674 ^^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" As a rule, the influences which have accelerated a nation's progress 

 and brought it to the apogee of its social existence end in precipitating 

 its ruin by their further action. Every direction which humanity 

 takes has almost always something of evil in it is limited in its very 

 nature, and can not stand its extreme consequences. All earthly exist- 

 ence bears in itself, from the first, the germs of its decay." It would 

 not be difticult to point to the springs of human action which must 

 render this necessary, except on the presumption of a revolution in 

 human nature itself, an event not likely to occur. 



It is not always the highest that prevail, especially in the conflicts 

 of industry. It is the plodding, the hardy those who have few wants 

 and can do with little. This is well understood by the industrial class- 

 es who have come into conflict with the Chinese in this country and in 

 Australia. And it is j^lain that a hardy race with moderate wants, 

 which increases twice as fast as a his/her race in the same territory, 

 will contribute more and more to the psychological and social status of 

 the whole people. There is nothing surer than that the high-toned 

 Yankee is losing in his relative weight of numbers in this country, and 

 it is equally sure that he will lose more and more, and eventually be 

 absorbed. The German, the Celt, the Southerner, the colored, are all 

 gaining upon him. Some patriotic people deplore the incoming and 

 rapid multiplication of white foreigners in the North ; and yet it is 

 this very accession of Caucasian strength that affords the best ground 

 of hope for the psychological elevation of the great American type or 

 types which are yet to take definite form. If only Yankees were con- 

 tending with the colored for supremacy, it would go far worse with 

 the whites than it now does in the race of numbers. Allowing the in- 

 crease of the colored to be 33^ per cent, in ten years, they would double 

 four times in less than a century ; that is, the census of 1980 would 

 show their numbers to have increased from 6,577,000 to 117,000,000 ! 

 Taking the increase of the Northern whites to be 15*7, as it is shown 

 to be for the last decade, after eliminating the obvious augmentation 

 due to immigration, their numbers would only double while the col- 

 ored quadrupled ; and the census of 1980 would show that the native 

 whites of the North had increased from 24,403,000 to 105,000,000. 

 That is, the colored race of the United States would then outnumber 

 the descendants of the present native Northern Avhites by 12,000,000. 

 It is, of course, not to be expected that these ratios of increase would 

 be maintained for that period ; both would fall, and both fall, perhaps, 

 in about the same proportion ; and this will probably take place, not- 

 withstanding the accession of white mothers to the colored stock and 

 the infusion of foreign blood into the veins of native whites. If these 

 and the colored were the only contestants on American soil, the de- 

 spised race would make comparatively short work of it, and come to 

 be the prevailing people. As it is, however, with rapid increase of 

 whites at the South, and white immigrants pouring into the country, 



