up. As these people are
given new ideas of comfort, and as their children are educated in
American ways of living, there is every reason to expect a decline in
their birth-rate, similar to that which has taken place among the
native-born during the past generation.
This elevation of standards in the lower classes will be accomplished
without any particular exertion from eugenists; there are many agencies
at work in this field, although they rarely realize the result of their
work which we have just pointed out.
But to effect a discriminating change in the standards of the more
intelligent and better educated classes calls for a real effort on the
part of all those who have the welfare of society at heart. The
difficulties are great enough and the obstacles are evident enough; it
is more encouraging to look at the other side, and to see evidences that
the public is awakening. The events of every month show that the ideals
of eugenics are filtering through the public mind more rapidly than some
of us, a decade ago, felt justified in expecting. There is a growing
recognition of the danger of bad breeding; a growing recognition in some
quarters at least of the need for more children from the superior part
of the population; a growing outcry against the excessive standards of
luxury that are making children themselves luxuries. The number of those
who call themselves eugenists, or who are in sympathy with the aims of
eugenics, is increasing every year, as is evidenced by the growth of
such an organization as the American Genetic Association. Legislators
show an eager desire to pass measures that as they (too often wrongly)
believe will have a eugenic result. Most colleges and universities are
teaching the principles of heredity, and a great many of them add
definite instruction in the principles of eugenics. Although the
ultimate aim of eugenics--to raise the level of the whole human race--is
perhaps as great an undertaking as the human mind can conceive, the
American nation shows distinct signs of a willingness to grapple with
it. And this book will have failed in its purpose, if it has not
convinced the reader that means are available for attacking the problem
at many points, and that immediate progress is not a mere dream.
One of the first necessary steps is a change in educational methods to
give greater emphasis to parenthood. And this change, it is a great
pleasure to be able to say, is being made in many places. The public
schools are gradually beginning to teach mothercraft, under various
guises, in many cities and the School of Practical Arts, Columbia Univ. ,
gives a course in the "Physical Care of the Infant. " Public and private
institutions are beginning to recognize, what has long been ignored,
that parenthood is one of the functions of men and women, toward which
their education should be directed. Every such step will tend, we
believe, to increase the birth-rate among the superior classes of the
community; every such step is therefore, indirectly if not directly, a
gain for eugenics; for, as we have emphasized time and again, a change
in public opinion, to recognize parenthood as a beautiful and desirable
thing, is one of the first desiderata of the eugenics program.
The introduction of domestic science and its rapid spread are very
gratifying, yet there are serious shortcomings, as rather too vigorously
set forth by A. E. Hamilton:
"There are rows of little gas stoves over which prospective wives
conduct culinary chemical experiments. There are courses in biology,
something of physiology and hygiene, the art of interior decoration and
the science of washing clothes. There is text-book sociology and
sometimes lectures on heredity or eugenics. But the smile of incredulity
as to my seriousness when I asked a Professor in the Margaret Morrison
Carnegie School [a college of Practical Arts for Women], 'Where are the
babies? ' is typical. Babies were impossible. They would interfere with
the curriculum, there was no time for practice with babies, and besides,
where could they be got, and how could they be taken care of? The
students were altogether too busy with calories, balanced rations, and
the history of medieval art. "
Perhaps the time is not so far distant when babies will be considered an
integral part of a girl's curriculum. If educators begin systematically
to educate the emotions as well as the intellect, they will have taken a
long step toward increasing the birth-rate of the superior. The next
step will be to correlate income more truly with ability in such a way
as to make it possible for superior young parents to afford children
earlier. The child ought, if eugenically desirable, to be made an asset
rather than a liability; if this can not be done, the parents should at
least not be penalized for having children. In this chapter, emphasis
has been laid on the need for a change in public opinion; in future
chapters some economic and social reforms will be suggested, which it is
believed would tend to make superior parents feel willing to have more
children.
The education of public opinion which, acting through the many agencies
named, will gradually bring about an increase in the birth-rate of
superior people, will not be speedy; but it has begun. The writers,
therefore, feel justified in thinking, not solely as a matter of
optimistic affirmation, but because of the evidence available, that the
race suicide now taking place in the old American stock will soon reach
its lowest limit, and that thereafter the birth-rate in that particular
stock will slowly rise. If it does, and if, as seems probable, the
birth-rate in some inferior sections of the American population at the
same time falls from its present level, a change in the racial
composition of the nation will take place, which, judged by past
history, is bound to be of great eugenic value.
CHAPTER XIV
THE COLOR LINE
"A young white woman, a graduate of a great university of the far North,
where Negroes are seldom seen, resented it most indignantly when she was
threatened with social ostracism in a city farther South with a large
Negro population because she insisted upon receiving upon terms of
social equality a Negro man who had been her classmate. [128]"
The incident seems trivial. But the phenomenon back of it, the "color
line," is so far-reaching that it deserves careful examination.
As the incident suggests, the color line is not a universal phenomenon.
The Germans appear to have little aversion to receiving Negroes--_in
Germany_--on terms of equality. These same Germans, when brought face to
face with the question in their colonies, or in the southern United
States, quickly change their attitude. Similarly a Negro in Great
Britain labors under much less disadvantage than he does among the
British inhabitants of Australia or South Africa.
The color line therefore exists only as the result of race experience.
This fact alone is sufficient to suggest that one should not dismiss it
lightly as the outgrowth of bigotry. Is is not perhaps a social
adaptation with survival value?
The purpose of this chapter is to analyze society's "unconscious
reasoning" which has led to the establishment of a color line--to the
denial of social equality--wherever the white[129] and black races have
long been in contact during recent history; and to see whether this
discrimination appears to be justified by eugenics.
J. M. Mecklin[130] summarizes society's logic as follows:
"When society permits the free social intercourse of two young persons
of similar training and interests, it tacitly gives its consent to the
possible legitimate results of such relations, namely, marriage. But
marriage is not a matter that concerns the contracting parties alone; it
is social in its origin and from society come its sanctions. It is
society's legitimatised method for the perpetuation of the race in the
larger and inclusive sense of a continuous racial type which shall be
the bearer of a continuous and progressive civilization. There are,
however, within the community, two racial groups of such widely
divergent physical and psychic characteristics that the blending of the
two destroys the purity of the type of both and introduces
confusion--the result of the blend is a mongrel. The preservation of the
unbroken, self-conscious existence of the white or dominant ethnic group
is synonymous with the preservation of all that has meaning and
inspiration in its past and hope for its future. It forbids by law,
therefore, or by the equally effective social taboo, anything that would
tend to contaminate the purity of its stock or jeopardize the integrity
of its social heritage. "
It is needless to say that the "social mind" does not consciously go
through any such process of reasoning, before it draws a color line. The
social mind rarely even attempts to justify its conclusions. It merely
holds a general attitude of superiority, which in many cases appears to
be nothing more than a feeling that another race is _different_.
In what way different?
The difference between the white race and the black (or any other race)
might consist of two elements: (1) differences in heredity--biological
differences; (2) differences in traditions, environment, customs--social
differences, in short. A critical inquirer would want to know which kind
of difference was greater, for he would at once see that the second kind
might be removed by education and other social forces, while the first
kind would be substantially permanent.
It is not difficult to find persons of prominence who will assert that
all the differences between white and Negro are differences of a social
nature, that the differences of a physical nature are negligible, and
that if the Negro is "given a chance" the significant differences will
disappear. This attitude permeates the public school system of northern
states. A recent report on the condition of Negro pupils in the New York
City public schools professes to give "few, perhaps no, recommendations
that would not apply to the children of other races. Where the
application is more true in regard to colored children, it seems largely
to be because of this lack of equal justice in the cases of their
parents. Race weakness appears but this could easily be balanced by the
same or similar weakness in other races. Given an education carefully
adapted to his needs and a fair chance for employment, the normal child
of any race will succeed, unless the burden of wrong home conditions
lies too heavily upon him. "[131]
As the writer does not define what she means by "succeed," one is
obliged to guess at what she means: Her anthropology is apparently
similar to that of Franz Boas of Columbia University, who has said that,
"No proof can be given of any material inferiority of the Negro
race;--without doubt the bulk of the individuals composing the race are
equal in mental aptitude to the bulk of our own people. "
If such a statement is wholly true, the color line can hardly be
justified, but must be regarded, as it is now the case sometimes, as
merely the expression of prejudice and ignorance. If the only
differences between white and black, which can not be removed by
education, are of no real significance,--a chocolate hue of skin, a
certain kinkiness of hair, and so on,--then logically the white race
should remove the handicaps which lack of education and bad environment
have placed on the Negro, and receive him on terms of perfect equality,
in business, in politics, and in marriage.
The proposition needs only to be stated in this frank form, to arouse an
instinctive protest on the part of most Americans. Yet it has been urged
in an almost equally frank form by many writers, from the days of the
abolitionists to the present, and it seems to be the logical consequence
of the position adopted by such anthropologists as Professor Boas, and
by the educators and others who proclaim that there are no significant
differences between the Negro and the white, except such as are due to
social conditions and which, therefore, can be removed.
But what are these social differences, which it is the custom to dismiss
in such a light-hearted way? Are they not based on fundamental
incompatibilities of racial temperament, which in turn are based on
differences in heredity? Modern sociologists for the main part have no
illusions as to the ease with which these differences in racial
tradition and custom can be removed.
The social heritage of the Negro has been described at great length and
often with little regard for fact, by hundreds of writers. Only a glance
can be given the subject here, but it may profitably be asked what the
Negro did when he was left to himself in Africa.
"The most striking feature of the African Negro is the low forms of
social organization, the lack of industrial and political cooperation,
and consequently the almost entire absence of social and national
self-consciousness. This rather than intellectual inferiority explains
the lack of social sympathy, the presence of such barbarous institutions
as cannibalism and slavery, the low position of woman, inefficiency in
the industrial and mechanical arts, the low type of group morals,
rudimentary art-sense, lack of race-pride and self-assertiveness, and in
intellectual and religious life largely synonymous with fetishism and
sorcery. "[132]
An elementary knowledge of the history of Africa, or the more recent and
much-quoted example of Haiti, is sufficient to prove that the Negro's
own social heritage is at a level far below that of the whites among
whom he is living in the United States. No matter how much one may
admire some of the Negro's individual traits, one must admit that his
development of group traits is primitive, and suggests a mental
development which is also primitive.
If the number of original contributions which it has made to the world's
civilization is any fair criterion of the relative value of a race, then
the Negro race must be placed very near zero on the scale. [133]
The following historical considerations suggest that in comparison with
some other races the Negro race is germinally lacking in the higher
developments of intelligence:
1. That the Negro race in Africa has never, by its own initiative, risen
much above barbarism, although it has been exposed to a considerable
range of environments and has had abundant time in which to bring to
expression any inherited traits it may possess.
2. That when transplanted to a new environment--say, Haiti--and left to
its own resources, the Negro race has shown the same inability to rise;
it has there, indeed, lost most of what it had acquired from the
superior civilization of the French.
3. That when placed side by side with the white race, the Negro race
again fails to come up to their standard, or indeed to come anywhere
near it. It is often alleged that this third test is an unfair one; that
the social heritage of slavery must be eliminated before the Negro can
be expected to show his true worth. But contrast his career in and after
slavery with that of the Mamelukes of Egypt, who were slaves, but slaves
of good stock. They quickly rose to be the real rulers of the country.
Again, compare the record of the Greek slaves in the Roman republic and
empire or that of the Jews under Islam. Without pushing these analogies
too far, is not one forced to conclude that the Negro lacks in his
germ-plasm excellence of some qualities which the white races possess,
and which are essential for success in competition with the
civilizations of the white races at the present day?
If so, it must be admitted not only that the Negro is _different_ from
the white, but that he is in the large eugenically _inferior_ to the
white.
This conclusion is based on the relative achievements of the race; it
must be tested by the more precise methods of the anthropological
laboratory. Satisfactory studies of the Negro should be much more
numerous, but there are a few informative ones. Physical characters are
first to be considered.
As a result of the careful measurement of many skulls, Karl Pearson[134]
has come to the following conclusions:
"There is for the best ascertainable characters a continuous
relationship from the European skull, through prehistoric European,
prehistoric Egyptian, Congo-Gaboon Negroes to Zulus and Kafirs.
"The indication is that of a long differentiated evolution, in which the
Negro lies nearer to the common stem than the European; he is nearer to
the childhood of man. "
This does not prove any mental inferiority: there is little or no
relation between conformation of skull and mental qualities, and it is a
great mistake to make hasty inferences from physical to mental traits.
Bean and Mall have made studies directly on the brain, but it is not
possible to draw any sure conclusions from their work. A. Hrdlicka
found physical differences between the two races, but did not study
traits of any particular eugenic significance.
On the whole, the studies of physical anthropologists offer little of
interest for the present purpose. Studies of mental traits are more to
the point, but are unfortunately vitiated in many cases by the fact that
no distinction was made between full-blood Negroes and mulattoes,
although the presence of white blood must necessarily have a marked
influence on the traits under consideration. If the investigations are
discounted when necessary for this reason, it appears that in the more
elementary mental processes the two races are approximately equal. White
and "colored" children in the Washington, D. C. , schools ranked equally
well in memory; the colored children were found to be somewhat the more
sensitive to heat. [135] Summing up the available evidence, G. O. Ferguson
concludes that "in the so-called lower traits there is no great
difference between the Negro and the white. In motor capacity there is
probably no appreciable racial difference. In sense capacity, in
perceptive and discriminative ability, there is likewise a practical
equality. "
This is what one would, _a priori_, probably expect. But it is on the
"higher" mental functions that race progress largely depends, and the
Negro must be judged eugenically mainly by his showing in these higher
functions. One of the first studies in this line is that of M. J.
Mayo,[136] who summarizes it as follows:
"The median age of white pupils at the time of entering high school in
the city of New York is 14 years 6 months: of colored pupils 15 years 1
month--a difference of 7 months. The average deviation for whites is 9
months; for colored 15 months. Twenty-seven per cent of the whites are
as old as the median age of the colored or older.
"Colored pupils remain in school a greater length of time than do the
whites. For the case studied [150 white and 150 colored], the average
time spent in high school for white pupils was 3. 8 terms; for colored
4. 5 terms. About 28% of the whites attain the average time of attendance
for colored.
"Considering the entire scholastic record, the median mark of the 150
white pupils is 66; of the 150 colored pupils 62; a difference of 4%.
The average deviation of white pupils is 7; of colored 6. 5. Twenty-nine
per cent. of the colored pupils reach or surpass the median mark of the
whites.
"The white pupils have a higher average standing in all subjects . . .
the colored pupils are about 3/4 as efficient as the whites in the
pursuit of high school studies. "
This whole investigation is probably much too favorable to the Negro
race, first because Negro high school pupils represent a more careful
selection than do the white pupils; but most of all because no
distinction was made between Negroes and mulattoes.
B. A. Phillips, studying the public elementary schools of Philadelphia,
found[137] that the percentage of retardation in the colored schools
ranged from 72. 8 to 58. 2, while the percentage of retardation in the
districts which contained the schools ranged from 45. 1 to 33. 3. The
average percentage of retardation for the city as a whole was 40. 3. Each
of the colored schools had a greater percentage of retardation than any
of the white schools, even those composed almost entirely of foreigners,
and in those schools attended by both white and colored pupils the
percentage of retardation on the whole varied directly with the
percentage of colored pupils in attendance.
These facts might be interpreted in several ways. It might be that the
curriculum was not well adapted to the colored children, or that they
came from bad home environments, or that they differed in age, etc. Dr.
Phillips accordingly undertook to get further light on the cause of
retardation of the colored pupils by applying Binet tests to white and
colored children of the same chronological age and home conditions, and
found "a difference in the acceleration between the two races of 31% in
favor of the white boys, 25% in favor of the white girls, 28% in favor
of the white pupils with boys and girls combined. "
A. C. Strong, using the Binet-Simon tests, found[138] colored school
children of Columbia, S. C. , considerably less intelligent than white
children.
W. H. Pyle made an extensive test[139] of 408 colored pupils in
Missouri public schools and compared them with white pupils. He
concludes: "In general the marks indicating mental ability of the Negro
are about two-thirds those of the whites. . . . In the substitution,
controlled association, and Ebbinghaus tests, the Negroes are less than
half as good as the whites. In free association and the ink-blot tests
they are nearly as good. In quickness of perception and discrimination
and in reaction, the Negroes equal or excel the whites. "
"Perhaps the most important question that arises in connection with the
results of these mental tests is: How far is ability to pass them
dependent on environmental conditions? Our tests show certain specific
differences between Negroes and whites. What these differences would
have been had the Negroes been subject to the same environmental
influences as the whites, it is difficult to say. The results obtained
by separating the Negroes into two social groups would lead one to think
that the conditions of life under which the negroes live might account
for the lower mentality of the Negroes. On the other hand, it may be
that the Negroes living under better social conditions are of better
stock. They may have more white blood in them. "
The most careful study yet made of the relative intelligence of Negroes
and whites is that of G. O. Ferguson, Jr. ,[140] on 486 white and 421
colored pupils in the schools of Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Newport
News, Va. Tests were employed which required the use of the "higher"
functions, and as far as possible (mainly on the basis of skin-color)
the amount of white blood in the colored pupils was determined. Four
classes were made: full-blood Negro, 3/4 Negro, 1/2 Negro (mulatto) and
1/4 Negro (quadroon). It was found that "the pure Negroes scored 69. 2%
as high as the whites; that the 3/4 pure Negroes scored 73. 2% as high as
the whites; that the mulattoes scored 81. 2% as high as the whites; and
that the quadroons obtained 91. 8% of the white score. " This confirms the
belief of many observers that the ability of a colored man is
proportionate to the amount of white blood he has.
Summarizing a large body of evidence, Dr. Ferguson concludes that "the
intellectual performance of the general colored population is
approximately 75% as efficient as that of the whites," but that pure
Negroes have only 60% of white intellectual efficiency, and that even
this figure is probably too high. "It seems as though the white type has
attained a higher level of development, based upon the common elementary
capacities, which the Negro has not reached to the same degree. " "All of
the experimental work which has been done has pointed to the same
general conclusion. "
This is a conclusion of much definiteness and value, but it does not go
as far as one might wish, for the deeper racial differences of impulse
and inhibition, which are at present incapable of precise measurement,
are likewise of great importance. And it is the common opinion that the
Negro differs in such traits even more than in intellect proper. He is
said to be lacking in that aggressive competitiveness which has been
responsible for so much of the achievement of the Nordic race; it is
alleged that his sexual impulses are strongly developed and inhibitions
lacking; that he has "an instability of character, involving a lack of
foresight, an improvidence, a lack of persistence, small power of
serious initiative, a tendency to be content with immediate
satisfactions. " He appears to be more gregarious but less apt at
organization than most races.
The significance of these differences depends largely on whether they
are germinal, or merely the results of social tradition. In favor of the
view that they are in large part racial and hereditary, is the fact that
they persist in all environments. They are found, as Professor Mecklin
says, "Only at the lower level of instinct, impulse and temperament, and
do not, therefore, admit of clear definition because they are overlaid
in the case of every individual with a mental superstructure gotten from
the social heritage which may vary widely in the case of members of the
same race. That they do persist, however, is evidenced in the case of
the Negroes subjected to the very different types of civilization in
Haiti, Santo Domingo, the United States, and Jamaica. In each of these
cases a complete break has been made with the social traditions of
Africa and different civilizations have been substituted, and yet in
temperament and character the Negro in all these countries is
essentially the same. The so-called 'reversion to type' often pointed
out in the Negro is in reality but the recrudescence of fundamental,
unchanged race traits upon the partial breakdown of the social heritage
or the Negro's failure successfully to appropriate it. "
Again, as Professor Ferguson points out, the experimental tests above
cited may be thought to give some support to the idea that the emotional
characteristics of the Negro are really inherent. "Strong and changing
emotions, an improvident character and a tendency to immoral conduct are
not unallied," he explains; "They are all rooted in uncontrolled
impulse. And a factor which may tend to produce all three is a deficient
development of the more purely intellectual capacities. Where the
implications of the ideas are not apprehended, where thought is not
lively and fertile, where meanings and consequences are not grasped, the
need for the control of impulse will not be felt. And the demonstrable
deficiency of the Negro in intellectual traits may involve the dynamic
deficiencies which common opinion claims to exist. "
There are other racial and heritable differences of much importance,
which are given too little recognition--namely, the differences of
disease resistance. Here one can speak unhesitatingly of a real
inferiority in respect to the environment of North America.
As was pointed out in the chapter on Natural Selection, the Negro has
been subjected to lethal selection for centuries by the Negro diseases,
the diseases of tropical Africa, of which malaria and yellow fever are
the most conspicuous examples. The Negro is strongly resistant to these
and can live where the white man dies. The white man, on the other hand,
has his own diseases, of which tuberculosis is an excellent example.
Compared with the Negro, he is relatively resistant to phthisis and will
survive where the Negro dies.
When the two races are living side by side, it is obvious that each is
proving a menace to the other, by acting as a disseminator of
infection. The white man kills the Negro with tuberculosis and typhoid
fever. In North America the Negro can not kill the white man with
malaria or yellow fever, to any great extent, because these diseases do
not flourish here. But the Negro has brought some other diseases here
and given them to the white race; elephantiasis is one example, but the
most conspicuous is hookworm, the extent and seriousness of which have
only recently been realized.
In the New England states the average expectation of life, at birth, is
50. 6 years for native white males, 34. 1 years for Negro males. For
native white females it is 54. 2 years and for Negro females 37. 7 years,
according to the Bureau of the Census (1916). These very considerable
differences can not be wholly explained away by the fact that the Negro
is crowded into parts of the cities where the sanitation is worst. They
indicate that the Negro is out of his environment. In tropical Africa,
to which the Negro is adapted by many centuries of natural selection,
his expectation of life might be much longer than that of the white man.
In the United States he is much less "fit," in the Darwinian sense.
In rural districts of the South, according to C. W. Stiles, the annual
typhoid death rate per 100,000 population is:
_Whites_ _Negroes_
Males 37. 4 75. 3
Females 27. 4 56. 3
These figures again show, not alone the greater intelligence of the
white in matters of hygiene, but probably also the greater inherent
resistance of the white to a disease which has been attacking him for
many centuries. Biologically, North America is a white man's country,
not a Negro's country, and those who are considering the Negro problem
must remember that natural selection has not ceased acting on man.
From the foregoing different kinds of evidence, we feel justified in
concluding that the Negro race differs greatly from the white race,
mentally as well as physically, and that in many respects it may be said
to be inferior, when tested by the requirements of modern civilization
and progress, with particular reference to North America.
We return now to the question of intermarriage. What is to be expected
from the union of these diverse streams of descent?
The best answer would be to study and measure the mulattoes and their
posterity, in as many ways as possible. No one has ever done this. It is
the custom to make no distinction whatever between mulatto and Negro, in
the United States, and thus the whole problem is beclouded.
There is some evidence from life insurance and medical sources, that the
mulatto stands above the Negro but below the white in respect to his
health. There is considerable evidence that he occupies the same
relation in the intellectual world; it is a matter of general
observation that nearly all the leaders of the Negro race in the United
States are not Negroes but mulattoes.
Without going into detail, we feel perfectly safe in drawing this
conclusion: that in general the white race loses and the Negro gains
from miscegenation.
This applies, of course, only to the germinal nature. Taking into
consideration the present social conditions in America, it is doubtful
whether either race gains. But if social conditions be eliminated for
the moment, biologists may believe that intermarriage between the white
and Negro races represents, on the whole, an advance for the Negro; and
that it represents for the white race a distinct loss.
If eugenics is to be thought of solely in terms of the white race, there
can be no hesitation about rendering a verdict. We must unhesitatingly
condemn miscegenation.
But there are those who declare that it is small and mean to take such a
narrow view of the evolution of the race. They would have America open
its doors indiscriminately to immigration, holding it a virtue to
sacrifice one's self permanently for someone else's temporary happiness;
they would equally have the white race sacrifice itself for the Negro,
by allowing a mingling of the two blood-streams. That, it is alleged, is
the true way to elevate the Negro.
The question may well be considered from that point of view, even
though the validity of such a point of view is not admitted.
To ensure racial and social progress, nothing will take the place of
leadership, of genius. A race of nothing but mediocrities will stand
still, or very nearly so; but a race of mediocrities with a good supply
of men of exceptional ability and energy at the top, will make progress
in discovery, invention and organization, which is generally recognized
as progressive evolution.
If the level of the white race be lowered, it will hurt that race and be
of little help to the Negro. If the white race be kept at such a level
that its productivity of men of talent will be at a maximum, everyone
will progress; for the Negro benefits just as the white does from every
forward step in science and art, in industry and politics.
Remembering that the white race in America is nine times as numerous as
the black race, we conclude that it would be desirable to encourage
amalgamation of the two races only in case the average of mulattoes is
superior to the average of the whites. No one can seriously maintain
that this supposition is true. Biologically, therefore, there is no
reason to think that an increase in the number of mulattoes is
desirable.
There is a curious argument in circulation, which points out that
mulattoes are almost always the offspring of Negro mothers and white
fathers, not of Negro fathers and white mothers. Therefore, it is said,
production of mulattoes does not mean at all a decrease in the number of
white births, but merely substitutes a number of mulatto births for an
equivalent number of pure Negro births. It is therefore alleged that the
production of mulattoes is in the long run a benefit, elevating the
Negro race without impairing the white race.
But this argument assumes that most mulatto births are illegitimate,--a
condition which eugenists do not sanction, because it tends to
disintegrate the family. Rather than such a condition, the legitimate
production of pure-blood Negroes is preferable, even though they be
inferior in individual ability to the illegitimate mulattoes offered as
a substitute. There are not at the present time enough desirable white
fathers in the country. If desirable ones are set aside to produce
mulattoes, it would be a great loss to the nation; while if the
mulattoes are the offspring of eugenically undesirable white fathers,
then the product is not likely to be anything America wants.
From whatever standpoint we take, we see nothing good to be said for
miscegenation. [141] We have discussed the problem as a particular one
between the blacks and whites but the argument will hold good when
applied to any two races between which the differences are so marked
that one may be considered decidedly inferior to the other.
Society,--white society,--long ago reached the instinctive conclusion,
which seems to us a correct one, that it must put a ban on intermarriage
between two such races. It has given expression to this feeling by
passing laws to prohibit miscegenation in 22 states, while six other
states prohibit it in their constitutions. There are thus 22 states
which have attempted legally to prevent intermarriage of the white and
black race. While in 20 states there is no law on the subject, it is
needless to say that popular feeling about it is almost uniform, and
that the legislators of New England for instance would refuse to give
their daughters in marriage to Negroes, even though they might the day
before have voted down a proposed law to prohibit intermarriage on the
ground that it was an expression of race prejudice.
In a majority of the states which have no legislation of this kind,
bills have been introduced during the last two or three years, and have
been defeated through the energetic interference of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an organization of
which Oswald Garrison Villard is chairman of the Board of Directors and
W. E. B. DuBois, a brilliant mulatto, is Director of Publicity and
Research. As this association represents a very large part of the more
intelligent Negro public opinion, its attitude deserves careful
consideration. It is set forth summarily in a letter[142] which was
addressed to legislators in various states, as follows:
"The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
earnestly protests against the bill forbidding intermarriage between the
races, not because the Association advocates intermarriage, which it
does not, but primarily because whenever such laws have been enacted
they have become a menace to the whole institution of matrimony, leading
directly to concubinage, bastardy, and the degradation of the Negro
woman. No man-made law can stop the union of the races. If intermarriage
be wrong, its prevention is best left to public opinion and to nature,
which wreaks its own fearful punishments on those who transgress its
laws and sin against it. We oppose the proposed statute in the language
of William Lloyd Garrison in 1843, in his successful campaign for the
repeal of a similar law in Massachusetts: 'Because it is not the
province, and does not belong to the power of any legislative assembly,
in a republican government, to decide on the complexional affinity of
those who choose to be united together in wedlock; and it may as
rationally decree that corpulent and lean, tall and short, strong and
weak persons shall not be married to each other as that there must be an
agreement in the complexion of the parties. '
"We oppose it for the physical reason that to prohibit such
intermarriage would be publicly to acknowledge that black blood is a
physical taint, something no self-respecting colored man and woman can
be asked to admit. We oppose it for the moral reason that all such laws
leave the colored girl absolutely helpless before the lust of the white
man, without the power to compel the seducer to marry. The statistics of
intermarriage in those states where it is permitted show this happens
so infrequently as to make the whole matter of legislation unnecessary.
Both races are practically in complete agreement on this question, for
colored people marry colored people, and white marry whites, the
exceptions being few. We earnestly urge upon you an unfavorable report
on this bill. "
Legislation on the subject of marriage is clearly inside the province of
government. That such an argument as is quoted from William Lloyd
Garrison can still be circulated in the United States and apparently
carry weight, is sufficient cause for one to feel pessimistic over the
spread of the scientific spirit in this nation. Suffice it to say that
on this point the National Association is a century behind the times.
The following policy seems to us to be in accordance with modern
science, and yet meet all the legitimate arguments of the National
Association. We will state our attitude as definitely as possible:
1. We hold that it is to the interests of the United States, for the
reasons given in this chapter, to prevent further Negro-white
amalgamation.
2. The taboo of public opinion is not sufficient in all cases to prevent
intermarriage, and should be supplemented by law, particularly as the
United States have of late years received many white immigrants from
other countries (e. g. , Italy) where the taboo is weak because the
problem has never been pressing.
3. But to prevent intermarriage is only a small part of the solution,
since most mulattoes come from extramarital miscegenation. The only
solution of this, which is compatible with the requirements of eugenics,
is not that of _laissez faire_, suggested by the National Association,
but an extension of the taboo, and an extension of the laws, to prohibit
all sexual intercourse between the two races.
Four states (Louisiana, Nevada, South Dakota and Alabama) have already
attempted to gain this end by law. We believe it to be highly desirable
that such laws should be enacted and enforced by all states. A necessary
preliminary would be to standardize the laws all over the Union,
particularly with a view to agreement on what a "Negro" legally is; for
in some states the legislation applies to one who is one-sixteenth, or
even less, Negro in descent, while in other states it appears to refer
only to full-blood or, at the most, half-blood individuals.
Such legislation, and what is more important, such public opinion,
leading to a cessation of Negro-white amalgamation, we believe to be in
the interests of national eugenics, and to further the welfare of both
of the races involved. Miscegenation can only lead to unhappiness under
present social conditions and must, we believe, under _any_ social
conditions be biologically wrong.
We favor, therefore, the support of the taboo which society has placed
on these mixed marriages, as well as any legal action which can
practicably be taken to make miscegenation between white and black
impossible. Justice requires that the Negro race be treated as kindly
and considerately as possible, with every economic and political
concession that is consistent with the continued welfare of the nation.
Such social equality and intercourse as might lead to marriage are not
compatible with this welfare.
CHAPTER XV
IMMIGRATION
There are now in the United States some 14,000,000 foreign-born persons,
together with other millions of the sons and daughters of foreigners who
although born on American soil have as yet been little assimilated to
Americanism. This great body of aliens, representing perhaps a fifth of
the population, is not a pool to be absorbed, but a continuous,
inflowing stream, which until the outbreak of the Great War was steadily
increasing in volume, and of which the fountain-head is so inexhaustible
as to appal the imagination. From the beginning of the century, the
inflow averaged little less than a million a year, and while about
one-fifth of this represented a temporary migration, four-fifths of it
meant a permanent addition to the population of the New World.
The character of this stream will inevitably determine to a large extent
the future of the American nation. The direct biological results, in
race mixture, are important enough, although not easy to define. The
indirect results, which are probably of no less importance to eugenics,
are so hard to follow that some students of the problem do not even
realize their existence.
The ancestors of all white Americans, of course, were immigrants not so
very many generations ago. But the earlier immigration was relatively
homogeneous and stringently selected by the dangers of the voyage, the
hardships of life in a new country, and the equality of opportunity
where free competition drove the unfit to the wall. There were few
people of eminence in the families that came to colonize North America,
but there was a high average of sturdy virtues, and a good deal of
ability, particularly in the Puritan and Huguenot invasions and in a
part of that of Virginia.
In the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, the number of
these "patriots and founders" was greatly increased by the arrival of
immigrants of similar racial stocks from Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia,
and to a less extent from the other countries of northern and western
Europe. These arrivals added strength to the United States, particularly
as a large part of them settled on farms.
This stream of immigration gradually dried up, but was succeeded by a
flood from a new source,--southern and eastern Europe. Italians, Slavs,
Poles, Magyars, East European Hebrews, Finns, Portuguese, Greeks,
Roumanians and representatives of many other small nationalities began
to seek fortunes in America. The earlier immigration had been made up
largely of those who sought escape from religious or political tyranny
and came to settle permanent homes. The newer immigration was made up,
on the whole, of those who frankly sought wealth. The difference in the
reason for coming could not fail to mean a difference in selection of
the immigrants, quite apart from the change in the races.
Last of all began an immigration of Levantines, of Syrians, Armenians,
and other inhabitants of Asiatic Turkey. Beyond this region lie the
great nations of Asia, "oversaturated" with population. So far there has
been little more than the threat of their overflow, but the threat is
certain to become a reality within a few years unless prevented by legal
restriction.
The eugenic results of immigration are partly indirect and partly
direct. Direct results follow if the newcomers are assimilated,--a word
which we shall use rather narrowly to mean that free intermarriage takes
place between them and all parts of the older population. We shall
discuss the direct results first, the nature of which depends largely on
whether the newcomers are racially homogeneous with the population
already in the country.
If they are like, the old and new will blend without difficulty. The
effects of the immigration then depend on whether the immigrants are
better or worse in average quality than the older residents. If as good
or better, they are valuable additions; if inferior they are
biologically a detriment.
is limited to the number whom the minister can afford to bring up on his
inadequate salary. ]
Against this it might be argued that the desired result will never be
wholly attained, because the most effective means of birth control
involve some expense, and because their effective use presupposes a
certain amount of foresight and self-control which is not always found
among the lower strata of society.
Despite certain dangers accompanying a widespread dissemination of the
knowledge of how to limit births, it seems to be the opinion of most
eugenists that if free access to such information be not permitted that
at least such knowledge ought to be given in many families, where it
would be to the advantage of society that fewer children be produced.
Such a step, of course, must be taken on the individual responsibility
of a doctor, nurse or other social worker. A propaganda has arisen
during recent years, in the United States, for the repeal of all laws
which prohibit giving knowledge about and selling contraceptives.
Whether or not it succeeds in changing the law it will, like the
Bradlaugh-Besant episode, spread contraception widely. This propaganda
is based largely on social and economic grounds, and is sometimes
unscientific in its methods and avowed aims. But whatever its nature may
be, there seems little reason (judging from analogy in European
countries) to believe that it can be stopped.
The "infant mortality movement" also has an effect here which is rarely
recognized. It is a stock argument of birth control propagandists that a
high birth-rate means a high rate of infant mortality; but A. O. Powys
has demonstrated that cause and effect are to some extent reversed in
this statement, and that it is equally true that a high rate of infant
mortality means a high birth-rate, in a section of the population where
birth control is not practiced. The explanation is the familiar fact
that conception takes place less often in nursing mothers. But if a
child dies early or is bottle-fed, a new conception is likely to occur
much sooner than would otherwise be the case. By reducing infant
mortality and teaching mothers to feed their babies naturally, the
infant mortality movement is thereby reducing the birth-rate in the
poorer part of the population, a eugenic service which to some extent
offsets the dysgenic results that, as we shall show in the last chapter,
follow the "Save the Babies" propaganda.
With the spread of the birth control and infant mortality movements one
may therefore look forward to some diminution of the differential
element in the birth-rate, together with a further decline in that
birth-rate as a whole.
Such a situation, which seems to us almost a certainty within the next
decade or two, will not change the duty of eugenics, on which we have
been insisting in this chapter and, to a large extent, throughout the
present book. It will be just as necessary as ever that the families
which are, and have been in the past, of the greatest benefit and value
to the country, have a higher birth-rate. The greatest task of eugenics,
as we see it, will still be to find means by which the birth-rate among
such families can be increased. This increase in the birth-rate among
superior people must depend largely on a change in public sentiment.
Such a change may be brought about in many ways. The authority of
religion may be invoked, as it is by the Roman Catholic and Mormon
churches[127] whose communicants are constantly taught that fecundity is
a virtue and voluntary sterility a sin. Unfortunately their appeal fails
to make proper discriminations. Whatever may be the theological reasons
for such an attitude on the part of the churches, its practical eugenic
significance is clear enough.
Nothing can be more certain than that, if present conditions continue,
Roman Catholics will soon be in an overwhelming preponderance in the
eastern United States, because of the differential birth-rate, if for no
other reason; and that the Mormon population will steadily gain ground
in the west. Similarly, it is alleged that the population of France is
gradually assuming the characteristics of the Breton race, because that
race is the notably fecund section of the population, while nearly all
the other components of the nation are committing race suicide (although
not so rapidly as is the old white stock in New England). Again, the
role of religion in eugenics is shown in China, where ancestor worship
leads to a desire for children, and makes it a disgrace to be childless.
A process analogous to natural selection applies to religions much as it
does to races; and if the Chinese religion, with its requirement of a
high birth-rate, and the present-day American Protestant form of the
Christian religion, with its lack of eugenic teaching, should come into
direct competition, under equal conditions of environment, it is obvious
that the Chinese form would be the eventual survivor, just because its
adherents would steadily increase and those of its rival would as
steadily decrease. Such a situation may seem fanciful; yet the leaders
of every church may well consider whether the religion which they preach
is calculated to fill all the needs of its adherents, if it is silent on
the subject of eugenics.
The influence of economic factors on the birth-rate is marked. The
child, under modern urban conditions, is not an economic asset, as he
was on the farm in earlier days. He is an economic liability instead.
And with the constant rise of the standard of living, with the increase
of taxation, the child steadily becomes more of a liability. Many
married people desire children, or more children, but feel that they can
not have them without sacrificing something that they are unwilling to
sacrifice.
Analysis of this increase in the cost of children, reveals not less than
five main elements which deserve attention from eugenists.
1. It costs more to clothe children than it used to. Not only does
clothing of a given quality cost more now than it did a decade or two
ago, but there are more fabrics and designs available, and many of
these, while attractive, are costly and not durable. Compliance to
fashion has increasingly made itself felt in the clothing of the child.
2. It costs more to feed them than it used to. Not only has food for
everyone increased in price, but the standards for feeding children
have been raised. Once children were expected to be content with plain
fare; now it is more frequently the custom to give them just what the
rest of the family eats.
3. The cost of medical attention has increased. All demand more of the
doctors now than they did in the last generation. The doctors are able
to do more than they formerly could, and particularly for his children,
every man wants the best that he can possibly afford. Hence medical
attendance for a child is constantly becoming more costly, because more
frequent; and further, the amount of money which parents spend on
medical attendance for their children usually increases with any
increase in their income.
4. The cost of domestic labor is greater. Most kinds of domestic service
have more than doubled in price within the memory of relatively young
people. Moreover, it is gradually being realized that a high standard is
desirable in selecting a nurse for children. As a fact, a children's
nurse ought to have much greater qualifications than the nurse whose
duty is to care for sick adults. If a mother is obliged to delegate part
of the work of bringing up her children to some other woman, she is
beginning to recognize that this substitute mother should have superior
ability; and the teachers of subconscious psychology have emphasized the
importance of giving a child only the best possible intellectual
surroundings. Ignorant nursemaids are unwillingly tolerated, and as the
number of competent assistants for mothers is very small, the cost is
correspondingly high. An increase in the number of persons trained for
such work is to be anticipated, but it is likely that the demand for
them will grow even more rapidly; hence there is no reason to expect
that competent domestic help will become any less costly than it is now.
5. The standards of education have risen steadily. There is perhaps no
other feature which has tended more to limit families. Conscientious
parents have often determined to have no more children than they could
afford to educate in the best possible way. This meant at least a
college education, and frequently has led to one and two-child families.
It is a motive of birth control which calls for condemnation. The old
idea of valuable mental discipline for all kinds of mental work to be
gained from protracted difficult formal education is now rejected by
educational psychologists, but its prevalence in the popular mind serves
to make "higher education" still something of a fetish, from which
marvelous results, not capable of precise comprehension, are
anticipated. We do not disparage the value of a college education, in
saying that parents should not attach such importance to it as to lead
them to limit their family to the number to whom they can give 20 years
of education without pecuniary compensation.
The effect of these various factors in the increasing cost of children
is to decrease fecundity not so much on the basis of income of parents,
as on the basis of their standards. The prudent, conscientious parent is
therefore the one most affected, and the reduction in births is greatest
in that class, where eugenics is most loth to see it.
The remedy appears to be a change in public opinion which will result in
a truer idea of values. Some readjustments in family budgets are called
for, which will discriminate more clearly between expenditure that is
worth while, and that which is not. Without depriving his children of
the best medical attention and education, one may eliminate those
invidious sources of expense which benefit neither the children nor
anyone else,--overdressing, for instance. A simplification of life would
not only enable superior people to have larger families, but would often
be an advantage to the children already born.
On the other hand, the fact that higher standards in a population lead
to fewer children suggests a valuable means of reducing the birth-rate
of the inferior. Raise their low standards of living and they will
reduce their own fertility voluntarily (the birth control movement
furnishing them with the possibility). All educational work in the slums
therefore is likely to have a valuable though indirect eugenic outcome.
The poor foreign-speaking areas in large cities, where immigrants live
huddled together in squalor, should be broken up. As these people are
given new ideas of comfort, and as their children are educated in
American ways of living, there is every reason to expect a decline in
their birth-rate, similar to that which has taken place among the
native-born during the past generation.
This elevation of standards in the lower classes will be accomplished
without any particular exertion from eugenists; there are many agencies
at work in this field, although they rarely realize the result of their
work which we have just pointed out.
But to effect a discriminating change in the standards of the more
intelligent and better educated classes calls for a real effort on the
part of all those who have the welfare of society at heart. The
difficulties are great enough and the obstacles are evident enough; it
is more encouraging to look at the other side, and to see evidences that
the public is awakening. The events of every month show that the ideals
of eugenics are filtering through the public mind more rapidly than some
of us, a decade ago, felt justified in expecting. There is a growing
recognition of the danger of bad breeding; a growing recognition in some
quarters at least of the need for more children from the superior part
of the population; a growing outcry against the excessive standards of
luxury that are making children themselves luxuries. The number of those
who call themselves eugenists, or who are in sympathy with the aims of
eugenics, is increasing every year, as is evidenced by the growth of
such an organization as the American Genetic Association. Legislators
show an eager desire to pass measures that as they (too often wrongly)
believe will have a eugenic result. Most colleges and universities are
teaching the principles of heredity, and a great many of them add
definite instruction in the principles of eugenics. Although the
ultimate aim of eugenics--to raise the level of the whole human race--is
perhaps as great an undertaking as the human mind can conceive, the
American nation shows distinct signs of a willingness to grapple with
it. And this book will have failed in its purpose, if it has not
convinced the reader that means are available for attacking the problem
at many points, and that immediate progress is not a mere dream.
One of the first necessary steps is a change in educational methods to
give greater emphasis to parenthood. And this change, it is a great
pleasure to be able to say, is being made in many places. The public
schools are gradually beginning to teach mothercraft, under various
guises, in many cities and the School of Practical Arts, Columbia Univ. ,
gives a course in the "Physical Care of the Infant. " Public and private
institutions are beginning to recognize, what has long been ignored,
that parenthood is one of the functions of men and women, toward which
their education should be directed. Every such step will tend, we
believe, to increase the birth-rate among the superior classes of the
community; every such step is therefore, indirectly if not directly, a
gain for eugenics; for, as we have emphasized time and again, a change
in public opinion, to recognize parenthood as a beautiful and desirable
thing, is one of the first desiderata of the eugenics program.
The introduction of domestic science and its rapid spread are very
gratifying, yet there are serious shortcomings, as rather too vigorously
set forth by A. E. Hamilton:
"There are rows of little gas stoves over which prospective wives
conduct culinary chemical experiments. There are courses in biology,
something of physiology and hygiene, the art of interior decoration and
the science of washing clothes. There is text-book sociology and
sometimes lectures on heredity or eugenics. But the smile of incredulity
as to my seriousness when I asked a Professor in the Margaret Morrison
Carnegie School [a college of Practical Arts for Women], 'Where are the
babies? ' is typical. Babies were impossible. They would interfere with
the curriculum, there was no time for practice with babies, and besides,
where could they be got, and how could they be taken care of? The
students were altogether too busy with calories, balanced rations, and
the history of medieval art. "
Perhaps the time is not so far distant when babies will be considered an
integral part of a girl's curriculum. If educators begin systematically
to educate the emotions as well as the intellect, they will have taken a
long step toward increasing the birth-rate of the superior. The next
step will be to correlate income more truly with ability in such a way
as to make it possible for superior young parents to afford children
earlier. The child ought, if eugenically desirable, to be made an asset
rather than a liability; if this can not be done, the parents should at
least not be penalized for having children. In this chapter, emphasis
has been laid on the need for a change in public opinion; in future
chapters some economic and social reforms will be suggested, which it is
believed would tend to make superior parents feel willing to have more
children.
The education of public opinion which, acting through the many agencies
named, will gradually bring about an increase in the birth-rate of
superior people, will not be speedy; but it has begun. The writers,
therefore, feel justified in thinking, not solely as a matter of
optimistic affirmation, but because of the evidence available, that the
race suicide now taking place in the old American stock will soon reach
its lowest limit, and that thereafter the birth-rate in that particular
stock will slowly rise. If it does, and if, as seems probable, the
birth-rate in some inferior sections of the American population at the
same time falls from its present level, a change in the racial
composition of the nation will take place, which, judged by past
history, is bound to be of great eugenic value.
CHAPTER XIV
THE COLOR LINE
"A young white woman, a graduate of a great university of the far North,
where Negroes are seldom seen, resented it most indignantly when she was
threatened with social ostracism in a city farther South with a large
Negro population because she insisted upon receiving upon terms of
social equality a Negro man who had been her classmate. [128]"
The incident seems trivial. But the phenomenon back of it, the "color
line," is so far-reaching that it deserves careful examination.
As the incident suggests, the color line is not a universal phenomenon.
The Germans appear to have little aversion to receiving Negroes--_in
Germany_--on terms of equality. These same Germans, when brought face to
face with the question in their colonies, or in the southern United
States, quickly change their attitude. Similarly a Negro in Great
Britain labors under much less disadvantage than he does among the
British inhabitants of Australia or South Africa.
The color line therefore exists only as the result of race experience.
This fact alone is sufficient to suggest that one should not dismiss it
lightly as the outgrowth of bigotry. Is is not perhaps a social
adaptation with survival value?
The purpose of this chapter is to analyze society's "unconscious
reasoning" which has led to the establishment of a color line--to the
denial of social equality--wherever the white[129] and black races have
long been in contact during recent history; and to see whether this
discrimination appears to be justified by eugenics.
J. M. Mecklin[130] summarizes society's logic as follows:
"When society permits the free social intercourse of two young persons
of similar training and interests, it tacitly gives its consent to the
possible legitimate results of such relations, namely, marriage. But
marriage is not a matter that concerns the contracting parties alone; it
is social in its origin and from society come its sanctions. It is
society's legitimatised method for the perpetuation of the race in the
larger and inclusive sense of a continuous racial type which shall be
the bearer of a continuous and progressive civilization. There are,
however, within the community, two racial groups of such widely
divergent physical and psychic characteristics that the blending of the
two destroys the purity of the type of both and introduces
confusion--the result of the blend is a mongrel. The preservation of the
unbroken, self-conscious existence of the white or dominant ethnic group
is synonymous with the preservation of all that has meaning and
inspiration in its past and hope for its future. It forbids by law,
therefore, or by the equally effective social taboo, anything that would
tend to contaminate the purity of its stock or jeopardize the integrity
of its social heritage. "
It is needless to say that the "social mind" does not consciously go
through any such process of reasoning, before it draws a color line. The
social mind rarely even attempts to justify its conclusions. It merely
holds a general attitude of superiority, which in many cases appears to
be nothing more than a feeling that another race is _different_.
In what way different?
The difference between the white race and the black (or any other race)
might consist of two elements: (1) differences in heredity--biological
differences; (2) differences in traditions, environment, customs--social
differences, in short. A critical inquirer would want to know which kind
of difference was greater, for he would at once see that the second kind
might be removed by education and other social forces, while the first
kind would be substantially permanent.
It is not difficult to find persons of prominence who will assert that
all the differences between white and Negro are differences of a social
nature, that the differences of a physical nature are negligible, and
that if the Negro is "given a chance" the significant differences will
disappear. This attitude permeates the public school system of northern
states. A recent report on the condition of Negro pupils in the New York
City public schools professes to give "few, perhaps no, recommendations
that would not apply to the children of other races. Where the
application is more true in regard to colored children, it seems largely
to be because of this lack of equal justice in the cases of their
parents. Race weakness appears but this could easily be balanced by the
same or similar weakness in other races. Given an education carefully
adapted to his needs and a fair chance for employment, the normal child
of any race will succeed, unless the burden of wrong home conditions
lies too heavily upon him. "[131]
As the writer does not define what she means by "succeed," one is
obliged to guess at what she means: Her anthropology is apparently
similar to that of Franz Boas of Columbia University, who has said that,
"No proof can be given of any material inferiority of the Negro
race;--without doubt the bulk of the individuals composing the race are
equal in mental aptitude to the bulk of our own people. "
If such a statement is wholly true, the color line can hardly be
justified, but must be regarded, as it is now the case sometimes, as
merely the expression of prejudice and ignorance. If the only
differences between white and black, which can not be removed by
education, are of no real significance,--a chocolate hue of skin, a
certain kinkiness of hair, and so on,--then logically the white race
should remove the handicaps which lack of education and bad environment
have placed on the Negro, and receive him on terms of perfect equality,
in business, in politics, and in marriage.
The proposition needs only to be stated in this frank form, to arouse an
instinctive protest on the part of most Americans. Yet it has been urged
in an almost equally frank form by many writers, from the days of the
abolitionists to the present, and it seems to be the logical consequence
of the position adopted by such anthropologists as Professor Boas, and
by the educators and others who proclaim that there are no significant
differences between the Negro and the white, except such as are due to
social conditions and which, therefore, can be removed.
But what are these social differences, which it is the custom to dismiss
in such a light-hearted way? Are they not based on fundamental
incompatibilities of racial temperament, which in turn are based on
differences in heredity? Modern sociologists for the main part have no
illusions as to the ease with which these differences in racial
tradition and custom can be removed.
The social heritage of the Negro has been described at great length and
often with little regard for fact, by hundreds of writers. Only a glance
can be given the subject here, but it may profitably be asked what the
Negro did when he was left to himself in Africa.
"The most striking feature of the African Negro is the low forms of
social organization, the lack of industrial and political cooperation,
and consequently the almost entire absence of social and national
self-consciousness. This rather than intellectual inferiority explains
the lack of social sympathy, the presence of such barbarous institutions
as cannibalism and slavery, the low position of woman, inefficiency in
the industrial and mechanical arts, the low type of group morals,
rudimentary art-sense, lack of race-pride and self-assertiveness, and in
intellectual and religious life largely synonymous with fetishism and
sorcery. "[132]
An elementary knowledge of the history of Africa, or the more recent and
much-quoted example of Haiti, is sufficient to prove that the Negro's
own social heritage is at a level far below that of the whites among
whom he is living in the United States. No matter how much one may
admire some of the Negro's individual traits, one must admit that his
development of group traits is primitive, and suggests a mental
development which is also primitive.
If the number of original contributions which it has made to the world's
civilization is any fair criterion of the relative value of a race, then
the Negro race must be placed very near zero on the scale. [133]
The following historical considerations suggest that in comparison with
some other races the Negro race is germinally lacking in the higher
developments of intelligence:
1. That the Negro race in Africa has never, by its own initiative, risen
much above barbarism, although it has been exposed to a considerable
range of environments and has had abundant time in which to bring to
expression any inherited traits it may possess.
2. That when transplanted to a new environment--say, Haiti--and left to
its own resources, the Negro race has shown the same inability to rise;
it has there, indeed, lost most of what it had acquired from the
superior civilization of the French.
3. That when placed side by side with the white race, the Negro race
again fails to come up to their standard, or indeed to come anywhere
near it. It is often alleged that this third test is an unfair one; that
the social heritage of slavery must be eliminated before the Negro can
be expected to show his true worth. But contrast his career in and after
slavery with that of the Mamelukes of Egypt, who were slaves, but slaves
of good stock. They quickly rose to be the real rulers of the country.
Again, compare the record of the Greek slaves in the Roman republic and
empire or that of the Jews under Islam. Without pushing these analogies
too far, is not one forced to conclude that the Negro lacks in his
germ-plasm excellence of some qualities which the white races possess,
and which are essential for success in competition with the
civilizations of the white races at the present day?
If so, it must be admitted not only that the Negro is _different_ from
the white, but that he is in the large eugenically _inferior_ to the
white.
This conclusion is based on the relative achievements of the race; it
must be tested by the more precise methods of the anthropological
laboratory. Satisfactory studies of the Negro should be much more
numerous, but there are a few informative ones. Physical characters are
first to be considered.
As a result of the careful measurement of many skulls, Karl Pearson[134]
has come to the following conclusions:
"There is for the best ascertainable characters a continuous
relationship from the European skull, through prehistoric European,
prehistoric Egyptian, Congo-Gaboon Negroes to Zulus and Kafirs.
"The indication is that of a long differentiated evolution, in which the
Negro lies nearer to the common stem than the European; he is nearer to
the childhood of man. "
This does not prove any mental inferiority: there is little or no
relation between conformation of skull and mental qualities, and it is a
great mistake to make hasty inferences from physical to mental traits.
Bean and Mall have made studies directly on the brain, but it is not
possible to draw any sure conclusions from their work. A. Hrdlicka
found physical differences between the two races, but did not study
traits of any particular eugenic significance.
On the whole, the studies of physical anthropologists offer little of
interest for the present purpose. Studies of mental traits are more to
the point, but are unfortunately vitiated in many cases by the fact that
no distinction was made between full-blood Negroes and mulattoes,
although the presence of white blood must necessarily have a marked
influence on the traits under consideration. If the investigations are
discounted when necessary for this reason, it appears that in the more
elementary mental processes the two races are approximately equal. White
and "colored" children in the Washington, D. C. , schools ranked equally
well in memory; the colored children were found to be somewhat the more
sensitive to heat. [135] Summing up the available evidence, G. O. Ferguson
concludes that "in the so-called lower traits there is no great
difference between the Negro and the white. In motor capacity there is
probably no appreciable racial difference. In sense capacity, in
perceptive and discriminative ability, there is likewise a practical
equality. "
This is what one would, _a priori_, probably expect. But it is on the
"higher" mental functions that race progress largely depends, and the
Negro must be judged eugenically mainly by his showing in these higher
functions. One of the first studies in this line is that of M. J.
Mayo,[136] who summarizes it as follows:
"The median age of white pupils at the time of entering high school in
the city of New York is 14 years 6 months: of colored pupils 15 years 1
month--a difference of 7 months. The average deviation for whites is 9
months; for colored 15 months. Twenty-seven per cent of the whites are
as old as the median age of the colored or older.
"Colored pupils remain in school a greater length of time than do the
whites. For the case studied [150 white and 150 colored], the average
time spent in high school for white pupils was 3. 8 terms; for colored
4. 5 terms. About 28% of the whites attain the average time of attendance
for colored.
"Considering the entire scholastic record, the median mark of the 150
white pupils is 66; of the 150 colored pupils 62; a difference of 4%.
The average deviation of white pupils is 7; of colored 6. 5. Twenty-nine
per cent. of the colored pupils reach or surpass the median mark of the
whites.
"The white pupils have a higher average standing in all subjects . . .
the colored pupils are about 3/4 as efficient as the whites in the
pursuit of high school studies. "
This whole investigation is probably much too favorable to the Negro
race, first because Negro high school pupils represent a more careful
selection than do the white pupils; but most of all because no
distinction was made between Negroes and mulattoes.
B. A. Phillips, studying the public elementary schools of Philadelphia,
found[137] that the percentage of retardation in the colored schools
ranged from 72. 8 to 58. 2, while the percentage of retardation in the
districts which contained the schools ranged from 45. 1 to 33. 3. The
average percentage of retardation for the city as a whole was 40. 3. Each
of the colored schools had a greater percentage of retardation than any
of the white schools, even those composed almost entirely of foreigners,
and in those schools attended by both white and colored pupils the
percentage of retardation on the whole varied directly with the
percentage of colored pupils in attendance.
These facts might be interpreted in several ways. It might be that the
curriculum was not well adapted to the colored children, or that they
came from bad home environments, or that they differed in age, etc. Dr.
Phillips accordingly undertook to get further light on the cause of
retardation of the colored pupils by applying Binet tests to white and
colored children of the same chronological age and home conditions, and
found "a difference in the acceleration between the two races of 31% in
favor of the white boys, 25% in favor of the white girls, 28% in favor
of the white pupils with boys and girls combined. "
A. C. Strong, using the Binet-Simon tests, found[138] colored school
children of Columbia, S. C. , considerably less intelligent than white
children.
W. H. Pyle made an extensive test[139] of 408 colored pupils in
Missouri public schools and compared them with white pupils. He
concludes: "In general the marks indicating mental ability of the Negro
are about two-thirds those of the whites. . . . In the substitution,
controlled association, and Ebbinghaus tests, the Negroes are less than
half as good as the whites. In free association and the ink-blot tests
they are nearly as good. In quickness of perception and discrimination
and in reaction, the Negroes equal or excel the whites. "
"Perhaps the most important question that arises in connection with the
results of these mental tests is: How far is ability to pass them
dependent on environmental conditions? Our tests show certain specific
differences between Negroes and whites. What these differences would
have been had the Negroes been subject to the same environmental
influences as the whites, it is difficult to say. The results obtained
by separating the Negroes into two social groups would lead one to think
that the conditions of life under which the negroes live might account
for the lower mentality of the Negroes. On the other hand, it may be
that the Negroes living under better social conditions are of better
stock. They may have more white blood in them. "
The most careful study yet made of the relative intelligence of Negroes
and whites is that of G. O. Ferguson, Jr. ,[140] on 486 white and 421
colored pupils in the schools of Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Newport
News, Va. Tests were employed which required the use of the "higher"
functions, and as far as possible (mainly on the basis of skin-color)
the amount of white blood in the colored pupils was determined. Four
classes were made: full-blood Negro, 3/4 Negro, 1/2 Negro (mulatto) and
1/4 Negro (quadroon). It was found that "the pure Negroes scored 69. 2%
as high as the whites; that the 3/4 pure Negroes scored 73. 2% as high as
the whites; that the mulattoes scored 81. 2% as high as the whites; and
that the quadroons obtained 91. 8% of the white score. " This confirms the
belief of many observers that the ability of a colored man is
proportionate to the amount of white blood he has.
Summarizing a large body of evidence, Dr. Ferguson concludes that "the
intellectual performance of the general colored population is
approximately 75% as efficient as that of the whites," but that pure
Negroes have only 60% of white intellectual efficiency, and that even
this figure is probably too high. "It seems as though the white type has
attained a higher level of development, based upon the common elementary
capacities, which the Negro has not reached to the same degree. " "All of
the experimental work which has been done has pointed to the same
general conclusion. "
This is a conclusion of much definiteness and value, but it does not go
as far as one might wish, for the deeper racial differences of impulse
and inhibition, which are at present incapable of precise measurement,
are likewise of great importance. And it is the common opinion that the
Negro differs in such traits even more than in intellect proper. He is
said to be lacking in that aggressive competitiveness which has been
responsible for so much of the achievement of the Nordic race; it is
alleged that his sexual impulses are strongly developed and inhibitions
lacking; that he has "an instability of character, involving a lack of
foresight, an improvidence, a lack of persistence, small power of
serious initiative, a tendency to be content with immediate
satisfactions. " He appears to be more gregarious but less apt at
organization than most races.
The significance of these differences depends largely on whether they
are germinal, or merely the results of social tradition. In favor of the
view that they are in large part racial and hereditary, is the fact that
they persist in all environments. They are found, as Professor Mecklin
says, "Only at the lower level of instinct, impulse and temperament, and
do not, therefore, admit of clear definition because they are overlaid
in the case of every individual with a mental superstructure gotten from
the social heritage which may vary widely in the case of members of the
same race. That they do persist, however, is evidenced in the case of
the Negroes subjected to the very different types of civilization in
Haiti, Santo Domingo, the United States, and Jamaica. In each of these
cases a complete break has been made with the social traditions of
Africa and different civilizations have been substituted, and yet in
temperament and character the Negro in all these countries is
essentially the same. The so-called 'reversion to type' often pointed
out in the Negro is in reality but the recrudescence of fundamental,
unchanged race traits upon the partial breakdown of the social heritage
or the Negro's failure successfully to appropriate it. "
Again, as Professor Ferguson points out, the experimental tests above
cited may be thought to give some support to the idea that the emotional
characteristics of the Negro are really inherent. "Strong and changing
emotions, an improvident character and a tendency to immoral conduct are
not unallied," he explains; "They are all rooted in uncontrolled
impulse. And a factor which may tend to produce all three is a deficient
development of the more purely intellectual capacities. Where the
implications of the ideas are not apprehended, where thought is not
lively and fertile, where meanings and consequences are not grasped, the
need for the control of impulse will not be felt. And the demonstrable
deficiency of the Negro in intellectual traits may involve the dynamic
deficiencies which common opinion claims to exist. "
There are other racial and heritable differences of much importance,
which are given too little recognition--namely, the differences of
disease resistance. Here one can speak unhesitatingly of a real
inferiority in respect to the environment of North America.
As was pointed out in the chapter on Natural Selection, the Negro has
been subjected to lethal selection for centuries by the Negro diseases,
the diseases of tropical Africa, of which malaria and yellow fever are
the most conspicuous examples. The Negro is strongly resistant to these
and can live where the white man dies. The white man, on the other hand,
has his own diseases, of which tuberculosis is an excellent example.
Compared with the Negro, he is relatively resistant to phthisis and will
survive where the Negro dies.
When the two races are living side by side, it is obvious that each is
proving a menace to the other, by acting as a disseminator of
infection. The white man kills the Negro with tuberculosis and typhoid
fever. In North America the Negro can not kill the white man with
malaria or yellow fever, to any great extent, because these diseases do
not flourish here. But the Negro has brought some other diseases here
and given them to the white race; elephantiasis is one example, but the
most conspicuous is hookworm, the extent and seriousness of which have
only recently been realized.
In the New England states the average expectation of life, at birth, is
50. 6 years for native white males, 34. 1 years for Negro males. For
native white females it is 54. 2 years and for Negro females 37. 7 years,
according to the Bureau of the Census (1916). These very considerable
differences can not be wholly explained away by the fact that the Negro
is crowded into parts of the cities where the sanitation is worst. They
indicate that the Negro is out of his environment. In tropical Africa,
to which the Negro is adapted by many centuries of natural selection,
his expectation of life might be much longer than that of the white man.
In the United States he is much less "fit," in the Darwinian sense.
In rural districts of the South, according to C. W. Stiles, the annual
typhoid death rate per 100,000 population is:
_Whites_ _Negroes_
Males 37. 4 75. 3
Females 27. 4 56. 3
These figures again show, not alone the greater intelligence of the
white in matters of hygiene, but probably also the greater inherent
resistance of the white to a disease which has been attacking him for
many centuries. Biologically, North America is a white man's country,
not a Negro's country, and those who are considering the Negro problem
must remember that natural selection has not ceased acting on man.
From the foregoing different kinds of evidence, we feel justified in
concluding that the Negro race differs greatly from the white race,
mentally as well as physically, and that in many respects it may be said
to be inferior, when tested by the requirements of modern civilization
and progress, with particular reference to North America.
We return now to the question of intermarriage. What is to be expected
from the union of these diverse streams of descent?
The best answer would be to study and measure the mulattoes and their
posterity, in as many ways as possible. No one has ever done this. It is
the custom to make no distinction whatever between mulatto and Negro, in
the United States, and thus the whole problem is beclouded.
There is some evidence from life insurance and medical sources, that the
mulatto stands above the Negro but below the white in respect to his
health. There is considerable evidence that he occupies the same
relation in the intellectual world; it is a matter of general
observation that nearly all the leaders of the Negro race in the United
States are not Negroes but mulattoes.
Without going into detail, we feel perfectly safe in drawing this
conclusion: that in general the white race loses and the Negro gains
from miscegenation.
This applies, of course, only to the germinal nature. Taking into
consideration the present social conditions in America, it is doubtful
whether either race gains. But if social conditions be eliminated for
the moment, biologists may believe that intermarriage between the white
and Negro races represents, on the whole, an advance for the Negro; and
that it represents for the white race a distinct loss.
If eugenics is to be thought of solely in terms of the white race, there
can be no hesitation about rendering a verdict. We must unhesitatingly
condemn miscegenation.
But there are those who declare that it is small and mean to take such a
narrow view of the evolution of the race. They would have America open
its doors indiscriminately to immigration, holding it a virtue to
sacrifice one's self permanently for someone else's temporary happiness;
they would equally have the white race sacrifice itself for the Negro,
by allowing a mingling of the two blood-streams. That, it is alleged, is
the true way to elevate the Negro.
The question may well be considered from that point of view, even
though the validity of such a point of view is not admitted.
To ensure racial and social progress, nothing will take the place of
leadership, of genius. A race of nothing but mediocrities will stand
still, or very nearly so; but a race of mediocrities with a good supply
of men of exceptional ability and energy at the top, will make progress
in discovery, invention and organization, which is generally recognized
as progressive evolution.
If the level of the white race be lowered, it will hurt that race and be
of little help to the Negro. If the white race be kept at such a level
that its productivity of men of talent will be at a maximum, everyone
will progress; for the Negro benefits just as the white does from every
forward step in science and art, in industry and politics.
Remembering that the white race in America is nine times as numerous as
the black race, we conclude that it would be desirable to encourage
amalgamation of the two races only in case the average of mulattoes is
superior to the average of the whites. No one can seriously maintain
that this supposition is true. Biologically, therefore, there is no
reason to think that an increase in the number of mulattoes is
desirable.
There is a curious argument in circulation, which points out that
mulattoes are almost always the offspring of Negro mothers and white
fathers, not of Negro fathers and white mothers. Therefore, it is said,
production of mulattoes does not mean at all a decrease in the number of
white births, but merely substitutes a number of mulatto births for an
equivalent number of pure Negro births. It is therefore alleged that the
production of mulattoes is in the long run a benefit, elevating the
Negro race without impairing the white race.
But this argument assumes that most mulatto births are illegitimate,--a
condition which eugenists do not sanction, because it tends to
disintegrate the family. Rather than such a condition, the legitimate
production of pure-blood Negroes is preferable, even though they be
inferior in individual ability to the illegitimate mulattoes offered as
a substitute. There are not at the present time enough desirable white
fathers in the country. If desirable ones are set aside to produce
mulattoes, it would be a great loss to the nation; while if the
mulattoes are the offspring of eugenically undesirable white fathers,
then the product is not likely to be anything America wants.
From whatever standpoint we take, we see nothing good to be said for
miscegenation. [141] We have discussed the problem as a particular one
between the blacks and whites but the argument will hold good when
applied to any two races between which the differences are so marked
that one may be considered decidedly inferior to the other.
Society,--white society,--long ago reached the instinctive conclusion,
which seems to us a correct one, that it must put a ban on intermarriage
between two such races. It has given expression to this feeling by
passing laws to prohibit miscegenation in 22 states, while six other
states prohibit it in their constitutions. There are thus 22 states
which have attempted legally to prevent intermarriage of the white and
black race. While in 20 states there is no law on the subject, it is
needless to say that popular feeling about it is almost uniform, and
that the legislators of New England for instance would refuse to give
their daughters in marriage to Negroes, even though they might the day
before have voted down a proposed law to prohibit intermarriage on the
ground that it was an expression of race prejudice.
In a majority of the states which have no legislation of this kind,
bills have been introduced during the last two or three years, and have
been defeated through the energetic interference of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an organization of
which Oswald Garrison Villard is chairman of the Board of Directors and
W. E. B. DuBois, a brilliant mulatto, is Director of Publicity and
Research. As this association represents a very large part of the more
intelligent Negro public opinion, its attitude deserves careful
consideration. It is set forth summarily in a letter[142] which was
addressed to legislators in various states, as follows:
"The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
earnestly protests against the bill forbidding intermarriage between the
races, not because the Association advocates intermarriage, which it
does not, but primarily because whenever such laws have been enacted
they have become a menace to the whole institution of matrimony, leading
directly to concubinage, bastardy, and the degradation of the Negro
woman. No man-made law can stop the union of the races. If intermarriage
be wrong, its prevention is best left to public opinion and to nature,
which wreaks its own fearful punishments on those who transgress its
laws and sin against it. We oppose the proposed statute in the language
of William Lloyd Garrison in 1843, in his successful campaign for the
repeal of a similar law in Massachusetts: 'Because it is not the
province, and does not belong to the power of any legislative assembly,
in a republican government, to decide on the complexional affinity of
those who choose to be united together in wedlock; and it may as
rationally decree that corpulent and lean, tall and short, strong and
weak persons shall not be married to each other as that there must be an
agreement in the complexion of the parties. '
"We oppose it for the physical reason that to prohibit such
intermarriage would be publicly to acknowledge that black blood is a
physical taint, something no self-respecting colored man and woman can
be asked to admit. We oppose it for the moral reason that all such laws
leave the colored girl absolutely helpless before the lust of the white
man, without the power to compel the seducer to marry. The statistics of
intermarriage in those states where it is permitted show this happens
so infrequently as to make the whole matter of legislation unnecessary.
Both races are practically in complete agreement on this question, for
colored people marry colored people, and white marry whites, the
exceptions being few. We earnestly urge upon you an unfavorable report
on this bill. "
Legislation on the subject of marriage is clearly inside the province of
government. That such an argument as is quoted from William Lloyd
Garrison can still be circulated in the United States and apparently
carry weight, is sufficient cause for one to feel pessimistic over the
spread of the scientific spirit in this nation. Suffice it to say that
on this point the National Association is a century behind the times.
The following policy seems to us to be in accordance with modern
science, and yet meet all the legitimate arguments of the National
Association. We will state our attitude as definitely as possible:
1. We hold that it is to the interests of the United States, for the
reasons given in this chapter, to prevent further Negro-white
amalgamation.
2. The taboo of public opinion is not sufficient in all cases to prevent
intermarriage, and should be supplemented by law, particularly as the
United States have of late years received many white immigrants from
other countries (e. g. , Italy) where the taboo is weak because the
problem has never been pressing.
3. But to prevent intermarriage is only a small part of the solution,
since most mulattoes come from extramarital miscegenation. The only
solution of this, which is compatible with the requirements of eugenics,
is not that of _laissez faire_, suggested by the National Association,
but an extension of the taboo, and an extension of the laws, to prohibit
all sexual intercourse between the two races.
Four states (Louisiana, Nevada, South Dakota and Alabama) have already
attempted to gain this end by law. We believe it to be highly desirable
that such laws should be enacted and enforced by all states. A necessary
preliminary would be to standardize the laws all over the Union,
particularly with a view to agreement on what a "Negro" legally is; for
in some states the legislation applies to one who is one-sixteenth, or
even less, Negro in descent, while in other states it appears to refer
only to full-blood or, at the most, half-blood individuals.
Such legislation, and what is more important, such public opinion,
leading to a cessation of Negro-white amalgamation, we believe to be in
the interests of national eugenics, and to further the welfare of both
of the races involved. Miscegenation can only lead to unhappiness under
present social conditions and must, we believe, under _any_ social
conditions be biologically wrong.
We favor, therefore, the support of the taboo which society has placed
on these mixed marriages, as well as any legal action which can
practicably be taken to make miscegenation between white and black
impossible. Justice requires that the Negro race be treated as kindly
and considerately as possible, with every economic and political
concession that is consistent with the continued welfare of the nation.
Such social equality and intercourse as might lead to marriage are not
compatible with this welfare.
CHAPTER XV
IMMIGRATION
There are now in the United States some 14,000,000 foreign-born persons,
together with other millions of the sons and daughters of foreigners who
although born on American soil have as yet been little assimilated to
Americanism. This great body of aliens, representing perhaps a fifth of
the population, is not a pool to be absorbed, but a continuous,
inflowing stream, which until the outbreak of the Great War was steadily
increasing in volume, and of which the fountain-head is so inexhaustible
as to appal the imagination. From the beginning of the century, the
inflow averaged little less than a million a year, and while about
one-fifth of this represented a temporary migration, four-fifths of it
meant a permanent addition to the population of the New World.
The character of this stream will inevitably determine to a large extent
the future of the American nation. The direct biological results, in
race mixture, are important enough, although not easy to define. The
indirect results, which are probably of no less importance to eugenics,
are so hard to follow that some students of the problem do not even
realize their existence.
The ancestors of all white Americans, of course, were immigrants not so
very many generations ago. But the earlier immigration was relatively
homogeneous and stringently selected by the dangers of the voyage, the
hardships of life in a new country, and the equality of opportunity
where free competition drove the unfit to the wall. There were few
people of eminence in the families that came to colonize North America,
but there was a high average of sturdy virtues, and a good deal of
ability, particularly in the Puritan and Huguenot invasions and in a
part of that of Virginia.
In the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, the number of
these "patriots and founders" was greatly increased by the arrival of
immigrants of similar racial stocks from Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia,
and to a less extent from the other countries of northern and western
Europe. These arrivals added strength to the United States, particularly
as a large part of them settled on farms.
This stream of immigration gradually dried up, but was succeeded by a
flood from a new source,--southern and eastern Europe. Italians, Slavs,
Poles, Magyars, East European Hebrews, Finns, Portuguese, Greeks,
Roumanians and representatives of many other small nationalities began
to seek fortunes in America. The earlier immigration had been made up
largely of those who sought escape from religious or political tyranny
and came to settle permanent homes. The newer immigration was made up,
on the whole, of those who frankly sought wealth. The difference in the
reason for coming could not fail to mean a difference in selection of
the immigrants, quite apart from the change in the races.
Last of all began an immigration of Levantines, of Syrians, Armenians,
and other inhabitants of Asiatic Turkey. Beyond this region lie the
great nations of Asia, "oversaturated" with population. So far there has
been little more than the threat of their overflow, but the threat is
certain to become a reality within a few years unless prevented by legal
restriction.
The eugenic results of immigration are partly indirect and partly
direct. Direct results follow if the newcomers are assimilated,--a word
which we shall use rather narrowly to mean that free intermarriage takes
place between them and all parts of the older population. We shall
discuss the direct results first, the nature of which depends largely on
whether the newcomers are racially homogeneous with the population
already in the country.
If they are like, the old and new will blend without difficulty. The
effects of the immigration then depend on whether the immigrants are
better or worse in average quality than the older residents. If as good
or better, they are valuable additions; if inferior they are
biologically a detriment.
