president's address. 25 



But the stimulating influences from these have failed to reach 

 the isolated trekker on his distant farm or, reaching him, have 

 found him cold and unresponsive. The incubus of years of 

 depressing isolation, submissive to nature, cannot lightly be thrown 

 aside. Meanwhile the land has made its appeal to a newer and 

 intensely vigorous type, with capital and intelligence meet for 

 development, infused with the new ideals in agriculture and awake 

 to its possibilities. The townsman of all classes, merchant, official 

 and professional, has responded to the call of the country and its 

 life of freedom, while the farmer already prosperous has extended 

 more and more. The glamour of the land prevails in South 

 Africa. The inevitable has happened. The trek farmer has 

 relinquished his feeble hold on the land, and has either become a 

 dependent upon the newcomer or drifted helplessly into the towns, 

 scarcely more capable of a livelihood there than in the country. 

 Within recent years one has witnessed whole districts in which 

 the pioneer farmer, pathetic in his helplessness, has been replaced 

 by the modern progressives; the country advances in material 

 prosperity, but the individual succumbs. The original trek farmer 

 was before his time, and cannot retrace his steps; he failed to fore- 

 see the results of isolation in a new undeveloped country, great 

 with possibilities but special in their nature, only to be won by 

 strenuous, intelligent effort directed by science. The new occu- 

 pant takes on where the old leaves off, and has knowledge of the 

 requirements for success. 



Recovery of the poor white as a class is not without its hope- 

 fulness. But for adults, however, the geneticist has nothing to 

 offer. They are the inheritors of the two or three hundred years 

 of environmental influences, unfitting for modern South Africa. 

 The effects have been cumulative from generation to generation, 

 and have moulded the individual from the day of his birth. J^ven 

 when transferred to ameliorating surroundings his efforts to shake 

 off the incubus of habit are for the most part futile. In general, 

 he is incapable of making a decent livelihood either under or 

 away from his old surroundings, incapable of adaptation to the 

 more strenuous and complex conditions now normal to South 

 Africa. He but accentuates the ordinary poverty and distress of 

 town life. His day of opportunity has gone by; he remains a 

 genuine subject for philanthropic effort, designed to help to 

 ameliorate the condition of the incapable and the unfortunate in 

 life's struggle. His position calls for the exercise of all of the 

 virtues of altruism, and truly noble responses have been forth- 

 coming. 



On the other hand, the possibilities of recovery of the new 

 generation inspire one with the highest hope. The immigrant 

 stock lias been shown to be virile and efficient, and the quality of 

 the blood has not changed. The deteriorating influences affect 

 only the individual ; the new life starts with all the original poten- 

 tialities of its class, and can be moulded to the possibilities of its 

 ancestral forbears. But from the beginning it must be freed from 

 the environment which has enfolded its immediate forbears, ere 



