Temperature of the Melting Pot 



29 



of health, intelligence, and all round 

 efficiency, it is suggested that the wisest 

 policy from now on for the country to 

 pursue would be one which might be 

 called intermittent or periodic immi- 

 gration. Let all immigration of any 

 sort whatever be rigidly and completely 

 prohibited for a period of say 20 years, 

 to be followed by a period of say 10 

 years of free immigration, with only 

 such restrictions physical, economic 

 and criminal, as we have in the immedi- 

 ate past imposed During the period of 

 no immigration the foreigners of the 

 last influx and their children would 

 become sensibly assimilated and fused 

 into the American population. For the 

 most part, they would have become 

 Americans in a real sense of the word. 

 Such a plan would further provide for 

 that periodic inflow of new blood, of 

 low living standaids, which seems to be, 

 both an economic and social necessity 

 at least to civilizations which are still 

 in the stage of industrial development 

 and exploitation. Finally such a plan 

 would, so far as one can foresee, post- 

 pone the period of pressing over-popula- 

 tion as long as it can humanly be post- 

 poned, without the necessity of resorting 

 to internal interferences of dubious 

 practicability." 



Although this analysis shows clearly 

 that the foreign immigrant is fusing 

 rapidly with the native stock — a con- 

 dition deplored by most geneticists as 

 one certain to dilute and degrade the 

 races to which much of our present 

 civilization is attributed Dr. Pearl 

 again assumes the contrary position. 

 Summing up the results of the vast 

 experiment in human genetics which 

 has gone on for three centuries in the 

 United States he says : "When I compare 

 the net result, as indicated by the human 

 product now here — the product counted 

 in the 1920 census — with the more 

 nearly pure-bred peoples of Europe, 

 I cannot force myself to that pessimis- 

 tic outlook that I am told by some of 

 my '100 per cent, Nordic' friends that 

 I ought to. It seems to me, looking at 

 the matter as a biologist, that a real, 



distinct, unique American people has 

 evolved in the course of the experiment 

 and is still continuing to evolve. Fur- 

 ther, as people go, it is not a bad 

 people. Its most interesting and valu- 

 able feature is that it is still changing 

 and evolving. I can find no manner of 

 bitter feeling or even regret that the 

 pure English-Scotch-Welsh stock of the 

 original settlers will eventually not be 

 the dominant element in the complex 

 of American germ-plasms that it has 

 been in the past, though personally I 

 am wholly of that stock, and am, for 

 three centuries, an American. Such a 

 state of affairs was, in the natural 

 course of events, bound to come about. 

 There cannot, by any possibility what- 

 ever, be anything approaching biologi- 

 cally pure race stocks in this country a 

 century hence. There are practically 

 none now, with the exception of the 

 Jews, and there is every present reason 

 to believe that even they will be far less 

 pure in 2021 than they are in 1921." 



"The kind of people who will survive 

 and run the aft'airs of the country, say a 

 couple of centuries hence, when popu- 

 lation pressure will be intense, will, I 

 think not be Englishmen, or Slavs, or 

 Jews, or Italians, but Americans, of 

 that type which has shown the greatest 

 adaptability to the problems which life 

 in this part of North America has pre- 

 sented. I think they will be just as 

 gentle, as high-minded, as clever, as 

 honorable, and as independent as any 

 people on the face of the earth." 



Most statistical treatises are shunned 

 by the layman as being too dry and 

 academic for any but statisticians but 

 in shunning the present paper the read- 

 er will have missed an intensely inter- 

 esting and intelligible analysis, for 

 Pearl has conjured up a picture of 

 racial conditions as they now exist in 

 America that, even though the con- 

 clusion be accepted with reservations, 

 furnishes a graphic base from which to 

 peer into the future and in the hack- 

 neyed phrase of the book reviewers, "is 

 nothing if not thought provoking." — 

 /. H. Kempt on, Washington, D. C. 



