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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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.
Even though the foregoing program were put into effect, which would,
possibly, be a "Counsel of Perfection," we would still have with us
an immense mass of Negroes and nearly as many southern and eastern
Europeans, intellectually below the standard of the average American.
The proper extension to and use by these undesirable classes of
a knowledge of birth control may be in the future of substantial
benefit, and the practice of sterilization of the criminal and the
intellectually unfit, now legally established in twenty-seven States,
can be resorted to with good result.
The fundamental question for this nation, as well as for the world at
large, is for the community itself to regulate births by depriving
the unfit of the opportunity of leaving behind posterity of their
own debased type. Our civilization has mercifully put an end to the
cruel, wasteful, and indiscriminate destruction of the unfit by
Nature, wherefore it is our duty, as exponents of that civilization,
to substitute scientific control, that civilization itself may be
maintained. Down to date the American stock has only just begun to
intermarry with the immigrant stock. When this process has gone
further--and it will go further--it will be more difficult to control
the destinies of the nation. It is therefore the duty of all Americans,
and such of the immigrant stock as are in sympathy with them, to face
the problem boldly and to take all eugenic means to encourage the
multiplication of desirable types and abate drastically the increase of
the unfit and miscegenation by widely diverse races.
So much for our internal problems. The problems outside of our country
are a different matter. In the last century the world has grown
smaller, and, perhaps, in the long run America must take her part in
international affairs.
The White Man's Burden
As Americans we are faced with the necessity of assuming our share of
a burden which has been carried by Great Britain for the last three
centuries--that is "the White Man's Burden,"--the duty of policing the
world and maintaining the prestige of the white man throughout the
Seven Seas. Due to the change in the industrial situation all over the
world and to the spread of the fatal sentimentalism of the Anglo-Saxon,
the lower races in Europe and elsewhere are beginning to assert
themselves. Everywhere from one end of the world to the other is heard
the cry of self-determination.
Americans already have much the same problem in the Philippines.
The attitude of the Imperial Government in London toward the native
races in its various Dominions has been in the past and still is not
unlike that of the Federal Government in Washington toward the Negroes
in our Southern States.
Americans must sympathize with the firm resolve of the handful of white
men in South Africa (less than a million and a half) to control and
regulate the Negro population there--numbering some seven millions and
in the midst of which they live. The same problem arises in Australia
and New Zealand where the Whites are determined that their civilization
shall not be swamped by Orientals.
We must also sympathize with the Whites in Kenya Colony in their
opposition to a filling of their country with cheap Hindu labor. As
Americans we can understand the Negro and recognize his cheerful
qualities, but we can have little sympathy with the Hindu whom we
have expressly barred from our Pacific Coast. These Hindus, with
the Chinese, have ruined the native races of many of the Polynesian
Islands. They have been for ages in contact with the highest
civilizations, but have failed to benefit by such contact, either
physically, intellectually, or morally.
Similar dangers exist on the Pacific Coast of Canada. The struggle for
the maintenance of the supremacy of the white man over the native, or
for that matter over the non-European, until now has been maintained
by Great Britain alone. Her ruling class has given the world the
greatest example since the days of Rome, of a just, fearless, and
unselfish government, but apparently the native does not desire such a
government.
The old imperial instinct that enabled Great Britain to retain control
of the white man's world appears to be coming to an end. The weary
Titan seems willing to turn over the burden of government to the
Dominions as fast as the latter demand it. This is evidenced also by
the proposal to give up the naval base at Singapore. If this base
is ever actually abandoned, it means England's withdrawal from the
supremacy of the Pacific. In such event, whether we Americans like it
or not--whether we intend it or not--the burden of the control of the
Pacific will pass in great measure to America. The future lies in the
Pacific rather than in the Atlantic, and with the completion of the
Panama Canal, America is brought face to face with Oriental problems.
Australia and New Zealand, still more British Columbia, look for
co-operation and leadership to the United States as well as to Great
Britain, and we must be prepared to accept this responsibility.
We have our own troubles in respect to the Philippines. The swarming of
the Filipinos into the Pacific States brings with it a repetition of
the Chinese problem of sixty years ago. California is determined that
the white man there shall not be replaced by the Chinese, the Japanese,
the Mexican, or the Filipino. The Eastern States should face this
problem understandingly, and recognize the simple fact that the white
men on the Pacific Coast of the United States and Canada are determined
to maintain a white ownership of the country, even though the East has
been willing to see New England swamped by French-Canadians and Polaks,
and the industrial centers of the North filled to overflowing with
southern and eastern Europeans.
When we talk about the maintenance of the white man's ideals and
culture and about the supremacy of the white man, we are talking
about two distinct things. One is the determination of the white
man to keep for himself his own countries, the United States, Great
Britain, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and many of
the smaller islands. With this determination Americans sympathize and
sooner or later we may be called on to help protect the White race
and the English language in these countries. It seems to be a part of
our destiny. The other phase of white supremacy is the white man's
effort to benefit the backward races and raise them to civilization by
instilling his language, his religion, and his culture into Asiatics
and Africans. This is the tendency of foreign missions, and it leads
sooner or later to a challenge by the natives of the control of the
Whites.
To rule justly, as the English have in India and Burma, is for the best
interest of the native. For example, the United States should either
firmly govern the Philippines, which, in the last analysis, is for the
interest and enrichment of the Filipinos, or else abandon them to
their own devices. If Japan ever gets hold of these islands, she will
keep them without regard to the wishes or interests of the native, as
that Empire is not greatly troubled with sentimentalists and native
sympathizers such as flourish in the United States.
The Japanese, the Chinese, the Hindus, and the Moslems have cultures,
customs, religions, arts, literatures, and institutions of their own,
which for them may be, and in many cases probably are, as good as
our own. The writer does not see any gain in destroying these native
elements of culture or replacing them indiscriminately with the
institutions of the white man to which those races are, for the most
part, unfitted. Democracy is an excellent example. It simply will not
work among Asiatics. In fact, its success is yet fully to be proven in
the Western World.
But the other side of the problem--whether we, the White race, shall
surrender our own culture, our own lands and our own traditions,
good or bad, to another race--presents a very different question.
Fortunately, in this case, Reason and Sentiment march hand in hand.
The prestige and strength of Europe and Great Britain have been greatly
impaired since the World War and Western civilization sooner or later
may be forced to hand on the Torch to America.
We see the Nordics again confronted across the Pacific by their
immemorial rivals, the Mongols. This will be the final arena of the
struggle between these two major divisions of man for world dominance
and the Nordic race in America may find itself bearing the main brunt.
In the meantime, the Nordic race, that has built up, protected, and
preserved Western civilization, needs to realize the necessity of its
own solidarity and close co-operation. Upon this mutual understanding
rest the peace of the world and the preservation of its civilization.
Let us take thought as to how we can best prepare for our share of the
task before us--that is, bear our share of the White Man's Burden.
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