840 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 752 



and vanished compai'atively rapidly before 

 the influx of the more numerous Euro- 

 peans. The settlement of the Dutch on 

 the Hudson, of the Germans in Pennsyl- 

 vania, not to speak of other nationalities, 

 is familiar to all of us. We know that the 

 foundations of our modern state were laid 

 by Spaniards in the Southwest, by French 

 in the Mississippi Basin and in the region 

 of the Great Lakes, but that the British im- 

 migration far outnumbered that of other 

 nationalities. In the composition of our 

 people, the indigenous element has never 

 played an important role, except for very 

 short periods. In regions where the set- 

 tlement progressed for a long time entirely 

 by the immigration of unmarried males of 

 the white race, families of mixed blood 

 have been of some importance during the 

 period of gradual development, but they 

 have never become sufficiently numerous 

 in any populous part of the United States 

 to be considered as an important element 

 in our population. Without any doubt, 

 Indian blood flows in the veins of quite a 

 number of our people, but the proportion 

 is so insignificant that it may well be dis- 

 regarded. 



Much more important has been the intro- 

 duction of the negro, whose numbers have 

 increased many fold so that they form now 

 about one eighth of our whole nation. 

 For a certain length of time the immigra- 

 tion of Asiatic nations seemed likely to 

 become of importance in the development 

 of our country, but the political events of 

 recent years have tended to decrease their 

 immediate importance considerably; al- 

 though we do not venture to predict that 

 the relation of Asiatics and white Ameri- 

 cans may not become a most important 

 problem in the future. These facts, how- 

 ever, are familiar to all of us and stand 

 out clearly to our minds. 



More recent is the problem of the immi- 

 gration of people representing all the na- 



tionalities of Europe, western Asia and 

 northern Africa. While until late in the 

 second half of the nineteenth century the 

 immigrants consisted almost entirely of 

 people of northwestern Europe, natives of 

 Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, 

 Switzerland, Holland, Belgium and France, 

 the composition of the immigrant masses 

 has changed completely since that time. 

 With the economic development of Ger- 

 many, German immigration has d^vindled 

 down ; while at the same time Italians, the 

 various Slavic peoples of Austria, Russia 

 and the Balkan Peninsula, Hungarians, 

 Roumanians, east Europea-n Hebrews, not 

 to mention the numerous other nationali- 

 ties, have arrived in ever-increasing num- 

 bers. There is no doubt that these people 

 of eastern and southern Europe represent 

 a physical type distinct from the physical 

 type of northwestern Europe; and it is 

 clear, even to the most casual observer, that 

 their present social standards differ funda- 

 mentally from our own. Since the num- 

 ber of new arrivals may be counted in 

 normal years by hundreds of thousands, 

 the question may well be asked. What will 

 be the result of this influx of tjT^es distinct 

 from our own, if it is to continue for a 

 considerable length of time? 



It is often claimed that the phenomenon 

 of mixture presented in the United States 

 is unique; that a similar intermixture has 

 never occurred before in the Avorld's his- 

 tory ; and that our nation is destined to be- 

 come what some writera choose to term a 

 "mongrel" nation in a sense that has never 

 been equaled anywhere. 



"^Tien we try to analyze the phenomena 

 in greater detail, and in the light of our 

 knowledge of conditions in Europe as well 

 as in other continents, this view does not 

 seem to me tenable. In speaking of Euro- 

 pean types, we are accustomed to consider 

 them as, comparatively speaking, pure 

 stocks. It is easy to show that this view 



