232 HEREDITY AND EUGENICS 



that intermixture of unrelated races is from ever}* 

 point of view undesirable, at least as regards race 

 combinations involving one primitive and one ad- 

 vanced race. It is possible that crosses between an 

 advanced and a native race mav be advantageous 

 as leading to progress in certain tropical regions 

 where the white man cannot survive, although the 

 results of such interbreeding in various tropical 

 countries do not lead to a very hopeful outlook. But 

 the melting-pot conception is being discredited b}' 

 eugenic writers in the United States, where inter- 

 crossing has been taking place on a great scale. It 

 ma}'- now be recognised that while interbreeding of 

 related races or strains gives increased vigour, at least 

 in the F^ generation, crosses on a large scale between 

 more distant races which have for ages been separately 

 evolving create unnecessary problems, and are, for 

 the most part, wholly undesirable in their results. 

 The more advanced race is diluted and degraded by 

 such intermixture, and primitive mental and moral 

 characters are placed on a level with the more highly 

 evolved. Moreover, Goddard (191 7), in discussing 

 mental tests for immigrants into the United States, 

 states that the average steerage passenger is of low- 

 grade intelligence, perhaps even feeble-minded. He 

 examined six small groups arriving at Ellis Island, 

 by means of the Binet scale tests, and found that 

 only 2 in 148 scored as high as twelve years, which is 

 regarded as the line between feeble-minded and 

 normal. These people included Italians, Russians, 

 Jews, and Hungarians. His conclusion is that there 

 is a high percentage of feeble-minded among the 

 present immigrants. 



Even after a thousand years of intermarriage, 

 separate racial traits may still be traceable in the 

 modern Englishman. The blend is only a blend 

 when considered en masse. Alternative inheri- 



