The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy - BestLightNovel.com
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First, the peril of arms. The military potencies of the colored races have been the subject of earnest, and frequently alarmist, speculation for the past twenty years, particularly since the Russo-j.a.panese War. The exciting effects of Pan-Islamism upon the warlike peoples of Asia and Africa have been frequently discussed, while the "Yellow Peril" has long been a journalistic commonplace.
How shall we appraise the colored peril of arms? On the whole, it would appear as though the colored military danger, in its isolated, purely aggressive aspect, had been exaggerated. Visions of a united Asia, rising suddenly in fanatic frenzy and hurling brown and yellow myriads upon the white West _seem_ to be the products of superheated imaginations. I say "seem," because there are unquestionably mysterious emotional depths in the Asiatic soul which may yet justify the prophets of cataclysmic war. As Hyndman says: "With all the facts before us, and with prejudice thrown aside, we are still unable to lay bare the causes of the gigantic Asian movements of the past. They were certainly not all economic in their origin, unless we stretch the boundaries of theory so far as to include the ma.s.sacre of whole populations and the destruction of their wealth within the limits of the invaders' desire for material gain. And, whether these movements arose from material or emotional causes, they have been before, and they may occur again. Forecast here is impossible. A new Mohammed is quite as likely to make his appearance as a new Buddha, a reborn Confucius, or a modern Christ.... Asia raided and scourged Europe for more than a thousand years. Now, for five hundred years, the counter-attack of Europe upon Asia has been steadily going on, and it may be that the land of long memories will cherish some desire to avenge this period of wrong and rapine in turn. The seed of hatred has already been but too well sown."[137]
Of course, on this particular point, forecast is, indeed, impossible.
Nevertheless, the point should be noted, for Asiatic war-fever may appear, if not in isolation, then in conjunction with other stimuli to warlike action, like population-pressure or imperialistic ambition, which to-day exist and whose amplitude can be approximately gauged. We have already a.n.a.lyzed the military potencies of Pan-Islamism and j.a.pan, and China also should not be forgotten. Pacifist though China has long been, she has had her bellicose moments in the past and may have them in the future. Should this occur, China, as the world's greatest reservoir of intelligent man-power, would be immensely formidable. Pearson visualizes a China "become an aggressive military power, sending out her armies in millions to cross the Himalayas and traverse the Steppes, or occupying the islands and the northern parts of Australia, by pouring in immigrants protected by fleets. Luther's old name for the Turks, that they were 'the people of the wrath of G.o.d,' may receive a new and terrible application."[138]
Granted that the Chinese will never become the fighting equals of the world's warrior races, their incredible numbers combined with their tenacious vitality might overcome opponents individually their superiors.
Says Professor Ross: "To the West the toughness of the Chinese physique may have a sinister military significance. n.o.body fears lest in a stand-up fight Chinese troops could whip an equal number of well-conditioned white troops. But few battles are fought by men fresh from tent and mess. In the course of a prolonged campaign involving irregular provisioning, bad drinking-water, lying out, loss of sleep, exhausting marches, exposure, excitement, and anxiety, it may be that the white soldiers would be worn down worse than the yellow soldiers. In that case the hardier men with less of the martial spirit might in the closing grapple beat the better fighters with the less endurance."[139]
The potentialities of the Chinese soldier would acquire vastly greater significance if China should be thoroughly subjugated by, or solidly leagued to, ambitious and militaristic j.a.pan. The combined military energies of the Far East, welded into an aggressive unity, would be a weapon of tremendous striking-power.
The colored peril of arms may thus be summarized: The brown and yellow races possess great military potentialities. These (barring the action of certain ill-understood emotional stimuli) are unlikely to flame out in spontaneous fanaticism; but, on the other hand, they are very likely to be mobilized for political reasons like revolt against white dominion or for social reasons like over-population. The black race offers no real danger except as the tool of Pan-Islamism. As for the red men of the Americas, they are of merely local significance.
We are now ready to examine the economic facet of the colored peril: the industrial-mercantile phase. In the second part of this volume I showed the profound effect of the "industrial revolution" in furthering white world-supremacy, and I pointed out the tremendous advantages accruing to the white world from exploitation of undeveloped colored lands and from exports of manufactured goods to colored markets. The prodigious wealth thereby ama.s.sed has been a prime cause of white prosperity, has b.u.t.tressed the maintenance of white world-hegemony, and has made possible much of the prodigious increase of white population.
We little realize what the loss of these advantages would mean. As a matter of fact, it would mean throughout the white world diminished prosperity, lessened political and military strength, and such relative economic and social stagnation as would depress national vigor and check population. It is even possible to visualize a white world reverting to the condition of Europe in the fifteenth century--thrown back upon itself, on the defensive, and with a static rather than a progressive civilization. Such conditions could of course occur only as the result of colored military and industrial triumphs of the most sweeping character.
But the possibility exists, nevertheless, as I shall endeavor to show.
Down to the close of the nineteenth century white supremacy was as absolute in industry as it was in politics and war. Even the civilized brown and yellow peoples were negligible from the industrial point of view. Asia was economically on an agricultural basis. Such industries as she possessed were still in the "house-industry" stage, and her products, while often exquisite in quality, were produced by such slow, antiquated methods that their quant.i.ty was limited and their market-price relatively high. Despite very low wages, Asiatic products not only could not compete in the world-market with European and American machine-made, ma.s.s-produced articles, but were hard hit in their home-markets as well. The way in which an ancient Asiatic handicraft like the Indian textiles was literally annihilated by the destructive compet.i.tion of Lancas.h.i.+re cottons is only one of many similar instances.
With the beginning of the twentieth century, however, Asia began to show signs of an economic activity as striking in its way as the activity which Asia was displaying in idealistic and political fields. j.a.pan had already laid the foundations of her flouris.h.i.+ng industrial life based on the most up-to-date Western models, while in other Asiatic lands, notably in China and India, the whir of machinery and the smoke of tall factory chimneys proclaimed that the East was fathoming the industrial secrets of the West.
What Asiatics were seeking in their industrial revival was well expressed a decade ago by a Hindu, who wrote in a leading Indian periodical: "In one respect the Orient is really menacing the West, and so earnest and open-minded is Asia that no pretense or apology whatever is made about it.
The Easterner has thrown down the industrial gantlet, and from now on Asia is destined to witness a progressively intense trade warfare, the Occidental scrambling to retain his hold on the markets of the East, and the Oriental endeavoring to beat him in a battle in which heretofore he has been an easy victor.... In competing with the Occidental commercialists, the Oriental has awakened to a dynamic realization of the futility of pitting unimproved machinery and methods against modern methods and appliances. Casting aside his former sense of self-complacency, he is studying the sciences and arts that have given the West its material prosperity. He is putting the results of his investigations to practical use, as a rule, recasting the Occidental methods and tools to suit his peculiar needs, and in some instances improving upon them."[140]
The accuracy of this Hindu statement of Asia's industrial awakening is indorsed by the statements of white observers. At the very moment when the above article was penned, an American economic writer, Clarence Poe, was making a study tour of the Orient, from which he brought back the following report: "The real cause of Asia's poverty lies in just two things: the failure of Asiatic governments to educate their people, and the failure of the people to increase their productive capacity by the use of machinery. Ignorance and lack of machinery are responsible for Asia's poverty; knowledge and modern tools are responsible for America's prosperity." But, continues Mr. Poe, we must watch out. Asia now realizes these things and is doing much to remedy the situation. Hence, "we must face in ever-increasing degree the rivalry of awakening peoples who are strong with the strength that comes from struggle with poverty and hards.h.i.+p, and who have set themselves to master and apply all our secrets in the coming world-struggle for industrial supremacy and for racial readjustment."[141] And more recently another American observer of Asiatic economic conditions reports: "All Asia is being permeated with modern industry and present-day mechanical progress."[142]
Take, for example, the momentous possibilities involved in the industrial awakening of China. China is not merely the most populous of lands, containing as it does nearly one-fourth of all the human beings on earth, but it is also dowered with immense natural resources, notably coal and iron--the prime requisites of modern industrial life. Hitherto China has been on an agricultural basis, with virtually no exploitation of her mineral wealth and with no industry in the modern sense. But the day when any considerable fraction of China's laborious millions turn from the plough and handicrafts to the factory must see a portentous reaction in the most distant markets.
Thirty years ago, Professor Pearson forecast China's imminent industrial transformation. "Does any one doubt," he asks, "that the day is at hand when China will have cheap fuel from her coal-mines, cheap transport by railways and steamers, and will have founded technical schools to develop her industries? Whenever that day comes, she may wrest the control of the world's markets, especially throughout Asia, from England and Germany."[143]
Much of what Professor Pearson prophesied has already come to pa.s.s, for China to-day has the beginnings of a promising industrial life. Even a decade ago Professor Ross wrote of industrial conditions there:
"a.s.suredly the cheapness of Chinese labor is something to make a factory owner's mouth water. The women reelers in the silk filatures of Shanghai get from eight to eleven cents for eleven hours of work. But Shanghai is dear; and, besides, everybody there complains that the laborers are knowing and spoiled. In the steel works at Hanyang common labor gets three dollars a month, just a tenth of what raw Slavs command in the South Chicago iron-works. Skilled mechanics get from eight to twelve dollars. In a coal-mine near Ichang a thousand miles up the Yangtse the coolie receives one cent for carrying a 400-pound load of coal on his back down to the river a mile and a half away. He averages ten loads a day but must rest every other week. The miners get seven cents a day and found; that is, a cent's worth of rice and meal. They work eleven hours a day up to their knees in water, and all have swollen legs. After a week of it they have to lie off a couple of days. No wonder the cost of this coal (semi-bituminous) at the pit's mouth is only thirty-five cents a ton. At Chengtu servants get a dollar and a half a month and find themselves.
Across Szechuan l.u.s.ty coolies were glad to carry our chairs half a day for four cents each. In Sianfu the common coolie gets three cents a day and feeds himself, or eighty cents a month. Through Shansi roving harvesters were earning from four to twelve cents a day, and farm-hands got five or six dollars a year and their keep. Speaking broadly, in any part of the empire, willing laborers of fair intelligence may be had in any number at from eight to fifteen cents a day.
"With an ocean of such labor power to draw on, China would appear to be on the eve of a manufacturing development that will act like a continental upheaval in changing the trade map of the world. The impression is deepened by the tale of industries that have already sprung up."[144]
Of course there is another side to the story. Low wages alone do not insure cheap production. As Professor Ross remarks: "For all his native capacity, the coolie will need a long course of schooling, industrial training, and factory atmosphere before he inches up abreast of the German or American working man."[145] In the technical and directing staffs there is the same absence of the modern industrial spirit, resulting in chronic mismanagement, while Chinese industry is further handicapped by traditional evils like "squeeze," nepotism, l.u.s.t for quick profits, and incapacity for sustained business team-play. These failings are not peculiar to China; they hamper the industrial development of other Asiatic countries, notably India. Still, the way in which j.a.panese industry, with all its faults, is perfecting both its technic and its methods shows that these failings will be gradually overcome and indicates that within a generation Asiatic industry will probably be sufficiently advanced to supply at least the Asiatic home-markets with most of the staple manufactures.
Thus it looks as though white manufactures will tend to be progressively eliminated from Asiatic markets, even under conditions of absolutely free compet.i.tion. But it is a very moot point whether compet.i.tion will remain free--whether, on the contrary, white wares will not be increasingly penalized. The Asiatic takes a keen interest in his industrial development and consciously favors it even where whites are in political control. The "swades.h.i.+" movement in India is a good example, while the Chinese and Egyptian boycotts of foreign as against native goods are further instances in point. The j.a.panese have supplemented these spontaneous popular movements by systematic governmental discrimination in favor of j.a.panese products and the elimination of white compet.i.tion from j.a.pan and its dependencies. This j.a.panese policy has been markedly successful, and should j.a.pan's present hegemony over China be perpetuated the white man may soon find himself economically as well as politically expelled from the whole Far East.
A decade ago Putnam Weale wrote warningly: "If China is forced, owing to the short-sighted diplomacy of those for whom the question has really supreme importance, to make common cause with j.a.pan as a _pis aller_, then it may be accepted as inevitable that in the course of time there will be created a _mare clausum_, which will extend from the island of Saghalien down to Cochin-China and Siam, including all the island-groups, and the sh.o.r.es of which will be openly hostile to the white man....
"And since there will be no danger from the compet.i.tion of white workmen, but rather from the white man's s.h.i.+ps, the white man's merchants, his inventions, his produce--it will be these which will be subjected to humiliating conditions.... It is not a very far cry from tariffs on goods to tariffs and restrictions on foreign s.h.i.+pping, on foreign merchants, on everything foreign--restrictions which by imposing vast and unequal burdens on the activities of aliens will soon totally destroy such activities.... What can very easily happen is that the federation of eastern Asia and the yellow races will be finally arranged in such a manner as to exclude the white man and his commerce more completely than any one yet dreams of."[146]
This latter misfortune may be averted by concerted white action, but it is difficult to see how the gradual elimination of white goods from Asiatic markets as the result of successful Asiatic compet.i.tion can be averted.
Certainly the stubborn maintenance of white political domination over a rebellious Asia would be no remedy. That would merely intensify swades.h.i.+ boycotts in the subject regions, while in the lands freed from white political control it would further j.a.pan's policy of excluding everything white. If Asiatics resolve to buy their own products instead of ours we may as well reconcile ourselves to the loss. Here again frank recognition of the inevitable will enable us to take a much stronger and more justifiable position on the larger world-aspects of the problem.
For Asia's industrial transformation is destined to cause momentous reactions in other parts of the globe. If Asiatic industry really does get on an efficient basis, its potentialities are so tremendous that it must presently not only monopolize the home-markets but also seek to invade white markets as well, thus presenting the white world with commercial and economic problems as unwelcome as they will be novel.
Again, industrialization will in some respects aggravate Asiatic longings for migration and dominion. In my opening pages I mentioned industrialization as a probable reliever of population-pressure in Asiatic countries by affording new livelihoods to the congested ma.s.ses. This is true. But, looking a trifle farther, we can also see that industrialization would stimulate a further prodigious increase of population. Consider the growth of Europe's population during the nineteenth century under the stimulus of the industrial revolution, making possible the existence in our industrialized Europe of three times as many people as existed in the agricultural Europe of a hundred years ago. Why should not a similar development occur in Asia? To-day Asia, though still upon a basis as agricultural as eighteenth-century Europe, contains fully 900,000,000 people. That even a partially industrialized Asia might support twice that number would (judging by the European precedent) be far from improbable.
But this would mean vastly increased incentives to expansion--commercial, political, racial--beyond the bounds of Asia. It would mean intensified encroachments, not only upon areas of white settlement, but perhaps even more upon non-Asiatic colored regions of white political control like Africa and tropical America. Here again we see why the white man, however conciliatory in Asia, must stand like flint in Africa and Latin America.
To allow the whole tropic belt clear round the world to pa.s.s into Asiatic hands would practically spell white race-suicide.
Professor Pearson paints a truly terrible picture of the stagnation and hopelessness which would ensue. "Let us conceive," he writes, "the leading European nations to be stationary, while the black and yellow belt, including China, Malaysia, India, central Africa, and tropical America, is all teeming with life, developed by industrial enterprise, fairly well administered by native governments, and owning the better part of the carrying trade of the world. Can any one suppose that, in such a condition of political society, the habitual temper of mind in Europe would not be profoundly changed? Depression, hopelessness, a disregard of invention and improvement, would replace the sanguine confidence of races that at present are always panting for new worlds to conquer. Here and there, it may be, the more adventurous would profit by the traditions of old supremacy to get their services accepted in the new nations, but as a rule there would be no outlet for energy, no future for statesmans.h.i.+p. The despondency of the English people, when their dream of conquest in France was dissipated, was attended with a complete decay of thought, with civil war, and with a standing still, or perhaps a decline of population, and to a less degree of wealth.... It is conceivable that our later world may find itself deprived of all that is valued on earth, of the pageantry of subject provinces and the reality of commerce, while it has neither a disinterred literature to amuse it nor a vitalized religion to give it spiritual strength."[147]
To sum up: The economic phase of the colored peril, though not yet a major factor, must still be seriously reckoned with by forward-looking statesmans.h.i.+p as something which will increasingly complicate the relations of the white and non-white worlds. In fact, even to-day it tends to intensify Asiatic desires for expansion, and thus exacerbates the third, or migratory, phase of the colored peril, which is already upon us.
The question of Asiatic immigration is incomparably the greatest external problem which faces the white world. Supreme phase of the colored peril, it already presses, and is destined to press harder in the near future. It infinitely transcends the peril of arms or markets, since it threatens not merely our supremacy or prosperity but our very race-existence, the wellsprings of being, the sacred heritage of our children.
That this is no overstatement of the issue, a bare recital of a few biological axioms will show. We have already seen that nothing is more _unstable_ than the racial make-up of a people, while, conversely, nothing is more _unchanging_ than the racial divisions of mankind. We have seen that true amalgamation is possible only between members of the same race-stock, while in crossings between stocks even as relatively near together as the main divisions of the white species, the race-characters do not really fuse but remain distinct in the mixed offspring and tend constantly to resort themselves as pure types by Mendelian inheritance.
Thus a country inhabited by a mixed population is really inhabited by different races, one of which always tends to dominate and breed the other out--the outbred strains being lost to the world forever.
Now, since the various human stocks differ widely in genetic worth, nothing should be more carefully studied than the relative values of the different strains in a population, and nothing should be more rigidly scrutinized than new strains seeking to add themselves to a population, because such new strains may hold simply incalculable potentialities for good or for evil. The potential reproductive powers of any stock are almost unlimited. Therefore the introduction of even a small group of prolific and adaptable but racially undesirable aliens may result in their subsequent prodigious multiplication, thereby either replacing better native stocks or degrading these by the injection of inferior blood.
The admission of aliens should, indeed, be regarded just as solemnly as the begetting of children, for the racial effect is essentially the same.
There is no more d.a.m.ning indictment of our lopsided, materialistic civilization than the way in which, throughout the nineteenth century, immigration was almost universally regarded, not from the racial, but from the material point of view, the immigrant being viewed not as a creator of race-values but as a mere vocal tool for the production of material wealth.
Immigration is thus, from the racial standpoint, a form of procreation, and like the more immediate form of procreation it may be either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse. Human history is largely the story of migrations, making now for good and now for ill. Migration peopled Europe with superior white stocks displacing ape-like aborigines, and settled North America with Nordics instead of nomad redskins. But migration also b.a.s.t.a.r.dized the Roman world with Levantine mongrels, drowned the West Indies under a black tide, and is filling our own land with the sweepings of the European east and south.
Migration, like other natural movements, is of itself a blind force. It is man's divine privilege as well as duty, having been vouchsafed knowledge of the laws of life, to direct these blind forces, rejecting the bad and selecting the good for the evolution of higher and n.o.bler destinies.
Colored immigration is merely the most extreme phase of a phenomenon which has already moulded prodigiously the development of the white world. In fact, before discussing the specific problems of colored immigration, it would be well to survey the effects of the immigration of various white stocks. When we have grasped the momentous changes wrought by the introduction of even relatively near-related and hence relatively a.s.similable strains, we will be better able to realize the far more momentous consequences which the introduction of colored stocks into white lands would entail.
The racial effects of immigration are ably summarized by that lifelong student of immigration problems, Prescott F. Hall. These effects are, he truly remarks, "more far-reaching and potent than all others. The government, the state, society, industry, the political party, social and political ideals, all are concepts and conventions created by individual men; and when individuals change these change with them. Recent discoveries in biology show that in the long run heredity is far more important than environment or education; for though the latter can develop, it cannot create. They also show what can be done in a few years in altering species, and in producing new ones with qualities. .h.i.therto unknown, or unknown in combination."[148]
The ways in which admixture of alien blood can modify or even destroy the very soul of a people have been fully a.n.a.lyzed both by biologists and by social psychologists like Doctor Gustave Le Bon.[149] The way in which wholesale immigration, even though mainly white, has already profoundly modified American national character is succinctly stated by Mr. Eliot Norton. "If," he writes, "one considers the American people from, say, 1775 to 1860, it is clear that a well-defined national character was in process of formation. What variations there were, were all of the same type, and these variations would have slowly grown less and less marked.
It needs little study to see of what great value to any body of men, women, and children a national or racial type is. It furnishes a standard of conduct by which any one can set his course. The world is a difficult place in which to live, and to establish moral standards has been one of the chief occupations of mankind. Without such standards, man feels as a mariner without a compa.s.s. Religions, rules, laws, and customs are only the national character in the form of standards of conduct. Now national character can be formed only in a population which is stable. The repeated introduction into a body of men of other men of different type or types cannot but tend to prevent its formation. Thus the 19,000,000 of immigrants that have landed have tended to break up the type which was forming, and to make the formation of any other type difficult. Every million more will only intensify this result, and the absence of a national character is a loss to every man, woman, and child. It will show itself in our religions, rules of conduct, in our laws, in our customs."[150]
The vital necessity of restriction and selection in immigration to conserve and build race-values is thus set forth by Mr. Hall:
"There is one aspect of immigration restriction in the various countries which does not often receive much attention; namely, the possibility of its use as a method of world-eugenics. Most persons think of migration in terms of s.p.a.ce--as the moving of a certain number of people from one part of the earth's surface to another. Whereas the much more important aspect of it is that of a functioning in time.
"This comes from two facts. The first is that the vacuum left in any country by emigration is rapidly filled up through a rise in the birth-rate.... The second fact is that immigration to any country of a given stratum of population tends to sterilize all strata of higher social and economic levels already in that country. So true is this that nearly all students of the matter are agreed that the United States would have a larger population to-day if there had been no immigration since 1820, and, it is needless to add, a much more h.o.m.ogeneous population. As long as the people of any community are relatively h.o.m.ogeneous, what differences of wealth and social position there may be do not affect the birth-rate, or do so only after a considerable time. But put into that community a number of immigrants, inferior mentally, socially, and economically, and the natives are unwilling to have their children a.s.sociate with them in work or social life. They then limit the number of their children in order to give them the capital or education to enter occupations in which they will not be brought into contact with the new arrivals. This result is quite apparent in New England, where successive waves of immigration from lower and lower levels have been coming in for eighty years. In the West, the same New England stock has a much higher birth-rate, showing that its fertility is in no way diminished. In the South, where until very recently there was no immigration at all, and the only socially inferior race was clearly separated by the accident of color, the birth-rate has remained very high, and the very large families of the colonial period are even now not uncommon.
"This is not to say that other causes do not contribute to lower the birth-rate of a country, for that is an almost world-wide phenomenon. But the desire to be separated from inferiors is as strong a motive to birth-control as the desire for luxury or to ape one's economic superiors.
Races follow Gresham's law as to money: the poorer of two kinds in the same place tends to supplant the better. Mark you, _supplant_, not drive out. One of the most common fallacies is the idea that the natives whose places are taken by the lower immigrants are 'driven up' to more responsible positions. A few may be pushed up; more are driven to a new locality, as happened in the mining regions; _but most are prevented from coming into existence at all_.
"What is the result, then, of the migration of 1,000,000 persons of lower level into a country where the average is of a higher level? Considering the world as a whole, there are, after a few years, 2,000,000 persons of the lower type in the world, and probably from 500,000 to 1,000,000 less of the higher type. The proportion of lower to higher in the country from which the migration goes may remain the same; but in the country receiving it, it has _risen_. Is the world as a whole the gainer?
"Of course the euthenist[151] says at once that these immigrants are improved. We may grant that, although the improvement is probably much exaggerated. You cannot make bad stock into good by changing its meridian, any more than you can turn a cart-horse into a hunter by putting it into a fine stable, or make a mongrel into a fine dog by teaching it tricks. But such improvement as there is involves time, expense, and trouble; and, when it is done, has anything been gained? Will any one say that the races that have supplanted the old Nordic stock in New England are any better, or as good, as the descendants of that stock would have been if their birth-rate had not been lowered?
"Further, in addition to the purely biological aspects of the matter, there are certain psychological ones. Although a cosmopolitan atmosphere furnishes a certain freedom in which strong congenital talents can develop, it is a question whether as many are not injured as helped by this. Indeed, there is considerable evidence to show that for the production of great men, a certain h.o.m.ogeneity of environment is necessary. The reason of this is very simple. In a h.o.m.ogeneous community, opinions on a large number of matters are fixed. The individual does not have to attend to such things, but is free to go ahead on some special line of his own, to concentrate to his limit on his work, even though that work be fighting the common opinions.
"But in a community of many races, there is either cross-breeding or there is not. If there is, the children of such cross-breeding are liable to inherit two souls, two temperaments, two sets of opinions, with the result in many cases that they are unable to think or act strongly and consistently in any direction. The cla.s.sic examples are Cuba, Mexico, and Brazil. On the other hand, if there is no cross-breeding, the diversity exists in the original races, and in a community full of diverse ideals of all kinds much of the energy of the higher type of man is dissipated in two ways. First, in the intellectual field there is much more doubt about everything, and he tends to weigh, discuss, and agitate many more subjects, in order to arrive at a conclusion amid the opposing views.
Second, in practical affairs, much time and strength have to be devoted to keeping things going along old lines, which could have been spent in new research and development. In how many of our large cities to-day are men of the highest type spending their whole time fighting, often in vain, to maintain standards of honesty, decency, and order, and in trying to compose the various ethnic elements, who should be free to build new structures upon the old!