CHAPTER XVII! ! !GENEALOGY AND EUGENICS!

CHAPTER XVII!
!
!GENEALOGY AND EUGENICS!
!
Scientific plant breeders to-day have learned that their success often
!depends on the care with which they study the genealogy of their plants.

!Live-stock breeders admit that their profession is on a sure scientific basis only to the extent that the genealogy of the animals used is known.

!Human genealogy is one of the oldest manifestations of man's intellectual activity, but until recently it has been subservient to sentimental purposes, or pursued from historical or legal motives. Biology has had no place in it.

Genealogy, however, has not altogether escaped the re-examination which all sciences received after the Darwinian movement revolutionised modern thought. Numerous ways have been pointed out in which it could be brought into line with the new way of looking at man and his world. The field of genealogy has already been invaded at many points by
!biologists, seeking the furtherance of their own aims.

It will be worth while to discuss briefly the relations between the conventional genealogy and eugenics. It may be that genealogy could become an even more valuable branch of human knowledge than it now is,
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!if it were more closely aligned with biology. In order to test this possibility, one must inquire:

!What is genealogy?

!What does it now attempt to do?

!What faults, from the eugenist's standpoint, seem to exist in present genealogical methods?

!What additions should be made to the present methods?

!What can be expected of it, after it is revised in accordance with the ideas of the eugenist?

The answer to the first question, "What is genealogy?" may be brief. Genealogy may be envisaged from several points. It serves history. It has a legal function, which is of more consequence abroad than in America. It has social significance, in bolstering family pride and creating a feeling of family solidarity--this is perhaps its chief
office in the United States. It has, or can have, biological significance, and this in two ways: either in relation to pure science or applied science. In connection with pure science, its function is to furnish means for getting knowledge of the laws of heredity. In application, its function is to furnish a knowledge of the inherited
characters of any given individual, in order to make it possible for the individual to find his place in the world and, in particular, to marry wisely. It is obvious that the use of genealogy in the applied science of eugenics is dependent on previous research by geneticists; for
!marriage matings which take account of heredity can not be made unless the mode of inheritance of human traits has previously been discovered.

!The historical, social, legal and other aspects of genealogy do not concern the present discussion. We shall discuss only the biological aspect; not only because it alone is germane to the present book, but because we consider it to have by far the greatest true value, accepting the criterion of value as that which increases the welfare of mankind. By this criterion, the historical, legal and social aspects of genealogy will be seen, with a little reflection, to be of secondary importance to its biological aspect.

Genealogy now is too often looked upon as an end in itself. It would be recognised as a science of much greater value to the world if it were considered not an end but a means to a far greater end than it alone can supply. It has, indeed, been contended, even by such an authority as Ottokar Lorenz, who is often called the father of modern scientific genealogy, that a knowledge of his own ancestry will tell  each individual exactly what he himself is. This appears to be the basis of Lorenz's valuation of genealogy. It is a step in the right direction:
!but

The present methods of genealogy are inadequate to support such a


!claim. Its methods are still based mainly on the historical, legal and social functions. A few of the faults of method in genealogy, which the eugenist most deplores, are:

!The information which is of most value is exactly that which genealogy ordinarily does not furnish. Dates of birth, death and marriage of an ancestor are of interest, but of limited biological importance. The facts about that ancestor which vitally concern his living descendant are the facts of his character, physical and mental; and these facts are given in very few genealogies.

!Genealogies are commonly too incomplete to be of real value. Sometimes they deal only with the direct male line of ascent--the line that bears the family name, or what animal breeders call the tail-male. In this case, it is not too much to say that they are nearly devoid of genuine value. It is customary to imagine that there is some special virtue inherent in that line of descent which carries the family name. Some one remarks, for instance, to Mr. Jones that he seems to be fond of the sea.

!"Yes," he replies, "You know the Joneses have been sailors for many generations."

Such incomplete pedigrees are rarely published nowadays, but in studying historic characters, one frequently finds nothing more than the single
line of ascent in the family name. Fortunately, American genealogies rarely go to this extreme, unless it be in the earliest generations; but
it is common enough for them to deal only with the direct ancestors of the individual, omitting all brothers and sisters of those ancestors.
!Although this simplifies the work of the genealogist immensely, it deprives it of value to a corresponding degree.

As the purpose of genealogy in this country has been largely social, it is to be feared that in too many cases discreditable data have been tacitly omitted from the records. The anti-social individual, the
feeble-minded, the insane, the alcoholic, the "generally no-count," has been glossed over. Such a lack of candor is not in accord with the scientific spirit, and makes one uncertain, in the use of genealogies,
to what extent one is really getting all the facts. There are few
families of any size which have not one such member or more, not many generations removed. To attempt to conceal the fact is not only unethical but from the eugenist's point of view, at any rate, it is a falsification of records that must be regarded with great disapproval.
!At present it is hard to say to what extent undesirable traits occur in the most distinguished families; and it is of great importance that this should be learned.

In this connection it is again worth noting that a really great man is rarely found in an ancestry devoid of ability. This was pointed out in the first chapter, but is certain to strike the genealogist's attention forcibly. Abraham Lincoln is often quoted as an exception; but more recent studies of his ancestry have shown that he is not really an


exception; that, as Ida M. Tarbell[162] says, "So far from his later career being unaccounted for in his origin and early history, it is as fully accounted for as is the case of any man." The Lincoln family was one of the best in America, and while Abraham's own father was an eccentric person, he was yet a man of considerable force of character,
by no means the "poor white trash" which he is often represented to have been. The Hanks family, to which the Emancipator's mother belonged, had also maintained a high level of ability in every generation;
!furthermore, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, the parents of Abraham Lincoln, were first cousins.

The more difficult cases, for the eugenist, are rather to be found in such ancestries as those of Louis Pasteur and Michael Faraday.
Pasteur[163] might perhaps be justly considered the greatest man France has ever produced; his father was a non-commissioned soldier who came of a long line of tanners, while his mother's family had been gardeners for generations. Faraday, who is worthy to be placed close to Charles
Darwin among eminent Englishmen, was the son of a blacksmith and a farmer's daughter. Such pedigrees are striking; and yet, as Frederick
Adams Woods has remarked, they ought to strengthen rather than to weaken one's belief in the force of heredity. When it is considered how rarely
such an ancestry produces a great man, it must be fairly evident that his greatness is due to an accidental conjunction of favourable traits,
!as the modern theory of genetics holds; and that greatness is not due to the inheritance of acquired characters, on which hypothesis Pasteur and Faraday would indeed be difficult to explain.

!Cases of this sort, even though involving much less famous people, will be found in almost every genealogy, and add greatly to the interest of its study, as well as offering valuable data to the professional geneticist.

Even if the information it furnishes were more complete, human genealogy would not justify the claims sometimes made for it as a science, because, to use a biological phrase, "the matings are not controlled." The results of a certain experiment are exhibited, but can not be interpreted unless one knows what the results would have been, had the preceding conditions been varied in this way or in that way. These controlled experiments can be made in plant and animal breeding;
they have been made by the thousand, by the hundred thousand, for many years. They can not be made in human society. It is, of course, not desirable that they should be made; but the consequence is that the biological meaning of human history, the real import of genealogy, can not be known unless it is interpreted in the light of modern plant and animal breeding. It is absolutely necessary that genealogy go into partnership with genetics, the general science of heredity. If a spirit
!of false pride leads genealogists to hold aloof from these experiments, they will make slow progress. The interpretation of genealogy in the light of modern research in heredity through the experimental breeding of plants and animals is full of hope; without such light, it will be discouragingly slow work.


Genealogists are usually proud of their pedigrees; they usually have a right to be. But their pride should not lead them to scorn the pedigrees
!of some of the peas, and corn, snapdragons and sugar beets, bulldogs and Shorthorn cattle, with which geneticists have been working during the last generation; for these humble pedigrees may throw more light on their own than a century of research in purely human material.

The science of genealogy will not have full meaning and full value to those who pursue it, unless they bring themselves to look on men and women as organisms subject to the same laws of heredity and variation as other living things. Biologists were not long ago told that it was
!essential for them to learn to think like genealogists. For the purpose of eugenics, neither science is complete without the other; and we believe that it is not invidious to say that biologists have been quicker to realise this than have genealogists. The Golden Age of genealogy is yet to come.

![There now exists many companies that provide the adequate services wanted to trace the DNA and Family history of any family. At the time of editing -MC]

!With these changes, genealogy would become the study of heredity, rather than the study of lineage.

It is not meant to say that the study of heredity is nothing more than applied genealogy. As understood nowadays, it includes mathematical and biological territory which must always be foreign to genealogy. It might
!be said that in so far as man is concerned, heredity is the interpretation of genealogy, and eugenics the application of heredity. Genealogy should give its students a vision of the species as a great group of ever-changing, interrelated organisms, a great network originating in the obscurity of the past, stretching forward into the obscurity of the future, every individual in it organically related to every other, and all of them the heritors of the past in a very real sense.

Genealogists do well in giving a realisation of the importance of the family, but they err if they base this teaching altogether on the family's pride in some remote ancestor who, even though he bore the family name and was a prodigy of virtues, probably counts for very little in the individual's make-up to-day. To take a concrete though wholly imaginary illustration: what man would not feel a certain
satisfaction in being a lineal descendant of George Washington? And yet, if the Father of his Country be placed at only four removes from the living individual, nothing is more certain than that this hypothetical living individual had fifteen other ancestors in George Washington's generation, any one of whom may play as great or a greater part in his ancestry; and so remote are they all that, as a statistical average, it
is calculated that the contribution of George Washington to the ancestry of the hypothetical living individual would be perhaps not more than one-third of 1% of the total. The small influence of one of these remote ancestors may be seen at a glance, if a chart of all the ancestors up to


the generation of the great hero is made. In more remote generations, the probable biological
influence of the ancestor becomes practically nil. Thus Americans who trace their descent to some royal personage of England or the Continent, a dozen generations ago, may get a certain amount of spiritual satisfaction out of the relationship, but they certainly can derive
little real help, of a hereditary kind, from this ancestor. And when
one goes farther back,--as to William the Conqueror, who seems to rank with the Mayflower immigrants as a progenitor of many descendants--the claim of descent becomes really a joke. If 24 generations have elapsed between the present and the time of William the Conqueror, every individual living to-day must have had living in the epoch of the Norman conquest not less than sixteen million ancestors. Of course, there was
!no such number of people in all England and Normandy, at that time, hence it is obvious that the theoretical number has been greatly reduced in every generation by consanguineous marriages, even though they were between persons so remotely related that they did not know they were related. C. B. Davenport, indeed, has calculated that most persons of the old American stock in the United States are related to each other not more remotely than thirtieth cousins, and a very large proportion as closely as fifteenth cousins.

!At any rate, it must be obvious that the ancestors of any person of old American stock living to-day must have included practically all the inhabitants of England and Normandy, in the eleventh century. Looking at the pedigree from the other end, William the Conqueror must have living to-day at least 16,000,000 descendants. Most of them can not trace back their pedigrees, but that does not alter the fact.

!Such considerations give one a vivid realisation of the brotherhood of man; but they can hardly be said to justify any great pride in descent from a family of crusaders for instance, except on purely sentimental grounds.

!Descent from a famous man or woman should not be disparaged. It is a matter of legitimate pride and congratulation. But claims for respect made on that ground alone are, from a biological point of view, negligible, if the hero is several generations removed. What Sir Francis Galton wrote of the peers of England may, with slight alterations, be given general application to the descendants of famous people:

"An old peerage is a valueless title to natural gifts, except so far as
!it may have been furbished up by a succession of wise intermarriages.... I cannot think of any claim to respect, put forward in modern days, that is so entirely an imposture as that made by a peer on the ground of descent, who has neither been nobly educated, nor has any eminent kinsman within three degrees."

But, some one may protest, are we not shattering the very edifice of which we are professed defenders, in thus denying the force of heredity?
Not at all. We wish merely to emphasise that a man has sixteen
great-great-grandparents, instead of one, and that those in the maternal


lines are too often overlooked, although from a biological point of view they are every bit as important as those in the paternal lines. And we wish further to emphasise the point that it is the near relatives who, on the whole, represent what one is. The great family which for a generation or two makes unwise marriages, must live on its past reputation and see the work of the world done and the prizes carried away by the children of wiser matings. No family can maintain its eugenic rank merely by the power of inertia. Every marriage that a
!member of the family makes is a matter of vital concern to the future of the family: and this is one of the lessons which a broad science of genealogy should inculcate in every youth.

In addition to their importance to society, a knowledge of the traits of a pedigree has a great direct importance to the individual; one of the
most valuable things to be learned from that knowledge is the answer to the question, "What shall a boy or girl do? What career shall one lay
out for one's children?" A knowledge of the child's inborn nature, such as can be had only through study of his ancestry, will guide those who have his education in hand, and will further guide those who decide, or help the child decide, what work to take up in life. This helps to put
!the problem of vocational guidance on a sound basis,--the basis of the individual's inherent aptitudes.

Not too much must be expected from vocational guidance at the present time, but in the case of traits that are inherited, it is a fair
!inference that a child is more likely to be highly endowed with a trait which both parents possess, than with one that only one parent possesses. "Among the traits which have been said to occur in some such direct hereditary way," H. L. Hollingworth[164] observes, "or as the result of unexplained mutation or deviation from type, are: mathematical aptitude, ability in drawing,[165] musical composition,[166] singing, poetic reaction, military strategy, chess playing. Pitch discrimination seems to depend on structural factors which are not susceptible of improvement by practice.[167] The same may be said of various forms of professional athletic achievement. Colour blindness seems to be an instance of the conspicuous absence of such a unit characteristic."

Again, the knowledge of ancestry is an essential factor in the wise selection of a husband or wife. Insistence has been laid on this point in an earlier chapter of this book, and it is not necessary here to repeat what was there said. But it seems certain that ancestry will steadily play a larger part in marriage selection in the future; it is
!at least necessary to know that one is not marrying into a family that carries the taint of serious hereditary defect, even if one knows nothing more. An intelligent study of genealogy will do much, we believe, to bring about the intelligent selection of the man or woman with whom one is to fall in love.

In addition to these general considerations, it is evident that genealogy, properly carried out, would throw light on most of the
specific problems with which eugenics is concerned, or which fall in the field of genetics. A few examples of these problems may be mentioned, in


!addition to those which are discussed in various other chapters of this book.

!The supposed inferiority of first-born children has been debated at some length during the last decade, but is not yet wholly settled. It appears possible that the first-born may be, on the average, inferior both physically and mentally to the children who come directly after him; on the other hand, the number of first-born who attain eminence is greater than would be expected on the basis of pure chance. More data are needed to clear up this problem.[168]

The advantage to a child of being a member of a large or small family is a question of importance. In these days of birth control, the argument is frequently heard that large families are an evil of themselves, the children in them being handicapped by the excessive child-bearing of the mother. The statistics cited in support of this
claim are drawn from the slums, where the families are marked by poverty and by physical and mental inferiority. It can easily be shown, by a
study of more favoured families, that the best children come from the large fraternities. In fact Alexander Graham Bell found evidence,[169] in his investigation of the Hyde Family in America, that the families of 10 or more children were those which showed the greatest longevity.
!In this connection, longevity is of course a mark of vitality and physical fitness.

!The question of the effect of child-bearing on the mother is equally important, since exponents of birth control are urging that mothers should not bear more children than they desire. A. O. Powys' careful study[170] of the admirable vital statistics of New South Wales showed that the mothers who lived longest were those who bore from five to seven children.

The age at which men and women should marry has not yet been sufficiently determined, on biological grounds. Statistics so far compiled do not indicate that the age of the father has any direct influence on the character of the children, but the age of the mother undoubtedly exercises a strong influence on them. Thus it is now well established[171] that infant mortality is lowest among the children of young mothers,--say from 20 to 25 years of age,--and that delay in child-bearing after that age penalises the children. There
!is also some evidence that, altogether apart from the infant mortality, the children of young mothers attain a greater longevity than do those of older women. More facts are needed, to show how much of this effect is due to the age of the mother, how much to her experience, and how much to the influence of the number of children she has previously borne.

Assortative mating, consanguineous marriage, the inheritance of a tendency to disease, longevity, sex-linked heredity, sex-determination, the production of twins, and many other problems of interest to the general public as well as to the biologist, are awaiting the collection
of fuller data. All such problems will be illuminated, when more


!genealogies are kept on a biological basis.

Here, however, an emphatic warning against superficial investigation must be uttered. The medical profession has been particularly hasty, many times, in reporting cases which were assumed to demonstrate heredity. The child was so and so; it was found on inquiry that the father was also so and so: it was heredity.
Such a method of investigation is calculated to bring genetics
into disrepute, and would hazard the credit of genealogy. As a fact, one case counts for practically nothing as proof of hereditary influence; even half a dozen or a dozen may be of no significance. There are two ways in which genealogical data can be analysed to deduce biological laws: one is based on the application of statistical and graphic methods to the data, and needs some hundreds of cases to be of value; the other is by pedigree-study, and needs at least three generations of pedigree, usually covering numerous collaterals, to offer important results. It is not to be supposed that anyone with a sufficiently complete record of
his own ancestry would necessarily be able by inspection to deduce from it any important contribution to science. But if enough complete family records are made available, the professional geneticist can be called
!into cooperation, can supplement the human record with his knowledge of the results achieved by carefully controlled animal and plant breeding, and between them, the genealogist and the geneticist can in most cases arrive at the truth. That such truth is of the highest importance to any family, and equally to society as a whole, must be evident.

Let the genealogist, then, bring together data on every trait he can think of. As a guide and stimulus, he should read the opening chapters of Herbert's Spencer's Autobiography, or of Karl Pearson's, Life,
Letters and Labors of Sir Francis Galton, or C. B. Davenport's
study[172] of C. O. Whitman, one of the foremost American biologists. He will also find help in Bulletin No. 13 of the Eugenics Record Office,
Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York. It is entitled, How to Make a Eugenical Family Study, and gives a list of questions which should be answered, and points which should be noted. With some such list as this,
or even with his own common-sense, the genealogist may seek to ascertain as much as possible about the significant facts in the life of his
!ancestors, bearing in mind that the geneticist will ask two questions about every trait mentioned:

!Is this characteristic inherited?

!If so, how?

!Nor must it be forgotten that the geneticist is often as much interested in knowing that a given character is not inherited under certain conditions, as that it is.

It is highly desirable that genealogists should acquire the habit of stating the traits of their subjects in quantitative terms. They too
often state that a certain amount is "much"; what should be told is "how much." Instead of saying that an individual had fairly good health, tell


exactly what diseases he had during his lifetime; instead of remarking that he was a good mathematician, tell some anecdote or fact that will allow judgment of the extent of his ability in this line. Did he keep record of his bank balance in his head instead of on paper? Was he fond of mathematical puzzles? Did he revel in statistics? Was the study of calculus a recreation to him? Such things probably will appear trivial
!to the genealogist, but to the eugenist they are sometimes important.

!Aside from biology, or as much of it as is comprised in eugenics, genealogy may also serve medicine, jurisprudence, sociology, statistics, and various other sciences as well as the ones which it now serves. But in most cases, such service will have a eugenic aspect. The alliance between eugenics and genealogy is so logical that it can not be put off much longer.

!Genealogists are all familiar with the charge of long standing that genealogy is a subject of no use, a fad of a privileged class. They do not need to be told that such a charge is untrue. But genealogy can be made a much more useful science than it now is, and it will be at the same time more interesting to its followers, if it is no longer looked upon as an end in itself, nor solely as a minister to family pride. We hope to see it regarded as a handmaid of evolution, just as are the other sciences; we hope to see it linked with the great biological movement of the present day, for the betterment of mankind.

So much for the science as a whole. What can the individual do? Nothing better than to broaden his outlook so that he may view his family not as an exclusive entity, centred in a name, dependent on some illustrious man or men of the past; but rather as an integral part of the great
fabric of human life, its warp and woof continuous from the dawn of creation and criss-crossed at each generation. When he gets this vision, he will desire to make his family tree as full as possible, to include
his collaterals, to note every trait which he can find on record, to
preserve the photographs and measurements of his own contemporaries, and to take pleasure in feeling that the history of his family is a
!contribution to human knowledge, as well as to the pride of the family.

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If the individual genealogist does this, the science of genealogy will become a useful servant of the whole race, and its influence, not confined to a few, will be felt by all, as a positive, dynamic force helping them to lead more worthy lives in the short span allotted to them, and helping them to leave more worthy posterity to carry on the
!names they bore and the sacred thread of immortality, of which they were for a time the custodians.

CHAPTER XVI! ! !WAR!

!

!

!

CHAPTER XVI WAR!

!

War always changes the composition of a nation; but this change may be

either a loss or a gain. The modification of selection by war is far

!more manifold than the literature on the biological effects of war would lead the reader to suppose. All wars are partly eugenic and partly dysgenic; some are mainly the one, some are mainly the other. The racial effects of war occur in at least three periods:

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!The period of preparation.

!The period of actual fighting.

!The period of readjustment after the war.

The first division involves the effect of a standing army, which

withdraws men during a part of the reproductive period and keeps most of them in a celibate career. The officers marry late if at all and show a

very low birth-rate. The prolonged celibacy has in many armies led to a higher incidence of venereal diseases which prolongs the celibacy and lowers the birthrate.[155] Without extended discussion, the following considerations may be named as among those which should govern a policy of military preparedness that will safeguard, as far as possible, the

!eugenic interests:

If the army is a standing one, composed of men serving long terms of enlistment, they should be of as advanced an age as is compatible with military efficiency. If a man of 35 has not married, it is probable that he will never marry, and therefore there is less loss to the race in enrolling him for military service, than is the case with a man of

!20-25.

!The army (except in so far as composed of inferior men) should not foster celibacy. Short enlistments are probably the most valuable means of avoiding this evil.

!Universal conscription is much better than voluntary service, since the latter is highly selective, the former much less so. Those in regular attendance in college should receive their military training in their course as is now done.

Officers' families should be given an additional allowance for each child. This would aid in increasing the birth-rate, which appears to be very low among army and navy officers in the United States service, and

!probably in that of all civilized countries.

Every citizen owes service to his nation, in time of need, but

fighting service should not be exacted if some one else could perform it better than he where he is expert in some other needed field. The recent action of England in sending to the front as subaltern officers, who were speedily killed, many highly trained technicians and young

scientists and medical men who would have been much more valuable at home in connection with war measures, is an example of this mistake.

Carrying the idea farther, one sees that in many nations there are certain races which are more valuable on the firing line than in industries at the rear; and it appears that they should play the part for which they are best fitted. From this point of view, the Entente allies were wholly justified in employing their Asiatic and African

!subjects in war. In the United States are millions of negroes who are of less value than white men in organised industry but almost as valuable as the whites, when properly led, at the front. It would appear to be sound statesmanship to enlist as many Negroes as possible in the active forces, in case of war, thus releasing a corresponding number of more skilled white workers for the industrial machine on whose efficiency success in modern warfare largely rests.

Leaving the period of preparedness, we consider the period of open warfare. The reader will remember that, in an earlier chapter, we divided natural selection into (1) lethal, that which operates through differential mortality; (2) sexual, that which operates through differential mating; and (3) fecundal, that which operates through differential fecundity. Again, selection operates both in an inter-group

competition and an intra-group competition. The influence of any agency on natural selection must be examined under each of these six heads. In the case of war, however, fecundal selection may be eliminated, as it is little influenced. Still another division arises from the fact that the

!action of selection is different during war upon the armed forces themselves and upon the population at home; and after the war, upon the nations with the various modifications that the war has left.

We will consider lethal selection first. To measure the effect of the inter-group selection of the armed forces, one must compare the relative quality of the two races involved. The evidence for believing in substantial differences between races is based (a) upon their relative achievement when each is isolated, (b) upon the relative rank when the two are competing in one society, and (c) upon the relative number of original contributions to civilisation each has made. Such comparisons are fatal to the sentimental equalitarianism that denies race differences. While there is, of course, a great deal of

!overlapping, there are, nevertheless, real average differences. To think otherwise is to discard evolution and revert to the older standpoint of "special creation."

Comparison of the quality of the two sides is sometimes, of course, very difficult. One may feel little hesitation in giving a decision in the classical war of the Greeks and Persians, or the more modern case of the

English and Afghans, but when considering the Franco-Prussian war, or the Russo-Japanese war, or the Boer war, or the American civil war, it

!is largely a matter of mere opinion, and perhaps an advantage can hardly be conceded to either side. Those who, misunderstanding the doctrine of evolution, adhere to the so-called "philosophy of force," would answer without hesitation that the side which won was, ipso facto, the better side. But such a judgment is based on numerous fallacies, and can not be endorsed in the sweeping way it is uttered. Take a concrete example:

!"In 1806, Prussia was defeated at the battle of Jena. According to the philosophy of force, this was because Prussia was 'inferior' and France was 'superior.' Suppose we admit for the moment that this was the case. The selection now represents the survival of the fittest, the selection which perfects the human species. But what shall we say of the battle of Leipsic? At Leipsic, in 1813, all the values were reversed; it is now France which is the 'inferior' nation.... Furthermore, a large number of the same generals and soldiers who took part in the battle of Jena also took part in the battle of Leipsic. Napoleon belonged, therefore, to a race which was superior to that of Blücher in 1806, but to an inferior race in 1813, in spite of the fact that they were the same persons and had not changed their nationality. As soon as we bring these assertions to the touchstone of concrete reality we see at once how untenable and even ridiculous are direct biological comparisons."[156]

!Without going into further detail, it is readily seen that, on the world at large, the eugenic effect of a war would be very different according as the sides differ much or little. Yet this difference in quality, however great, will have no significance, unless the superior or inferior side is in general more likely to lose fewer men. Where the difference has been considerable, as between a civilised and savage nation, it has been seldom that the superior has not triumphed with fewer losses. Victory, however, is influenced much less in these later days by the relative military efficiency of two single nations than by their success in making powerful alliances. But such alignments are by no means always associated with better quality, because (a) there is a natural tendency for the weak to unite against a strong nation, (b) to side with a group which is apparently succeeding, and (c) the alliances may be the work of one or a few individuals who happen to be in positions of power at the critical time.

Modern European wars, especially the latest one, have been marked by the high quality of the combatants on both sides relative to the rest of the world. As these same races fight with pertinacity, there is a high

!mortality rate, so that the dysgenic result of these wars is particularly deplorable.

As for the selection taking place within each of the struggling

nations, the combatants and the non-combatants of the same age and sex must first be compared. The difference here depends largely on how the army in question was raised. Where the army is a permanent, paid force, it probably does not represent a quality above the average of the

nation, except physically. When it is conscripted, it is superior

physically and probably slightly in other respects. If it is a

volunteer army, its quality depends largely on whether the cause being fought for is one that appeals merely to the spirit of adventure or one that appeals to some moral principle. In the latter case, the quality may be such that the loss of a large part of the army will be peculiarly

damaging to the progress of the race. This situation is more common than might be supposed, for by skillful diplomacy and journalism a cause which may be really questionable is presented to the public in a most idealistic light. But here, again, one can not always apply sweeping generalisations to individual cases. It might be supposed, for instance, that in the Confederate army the best eugenic quality was represented by the volunteers, the second best by those who stayed out until they were conscripted, and the poorest by the deserters. Yet David Starr Jordan

and Harvey Ernest Jordan, who investigated the case with care, found that this was hardly true and that, due to the peculiar circumstances, the deserters were probably not as a class eugenically inferior to the

volunteers.[157] Again some wars, such as that between the United States and Spain, probably develop a volunteer army made up largely of the adventurous, the nomadic, and those who have fewer ties; it would be difficult to demonstrate that they are superior to those who, having settled positions at home, or family obligations, fail to volunteer. The greatest damage appears to be done in such wars as those waged by great European nations, where the whole able-bodied male population is called out, and only those left at home who are physically or mentally unfit

!for fighting--but not, it appears to be thought, unfit to perpetuate the race.

!Even within the army of one side, lethal selection is operative. Those who are killed are by no means a haphazard sample of the whole army. Among the victims there is a disproportionate representation of those with (1) dauntless bravery, (2) recklessness, (3) stupidity. These qualities merge into each other, yet in their extremes they are widely different. However, as the nature of warfare changes with the increase of artillery, mines, bombs, and gases, and decrease of personal combat, those who fall are more and more chance victims.

In addition to the killed and mortally wounded, there are many deaths from disease or from wounds which were not necessarily fatal. Probably the most selective of any of these three agencies is the variable

resistance to disease and infection and the widely varying knowledge and appreciation of the need for hygienic living shown by the individual,

!as, for instance, by less reckless drinking of un-sterilised water. But here, too, in modern warfare, this item is becoming less selective, with the advance in discipline and in organised sanitation.

!The efficiency of selection will be affected by the percentage that each side has sent to the front, if the combatants are either above or below the average of the population. A nation that sends all its able-bodied males forward will be affected differently from its enemy that has needed to call upon only one-half of its able-bodied men in order to win its cause.

Away from the fighting lines of the contending sides, conditions that prevail are rendered more severe in many ways than in times of peace. Poverty becomes rife, and sanitation and medical treatment are commonly sacrificed under the strain. During a war, that mitigation of the action

!of natural selection which is so common now among civilised nations, is somewhat less effective than in times of peace. The scourge of typhus in Serbia is a recent and graphic illustration.

After a war has been concluded, certain new agencies of inter-group selection arise. The result depends largely on whether the vanquished have had a superior culture brought to them, as in the case of the Philippines, or whether, on the contrary, certain diseases have been introduced, as to the natives of the New World by the Spanish conquerors and explorers, or crushing tribute has been levied, or grievous

!oppression such as has befallen Belgium.

Sometimes the conquerors themselves have suffered severely as the result of excessive spoliation, which has produced vicious idleness and luxurious indulgence, with the ultimate effect of diminishing the

!birth-rate.

!Within the nation there may be various results. Sometimes, by the reduction of overcrowding, natural selection will be less severe. On the other hand, the loss of that part of the population which is more economically productive is a very serious loss, leading to excessive poverty with increased severity in the action of natural selection, of which some of the Southern States, during the Reconstruction period, offer a good illustration.

!Selection is also rendered more intense by the heavy burden of taxation, and in the very common depreciation of currency as is now felt in Russia.

!Sexual selection as well as lethal is affected by war in manifold ways. Considering the armed force, there is an inter-group selection, when the enemy's women are assaulted by the soldiers. While this has been an important factor in the past, it is somewhat less common now, with better army discipline and higher social ideals.

!Within the group, mating at the outset of a war is greatly increased by many hurried marriages. There is also alleged to be sometimes an increase of illegitimacy in the neighbourhood of training camps. In each of these instances, these matings do not represent as much maturity of judgment as there would have been in times of peace, and hence give a less desirable sexual selection.

In the belligerent nation at home, the number of marriageable males is of course far less than at ordinary times. It becomes important, then,

to compare the quality of the non-combatants and those combatants who survive and return home, since their absence during the war period of course decreases their reproduction as compared with the non-combatants. The marked excess of women over men, both during the war and after,

necessarily intensifies the selection of women and proportionately reduces that of men, since relatively fewer men will remain unmated. This excess of women is found in all classes. Among superiors there are,

!in addition, some women who never marry because the war has so reduced the number of suitors thought eligible.

The five years' war of Paraguay with Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina (1864-1869) is perhaps the most glaring case on record[158] in recent years of the destruction of the male population of a country. Whole regiments were made up of boys of 16 or less. At the beginning of the war the population of Paraguay had been given as 1,337,437. It fell to 221,709 (28,746 men, 106,254 women, 86,079 children); it is even now probably not more than half of the estimate made at the beginning of the war. "Here in a small area has occurred a drastic case of racial ravage without parallel since the time of the Thirty Years' War." Macedonia, however, furnishes a fairly close parallel--D. S. Jordan found whole villages there in 1913 in which not a single man remained: only women and children. Conditions were not so very much better in parts of the South at the close of the Civil War, particularly in Virginia and North

Carolina, where probably 40% of the young men of reproductive age died without issue. And in a few of the Northern states, such as Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts, the loss was proportionately almost as great. These were probably as good men as any country has produced, and their loss, with that of their potential offspring, undoubtedly is

!causing more far-reaching effects in the subsequent history of the United States than has ever been realised.

!In the past and still among many savage peoples, inter-group selection has been affected by the stealing of women from the vanquished. The effect of this has been very different, depending on whether these women would otherwise have been killed or spared, and also depending on the relative quality of their nation to that of their conquerors.

!To sum up, there are so many features of natural selection, each  of which must be separately weighed and the whole then balanced, that it is a matter of extensive inquiry to determine whether a certain war has a preponderance of eugenic or dysgenic results.

When the quality of the combatants is so high, compared with the rest

of the world, as during the Great War, no conceivable eugenic gains from the war can offset the losses. It is probably well within the facts to assume that the period of this war represents a decline in inherent human quality, greater than in any similar length of time in the

!previous history of the world.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that war is becoming much less common if we consider number of combatants rather than number of wars as times goes on,[159] and it steadily tends to be more destructive. War, then, offers one of the greatest problems which the eugenist must face, for a

!few months of war may undo all that eugenic reforms can gain in a generation.

The total abolition of war would, of course, be the ideal, but there is no possibility of this in the near future. The fighting instinct, it

must be remembered, is one of the most primitive and powerful that the human mechanism contains. It was evolved in great intensity, to give man supremacy over his environment--for the great "struggle for existence"

is with the environment, not with members of one's own species. Man long ago conquered the environment so successfully that he has never since had to exert himself in physical combat in this direction; but the

!fighting instinct remained and could not be baulked without causing uneasiness. Spurred on by a complex set of psychological and economic stimuli, man took to fighting his own kind, to a degree that no other species shows.

Dumbell Set with Personal Training

The only immediate course of action open seems to be to seek, if possible, to diminish the frequency of war by subduing nations which start wars and, by the organization of

!a League to Enforce Peace; to avoid war-provoking conquests; to diminish as much as possible the disastrous effects of war when it does come, and to work for the progress of science and the diffusion of knowledge which will eventually make possible the greater step, effective international organisation.

!

!

CHAPTER XV! ! !IMMIGRATION!

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 realise 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 colonise 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, Romanians 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, "over saturated" with population. So far there has been little more than the threat of their overflow, but the threat is certain to become a reality 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.

!But if the new arrivals are different, if they represent a different subspecies of Homo sapiens, the question is more serious, for it involves the problem of crossing races which are biologically more or less distinct. Genetics can throw some light on this problem.

Waiving for the moment all question as to the relative quality of two distinct races, what results are to be expected from crossing? It (1)

!gives an increase of vigour which diminishes in later generations and (2) produces recombination of characters.

!The first result may be disregarded, for the various races of man are probably already much mixed, and too closely related, to give rise to much hybrid vigour in crosses.

The second result will be favourable or unfavourable, depending on the characters which go into the cross; and it is not possible to predict

the result in human matings, because the various racial characters are so ill known. It is, therefore, not worth while here to discuss at

!length genetic theory. In general it may be said that some valuable characters are likely to disappear, as the result of such crosses, and less desirable ones to take their place. The great bulk of the population resulting from such racial crosses is likely to be more or less mongrel in nature. Finally, some individuals will appear who combine the good characters of the two races, without the bad ones.

The net result will therefore probably be some distinct gain, but a greater loss. There is danger that complex and valuable traits of a race will be broken down in the process of hybridisation, and that it will take a long time to bring them together again. The old view that racial crosses lead fatally to race degeneration is no longer tenable, but the

view recently advanced, that crosses are advantageous, seems equally hasty. W. E. Castle has cited the Pitcairn Islanders and the

!Boer-Hottentot mulattoes of South Africa as evidence that wide crosses are productive of no evil results. These cases may be admitted to show that such a hybrid race may be physically healthy, but in respect of mental traits they hardly do more than suggest the conclusion we advanced in our chapter on the Colour Line,--that such miscegenation is an advantage to the inferior race and a disadvantage to the superior one.

!On the whole, we believe wide racial crosses should be looked upon with suspicion by eugenists.

The colonisers of North America mostly belonged to the Nordic race.[143] The earlier immigrants to the United States,--roughly, those who came here before the Civil War,--belonged mostly to the same stock, and therefore mixed with the early settlers without difficulty. The

!advantages of this immigration were offset by no impairment of racial homogeneity.

But the more recent immigration belongs mostly to other races, principally the Mediterranean and Alpine. Even if these immigrants were superior on the average to the older population, it is clear that their assimilation would not be an unmixed blessing, for the evil of crossbreeding would partly offset the advantage of the addition of valuable new traits. If, on the other hand, the average of the new immigration is inferior in quality, or in so far as it is inferior in

!quality, it is evident that it must represent biologically an almost unmixed evil; it not only brings in new undesirable traits, but injures the desirable ones already here.

A. Ross has attempted to predict some of the changes that will take place in the population of the United States, as a result of the immigration of the last half-century.[144] "It is reasonable," he thinks, "to expect an early falling off in the frequency of good looks

in the American people." A diminution of stature, a depreciation of morality, an increase in gross fecundity, and a considerable lowering of the level of average natural ability are among other results that he considers probable. Not only are the races represented in the later immigration in many cases inferior in average ability to the earlier immigrant races, but America does not get the best, or even a representative selection,[145] from the races which are now contributing to her population. "Europe retains most of her brains, but sends multitudes of the common and sub-common. There is little sign of an intellectual element among the Magyars, Russians, South Slavs, Italians, Greeks or Portuguese" who are now arriving. "This does not hold, however, for currents created by race discrimination or oppression. The Armenian, Syrian, Finnish and Russo-Hebrew streams seem representative, and the first wave out of Russia in the

!eighties was superior."

While the earlier immigration brought a liberal amount of intelligence

and ability, the later immigration (roughly, that of the last half century) seems to have brought distinctly less. It is at present principally an immigration of unskilled labor, of vigorous, ignorant peasants. Some of this is "promoted" by agents of transportation

companies and others who stand to gain by stirring up the population of a country village in Russia or Hungary, excite the illiterate peasants

by stories of great wealth and freedom to be gained in the New World, provide the immigrant with a ticket to New York and start him for Ellis Island. Naturally, such immigration is predominantly male. On the whole, females make up one-third of the recent inflow, but among some

!races--Greeks, Italians and Romanians, for example--only one-fifth.

!In amount of inherent ability these immigrants are not only less highly endowed than is desirable, but they furnish, despite weeding out, altogether too large a proportion of the "three D's"--defectives, delinquents and dependents.

The amount of crime attributable to certain sections of the more recent immigration is relatively large. "It was frequently stated to the

members of the Immigration Commission in southern Italy that crime had greatly diminished in many communities because most of the criminals had gone to America." The amount of crime among immigrants in the United States is partly due to their age and sex distribution, partly due to

their concentration in cities, partly to the bad environment from which they have sometimes come; partly to inherent racial characteristics, such as make crimes of violence frequent among the Southern Italians, crimes of gain proportionately more frequent among the Jews, and violence when drunk more a characteristic of the Slavs. No restriction of immigration can wholly eliminate the criminal tendencies, but, says Dr. Warne,[148] after balancing the two sides, "It still remains true

that because of immigration we have a greater amount of pauperism and crime than would be the case if there were no immigration. It is also an indisputable fact that with a better regulation of immigration the

!United States would have less of these social horrors."

To dwell too much on the undesirable character of part of the present immigration would be to lose perspective. Most of it consists of vigorous, industrious, ignorant peasants, induced to come here in search of a better living than they can get at home. But it is important to remember that if they come here and stay, they are pretty certain to be assimilated sooner or later. In cases superior to the average of the

!older population, their arrival should be welcomed if not too racially diverse; but if, as we believe the record of their achievements shows, a large part of the immigration is on the average inferior to the older population of the United States, such are eugenically a detriment to the future progress of the race. The direct biological result to be expected from the assimilation of such newcomers is the swamping of the best characteristics of the old American stock, and a diminution of the average of intelligence of the whole country.

The interbreeding is too slow at present to be conspicuous, and hence its effects are little noticed. The foreigners tend to keep by

themselves, to form "Little Italies," "Little Russias," transplanted Ghettoes and "foreign quarters," where they retain their native languages and customs and marry compatriots. This condition of segregation can not last forever; the process of amalgamation will be more rapid with each generation, particularly because of the

!preponderance of males in the newer immigration who must marry outside their own race, if they are to marry at all.

The direct results of immigration that lead to intermarriage with the older population are fairly easy to outline. The indirect results, which we shall now consider, are more complex. We have dealt so far only with the effects of an immigration that is assimilated; but some immigration (that from the Orient, for example) is not assimilated; other

!immigration remains unassimilated for a long time. What are the eugenic consequences of an unassimilated immigration?

The presence of large numbers of immigrants who do not intermarry with the older stock will, says T. N. Carver,[149] inevitably mean one of

!three things:

!Geographical separation of races.

!Social separation of races (as the "colour line" in the South and to a large extent in the North, between Negroes and whites who yet live side by side).

!Continuous racial antagonism, frequently breaking out into race war. This third possibility has been at least threatened, by the conflict between the white and yellow races in California, and the conflict between whites and Hindus in British Columbia.

!None of these alternatives is attractive. The third is undesirable in every way and the first two are difficult to maintain. The first is perhaps impossible; the second is partly practicable, as is shown by the case of the Negro. One of its drawbacks is not sufficiently recognised.

In a soundly-organized society, it is necessary that the road should be open from top to bottom and bottom to top, in order that genuine merit may get its deserts. A valuable strain which appears at the bottom of the social scale must be able to make its way to the top, receiving financial and other rewards commensurate with its value to the state, and being able to produce a number of children proportionate to its reward and its value. This is an ideal which is seldom approximated in

government, but it is the advantage of a democratic form of government that it presents the open road to success, more than does an oligarchic government. That this freedom of access to all rewards that the state can give should be open to every one (and conversely that no one should be kept at the top and over-rewarded if he is unworthy) is essential to eugenics; but it is quite incompatible with the existence within the

state of a number of isolated groups, some of which must inevitably and properly be considered inferior. It is certain that, at the present time

in this country, no Negro can take a place in the upper ranks of

society, which are and will long remain white. The fact that this situation is inevitable makes it no less unfortunate for both Negro and white races; consolation can only be found in the thought that it is less of a danger than the opposite condition would be. But this condition of class discrimination is likely to exist, to a much less extent it is true, in every city where there are foreign-born and

!native-born populations living side by side, and where the epithets of "Sheeny," "Dago," "Wop," "Kike," "Greaser," "Guinea," etc., testify to the feeling of the older population that it is superior.

While eugenic strength in a state is promoted by variety, too great a heterogeneity offers serious social difficulties. It is essential if America is to be strong eugenically that it slow down the flood of immigrants who are not easily assimilable. At present a state of affairs is being created where class distinctions are likely to be barriers to

!the promotion of individual worth--and equally, of course, to the demotion of individual worthlessness.

The arrivals of the past

!few decades have been nearly all unskilled labourers. Professor Carver believes that continuous immigration which enters the ranks of labor in larger proportion and the business and professional classes in a smaller proportion than the native-born will produce the following results:

!Distribution. It will keep competition more intense among labourers and less intense among business and professional men: it will therefore raise the income of the employing classes and lower the wages of unskilled labor.

!Production. It will give a relatively low marginal productivity to a typical immigrant and make him a relatively unimportant factor in the production of wealth.

!Organisation of industry. Immigrants can only be employed economically at low wages and in large gangs, because of (2).

!Agriculture. If large numbers of immigrants should go into agriculture, it will mean one of two things, probably the second:

!Continuous subdivision of farms resulting in inefficient and wasteful application of labor and smaller crops per man, although probably larger crops per acre.

!Development of a class of landed proprietors on the one hand and a landless agricultural proletariat on the other.

It is true that the great mass of unskilled labor which has come to the United States in the last few decades has made possible the development of many industries that have furnished an increased number of good jobs to men of intelligence, but many who have made a close study of the immigration problem think that despite this, unskilled labor has been coming in altogether too large quantities.

!If the immigration of large quantities of unskilled labor with low standards of living tends in most cases to depress wages and lower the standard of living of the corresponding class of the old American population, the consequences would appear to be:

!The employers of labor would profit, since they would get abundant labor at low wages. If this increase in the wealth of employers led to an increase in their birth-rate, it would be an advantage. But it apparently does not. The birth-rate of the employing class is probably little restricted by financial difficulties; therefore on them immigration probably has no immediate eugenic effect.

!The American skilled labourers would profit, since there is more demand for skilled labor in industries created by unskilled immigrant labor. Would the increasing prosperity and a higher standard of living here, tend to lower the relative birth-rate of the class or not?

!The answer probably depends on the extent of the knowledge of birth control which has been discussed elsewhere.

The wages and standard of living of American unskilled labourers will fall, since they are obliged directly to compete with the newcomers. It seems most likely that a fall in wages and standards is correlated with

!a fall in birth-rate. This case must be distinguished from cases where the wages and standards never were high, and where poverty is correlated with a high birth-rate. If this distinction is correct, the present immigration will tend to lower the birth-rate of American unskilled labourers.

!The arguments here used may appear paradoxical, and have little statistical support, but they seem to us sound and not in contradiction with any known facts. If they are valid, the effect of such immigration as the United States has been receiving is to reduce the birth-rate of the unskilled labor with little or no effect on the employers and managers of labor.

Since both the character and the volume of immigration are at fault, remedial measures may be applied to either one or both of these features. It is very desirable that we have a much more stringent selection of immigrants than is made at the present time. But most of

!the measures which have been actually proposed and urged in recent years have been directed at a diminution of the volume, and at a change in character only by somewhat indirect and indiscriminate means.

The Immigration Commission made a report to Congress on Dec. 5, 1910, in which it suggested the following possible methods of restricting the

!volume of immigration:

!The exclusion of those unable to read and write in some language.

The reduction of the number of each race arriving each year to a certain percentage of the average of that race arriving during a given

!period of years.

!The exclusion of unskilled labourers unaccompanied by wives or families.

!Material increase in the amount of money required to be in the possession of the immigrant at the port of arrival.

!Material increase in the head tax.

!Limitation of the number of immigrants arriving annually at any port.

!The levying of the head tax so as to make a marked discrimination in favour of men with families.

Eugenically, it is probable that (3) and (7), which would tend to admit only families, would be a detriment to American welfare; (1) and (2) have been the suggestions which have met with the most favour. All but

one member of the commission favoured (1), the literacy test, as the most feasible single method of restricting undesirable immigration, and it

!was enacted into law by Congress, which passed it over President Wilson's veto, in February, 1917.

Records for 1914 show that "illiteracy among the total number of arrivals of each race ranged all the way from 64% for the Turkish to less than 1% for the English, the Scotch, the Welsh, the Scandinavian,

!and the Finnish. The Bohemian and Moravian, the German, and the Irish each had less than 5% illiterate. Races other than the Turkish, whose immigration in 1914 was more than one-third illiterate, include the Dalmatians, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Russians, Ruthenians, Italians, Lithuanians, and Romanians."

It is frankly admitted by the proponents of this method of restriction that it will keep out some who ought to come in, and let in some who ought to be kept out. It is in some cases a test of opportunity rather than of character, but "in the belief of its advocates, it will meet the situation as disclosed by the investigation of the Immigration

Commission better than any other means that human ingenuity can devise.

!It is believed that it would exclude more of the undesirable and fewer of the desirable immigrants than any other method of restriction."

On the other hand, it is argued that the literacy test will fail of success because those who want to come will learn to read and write,

!which will only delay their arrival a few months without changing their real character. But the effect of such attempts will separate those who succeed from those who are too inferior to succeed, which would be an advantage of the plan rather than a defect.

The literary restriction has been a great step forward but should be backed by the addition of such mental tests as will make it fairly certain to keep out the dull-minded as well as feeble-minded. Long division would suffice as such a test until better tests relatively

!unaffected by schooling can be put into operation, since it is at this point in the grades that so many dull-minded drop out of the schools.

What are the grounds, then, for forbidding the yellow races, or the races of British India, to enter the United States? The considerations urged in the past have been (1) Political: it is said that they are unable to acquire the spirit of American institutions. This is an objection which concerns eugenics only indirectly. (2) Medical: it is said that they introduce diseases, such as the oriental liver, lung and

intestinal flukes, which are serious, against which Americans have never been selected, and for which no cure is known. (3) Economic: it is argued that the Oriental's lower standard of living makes it impossible for the white man to compete with him. The objection is well founded, and is indirectly of concern to eugenics, as was pointed out in a preceding section of this chapter. As eugenists we feel justified in objecting to the immigration of large bodies of unskilled Oriental

!labor, on the ground that they rear larger families than our stock on the same small incomes.

Eugenically, then, the immigration of any considerable number of unskilled labourers from the Orient may have undesirable direct results and is certain to have unfavourable indirect results. It should therefore be prevented, either by a continuation of the "gentlemen's agreement" now in force between the United States and Japan, and by similar agreements with other nations, or by some such non-invidious measure.

This exclusion should not of course be

!applied to the intellectual classes, whose presence here would offer advantages which would outweigh the disadvantages.

It appears that even a small infusion of Chinese blood may produce long-continued favourable results, if the case of the Ilocanos is correctly described. This tribe, in Northern Luzon, furnishes perhaps the most industrious workers of any tribe in the islands; foremen and overseers of Filipinos are quite commonly found to be Ilocanos, while the members of the tribe are credited with accomplishing more steady

!work than any other element of the population. The current explanation of this is that they are Chinese mestizos: their coast was constantly exposed the raids of Chinese pirates, a certain number of whom settled there and took Ilocano women as wives. From these unions, the whole tribe in the course of time is thought to have benefited.[154]

The history of the Chinese in the Philippines fails to corroborate the idea that he never loses his racial identity. It must be borne in mind that nearly all the Chinese in the United States are of the lowest working class, and from the vicinity of Canton; while those in the Philippines are of a higher class, and largely from the neighbourhood of Amoy. They have usually married Filipino women of good families, so their offspring had exceptional advantages, and stand high in the

estimation of the community. The requirement of the Spanish government was that a Chinese must embrace Christianity and become a citizen, before he could marry a Filipino. Usually he assumed his wife's name, so the children were brought up wholly as Filipinos, and considered

!themselves such, without cherishing any particular sentiment for the Flowery Kingdom.

!The biologist who studies impartially the Filipino peoples may easily conclude that the American government is making a mistake in excluding the Chinese; that the infiltration of intelligent Chinese and their intermixture with the native population would do more to raise the level of ability of the latter than a dozen generations of that compulsory education on which the government has built such high hopes.

And this conclusion leads to the question whether much of the surplus population of the Orient could not profitably be diverted to regions occupied by savage and barbarian people. Chinese immigrants, mostly traders, have long been going in small numbers to many such regions and have freely intermarried with native women. It is a matter of common observation to travellers that much of the small mercantile business has passed into the hands of Chinese mestizos. As far as the first few generations, at least, the cross here seems to be productive of good

results. Whether Oriental immigration should be encouraged must depend on the decision of the respective governments, and considerations other than biologic will have weight. As far as eugenics is concerned it is

!likely that such regions would profit by a reasonable amount of Chinese or Japanese immigration which resulted in interbreeding and not in the formation of isolated race-groups, because the superior Orientals tend to raise the level of the native population into which they marry.

The question of the regulation of immigration is, as we have insisted throughout this chapter, a question of weighing the consequences. A decision must be reached in each case by asking what course will do most for the future good both of the nation and of the whole species. To talk

of the sacred duty of offering an asylum to any who choose to come, is to indulge in immoral sentimentality. Even if the problem be put on the most unselfish plane possible, to ask not what will be for this

country's own immediate or future benefit, but what will most benefit the world at large, it can only be concluded that the duty of the United States is to make itself strong, efficient, productive and progressive. By so doing they will be much better able to help the rest

!of the world than by progressively weakening themselves through failure to regulate immigration.

!Looking only at the eugenic consequences, we can not doubt that a considerable and discriminatory selection of immigrants to this country is necessary. Both directly and indirectly, the immigration of recent years appears to be diminishing the eugenic strength of the nation more than it increases it.

The state would be in a stronger position eugenically (and in many other ways) if it would decrease the immigration of unskilled labor, and increase the immigration of creative and directing talent. A selective diminution of the volume of immigration would tend to have that result, because it would necessarily shut out more of the unskilled than the skilled.

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