The Colored Race 169 



treads and the air he breathes. And when man is removed 

 from his home to a distant country, and is brought under dif- 

 ferent climatic and telluric conditions, he feels the change in 

 proportion as the new environment differs from the old. 

 Nature at once goes to work to adapt the new-comer to his 

 new surroundings. The greater the change the harder the 

 process of adaptability and the greater the waste and the loss 

 of life. The medical histories of wars in distant climes in 

 which Europeans have figured show that the loss of life from 

 a new environment has often equalled, if it has not exceeded, 

 that from the casualties of war. The Esquimaux can as 

 little live in the tropics as the Hottentot in the polar region.* 



Now while the change of the African to America has been 

 more in longitude than in latitude it must still have an influ- 

 ence in modifying the race. The negro without any other 

 modifjdng influences would be a different man five hundred 

 years hence from the one just transported from his natural 

 home. 



But a factor much more potent is the struggle for existence, 

 and not only a struggle within the race but a struggle outside 

 with a superior race. There is no law in the physical world 

 more relentless than this very struggle for existence and sur- 

 vival of the fittest. From the cradle to the grave it is one 

 continuous fight with man and the elements. It is a struggle 

 for mere living, a struggle for ease and comfort, a struggle 

 against exposure, privation and disease ; and in this struggle 

 the weaker die and the stronger live. We may talk of uni- 

 versal brotherhood, but the stronger will rise and rule and the 

 weaker will go to the wall. The denser the population the 

 thicker the fight. It is in the great cities that we see this 

 struggle at its fiercest — the poorer and weaker on one side, 



*An interesting example among the lower animals of the fatal influ- 

 ences of a change of habitat is seen in the monkeys brought to this 

 country. They almost invariably die from consumption. I once ex- 

 amined the bodies of a number of monkeys from our menageries and 

 zoological gardens, and in every case I found pulmonary tuberculosis in 

 all its stages. The change from the pure air of the forest to the con- 

 fined and vitiated air of our centres of population is fatal to them. 



