_Subject._ Anthropometry.
_Gist._ "In vital capacity, the most important of all physiological
characteristics, the tendency of the race has been downward."[36]
Ample statistics are presented to show that in proportion to structure
the Negro is heavier than the white man. This fact, the author tells us,
is ordinarily considered favorable to a healthy development and freedom
from pulmonary weakness. "The elaborate investigations of the medical
department of the New York Mutual Life, in 1874, of the Washington Life,
in 1886, the Prudential Insurance Company of America, in 1895, and the
New York Mutual Life, in 1895, prove conclusively that low weight in
proportion to age and stature is a determining factor in the
susceptibility of an individual to consumption."[37]
In order to explain away this apparent advantage in favor of the Negro,
the author has invented a unique physiological principle, viz: "A
physiological law may hold good for one race and not for another."[38]
It is noticeable that the author applies this principle only when it
suits his convenience but withholds it whenever it runs across his
theory.
By a series of measurements based, confessedly, upon insufficient data,
it is concluded that the Negro has a smaller lung capacity, smaller
chest expansion, and a higher rate of respiration than the white man,
and that the Mulatto is inferior to both the parent races in these vital
functions. These differences are considered a powerful factor in lung
degeneration, and proof positive of physical inferiority. In these
respects he tacitly repudiates his erstwhile principle that "a
physiological law may hold good for one race and not for another," and
assumes that the two races are subject to like conditions of disease and
death.
On the whole it may be said that this is the least interesting chapter
in the whole book. The data are so slender and the arguments are so
evidently shaped to a theory, that we are neither enlightened by the one
nor convinced by the other. But the author's judgment must be justified.
The gloomy warning comes with Catonian regularity at the end of each
chapter. Listen to his last words: "A combination of these traits and
tendencies must in the end cause the extinction of the race."[39]
If the Negro is inferior in vital function and power to the Caucasian,
he will be a public benefactor who scientifically demonstrates the fact.
But the colored race most stubbornly refuses to be argued out of
existence on an insufficient induction of data and unwarranted
conclusions deduced therefrom.