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I have been asked to speak on the modern populations of America, and I confess that I feel some hesitation in taking up this important subject. The scientific problems involved are of great and fundamental importance; but unfortunately materials for their discussion have hardly been collected at all, and I do not see any immediate prospect of their being gathered on a scale at all adequate.

We may distinguish three distinct types of populations in modern America. The first type includes those that are entirely or almost entirely descendants of European immigrants, such as the population of the northern United States, of Canada, and of the Argentine; a second type is represented by populations containing a large amount of Indian blood, like those of Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia; and a third type includes populations consisting essentially of mixtures of Negroes and other races. In this last group we may again distinguish between populations in which the mixture is essentially Negro and White and those in which we find a strong mixture of Negro and Indian, or Negro, Indian, and White. Examples of these are the populations of the Southern States, of the West Indies, of some districts of Central and South America, like parts of Brazil, and of certain localities on the west coast of South America.

It will easily be recognized that the mixed populations who are descendants of American Indians and Europeans are found essentially in those large areas in which the aboriginal population at the time of the Conquest was dense. This was the case particularly in Mexico and in the Andean highlands. The extermination of the native population has occurred only in those areas in which at the time of the Conquest the Indian population was very sparse or where a dense population lived in a limited territory, as in the West Indies. The Negro populations occur in all those areas in which there was a long-continued importation of African slaves.

The development of these populations depended to a great extent upon the very fundamental difference in the relations between the Anglo-Saxon European immigrants and the Latin American immigrants. While among the former intermarriages or unions between women of European descent and members of the foreign races were rare, intermixture was not so limited in Latin American countries; and unions between European men and women of foreign races, or of European women and men of foreign races, have always been of more nearly equal frequency. The importance of this difference is great, because in the former case the number of individuals with European blood is constantly increasing, because the children of the women of the White population remain White, while the children of the women of the Negro or Indian population have on the average a considerable amount of infusion of White blood. This must necessarily result in a constant decrease of the relative amount of non-European blood in the total population. This phenomenon may be disturbed to a certain extent by differences in fertility or mortality of the mixed populations, but it is not likely that the total result will be influenced by such differences. In those cases, on the other hand, in which White women marry members of foreign races, or at least half-blood descendants of foreign races, a thorough penetration of the two races must occur; and if marriages in both directions are equally frequent, the result must be a complete permeation of the two types. There is very little doubt that the rapid disappearance of the American Indian in many parts of the United States is due to this peculiar kind of mixture. The women of mixed descent are drawn away from the tribes with a fair degree of rapidity, and merge in the general population; while the men of mixed descent remain in the tribe, and contribute to a continued infusion of White blood among the natives.

The claim has been made, and has constantly been repeated, that mixed races—like the American Mulattoes or the American Mestizos—are inferior in physical and mental qualities, that they inherit all the unfavorable traits of the parental races. So far as I can see, this bold proposition is not based on adequate evidence. As a matter of fact, it would be exceedingly difficult to say at the present time what race is pure and what race is mixed. It is certainly true that in the borderland of the areas inhabited by any of the fundamental races of mankind mixed types do occur, and there is nothing to prove that these types are inferior either physically or mentally. We might adduce, as an example, Japan, a country in which the Malay and the Mongol type come into contact; or the Arab types of North Africa, that are partly of Negro, partly of Mediterranean descent; or the nations of eastern Europe, that contain a considerable admixture of Mongoloid blood. In none of these cases will a careful and conscientious investigator be willing to admit any deteriorating effect of the undoubted mixture of different races. It is exceedingly difficult in all questions of this kind to differentiate with any degree of certainty between social and hereditary causes. On the whole, the half-bloods live under conditions less favorable than the pure parental races; and for this reason the social causes will bring about phenomena of apparent weakness that are erroneously interpreted as due to effects of intermixture. This is particularly true in the case of the Mulatto population of the United States. The Mulatto is found as an important element in many of our American cities where the majority of this group form a poor population, which, on the one hand, is not in a condition of social and economic equality with the Whites, while, on the other hand, the desire for improved social opportunity creates a considerable amount of dissatisfaction. It is not surprising that under these conditions the main characteristics of the group should not be particularly attractive. At the same time the poverty that prevails among many of them, and the lack of sanitary conditions under which they live, give the impression of hereditary weakness.

The few cases in which it has been possible to gather strictly scientific data on the physical characteristics of the half-bloods have rather shown that there may be a certain amount of physical improvement in the mixed race. Thus the investigation of half-blood Indians in the United States which I undertook in 1892 showed conclusively that the physical development of the mixed race, as expressed by their stature, is superior to that of both the White and Indian parents. I also found that the fertility of half-blood women was greater than that of the full-blood Indian women who live practically under the same social conditions. The latter conclusion has been corroborated by a much wider investigation, included in the last Census of the United States. Professor Dixon, under whose auspices the data were collated, not only found that the half-blood women were more fertile than the full-blood women, but he also discovered that the number of surviving children of half-blood women was greater than the number of surviving children of full-blood women. This seems to indicate a greater vigor even more clearly than the data found by a study of the stature of the half-blood race. During the present year I have been able to make an investigation of the population of Puerto Rico; and here a similar phenomenon appears in a comparison between the Mulatto population and the White population. In a study of children it was found that the Mulattoes excel in physical development the children of pure Spanish descent, and that their development is more rapid. Evidently the rapidity of development of the Mulatto, and his better physique, are phenomena that are closely correlated.

A number of tests have been made of the mental conditions of Mulatto children. These, however, I do not consider as convincing, because the differences found are slight, and because, furthermore, the retardation of development due to less favorable social conditions has not sufficiently been taken into account. There is also much doubt in regard to the significance of certain differences in the resistance to pathogenic causes that has been observed in different races. Judging from a general biological point of view, it would seem that an unfavorable effect of mixture of races is very unlikely. The anatomical differences between the races of man that we have to consider here are at best very slight, certainly less than those found in different races of domesticated animals. In the case of domesticated animals, no decrease of vigor has been observed when races are crossed as closely allied as races of man. Since man must be considered anatomically as a highly domesticated species, we may expect the same conditions to prevail, and by analogy there is no reason to suppose any unfavorable effects.

Attention should be called here to a peculiar condition of society in all those regions where the old aboriginal population contributes a large amount to the modern population. In all these cases we observe a continuity of tradition that leads back to pre-Columbian times. It may be that the ancient religious ideas and that much of the oral tradition of the people have been lost and that their place has been taken by ideas imported from Europe. Nevertheless a vast amount of the old customs survives. This may be readily seen by a study of the habitations and of the household utensils in Mexico and in Peru. It is quite obvious that in these cases the ancient tradition survives; and this fact is merely an indication of the tremendous force of conservatism that binds the people of modern times to their past. It is no wonder that in these cases the obstacles to the diffusion of modern ideas are much greater than in those populations that derive their origin entirely from European sources. This is so much more the case, since the European immigrant breaks completely with his past, and develops in a new environment and according to new standards of thought.

The investigation of the ideas and beliefs of the American Negroes throws an interesting side-light on these conditions. Unfortunately this subject has received very slight attention, and it is hardly possible to state definitely what the conditions are in various parts of the continent. It is quite clear, however, that the Negroes, owing to their segregation, have retained much of what they brought from Africa. In this case there is no continuity in the material life, because the houses, household utensils, and other objects are all derived from European sources, while many of the old tales and old religious ideas seem to survive, much modified, however, by American conditions. Owing to the fact that the coast tribes of Africa have been long under the influence of Portuguese civilization, a certain assimilation of Negro ideas had developed; and in all probability this accounts for the similarity of ideas found among American Negroes and Indians of Latin America, so far as these have adopted ideas imported by Spaniards and Portuguese of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Another question relating to the physical type of the mixed populations relates to the question of how far a new type results from their intermingling. Of recent years there has been much discussion in regard to this problem. Galton and his adherents maintain that in a mixture of types a new intermediate type will develop analogous to the appearance of the mule as a result of mixture between horse and donkey. Other investigators, following the important observations of Mendel and his successors, claim that no permanent new type develops, but that the so-called “unit” characters of the parents will be segregated in the mixed population. Assuming, for instance, the blue eye of the North European to be a “unit” character, it is assumed that in the mixed type there will always remain a certain group with blue eyes. More specifically it is claimed that among the descendants of couples in which one parent has blue eyes, the other pure brown eyes, one-fourth of the total number from the second generation on will have blue eyes, while the rest will have brown eyes. In order to avoid technicalities, we might perhaps say that in these cases there must be a certain degree of alternating inheritance, in so far as in a mixed population some individuals will resemble in their traits the one parental race, while others will resemble the other. Some investigators claim that the existence of this type of inheritance—so-called “Mendelian” inheritance—has been definitely proved to exist in man.

It is hardly possible at the present time to answer this important problem with any degree of definiteness, although in regard to a number of traits sufficient evidence is available. I pointed out before that in the case of stature the half-blood shows a tendency to exceed both parental types; in other words, that a new distinctive form develops. On the other hand, the investigation of eye-color has shown that while intermediate eye-colors do occur, there is a decided tendency for a number of individuals to reproduce either the blue eyes of northern Europe or the very dark eyes of other races. In regard to skin-color the evidence is not clear. A certain permanence of type has also been found in the head form. Some types of man may be characterized by the ratio of the longitudinal to the transversal diameter of the head. Sometimes both are not very different, while in other cases the head is very narrow and at the same time very long. It has been found that when two types intermingle in which the parental races show material differences in head form, then a great variety of head forms will occur among the descendants, indicating a tendency to revert to the parental types. Whether or not the classical ratios of Mendelian inheritance prevail is a question that it is quite impossible to answer. On the whole, it seems much more likely that we have varying types of alternating inheritance rather than true Mendelian forms.

If further investigation should show that the tendency to such alternating inheritance is found in mixed types throughout, and that the different features belonging to the distinctive parental types have only slight degrees of correlation, it would follow that in a mixed type we may expect the occurrence of a great variety of combinations of parental types; and we may expect, perhaps, a certain loosening of those correlations that are characteristic for the parental races. This question, however, has never been investigated, and cannot be answered with any degree of certainty.

These questions have also a bearing upon the characteristics of the populations of pure European descent that are developing in our country. In earlier times the provenience of the settlers in each particular area was fairly uniform. In the United States we find settlers from England; in the Argentine, those from Spain; but the rapid increase of population in Europe, and the attractiveness of economical conditions in America, have brought it about that the sources of European immigration have become much wider. In the Argentine Republic we find an immigration coming principally from the shores of the Mediterranean. The modern population of the United States is drawn from all parts of Europe, the most recent influx being principally from southeastern, southern, and eastern Europe. The racial composition of the population of Europe is not by any means uniform; but we find distinctive local types inhabiting the various parts of the continent. The differences between a dark-eyed, black-haired, swarthy South Italian, and a blond, tall, blue-eyed Scandinavian and a short-headed, gray-eyed, tall Servian, are certainly most striking. This fact has led to the assertion that nothing like the modern intermixture of European types has ever occurred in the past in any part of Europe.

Attention should be called here to a peculiar difference between the composition of our American population and that of European populations. After individual land-tenure had developed, and agriculture had become the basis of life of all European peoples, a remarkable permanence of habitat developed in all parts of Europe. In place of the waves of migration that marked the end of antiquity, a local development of small village communities set in, which, after they were once established, came to be exceedingly permanent. The members of these communities were only slightly increased from the outside, and thus a period of inbreeding set in that is equaled only by the amount of inbreeding characteristic of small isolated primitive tribes. It is difficult to obtain exact information in regard to this process; but the investigation of genealogies of a few European communities shows that it has been very marked. It is therefore clear that when we compare, let me say, the population of a small Spanish village and that of a South Italian village, we may find in both communities what appears to the observer as the same type; but we find at the same time that the actual lines of descent of these two groups have been quite distinct for many generations. A peculiar result is found wherever this type of inbreeding occurs. Since all the families are interrelated, it is clear that all the families are very much alike, and that practically any family may be selected and considered as the type of the population that is being investigated. Wherever these conditions do not prevail, and where the ancestry of the various parts of the population is quite distinct, a single family can never be considered as representative of the whole population, and we may expect considerable differences to occur between the family lines. This coming together of distinct lines is characteristic of all the industrial districts of Europe and also of the populations of European descent in America. Thus in the Argentine Republic the people of Spanish and of Italian communities will be brought together. In the United States we find side by side families of English, Irish, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Italian descent, each of which represents the type of the locality from which it comes. In other words, the family lines composing American populations are much more diverse than those found in the rural communities of Europe.

From a biological point of view there is little doubt that this condition must have an effect upon the physical characteristics of the whole population. Observations are not available, except those bearing upon the relation of sexes in the Argentine Republic. According to the last Argentine census, it has been found that the relation of sexes of children found in families of pure Italian or pure Argentine descent shows considerable differences when compared with that found in families of mixed Italo-Spanish descent, and it may very well be that this has to do with the disturbances of the lines of descent which we have just discussed.

No investigations are available on the physical characteristics of individuals of mixed European descent. All we know is that the alternating inheritance referred to before may be observed also in the descendants of a single people. Thus, for instance, it has been shown that when a long-headed Russian Jew marries a short-headed Russian Jewess, the children resemble in part the father, in part the mother, so that here also a certain reversion of type may be noticed. It has also been found that the laws of inheritance of eye-color are similar to those referred to before. There is therefore every reason to assume that the same laws of inheritance prevail in a mixture of European peoples that have been observed in a mixture of different races.

A word should be said in regard to the claim that the mixture of European types that is characteristic of the population of modern America is of a unique character. The events that occurred in prehistoric Europe do not favor this assumption, because the European continent at that time was the scene of constant migration and of constant intermingling of different peoples. The contrast between medieval conditions and ancient conditions appears, for instance, very clearly in Spain. The oldest inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula of which we know were overlaid successively by Phenicians, Romans, Kelts, Teutonic tribes, and Moorish people from northern Africa, which resulted in an enormous infusion of blood from all parts of Europe. With the Spanish victories over the Moors and the driving away of the Jews, a period of inbreeding set in which has lasted up to the present time. Similar conditions obtain in eastern Europe, where waves of migrations of Slavic, Teutonic, Finnish and Mongol peoples may be traced, each of which represented a certain definite local type. In short, the whole early history of Europe is one continued series of shifts of populations, that must have resulted in an enormous mixture of all the different types of the continent.

The important question arises whether the types that come to America remain stable and retain their former characteristics. A number of years ago I investigated this question, and reached the conclusion that a number of definite, although slight, changes are taking place; more particularly, that under American geographical and social conditions the width of the face decreases, and the head form undergoes certain slight changes. My observations are corroborated by the evidence that may be obtained from studies of European city populations. The differences in social environment there are probably the same as those that I have observed in the city of New York; and the observations also indicate a certain difference between the city population and the country population which cannot be explained by mixture or by selection.

Quite recently I investigated this question in Puerto Rico, and found that the type of the modern population does not conform to any of the ancestral types. The population is derived very largely from Spanish sources, so much so that among the individuals whom I measured a large percentage were sons of Spanish-born fathers. Besides this, we find a considerable infusion of Negro blood, and I presume also a certain survival of Indian blood. The ancestral types, except the Indians, are decidedly long-headed. The Indian blood cannot be very considerable; nevertheless we find that the Puerto Ricans of today are as short-headed as the average of the French of the Auvergne. We may therefore conclude that the movement of populations from Europe to our continent is accompanied by certain changes of type, the extent of which cannot be definitely determined at the present time.

I cannot conclude my remarks without at least a brief reference to the modern endeavors to improve the physical type of the people. It has been claimed that the congestion in modern cities and other causes are bringing about a gradual degeneration of our race, which advocates of eugenics desire to counteract by adequate legislative measures. It is certainly right to try to check the spread of hereditary defects by such measures, but the movement as it is now conceived is not free of serious dangers. First of all, it would seem that the fundamental thesis of the degeneracy of our population has never been proved. Our statistics permit us to count the number of defective individuals, which of course appears to increase with the rigidity of examination. On the other hand, our statistics do not allow us to count the individuals of unusual physical or mental development. It is obvious that, even if the method of counting should remain the same, there would be an apparent increase in the number of defectives if the variability of the total population should increase; in other words, if not all should conform to a standard, but a considerable number should be inordinately gifted, another number inordinately deficient. This would not necessarily mean a degeneration of the population, but would merely be an expression of increased variability. More serious is the question whether the principles of eugenics conform to the natural development of the human species. The fundamental motive that prompts us to advocate eugenic measures is perhaps not so much the idea of increasing human efficiency as rather to eliminate human suffering. The humanitarian idea of the elimination of suffering, which conforms so well with our sentiments, seems, however, opposed to the conditions under which species thrive. What is an inconvenience today will be suffering tomorrow; and the effect of an exaggerated humanitarianism may be to make mankind so sensitive to suffering that the very roots of its existence will be endangered. This consideration ought to receive the most careful attention of those who try to predetermine the development of our populations by legislative devices.

[2]	From Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Americanists, Washington, December, 1915 (Washington, D. C., 1917), pp. 569-575.