580 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



with succeeding generations. We now know that skin color in inherit- 

 ance follows in general Mendelian laws of inheritance, frequently giving 

 rise to white and black " sports " in every large family of mulatto 

 children. In accordance with Mendelian principles, the result of a 

 white-negro cross is always brown-skinned, the dark skin color dom- 

 inating. " White " and " black " skin colors are a pair of unit char- 

 acters. White color means the absence of the determiner for deep 

 pigmentation in the germ-plasm; dark skin is due to the presence of 

 such determiner. When first generation hybrids intermarry, in an 

 appropriately large family there will appear invariably one or several 

 children lighter than either parent, and one or several darker; that is, 

 the " lighter " and the " darker " have reverted to the grandparental 

 character for skin color. This reveals the fact of a segregation of the 

 determiners of skin color in the germ-cells, producing a purity of 

 gametes. 



We are now in possession of facts, thanks mainly to the labors of 

 Professor Karl Pearson and his collaborators at the Galton Eugenics 

 Laboratory, and to Professor Davenport and his staff of assistants at 

 the Eugenics Eecord Office, showing that the inheritance of several 

 scores of human physical and mental traits are in close conformity with 

 Mendelian formula?. There is no countervailing fact, and there is 

 much precise and yet more suggestive data, to the assumption that 

 many of the really desirable negro traits (e. g., physical strength, 

 resistance or relative immunity to certain infections, capacity for 

 routine, cheerful temperament, vivid imagination, rhythmic and 

 melodic endowment, etc.) are of the nature of unit characters and as 

 such may be transmitted according to fixed laws by simple control of 

 matings. 



If a demi-god could thus experiment with human crosses, as biol- 

 ogists now do with animal breeds, a pure race could undoubtedly be 

 established combining the best elements of the negro and the white. 

 I am well aware that little could probably be actually accomplished 

 under present social conditions, even if it were not morally inimical, to 

 make the experiment by legal control of negro and mulatto crosses. 

 But some little could be accomplished by education and the arousing 

 of the sentiment of colored racial pride. The point seems clear that 

 in the presence of 2,000,000 mulattoes, steadily increasing in number, 

 of relatively superior worth to the pure negro, we have a key to the 

 solution of our problem. The mulatto is the leaven with which to lift 

 the negro race. He serves as our best lever for negro elevation. The 

 mulatto does not feel the instinctive mental nausea to negro mating. 

 He might even be made to feel a sacred mission in this respect. The 

 negro aspires to be mulatto, the mulatto to be white. These aspira- 

 tions are worthy, and should be encouraged. Possibility of marriage 



