Part 22

French Guiana differs from the Dutch settlement mainly in being smaller, its population being not much more than 30,000, including many convicts or ex-convicts, for this has long been a French penal settlement.

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Brazil with a territory larger than the continental United States differs from its neighbors in many striking ways, apart from the fact that it was settled by Portuguese, not Spanish, and that its language and culture are therefore Portuguese rather than Spanish.

The Indian population was killed off or driven westward by the early settlers just as in the United States, so that it is now confined largely to the untracked and almost unpopulated forests of the Amazonian Basin, where perhaps a couple of a million aborigines may still exist.

To provide labor the Portuguese imported slaves from Africa, and then fused with them to produce the present-day pre-dominantly Negro population. The Portuguese here thus repeated the experience of the mother country. During the great years of Portuguese exploration and colonization in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, it has been estimated that a million Portuguese, mainly young men, went to the tropics, and for the most part never came back. Negroes were imported to take their places and to do the work of the country. Intermarriage of these Negroes with the old population left Portugal with a larger amount of Negro blood than any other European country, and greatly impaired its ability to contribute to the progress of civilization. Thus Portugal, which, when dominated by the Nordics, had set an extraordinary example of progress in many ways, now contributes relatively little to such progress and only the rebirth of a reasonable pride of race, and the application of a sound eugenics program will enable it to regain a position of leadership.

History has repeated itself in Brazil. The salvation of Brazil has been the arrival during the past century of European immigrants. Thousands of Germans poured into the Highlands of the Southern States where large regions have an almost Teutonic civilization at the present time. If a false interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine had not helped to interfere with this process, the results for South America might have been most beneficial.

But the main currents of immigration have been from Latin countries of the Old World. During the past century Brazil has received more than four million foreigners, of whom a million and a half were Italians, a million and a quarter Portuguese, and half a million Spanish. Thus more than three-fourths of the immigration has been from the Latin countries, and only about a quarter of a million from Germany and Austria. Since the World War this overwhelming migration from the Latin countries has slowed down. The German migration has, on the contrary, increased.

Brazil thus consists of two distinct areas: a relatively small, fertile, and healthful highland region in the south, where the main activities of the country are carried on largely under the influence of Mediterranean and Alpine immigrants; and a huge tropical area given over mainly to the Negro and Mulatto element and the Indians.

With a population of somewhere around 30,000,000 Brazil is not only the largest of the South American republics, but nearly as large as all the rest of them put together.

The future of Brazil depends largely on the nature of its immigration policy during the next generation or two and on the acceptance of a workable program of eugenics. Fortunately, no South American country has taken up such a policy with more interest than has this great republic. It still possesses an aristocracy which has maintained its racial purity, but this is probably too small a nucleus alone to regenerate the whole body politic.

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Uruguay. Crossing the boundary from Brazil to Uruguay, one sees a new picture. Uruguay is almost entirely white. Indeed, this whole region of La Plata is one of the future dominant areas of the New World. It contains less Negro blood than does, relatively, the United States. Not only have Negroes been largely kept out, but the remnants of Indian tribes have become inconspicuous, as on the plains of the Mississippi Valley, where the Indians, mere nomads with a negligible culture, were driven back by the march of civilization. The striking parallel between the settlement of this region and that of the Western States of North America is often pointed out. Each was a sheep and cattle country, and then farmers took up land and developed it into a region of prosperity and great potentialities.

Uruguay has a cosmopolitan population almost wholly of European origin. Since the World War it has attracted not only a large part of the Spanish emigration but also large numbers of Italians, French, Germans, and others. The earlier immigration was largely of North Italians, mainly of Alpine blood with slight Nordic infusion. The total population of the country is now well over a million and a half.

A wise selection of immigration from now on will still further increase the influence of this small republic, and set a good example for all of South America.

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Argentina represents one of the striking examples of a nation built up rapidly by foreign immigration. Nearly 85 per cent of its people are foreign-born or the descendants of recent immigration, with Italians forming by far the largest group. Moreover, the Argentine Republic has attracted the vigorous population of North Italy, which racially is mainly Alpine but still has a Nordic element, and forms a striking contrast to the population of South Italian and Sicilian immigrants that have filled up the slums of North American cities. The North Italians are more akin to the Swiss and the South Germans than they are to the South Italians.

Non-whites do not amount to 5 per cent of the population. The total population of something like 10,000,000 makes the Argentine Republic second only to Brazil in size in South America, and in every respect, except size, it easily takes first rank.

The racial composition of this extraordinary nation with its ultra-modern civilization, and its get-rich-quick atmosphere, deserves more extended treatment than can be given here. The English, though not the most numerous, have taken the first place in its financial world. French immigrants, though fewer in number, have become a very important factor in the progress of its civilization. A hundred thousand Germans have settled in the country and form the backbone of many regions.

Since the war Argentina has been one of the principal destinations of citizens of the former Central Empires who were going overseas. The spirit of the civilization has attracted many Jews. More than 160,000 immigrants during the last two generations are credited to Russia, and almost an equal number to Turkey. These last, however, were Turks only by force and were actually Christian Syrians from the Lebanon who became so completely identified with the retail trade of the country that the colloquial name for a small grocery store is "Turco."

All of these elements together do not begin to measure in importance with the Spanish and Italian elements. But in recent years new currents have set in which, if continued, will profoundly modify the character of the country by introducing a large number of Slavs, particularly Poles, Yugoslavs, Czechoslovaks, and Lithuanians, together with the Slavic element among the Germans. Before the World War the immigration to Argentina was about seven-eighths from the Latin countries, but since then these have furnished only about two-thirds.

Argentina therefore represents a white population largely Alpine and Mediterranean with a considerable Nordic element. It is doubtful whether it stands to gain by allowing Alpines to increase, particularly if this brings in different types of culture and traditions. Argentina might well profit by the mistakes of the United States and immediately orient its immigration policy along sound logical and constructive lines.

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Chile, unlike the Indo-Spanish countries just south of the United States, is also a white man's country. The pure Indians are a vanishing minority. The Spanish and dominant element is largely made up of Basques, but there has been a substantial addition of British, whose influence is important in commerce and industry, and of Germans, who have dominated the army and education, and have been an important factor in agriculture. Chile, with four million population, is therefore the least Latin of any of the countries south of the United States. The progressiveness and prosperity of the region have long attracted the attention of every traveller.

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Bolivia is another of the pre-dominantly Indian countries which have made little contribution to the world. The number of Whites here is negligible. Immigration has never been important and the Bolivian has developed a provincial arrogance and hostility to foreigners which is as prejudicial to his own interests as it is unwarranted. Scarcely one-fifth of the people even speak Spanish in their daily life, and two-thirds are primitive Indians, the others being hybrids of varying degrees.

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Paraguay is an Indian republic which has not only avoided the Negro influence common elsewhere but has almost escaped the infusion of white blood. There are scarcely any pure Whites. The Guarani Indians of this region were not highly civilized like the Mayas and Incas, and therefore took on a Spanish culture instead of retaining one of their own. It would have been extremely interesting to see what an Indian republic could amount to in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Unfortunately the course of experiment was obstructed by one of the most sanguinary wars in history (1864-69) in which Paraguay carried on a contest with Brazil and Argentina until the greater part of its male population was destroyed. At the beginning of the war, the population of Paraguay was officially said to be 1,337,437. Even if this were extraordinarily inaccurate and exaggerated, the figures afterward were no less so, for the calculation after the close of hostilities credited the country with a loss of more than a million. More exactly, the population was returned as 221,709, of which 86,079 were children, 106,254 women, and only 28,746 men. Nothing like this situation has ever before been recorded in a large population. Whole regiments had been made up of boys under sixteen. In more than half a century since then, the country has not begun to recover. Even now its population is less than a million. Immigrants from Europe have always avoided it. Paraguay is in a class by itself.

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Peru's four or five million inhabitants are mostly pure Indians, while the remainder are nearly all hybrids. Chinese and Japanese as well as Negroes have contributed to the mongrelization of the mass, and not one in ten even claims to be white, which here, as elsewhere in Latin America, by no means guarantees anything more than a homoeopathic dose of European blood.

The aboriginal civilization is often described as remarkably high but seems to have been the work of peoples who antedated the Spanish by a long period; and the Conquerors themselves apparently considered the Peruvian Indians to be less intelligent than those they had encountered in Mexico. The number of Indians decreased during the early Spanish regime until some districts were almost depopulated and the loss of leaders especially was irreparable. Whether or not the present inhabitants are the descendants of the Incas, they have not been able to develop a strong and progressive state.

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Ecuador is an isolated and unimportant region inhabited largely by backward Indian tribes. Probably not less than two-thirds of the 2,000,000 population are pure Indian. The handful of Whites and the few hundred thousand hybrids rule the country. The Negro element, never large, is gradually being absorbed and is leaving its stamp on the whole population.

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The West Indies are more important to the United States immigration policy than would be expected from their size, because of their close proximity to American ports of entry.

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Cuba has always received its immigrants pre-dominantly from Spain, and the imported Negro element, numbering about 800,000 of its three millions of population, is not increasing in importance. The island is considered less white than Puerto Rico, but more than a quarter of a million of the inhabitants are Spanish-born, these comprising nearly three-quarters of all the foreigners.

As in many other Latin-American countries, the Chinese have taken a strong hold, beginning nearly a century ago, and are intermarrying with the Whites.

Cuba does not represent a desirable or needed source of immigration to the United States, and should be put under a proper quota.

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Puerto Rico has a population of nearly a million and a half. The fact that this dense population cannot make a living under the present and backward conditions on the island, and that it is continually exercising its right of entry to the United States, is one of the most serious features of the present immigration policy.

The Negro and Mulatto element makes up a majority of the population but is relatively losing ground--partly from high death rates and partly by absorption in the mass. The Indian stock is extinct. Immigration from abroad has been negligible for a long time.

As the island is a territory, the inhabitants are citizens of the United States and cannot be prevented from coming freely into the mainland. The number of Puerto Ricans in New York City was at one time estimated as high as 100,000. If economic conditions are attractive there is nothing to prevent half a million of them from migrating to the continent and adding their traits to the much-overloaded "melting pot."

It is now clear that the United States made a great mistake, after the war with Spain, in taking over territories that were already populated by aliens. Previously the territory that was acquired was largely empty and suitable for settlement by the old stock. What has been done is not easy to undo, but it may at least serve as an emphatic lesson against any further acquisitions of inhabited territory in the future. Meanwhile there is an embryonic movement for independence in Puerto Rico, which may have to, indeed should, be encouraged in order to give the United States protection from its own folly.

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The Virgin Islands, which the United States bought from Denmark in 1917, have, like other West Indian islands, a population almost exclusively Negro or Mulatto.

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The British West Indies are overwhelmingly black, though many of them, such as New Providence, Barbados, Bermuda, and the Bahamas, have substantial English aristocracies that guard jealously their racial heritage. These British islands, particularly Jamaica and Barbados (the latter one of the most densely populated spots in the whole world) have been fertile sources of black emigration to other islands and to the mainland.

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Haiti is a purely Negro Republic, and offers a good illustration of what the Negro accomplishes if left to himself, even though given all the advantages of easy access to European civilization. The republic of Santo Domingo occupies the other part of the same island; its hybrid population has more Spanish and less Negro blood but it is not by any means civilized.

In general the islands of the West Indies now contain nearly 8,000,000 people, the descendants of Negro slaves with a very small but undiscoverable admixture of Indian blood and a somewhat larger but still unimportant admixture of European stock. They present a standing menace to the United States immigration policy, and afford one of the principal arguments for extending stringent restrictions to the Western Hemisphere. The whole Caribbean is in the process of becoming a Negro territory. Such a result may be inevitable, but adjacent nations which desire to remain white must protect themselves while there is time.

In broad outline, the picture of Latin-America is the picture of a diversified region occupied by some 80,000,000 people, mainly Indians, but with varying proportions of White and Negro blood, the former usually small in amount, the latter often large. The few countries that may properly be called white are not emigrant-exporting countries, and their inhabitants are for the most part non-Nordic, therefore not particularly well adapted to incorporation in the United States.

In conclusion, it may be remarked at this point that each successive revolution in Latin America has tended toward hastening the elimination of European blood and influence. It is usually the half-breeds who revolt and they, in turn, are subject to the increasing self-assertion of the pure native.

XVIII

THE NORDIC OUTLOOK

In the preceding chapters we have seen the unity of the nation greatly impaired in race and religion and threatened in language, but the country is still 70 per cent Nordic and 80 per cent Protestant, and no one foreign language seriously threatens our English speech. There are nearly 50 per cent of Old-Native American Whites in the country at large, although they have been swamped by aliens in New England and in the industrialized States of the Northeast.

The great majority of the senators of the United States are still of old American stock and so are the members of the House of Representatives. The leaders of the nation in science, education, industry, and in the Army and Navy are still overwhelmingly Nordic, so that with these elements in our favor we are still in a position to check the increase of the other elements and contend against their deleterious effects upon our institutions.

Much of the immigration during the last century has been identical with the old British stock in all respects. The English and the Scotch who have come over here, as well as the Scandinavians and most of the Germans, and perhaps some other elements, are to be regarded as reinforcements of the older stock. On the other hand, most of the people from southern and eastern Europe must be regarded as distinct menaces to our national unity.

The remedy is first and foremost _the absolute_ suspension of all immigration from all countries; and the signs of the times indicate that such suspension is inevitable. Such a total suspension of immigration would remove all grounds for charges of discrimination against Asiatics, which now embarrass our foreign relations. At the very least, the same quota limitations should be imposed on the countries to the south of us as are enforced against Europe.

In view of the fact that during the great depression which began in 1929 we had millions of unemployed of our own people here, we should be deaf to sentimental pleas for the admission of relatives of any kind. If families are separated, it has not been through the fault of the American people, and the immigrant can return whence he came, if he wishes to join his family. As a matter of fact, it is only one or two groups which are so vigorously clamoring for the admission of relatives.

Not only should European immigration be entirely stopped but still more, all immigration of every sort from countries to the south of us should be barred. In the islands and on the coasts of the Caribbean, and in Mexico and in Central America, to say nothing of the countries farther south, we have a vast reservoir of Negroes, and of Indians in the interior, who sooner or later will be drawn toward the United States by the high wages of common labor. The strictest legislation at this time is necessary to prevent this impending invasion before it assumes the dimensions of a flood, such as has already happened in the case of the Mexican Indians. If immigration be not absolutely prohibited, at very least, no one should be allowed to enter the United States, unless a visitor or traveller, except white men of superior intellectual capacity distinctly capable of becoming valuable American citizens.

The law of 1790 providing that no one could become a citizen of the United States except free Whites was the law until the aftermath of the Civil War added the word "black" or "of African descent" to those who could be naturalized. This last provision should be repealed and the blacks with the South American and Central American Indians put on the same footing as the Orientals.

All Filipino immigration should be stopped before it becomes a serious menace. If possible, half-breeds from Hawaii should not be allowed entry and absolute restriction should be placed on the entrance of Negroes and Mulattoes from Puerto Rico. There are now swarms of them in the Harlem District of New York. This last is simple justice to the American Negroes.

The increasing use of machines calls for less and less common labor, and even in normal times there will be a surplus of man power for the factories and the farms. Why should outsiders be allowed to come in and take the jobs and lower the living standards of American labor? This is one of the greatest questions before the American people and the depression following 1929 has brought this truth home.

We have now in this country over five million aliens who are not citizens, more than a million of whom are said to be illegally here. These last should be deported as fast as they can be located and funds made available. There can be no better means of relieving unemployment present or future than by such wholesale deportation. We should begin with those aliens who have violated our laws or who have become public charges and all such, now in our penitentiaries and asylums, should be deported forthwith. When that has been done and done fully, it should be followed by the deportation of unemployed aliens.

Registration is necessary for the carrying out of any proper system of deportation. Why any one should object to registration as a proper means of identification is a mystery, unless there is a sinister motive behind the desire to conceal identity.

A storm of protest will arise from the vociferous and influential foreign blocs and from the radicals and half-breeds claiming to be Americans, who will all rush to the defense of their kind. It is strange to find how sensitive we are to any foreign criticism of things American, but how prone we are to listen respectfully to local aliens, who are urging their own interests at the expense of the national welfare.

In order to curb the influence of these aliens and to prevent their pernicious control by politicians, it would also be wise to suspend all naturalization for a generation at least. Our citizenship in the past has been made of little value by the absurd way that it has been thrust upon foreigners. Nothing can be more ill-advised politically than the Americanization programs of some worthy people. An American is not made by conferring upon him the franchise, but by the alien's voluntary and genuine acceptance of our language, laws, institutions, and cultural traditions.