474 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



A WORLD-WIDE COLOE LINE 



By Professor U. G. WEATHERLY 



INDIANA UNIVERSITY 



ONE phase of the declining birth-rate among the white peoples of 

 European stock has become increasingly important now that 

 world interests have begun to override national and continental inter- 

 ests. If mere numbers should turn out to be the determining factor in 

 fixing the balance of world power the European peoples can not hope 

 much longer to retain the hegemony which they have held since the 

 period of wider colonization began. The whites have not themselves 

 become stationary in numbers, but the extension of white influence into 

 regions inhabited by colored races has increased the prospect of a large 

 growth among the latter. Those agencies which have kept down the 

 natural increase of non-European peoples are usually either eliminated 

 or very greatly modified when white rule is established or when white 

 civilization comes to exert a preponderating influence. In Africa, for 

 instance, the slave trade and intertribal wars have been practically 

 abolished in those districts which have come under adequate European 

 control. 



To the extent also that the salutary achievements of European 

 civilization have been accommodated to native modes of living, mate- 

 rial conditions have been so modified as to furnish an environment 

 theoretically favorable to a greater economy of human life. Because 

 in most instances this influence has been as yet only a casual one, and 

 because many of the race contacts have occurred in regions and under 

 conditions least favorable to good results, the saving of life has not 

 been so marked as it might otherwise have been, but on the whole the 

 influence of white civilization has been a notable factor in population 

 economy among primitive peoples. 



There are of course some important exceptions to this rule. If white 

 civilization does not everywhere and always counteract Malthus's 

 " positive checks," misery and vice, it is because the attempt to adjust 

 primitive peoples to a more complex economy is sometimes destructive 

 in itself. Many of the most wholesome conveniences and comforts of 

 the European are disastrous to peoples accustomed to a simpler or at 

 least to a different economy. Nansen claims that the Eskimo of 

 Greenland have been demoralized by the introduction of fire-arms, 

 bread, coffee and cloth as much as by European diseases. 1 Mr. Bryce 

 states that the adoption of European styles of housing and clothing, 

 those pet items in the program of the militant philanthropist, has liter- 

 ally decimated the natives of Hawaii since Captain Cook's time. 2 



1 Nansen, "Eskimo Life," pp. 328-331. 



2 Bryce, ' ' The Relations of the Advanced and Backward Baces of Man- 

 kind," p. 11. 



