Part 19

A second solution would be deportation, which was seriously suggested a hundred years ago. At that time it might have been possible to re-transport the then slaves to Africa, and such action would have involved only a fraction of the cost of the Civil War. This was considered as a possible remedy by some of the wisest statesmen in the years immediately preceding the Civil War. Today it is not possible, because Africa, with the exception of Liberia, is under the control of white states, which certainly would not welcome such an enormous addition to their own color problem, aside from all other practical considerations.

Present-day advocates of repatriation argue that lack of native population is the principal factor likely to hold back the development of some of the healthiest and most fertile parts of interior Africa. The American Negro, they say, might well carry there the education he has received in the United States, and do better for himself than he could expect to do here, especially if, through a rising race consciousness among the Whites, they show themselves less hospitable to his claims for equality.

The substantial following, gained by the Negro Garvey, who started a "Back to Africa" movement a few years ago, is cited as evidence that the Negroes in this country are not necessarily adverse to leaving it. But much more evidence will be needed before the repatriation of the Negro can be considered seriously.

As a third possibility, segregation has been suggested. This would mean the abandonment by the Whites of whole sections of the country along the Gulf of Mexico. This has actually happened in some places along the lower Mississippi River, where the numbers of the Negroes have become so overwhelming that the few remaining Whites have simply moved out and abandoned the district to them. It has happened and is happening in the West Indies. Haiti and Santo Domingo have been entirely turned over to Negroes and other examples of West Indian Islands almost abandoned to Negroes can be found.

Whatever be the final outcome, the Negro problem must be taken vigorously in hand by the Whites, without delay. States which have no laws preventing the intermarriage of white and black should adopt them. During the last quarter-century, many such bills, introduced in Northern legislatures, have been defeated by an organized pro-Negro lobby. The Christian churches in some parts of the North have also taken an unwise stand, in trying to break down the social barriers between Negro and White. This attitude goes back to the days of the abolitionists, who persuaded themselves that the Negro slave had all possible virtues and the Southern White man all possible vices. It was a primary factor in creating the tragedy of "reconstruction" after the Civil War.

Senator Roscoe Conkling hit this attitude off neatly when some one asked him what had happened in the Senate that day. He replied: "We have been discussing Senator Sumner's annual bill entitled 'An act to amend the act of God whereby there is a difference between white and black.'"

More necessary than legislation is a more vigorous and alert public opinion among the Whites, which will put a stop to social mixing of the two races. Social separation is the key to minimizing the evils of race mixture at the present time. Public opinion might well stop exalting the Mulatto and thereby putting its stamp of approval on miscegenation. Negroes should be encouraged to respect their own racial integrity. Finally, knowledge of methods of Birth Control now widespread among the Whites, should be made universally available to the Blacks.

Compared with the Negro, the American Indian offers no serious problem to American unity. On the entire continent north of Mexico there are only about 432,000. The 1930 census gives the Indian population of the United States as 332,397.

The distribution of these Indians is remarkably irregular. The West has the largest number; then comes the South, because of Oklahoma's 92,000, for the Gulf States have few. North Carolina, on the other hand, stands seventh in the list of States arranged according to Indian population. As against 137,000 in the West and 116,000 in the South, the North has but 78,000. These are widely scattered and often little known to the general public. New York State still has 7000 Indians, Michigan about the same number and North Dakota somewhat more; Wisconsin and Minnesota have 11,000 each, while South Dakota stands fourth on the list of all the States with its 22,000. In the West the Indian population is concentrated mainly in Arizona, New Mexico, California, Montana, and Washington, in the order named.

These Indians now represent 371 tribes, or remnants of tribes. How large their numbers were at the time of the first white settlement in North America has been a matter of interesting conjecture. Most estimates are not much above a million, but the population may have been considerably greater a few hundred years earlier. Since white occupation a few tribes have increased in numbers. Most have diminished, and some have become extinct, more frequently from the white man's diseases and from whiskey than from the results of fighting.

The densest Indian population at the time of the conquest was on the Pacific Coast, which did not come into close contact with the Whites until the last century. This Pacific Coast Indian population was also of a low scale of intelligence and culture, and remarkably broken up into distinct groups which could not understand each other. As many separate languages were spoken by the Indians of this region as by all the other Indians of the United States together. When the first mission on the West Coast was founded by the Spaniards, in 1769, the number of California Indians was computed at 220,000. This has decreased more than 90 per cent at this date.

The policy of the Catholic missionaries was to corral the Indians around the missions. The church considered itself the owner of all the land, and the Indians worked it as tenants. When the Mexican Government confiscated the property of the church, it took title to all the land. Hence the Indians, who had always lived on it, found themselves illegal trespassers, and until about 1913 they were landless, starving fugitives. At that time the government began to provide land for the Indians. While their treatment has decimated them nine times, their isolation prevented intermarriage with the Whites, so the California Indians are of relatively pure blood.

The revolt of the Pueblo Indians of Arizona and New Mexico against the Spanish in 1680-92 was the beginning of their decline. The Navajos and Apaches, on the contrary, have increased in numbers, at the same time avoiding white mixture.

The Indians of the Atlantic Coast were destroyed partly by disease, partly by war; and their remnants were pushed westward year after year by the Whites until they are mostly now west of the Mississippi, many of them being in Oklahoma. The Iroquois are an exception, and have perhaps increased in numbers. They got hold of firearms before their tribal neighbors and were able to destroy many of the latter, incorporating the remnants in their own tribe. The Sioux of the great plains are also said to have increased.

In the Gulf States, on the other hand, the Indians were largely exterminated before their remnants were moved to the Indian Territory. The Chickasaws told the French explorer, Iberville, in 1702, that in the preceding twelve years they had killed or captured for slave traders 2300 Choctaws, at a cost to themselves of 800 men.

In the Northwest and Alaska, whiskey and disease have been leading factors in the reduction of the number of the natives. With this, in many regions, went a low fertility, due partly to starvation.

Nearly all of the American Indians lived as hunters. When the Whites invaded the forests and drove off or killed the game, the Indian economic system was broken up, and they had little opportunity to meet the rapidly changing conditions.

There has been, since early times, some intermarriage between Indians and Whites, but it has not been on a sufficiently large scale to be serious. The estimate however is sometimes made that one-half of the census population of Indians has white blood. Naturally, there is no way of proving or disproving such a conjecture. Only in Oklahoma has such mixing been looked on with favor, and even there some tribes held themselves largely aloof from white miscegenation and punished with death any interbreeding of their members with Negroes. The discovery of oil on Indian tribal lands made the claim to Indian blood a lucrative one and oil revenues unfortunately covered a multitude of sins. Throughout the West in general the term "squaw man" is a bitter reproach.

Taking the country over, the Whites who have married Indians have not been of a high class. But the total number of Indians in the United States is so small that their future is probably that of being absorbed in the White race through miscegenation, unless it be for a few tribes cultivating a racial purity of their own and, with favorable economic conditions, perpetuating themselves for a long time to come.

The Mexican population is found mainly in the Southwestern States, but has also assumed relatively large proportions in such States as Colorado, Kansas, Illinois, and Michigan. The character of this immigration has been described elsewhere in these pages. It has given the United States an alien element with a high birthrate and very low standards of living, with which white laborers cannot and will not compete.

The census of 1930 found nearly a million and a half Mexicans in the United States. It was generally supposed that the number who had entered the country illegally was greater than those who came through the recognized routes. To prevent such a nullification of immigration regulations, mere registration of aliens is not sufficient, for that is likely to affect only those who have entered legally. Our entire population should be registered. The advantages of a universal system of proving identity are many, and extension of the system of registering births, on the one hand, and of registering voters, on the other, would take care of this without setting up much new and expensive machinery.

The menace of Chinese and Japanese immigration has for the present been stopped by immigration laws which exclude any one not eligible to citizenship. A proper application of this rule as established by the Supreme Court might shut off much of the immigration of Indians from Mexico.

Since the end of the World War the immigration of Filipino young men has become a disturbing problem on the Pacific Coast. The number of arrivals up to 1930 amounts to nearly 50,000. These, like the Greeks and some other European immigrant groups, bring but few women with them and therefore form a socially undesirable and racially threatening element wherever they are located.

Unlike the Puerto Ricans and Hawaiians, the Filipinos are not citizens of the United States, with rights of entry that cannot be abrogated. They are citizens of the Philippine Islands, and permitted to enter the United States only by courtesy. Congress, therefore, has full right to adopt legislation which will exclude them, and it should make immediate use of its power to protect white America from this reservoir of 10,000,000 Malays and Mongoloids now under the American flag and at present potential immigrants. If this cannot be done effectively, the United States will have no alternative but to admit that its adoption of the islands and its attempt to salvage them after Spanish misrule was a mistake. As a safeguard to its own racial welfare, it may become necessary to give the Filipino his independence, commend him to the benevolence of Providence and the League of Nations, and have nothing more to do with him.

In the same way there should be no thought of further acquisition of territory in the West Indies or in Central America. It is conceivable that the Central American countries might in a not too remote future be able to form a stable confederation and stand on their own feet more successfully than they have done during the last generation. If such a federation could include the West Indian Islands, the United States might well donate its possessions there.

Hindu immigration has so far been nothing more than a threat. The present immigration restrictions will prevent the immigration of these people, except for travel and study. Experience in many parts of the world has shown the folly of allowing white countries to be overrun by Hindus, and Americans should sympathize with the British possessions that are trying to maintain white supremacy in their own borders in this respect.

In Hawaii the United States has another possible source of undesirable immigration. The dominant element among its third of a million inhabitants is the Japanese, who have held themselves aloof from the other residents and shown little tendency to intermarry. Every Japanese child born in the islands is an American citizen, with the full right of entry to the mainland. The greater part of the rest of the population is a mongrel crowd. Chinese and native Hawaiians, until quite recently, have shown a marked tendency to intermarry. Every effort should be made to find some constitutional way by which Hawaii can be prevented from becoming a continuous source of supply of undesirable citizens of the United States.

While the list of unassimilable elements in the United States is a long one, it must be borne in mind that most of them are still small. A wise population policy promptly adopted and maintained henceforth will give the republic an opportunity to grow along sound and fruitful lines.

XVI

OUR NEIGHBORS ON THE NORTH

Before dealing with the countries to the north of us, it may be well to call attention to the fact that there are three major divisions of Canada. First, the Maritime Provinces, which were acquired by Great Britain at a later date than the other Atlantic Colonies, as they were originally claimed by the French. In this division Newfoundland should be considered. These territories lying east of the United States were settled directly from England or at the time of the Revolution by Loyalist refugees from New England. There is a large Scotch element in the population, which was lacking in New England. On the whole, the area is thoroughly Nordic, except on the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Bay of Chaleurs, where the Alpine French Habitants have infiltrated.

The second division of the Dominion is French-speaking, Roman Catholic Quebec, with a fecund population of low cultural status. The French distrust of the New England Protestants, with whom they had been at war for one hundred and fifty years, was the predominant cause of their failure to join with the revolting American Colonies in 1776. Quebec was known as Lower Canada.

Like the territories of the United States, the Dominion of Canada of today represents a part of the Nordic conquest of North America, the sole exception being the French population of Quebec Province.

The country to the west of the Ottawa River constitutes the third major division and was, after the Revolution, known as Upper Canada. Its original population was composed chiefly of American Loyalists who fled there in numbers after the Revolution. The immigration into Upper Canada from Britain was later very largely Scotch, Scotch Irish, and North of England. This is true more or less of all English-speaking Canada, except possibly British Columbia.

In a measure the Dominion is an offshoot of the United States, and its development proceeded along lines parallel to those of the States to the south of the boundary. The character of the population west of Quebec Province is much the same as that of the United States, lacking, fortunately for Canada, some of our immigrant elements. The country was settled without the terrible Indian wars that afflicted our frontier and without the lawless element so conspicuous in the history of our Far West.

The French settlement of Quebec was contemporaneous with the first English settlement in North America at Jamestown. A majority of the emigrants were from northern France. So far as one can judge at the present time by the descendants of this population, the pure Nordic stock must have been rare among them. They are today in general a stocky, short-necked people, rather of the Alpine build, with eyes often rather dark. The blond hair and tall stature of the Nordic are so rare as to attract attention at once. The type suggests the Pre-Norman population of northwestern France, rather than its Nordic conquerors. Some of the seigneurs, the explorers, and the adventurers of the early period apparently were of Nordic stock, but they were probably always in a great minority and have left few descendants.

Very little satisfactory research has been done as to the origin of the Habitants. A recent study of a typical group has given some indication of the general conditions in Quebec. In this group stature was found to be five feet and five inches, which is about the general average of the French. The cephalic index was over 83.0, which is about the mean for Brittany and is higher than that of Normandy. The hair was rather dark brown and straight, this straightness is slightly suggestive of Indian admixture. The eye color was more often brown than mixed blue and brown. Pure blue eyes were present only in 15 per cent. The tall burly build of the Norman peasant was very rare.

The language spoken in Quebec is an archaic Norman patois of the time of Louis XIV. This fact has given rise to the general belief that the Habitants came from Normandy, but the more probable reason is that the Normans were the earliest immigrants and established their patois, which was accepted by later arrivals. The Normans appeared to have been far short of a majority of the total number of immigrants and Brittany supplied still fewer. The balance was divided among the provinces of the northern half of France.

The physical type of the Habitants of today suggestive as it is of the peasants of the interior of Brittany finds confirmative evidence in their subserviency to the church.

Throughout the French period the population consisted to a marked extent of soldiers, traders, administrators, priests, and others who did not bring their families with them. Efforts of the French Government to encourage family life were not always either well directed or successful. Colbert hoped for a large French population in Canada by intermarriage with the Indians. Administrative regulations penalized bachelors, who, for instance, were refused licenses to enter the fur trade, which was the main source of wealth in the country at that time.

Many of these restrictions were directed by the priests, doubtless not so much for eugenic reasons as with the motive of protecting the morals of the young men by giving them wives. At an early date the colony fell under the domination of the Jesuits, and maintained for a long time a religious tone that in its own way was much more stern and uncompromising than that of the Puritan settlements in New England. Much of the wealth and effort that might have gone to strengthen the colony was sunk in sterile monastic foundations. Even today stone churches are a conspicuous feature of the landscape in the midst of poverty-stricken villages.

At one time there was for some years a directed migration of young women from France, sent out to become the wives of the colonists and early in the history of the country a policy of bonuses for marriage, and for large families, which has been repeated at intervals ever since, was introduced. None the less, the colony grew but slowly and to the failure to establish it on a sound biological foundation is due the collapse of French rule.

In 1665 the first census showed a population of 3215. In the next hundred years this had increased to somewhat more than 70,000, with an additional 20,000 in what are now the Maritime Provinces. That the French could maintain the contest for so long against British neighbors who outnumbered them twenty to one is to their credit, but their lack of recognition that their settlement could not be permanent unless based on a real migration of families ultimately cost them the country.

One of the chief causes of the failure of French Canada to expand beyond the narrow limits of the banks of the Saint Lawrence River, during its first century of existence, was an obscure skirmish which occurred on the west side of Lake Champlain in 1609. Champlain was advancing toward the South in company with Canadian Algonquins, when he encountered a war party of the Mohawks. In the fighting that followed, some Mohawks were killed and captured. At that time and in that place began the bitter enmity of the Iroquois Five Nations and the Canadian French. It was a feud that was never allowed to rest and yearly war parties of Mohawks went north along Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River and devastated the lower portion of Quebec Province. At the same time war parties of the Senecas descended the Saint Lawrence and attacked the French from the West. As long as the power of the Iroquois lasted, which was all through the seventeenth century, they devastated a large part of New France.

In the meantime, the Dutch and English were growing up in security to the South and East. Thus Champlain's skirmish with the Iroquois was the factor that delayed the expansion of France into the region of the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi Valley until relatively late in the eighteenth century.

The French population still centers in Quebec Province, long known as Lower Canada, but it has spread to other parts of the continent both south and west of the Quebec boundary. Their expansion in Canada has been into the neighboring provinces. Emigration to New England began in the eighteenth century but was not considerable until the nineteenth century.

While this French-Canadian population has remained so fecund as to furnish a stock example for every writer, it, too, has felt the trend of the times. For a long time the government of Quebec offered a grant of one hundred acres of land to every man who was the father of twelve living children by one wife. In less than a single year over 3000 heads of families availed themselves of this privilege and in 1907 there was published a list of 7000 families having at least twelve living children.

In spite of this fecundity, the birthrate has been declining for almost the whole of the historical period. Two hundred and fifty years ago the average for all women of child-bearing age in Quebec Province was one child every two and one-half years. By 1850 this ratio had decreased to one in five years. At present it is one in seven and one-half years. Under this method of measurement, the rate of natural increase per head is only one-third of what it was in colonial times. Even the Roman Catholic "Habitant," therefore, has felt the effect of the general decline of birthrate throughout the western world in the period since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century there was a small but steady immigration from the British Isles into Upper Canada, though interrupted by the Napoleonic Wars. After the close of that conflict a larger movement of population took place, which brought in an extensive English population. Theretofore most of the arrivals had been Scotch or Americans, so that a visitor in 1810 commented on the fact that he met "scarcely any English and few Irish."