Finally we attempted to describe the mental characteristics of primitive man, regardless of his racial affiliations. We pointed out the differences in principles of classification of experience found on different social stages, and the differences in logical conclusions reached by primitive and civilized man owing to the difference in the character of knowledge accumulated by preceding generations. We then followed out the emotional associations of habitual activities, and the tendency to invent for them rationalistic explanations. We found them quite common in primitive life, and noticed the great variety of ideas and activities that were thus brought into contact so as to produce a number of peculiar concepts and activities. Other peculiar associations are not due to strong emotional causes, but to all of them is common the tendency of taking on rationalistic explanations of varied character. The change from primitive to civilized society includes a lessening of the number of the emotional associations, and an improvement of the traditional material that enters into our habitual mental operations.
X. RACE PROBLEMS IN THE UNITED STATES
We will now turn to the question what these results of our inquiry teach us in regard to the problems that confront our modern civilization, particularly our nation. The development of the American nation through the amalgamation of diverse European nationalities, the presence of the Negro, Indian, and Chinese, and the whole ever-increasing heterogeneity of the component elements of our people, involve a number of problems to the solution of which our inquiries contribute important data.
Our previous considerations make clear the hypothetical character of many of the generally accepted assumptions, and indicate that not all of the questions involved can be answered at the present time with scientific accuracy. It is disappointing that we have to take this critical attitude, because the political question of dealing with all these groups of people is of great and immediate importance. However, it should be solved on the basis of scientific knowledge, not according to emotional clamor. Under present conditions, we seem to be called upon to formulate definite answers to questions that require the most painstaking and unbiassed investigation; and the more urgent the demand for final conclusions, the more needed is a critical examination of the phenomena and of the available methods of solution.
Let us first represent to our minds the facts relating to the origins of our nation. When British immigrants first flocked to the Atlantic coast of North America, they found a continent inhabited by Indians. The population of the country was thin, and vanished comparatively rapidly before the influx of the more numerous Europeans. The settlement of the Dutch on the Hudson, of the Germans in Pennsylvania, not to speak of other nationalities, is familiar to all of us. We know that the foundations of our modern state were laid by Spaniards in the Southwest, by French in the Mississippi Basin and in the region of the Great Lakes, but that the British immigration far outnumbered that of other nationalities. In the composition of our people, the indigenous element has never played an important rôle, except for very short periods. In regions where the settlement progressed for a long time entirely by the immigration of unmarried males of the white race, families of mixed blood have been of some importance during the period of gradual development, but they have never become sufficiently numerous in any populous part of the United States to be considered as an important element in our population. Without any doubt, Indian blood flows in the veins of quite a number of our people, but the proportion is so insignificant that it may well be disregarded.
Much more important has been the introduction of the negro, whose numbers have increased many fold, so that they form now about one-eighth of our whole nation. For a certain length of time the immigration of Asiatic nations seemed likely to become of importance in the development of our country, but the political events of recent years have tended to decrease their immediate importance considerably, although we do not venture to predict that the relation of Asiatics and white Americans may not become a most important problem in the future. These facts, however, are familiar to all of us, and stand out clearly to our minds.
More recent is the problem of the immigration of people representing all the nationalities of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa. While until late in the second half of the nineteenth century the immigrants consisted almost entirely of people of northwestern Europe, natives of Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and France, the composition of the immigrant masses has changed completely since that time. With the economic development of Germany, German immigration has dwindled down; while at the same time Italians, the various Slavic peoples of Austria, Russia, and the Balkan Peninsula, Hungarians, Roumanians, East European Hebrews, not to mention the numerous other nationalities, have arrived in ever increasing numbers. There is no doubt that these people of eastern and southern Europe represent physical types distinct from the physical type of northwestern Europe; and it is clear, even to the most casual observer, that their present social standards differ fundamentally from our own. Since the number of new arrivals may be counted in normal years by hundreds of thousands, the question may well be asked, What will be the result of this influx of types distinct from our own, if it is to continue for a considerable length of time?
It is often claimed that the phenomenon of mixture presented in the United States is unique; that a similar intermixture has never occurred before in the world’s history; and that our nation is destined to become what some writers choose to term a “mongrel” nation in a sense that has never been equalled anywhere.
When we try to analyze the phenomenon in greater detail, and in the fight of our knowledge of conditions in Europe as well as in other continents, this view does not seem to me tenable. In speaking of European types, we are accustomed to consider them as, comparatively speaking, pure stocks. It is easy to show that this view is erroneous. It is only necessary to look at a map illustrating the racial types of any European country—like Italy, for instance—to see that local divergence is the characteristic feature, uniformity of type the exception. Thus Dr. Ridolfo Livi, in his fundamental investigations on the anthropology of Italy, has shown that the types of the extreme north and of the extreme south are quite distinct,—the former tall, short-headed, with a considerable sprinkling of blond and blue-eyed individuals; the latter short, long-headed, and remarkably dark. The transition from one type to the other is, on the whole, quite gradual; but, like isolated islands, distinct types occur here and there. The region of Lucca in Tuscany, and the district of Naples, are examples of this kind, which may be explained as due to the survival of an older stock, to the intrusion of new types, or to a peculiar influence of environment.