Many of these restrictions were directed by the priests, doubtless not so much for eugenic reasons as with the motive of protecting the morals of the young men by giving them wives. At an early date the colony fell under the domination of the Jesuits, and maintained for a long time a religious tone that in its own way was much more stern and uncompromising than that of the Puritan settlements in New England. Much of the wealth and effort that might have gone to strengthen the colony was sunk in sterile monastic foundations. Even today stone churches are a conspicuous feature of the landscape in the midst of poverty-stricken villages.
At one time there was for some years a directed migration of young women from France, sent out to become the wives of the colonists and early in the history of the country a policy of bonuses for marriage, and for large families, which has been repeated at intervals ever since, was introduced. None the less, the colony grew but slowly and to the failure to establish it on a sound biological foundation is due the collapse of French rule.
In 1665 the first census showed a population of 3215. In the next hundred years this had increased to somewhat more than 70,000, with an additional 20,000 in what are now the Maritime Provinces. That the French could maintain the contest for so long against British neighbors who outnumbered them twenty to one is to their credit, but their lack of recognition that their settlement could not be permanent unless based on a real migration of families ultimately cost them the country.
One of the chief causes of the failure of French Canada to expand beyond the narrow limits of the banks of the Saint Lawrence River, during its first century of existence, was an obscure skirmish which occurred on the west side of Lake Champlain in 1609. Champlain was advancing toward the South in company with Canadian Algonquins, when he encountered a war party of the Mohawks. In the fighting that followed, some Mohawks were killed and captured. At that time and in that place began the bitter enmity of the Iroquois Five Nations and the Canadian French. It was a feud that was neverallowed to rest and yearly war parties of Mohawks went north along Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River and devastated the lower portion of Quebec Province. At the same time war parties of the Senecas descended the Saint Lawrence and attacked the French from the West. As long as the power of the Iroquois lasted, which was all through the seventeenth century, they devastated a large part of New France.
DOMINIONOFCANADA & NEWFOUNDLAND
In the meantime, the Dutch and English were growing up in security to the South and East. Thus Champlain's skirmish with the Iroquois was the factor that delayed the expansion of France into the region of the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi Valley until relatively late in the eighteenth century.
The French population still centers in Quebec Province, long known as Lower Canada, but it has spread to other parts of the continent both south and west of the Quebec boundary. Their expansion in Canada has been into the neighboring provinces. Emigration to New England began in the eighteenth century but was not considerable until the nineteenth century.
While this French-Canadian population has remained so fecund as to furnish a stock example for every writer, it, too, has felt the trend of the times. For a long time the government of Quebec offered a grant of one hundred acres of land to every man who was the father of twelve living children by one wife. In less than a single year over 3000 heads of families availed themselves of this privilege and in1907 there was published a list of 7000 families having at least twelve living children.
In spite of this fecundity, the birthrate has been declining for almost the whole of the historical period. Two hundred and fifty years ago the average for all women of child-bearing age in Quebec Province was one child every two and one-half years. By 1850 this ratio had decreased to one in five years. At present it is one in seven and one-half years. Under this method of measurement, the rate of natural increase per head is only one-third of what it was in colonial times. Even the Roman Catholic "Habitant," therefore, has felt the effect of the general decline of birthrate throughout the western world in the period since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
From the beginning of the nineteenth century there was a small but steady immigration from the British Isles into Upper Canada, though interrupted by the Napoleonic Wars. After the close of that conflict a larger movement of population took place, which brought in an extensive English population. Theretofore most of the arrivals had been Scotch or Americans, so that a visitor in 1810 commented on the fact that he met "scarcely any English and few Irish."
In 1815 the government began to assist immigrants by giving free passage and a grant of one hundred acres of land after arrival with a promise of free rations for the first six or eight months and a like amount of land to each male child on hisreaching the age of twenty-one. A wise restriction required a deposit of a little less than one hundred dollars by the immigrant, to be returned to him after two years if he had complied with the terms of the contract on his behalf. These provisions were availed of mainly by Scotchmen going to Ontario. The scheme, however, had the advantage for our present purpose of establishing for the first time records of immigration, which thenceforth can be traced in detail.
In 1819 the emigration from British ports to Canada was in excess of 20,000, and continued for years at about this rate in spite of the booms which Australia and New Zealand were enjoying at the same time. There was a substantial movement of emigration toward Canada in the years 1830-34. In the nine years preceding 1837, more than a quarter of a million emigrants from the British Isles arrived at Quebec on their way westward, more than 50,000 of them in a single year.
Primogeniture in England has been a powerful factor in building up the British Commonwealth. The oldest son of a landed family inherited the estate and the titles, if any, and stayed at home. The younger sons, left to shift for themselves, were ready to emigrate. The colonies have thus received a great many more settlers of first-class ability than would otherwise have been the case. At the same time, the perpetuation of family continuity, through the preservation of the ancestral home intact, has been a strong psychological factor in maintaining a vigorous family life in the upper classes of Great Britain.
By 1840 the population of Canada was approximately a million and a half. During the next generation nearly a million more immigrants arrived from British ports—the great Irish migration changing the racial character of this movement markedly from about 1845. Prior to that time the newcomers were pre-dominantly English, with Wiltshire and Yorkshire largely represented. When the potato famine caused the Irish to seek refuge elsewhere, they naturally turned their steps to England, as the most easily and cheaply accessible of havens. Great Britain could absorb only a limited part of these and began to direct them to Canada, which, indeed, they preferred to the United States because the Catholic Church was strong there.
The emigrants were weak and in 1849 one-sixth of those who started are said to have died on the voyage. The number of Irish who left the United Kingdom in that year was 215,000, of whom nearly half were bound for Quebec. Canada became alarmed at being made the dumping ground of an enfeebled and destitute population so much in excess of its capacity to absorb, and, by increased taxes and other means, slowed down this immigration, which then headed toward the United States. Thereafter many of the Irish who had already gone to Canada moved on down into the Union, so that in the end Canada received a smaller part of the Irish Catholic migration than might be thought.
The census of 1871 furnishes a convenient pointat which to take a review of the population. It then totalled 3,485,761 in the four original provinces (Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia). British and French together, in the ratio of two to one, made up 92 per cent. The only foreign element which contributed as much as 1 per cent of the whole was the German, numbering more than 200,000 people, or 5.8 per cent.
The French Habitants have always formed a somewhat indigestible mass, but half a century of struggle had resulted in a workable system of government and compromise in the administrative life of the country. The dominant element was the British, and save for the great mass of French there was no large foreign block to menace the country's unity.
In sharp contrast to the settlement of the West of the United States, the occupation of the prairie and mountain provinces of Canada has been marked by law and order. In our West, especially in the mining districts, law was largely disregarded and its place taken by private justice, administered by individuals.
In Canada the Mounted Police have played a most efficient rôle in controlling both the settlers and the Indians. At the time of the Klondike rush in 1898, when hordes of gold seekers scrambled over the passes to the head waters of the Yukon, a handful of Mounted Police maintained a discipline for which the Americans themselves were very grateful. In the same way the administration of the mining lawsof the Klondike, which is in Canadian territory, was admired and envied by the Americans there.
The Canadian treatment of the Indians in the western provinces was also marked by an absence of the bloody wars which characterized our westward advance. The only uprising against the Whites was the Riel Rebellion in Manitoba, in 1869, which was by the half-breeds rather than by the Indians and which had special underlying causes. All this has been accomplished without the Whites in any way fraternizing with the Indians.
During the French period, the Canadian Indians always sided with the French against the English, because under the influence of the Catholic priests, the French Indian half-breed was regarded as a Frenchman and, as a result, influenced his mother's people in favor of the ruling race.
There were plenty of offspring of white frontiersmen and Indian squaws all along our frontier, but these half breeds were everywhere kicked out and despised as Indians. This attitude toward the lower race has always characterized our American frontier and while very unpopular with the natives, has served to keep the White race unmixed, in sharp contrast to the French and Spanish colonies.
Canada still has more than 100,000 Indians, four times as many in proportion to the whole population, as in the United States.
Newfoundland, for geographical reasons, even though it has politically no relation to Canada, is themost convenient starting point in reviewing in more detail the subdivisions of the country.
Larger than Ireland, the island claims to be the "senior colony" of the British Commonwealth. John Cabot, a Genoese, sailing from Bristol, discovered it in 1497, according to the traditional account, and took possession of it in the name of Henry VII. Within a few years fishermen, not merely English but French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Basque, were landing there to dry and cure the enormous quantities of cod caught on the Great Banks, which still form the principal wealth of the colony. In fact, some writers believe that the island may have been discovered long before the time of Columbus, by fishermen. At any rate, the effective occupation, though scarcely the continuous settlement of Newfoundland, long antedated the colonization of Virginia and many of the original English residents came from Devonshire.
The aboriginal inhabitants, the Beothics, disappeared half a century ago. They were probably Eskimos, or closely related to them, and are sometimes spoken of as "Red" Indians, in contrast to the "Black" Indians, the Micmacs, who have recently immigrated in small numbers from New Brunswick.
Newfoundland has nearly a quarter of a million inhabitants, but its backward stage of development still makes it little known to the outside world.
On the mainland a long strip of the Atlantic Coast and a large triangle of land behind it are attached to Newfoundland administratively, under the name ofLabrador. Because of its scanty population it may well be disregarded in the present discussion.
Nova Scotia during Colonial days was almost a New England colony. It was known to the French as "Acadie" and was ceded to England in 1713.
Interposed between New England and French Canada, Acadia suffered heavily from the warfare that went on between the two regions. The existence of a large French population was always a source of irritation, and of danger, to the English. Finally in 1758 the French were cleared out, about 6000 of them being distributed throughout the English colonies, and the remainder escaping to Canada. Those who came to the thirteen colonies suffered hardships, but on the whole were more humanely treated than were those who fled to their co-religionists in Quebec Province. The place of the exiled Acadians[15]was largely taken by New England emigrants.
The American population of Nova Scotia was further greatly augmented at the time of the Revolution by an influx of Loyalists. These came in such numbers as to disturb the colony seriously, but formed an invaluable addition of the best sort of British stock. This general trend has continued so that, even in 1921, of the foreign-born population ofNova Scotia, that which originated in the United States was twice as large as all the rest of the foreign-born population put together.
The Scotch immigration which has exercised such an important influence on the eastern counties of Nova Scotia began about 1760 with the arrival of Scots and Ulster Scots. In 1772 a contingent of Highlanders direct from Scotland took up land alongside an American group from Philadelphia. From then on until about 1820, a steady stream of Highlanders came into the region; Gaelic is still spoken in parts of the colony. Nova Scotia with the other Maritime Provinces still represents the most purely British of all the Canadian provinces, and as shown, an important part of its population came to it through the United States.
New Brunswick was established on August 16, 1784, out of a part of ancient Acadia. It also received an important number of Loyalists at the time of the Revolution—indeed it might be said to owe its existence to the arrival of some 10,000 expatriates from the United States. But the bulk of the population is Scottish with a strong Highland contingent. There are few foreign-born other than a small element from the United States.
Prince Edward Island is similar as to its population and is the most purely "native" of all, only one in each one hundred in this province being foreign-born. The Roman Catholics there include a considerable number of Scotch Highlanders and number nearly a half of the population.
Quebec is still the stronghold of the French-Canadians, more than half of whom are unable to speak the English language. The French stock still numbers one-fourth of the entire population of the entire Dominion of Canada. On the northern frontier of Quebec there was some mixture with the Indians, but the half-breeds are probably not numerous enough to form a substantial part of the old population. In addition to their great movement to New England the French-Canadians have spread into Ontario, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island to some extent.
The French-Canadian stock is the most highly inbred of any of the large groups of the New World. It is based on original immigrants who numbered a good many less than 10,000. In the course of three centuries this nucleus has multiplied to 3,000,000, with virtually no additions of fresh arrivals from abroad. They have lived a New World life longer than have most of the Whites of the Western Hemisphere, and must be put in a class by themselves. They are not French, in spite of their language—an archaic speech at which the true Frenchman laughs. In every way they differ from the present-day French, more indeed than New Englanders of Colonial descent now differ from the present-day Englishman. From the cradle to the grave they are surrounded by the influence of the Roman CatholicChurch to an extent almost as unknown to the present-day French as it is to the present-day Americans. Of late years not only those who have come to New England, but some of those living in Quebec Province have shown a disposition to break away from the church because of its heavy and inexorable taxation.
The French-Canadians, in Quebec and the neighboring provinces, were, to an extent, disloyal to the British Empire in the Great War. Under the influence of their priests they resisted the draft in several instances and there was bloodshed in Quebec on this account. As has been said elsewhere, these Frenchmen would not fight for the British Empire, which had guaranteed them extraordinary privileges as to their language and religion, nor would they fight for France, which they claimed as motherland, but which they now regarded as atheistic. Neither would they fight for Belgium, which is pretty nearly as clerical as they are. In short, their conduct during the World War was contemptible and in sharp contrast to the militant and effective patriotism of the more westerly provinces of Canada.
Ontario, called Upper Canada in distinction to French-speaking Lower Canada, received its first important population from the United States when Loyalist refugees, including many Highland Scots, mainly from northern and western New York, settled there and became known as the United Empire Loyalists. Among these immigrants, were the disbanded frontier regiments which had been organized by Sir John Johnson, including abundant Macdonalds from Glengarry and Inverness, together with Camerons, Chisholms, Fergusons, MacIntyres, Russells, and Hamiltons, who opened up the region constituting the present counties of Glengarry, Stormont, and Dundas.
In 1785, almost the entire parish of Knoydart, Glengarry, emigrated direct from Scotland and settled in a body in Upper Canada. In 1793 a contingent from Glenelg settled at Kirkhill. In 1799 came many Camerons from Lochiel, and in 1803 another delegation of Macdonalds arrived, with more people from Glenelg and Kintail. Thus Ontario, which in 1791 was set off from (French) Lower Canada and given its own government under the name of Upper Canada, became almost as much entitled to consider itself a "Nova Scotia," as did the Maritime Province of that name.
At the end of the American Revolution, Upper Canada was supposed not to contain as many as 10,000 inhabitants. By 1811 it had 83,000 and by 1817 it was estimated to have 134,000. While many Irish came at a somewhat later period, most of these eventually went on to the United States.
The interference with British immigration caused by the Napoleonic wars led to Upper Canada's offering special attraction to settlers from the United States. The lack of sympathy of these with the British Government during the War of 1812 was an embarrassment to Canada, just as the loyalty of theUnited Empire group, which prevented Canada from being conquered by the United States, was in turn a serious annoyance to the American Government.
The later settlement of Ontario was largely from Scotland and the northern English counties, and was pre-dominantly Presbyterian. There were enough Ulster Scots to make it an active center of the American Protective Association of forty years ago and it is definitely, at the present time, a Nordic territory.
During the present century it has received thousands of Austrians, Poles, and Italians, who introduced racial elements not easily assimilated.
Manitoba began to be settled shortly after the War of 1812, when Lord Selkirk established his Red River Colony. The Scotch Highlanders, Swiss, and others whom he planted there did not prosper, and many of them eventually drifted down into the United States, taking an active part in the formation of Minnesota. Around this nucleus, however, there gradually grew an incongruous and isolated settlement made up of three elements that had almost nothing in common; the Scotch, the French-Canadians, and the half-breeds. In 1849 the Red River Settlement was credited with 5391 people. With the establishment of steam navigation on the Red River, and the official creation of Winnipeg, both of which occurred in 1862, development began on a larger scale.
A provisional government was given to the territory in 1869, and from time to time land was generously allotted to the early white settlers, to the half-breeds, and to the Hudson's Bay Company. Thereafter the province grew slowly, from the natural increase of its founders and from a Nordic migration from Ontario and from the neighboring parts of the United States, until the mixed European immigration of the last half-century changed somewhat the character of the population. These latter now account for one-third of the whole.
The proportion of these non-Nordic Europeans, from southern or central Europe, is three times as great as the European immigration from either northern or western Europe. If this immigration continues in like proportions, Manitoba, like the other prairie provinces, is in danger of being lost to the Nordics.
Saskatchewan has a larger American-born population than Manitoba, one resident in every eight having first seen the light of day under the American flag. But it has a still larger recent European immigration amounting to nearly 40 per cent of the total population of the province. A bare half of the people of Saskatchewan are of British origin.
Alberta has both a somewhat smaller European element and the largest American-born contingent of any of the provinces, amounting to one in six. Many English of a fine type have settled there.
In all the Prairie Provinces the French-Canadianrepresents scarcely more than one in twenty of the population.
British Columbia has prided itself with justice on its British origin, and is exceeded in this respect only by the Maritime Provinces. Of its European immigrants (one in eleven of the whole), approximately equal numbers are Nordics from northern or western Europe, and Alpines or Mediterraneans from southeastern and central Europe. During the World War its young men showed great attachment to the mother country, and the loss from death was correspondingly great. Because of its great distance from the ports of entry, it was long avoided by immigrants. Not until about 1907 did it begin to get its fair share. Since then, it has held its own, about half of its new arrivals however coming from the United States.
The province also has its Asiatic problem, which has been the source of hard feeling on several occasions. One of the great hindrances to its more rapid development was shortage of labor, and it was natural that the Orient, which could reach British Columbia more easily and cheaply than could either Europe or even the Atlantic provinces of Canada itself, should be called upon to meet the need. Chinese soon began to enter, until stopped by a head tax of $500. Japanese came in considerable numbers, not merely in the fisheries but for day labor in railway construction. Some 6000 Hindus likewise found their way there. Orientals now amount to one inevery seven of the total population. There is a real Asiatic question here and the Whites are beginning to look to the United States for protection.
Canada's immense arctic area, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, may be neglected in this discussion because of the lack of population. Those who see in the mosquito-infested tundra of "The Land of Little Sticks," with its months of winter darkness, a future populous area of agricultural and livestock industry are destined to wait long for the realization of their dream.
So far as the British element in Canada is concerned, it has been pointed out above in several places that the country is to a certain extent an offspring of the United States. This contribution has continued up to the present time. During the 1880's there was another great period of migration from the Union to the Dominion. At that time nearly twice as many entered Canada from this country as from Great Britain, and six times as many as from the continent of Europe.
Not all of these Americans were of the old native stock. It has been calculated that at least half of this contingent was of British extraction, the other half being made up of various European nationalities who, after becoming acclimated to the New World in the United States, passed on to Canadian soil. Thus the contribution from the United States during that period did not represent a purely Nordic accession.
The 1890's represented a period of British immigration. But, with the turn of the century, Canada began to share in the great influx of miscellaneous peoples who were already deluging the shores of the United States. During the first twelve years of the twentieth century, Canada received 2,000,000 people, of whom 800,000 were British. About 700,000 others came from the United States, but more than a third of these are calculated to have been Continental arrivals who merely passed through the United States for convenience. In 1901 there were in Canada some 650,000 of "foreign stock"—that is, of neither British nor French origin. In 1921 there were more than twice as many. Since the beginning of the century Canada has acquired more than 100,000 Jews.
After the World War the Empire Settlement Act began to make itself felt, reducing markedly the proportion of immigrants from the United States into Canada while from 1900 onward Ireland began to figure heavily in the immigration statistics.
In 1930 there were, on the other hand, over 1,200,000 Canadian-born, both of British and French stock, in the United States and during the preceding eight years 300,000 had returned to Canada.
Not only have the western provinces, then, been thrown violently into a disequilibrium by the population changes of the last generation, but the stability of the whole Dominion has been menaced. Canada, like the United States, has taken on a great liability in the admission of the hundreds of thousands of non-Nordics, who will be hard to assimilate, even if it be assumed that they would become valuable when assimilated, which is by no means always the case. One of Canada's advantages, on the other hand, is the negligible proportion of Negroes, and it might well erect barriers even now against them, as it has already done against the Asiatics.
With its immense territory and more than 10,000,000 inhabitants, Canada is still to be credited to the Nordics, though, if the population trends that began with this century should continue, the balance would change rapidly. While the United States has contributed by far the largest number of foreign-born, Russia has contributed the second largest number of immigrants, Saskatchewan receiving more of these than any other province. Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba have received about equal numbers, in each case one-third less than went to Saskatchewan. Those of Austrian birth, who are third in the list, are concentrated in the two provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan in about equal numbers, each of these provinces having almost twice as many Austrian-born as Alberta or Ontario. The Chinese stand fourth in numbers among the foreign-born of the Dominion, but most of them are concentrated in British Columbia. Ontario has almost as many Italians as all the rest of Canada put together, and it has also the largest number of Poles.
Because of the great body of French-Canadians, the Roman Catholic Church is proportionately twice as strong as in the United States.
The 1921 census showed the population to be made up as follows:
This computation distributes the immigrants from the United States according to their racial stock; thus the main part would be classified with those of British origin, a smaller part as "other European," and so on.
From the foregoing it is evident that Canada is now less than 60 per cent Nordic—probably less Nordic than the United States.
Canada has been the great obstacle to extending the American immigration quotas to the countries of the Western Hemisphere. The majority of its inhabitants are our own kinsmen, many of whom have already contributed elements of great value to our population. Others would be most welcome if they chose to come.
Our nation has been unwilling to put the slightest restriction on Canadian immigration, by applying a quota; and it was thought it would be invidious and discriminatory to apply a quota to the countries south of us, and not to the one to the north. That difficulty will have to be met firmly in the near future. One proposed solution has been to admit from Canada only those whose mother tongue is English.
FOOTNOTES:[15]Acadie in the Micmac language means "place." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's pathetic poem, "Evangeline," embodies the anti-English sentiments of the early nineteenth century in New England and is founded largely on an error of spelling, which made "Arcadia" out of the Indian word. The expulsion of the French in 1758 was by Bostonians under Colonel John Winslow, and was justified by the refusal of the French to accept loyally the rule of the English.
FOOTNOTES:
[15]Acadie in the Micmac language means "place." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's pathetic poem, "Evangeline," embodies the anti-English sentiments of the early nineteenth century in New England and is founded largely on an error of spelling, which made "Arcadia" out of the Indian word. The expulsion of the French in 1758 was by Bostonians under Colonel John Winslow, and was justified by the refusal of the French to accept loyally the rule of the English.
[15]Acadie in the Micmac language means "place." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's pathetic poem, "Evangeline," embodies the anti-English sentiments of the early nineteenth century in New England and is founded largely on an error of spelling, which made "Arcadia" out of the Indian word. The expulsion of the French in 1758 was by Bostonians under Colonel John Winslow, and was justified by the refusal of the French to accept loyally the rule of the English.
XVII
OUR NEIGHBORS ON THE SOUTH
UnlikeCanada on our north, the countries south of the Rio Grande have been relatively little influenced by Nordic culture, to say nothing of anything resembling a Nordic conquest. The outlying territories of Mexico which were annexed to the United States were nearly empty lands and present Mexican influences in the Southwest are matters of more recent date.
Latin America is one of the major divisions of the World, and from the present point of view should no more be discussed as a unit than could Europe or Asia. Its original population represents one of the great racial divisions of mankind. Its twenty different nations now speak several different languages, and embrace representatives of all the important races of both hemispheres.
The general area gets such unity as it possesses from the Latin and Roman Catholic aspect of its culture as contrasted with the Protestant, Anglo-Saxon culture of America north of the Mexican border. This Latin civilization was originally Spanish (in Brazil Portuguese), but since the era of the revolutions which threw off the Spanish yoke, the Spanish influence has become more and more negligible, and locally has been somewhat supplanted by the French, and, to a small extent, by the Italian influence.
Latin America was never colonized at all in the sense that North America was colonized. English settlers with their families came to the New World to found homes, but the early history of Latin America was that of a series of plundering and proselyting expeditions, and such of the adventurers as tarried were usually men without families who had no desire to stay a day longer than was necessary to acquire a fortune and return to Europe. Add to these the military forces who came under compulsion, and the missionaries, administrators, and concessionaires of all kinds and one has the bulk of the early European immigration.
Under these circumstances the number of women who came with their husbands was naturally small, and most of the Europeans took Indian wives, frequently several of them, thus laying the basis for the half-breed population of the present day. In Paraguay, for instance, some of the colonial rulers are said to have had fifty or a hundred native concubines. If every descendant of these matings carries the Spanish name but has married mainly with Indian stock in the ten or fifteen generations since, it is easy to understand that present-day families may bear the names of hidalgos, of whose genetic traits they have virtually none.
The number of European immigrants was never large. During the sixteenth century, a period of active exploitation, the entire movement from Spain to America is thought to have represented only about 1000 or 1500 persons a year. With a high death rate, and the disposition on their part to return as soon as possible, there was no opportunity for the Spaniard to establish the basis of a civilization built upon his own race.
By 1553 foundling half-breeds numbered thousands in Spanish America and the viceroy Mendoza was obliged to establish an orphan school for them. Even at the end of the eighteenth century, when Humboldt visited Mexico City, he remarked that of the European-born Spaniards there, not one-tenth were women. The proportion of women must certainly have been still smaller in the provincial towns and on the frontiers.
So far as the present population goes back to the early days of Spanish dominion, it may be said to be Spanish by name and Indian by blood. The families, which in many Spanish American countries have social prestige because of descent from the conquerors and rulers of the Colonial Period, must therefore attach all importance to the family name, and little or none to the many other lines of descent which have entered into the composition of their present generation.
Honorable exception should be made in almost every one of the Spanish American republics of a small group of Whites that has consistently maintained its racial integrity and upheld intelligent ideals of racial progress, under most difficult conditions.In many of the countries, too, there are groups of far-seeing intellectuals who are working for the adoption of wise immigration policies, presenting sound and constructive measures of eugenic reform, and striving to awaken their fellow countrymen to the fact that a nation's capital is, in the last analysis, biological, and that permanent and satisfactory progress is possible only to a people with a healthy family life.
In many of the Latin American countries the Whites, or those who pass as such (for they have, in most cases, a large proportion of Indian blood) form an oligarchy or ruling caste occupying the higher positions in the political and ecclesiastical worlds. They also constitute the land-owning and professional classes, while commerce and industry are largely in the hands of foreigners or their descendants. In many cases these foreign immigrants marry into the best native families, and thus their children become a part of the ruling caste.
Mexico. The restriction of European immigration into the United States under the National Origins Quota cutting off what had been the principal source of unskilled labor had an unexpected and undesirable effect in encouraging immigration from nearby countries of the Western Hemisphere, which were not under the quota, and particularly from Mexico. Industries accustomed to depend upon cheap, ignorant, and docile workers from Mediterranean or Alpine countries turned to the illiterateIndians on the South as a ready substitute. The stream of arrivals across the border, more illegal than legal, soon brought into the United States more than a million Mexicans. Only the unexpected depression beginning in 1929 stemmed this tide and apparently prevented Mexico from reconquering peacefully, by an immigrant invasion, the territory it had lost by the decision of war in 1848.
Since the sixteen million residents of Mexico are the nearest large body of people in a position to supply immigrants to the United States and ready to do so, a study of their composition is of the highest importance at the present time. Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest had seen the rise and fall of several relatively high native civilizations, and that of the Aztecs, which was destroyed by the Spaniards, had many noteworthy features. The combination of brutality and piety which dominated the conquerors led to the extermination as far as possible of every salient feature of the native culture. The country was, thereafter, exploited ruthlessly by the Spaniards, but the Spanish civilization, such as it was, did not succeed in establishing itself in this foreign soil. The history of the last four centuries has been a history of the gradual absorption of the foreigners by the Indian element. This is true alike of race and culture.
MEXICO CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES
The large native population found here by the Spaniards was quickly reduced in numbers. A Spanish priest enumerates ten plagues which had decimated the people during his time, that is, during thefirst quarter of a century after the conquest. First the smallpox, brought by a Negro in one of Narvaez' ships. It is said to have destroyed more than half of the people in many of the provinces. The others were: the slaughter in the capture of Mexico City, the famine resulting from the widespread warfare; the abuses of overseers of the towns given in vassalage; the heavy tributes; the tremendous abuses in connection with the mines; the reconstruction of Mexico City by forced labor; the traffic in branded slaves; the abuses of transportation, with Indians as human beasts of burden; and the factional warfare among the Spaniards themselves, in which the Indians bore the brunt of the fighting. To these should be added particularly the other infectious diseases that the Spaniards introduced, such as tuberculosis and syphilis, as to which the aboriginal inhabitants had not the slightest immunity or resistance, through previous racial experience.
Under such conditions the native population of the hemisphere was probably reduced by 50 or 75 per cent in a few generations, and in the West Indies it was exterminated. Since then it has been steadily regaining ground on the mainland, though not in the islands, in many of which the Negro has replaced it.
The number of Spaniards who came at any time to Mexico is placed at 300,000 at the outside. Many of these certainly did not remain in the country and few of them brought their families. Under the conditions that existed in Mexico and the other conquered territories, it was universally recognized that the situation was not suitable for a white woman. While the Spanish Government encouraged men to take their wives out from Spain, few of them cared to do so, and probably most of the men who came to the colonies were unmarried. Spain put insuperable difficulties in the way of unmarried women who wanted to emigrate, so that Spanish women throughout the history of Mexico were few. The resulting population is therefore made up of the offspring of the Indians and of a few Spanish men mated to Indian women. Most of the Mexican population is still pure or nearly pure Indian. There is a considerable hybrid element which does most of the talking, and a negligible element that can be considered white in the strict sense of the term.
Mexican statistics commonly designate about 10 per cent of the population as white. But most of these have much Indian blood, and recent students doubt whether 3 per cent are properly to be described as white. Much of this genuine white element is in Mexico City, though the various states have their local and reputable white aristocracies, of which that in Yucatan is conspicuous for the maintenance of high standards of racial integrity.
The Mexican revolution which began in 1810 dislodged the overseas Spanish and substituted exploitation by the local hybrid group. Since then the general trend has been toward the rise to control of the Indians. The last period of revolution, which began in 1910 and may be said to be still in progress, hasbeen marked by attempts to take away from the hybrid oligarchy the immense land properties which it had obtained and to distribute them to the Indians. While this has met with many difficulties, and has been realized only to a small extent, it has been at least the avowed objective of most of the revolutionists in the past two or three decades.
During recent years there has been a glorification of the Mexican Indian and his culture by North American writers. No doubt the Mexican Indian is well suited to his environment, and his traditional habits are well suited to him. This does not mean, however, that either has any important contribution to make to the United States which would be realized by a northward mass migration of agricultural and industrial serfs. On the contrary, the Mexican immigration to the United States, which is made up overwhelmingly of the poorer Indian element, has brought nothing but disadvantages. It has created, particularly in the Southwestern States, an exploited peasant class unconformable with the principles of American civilization. This population, neither physically nor mentally up to the prevailing standards, is producing a large contribution to the future American race, since every one of its numerous children born in the States becomes an American citizen by birth.
Tests made in the schools of southern California, in which the language handicap was discounted as far as possible, indicate that the average Mexican child was about as far below the average Negrochild in abstract intellect as the average Negro child was below the average white child.
Physically, the race is conspicuous by its low resistance to tuberculosis, which has exterminated so large a part of the native population of the Western Hemisphere during the last four centuries. The New World had not been subject to tuberculosis and therefore offered a fertile field for the germs of this disease. The population of the Old World had been ravaged by it for many centuries, and in each generation the low resistants had been killed off so that a more immune stock had been gradually produced by natural selection.
Such studies as have been made in the Southwestern States indicate that the average Mexican family is at least half again as large as the average white family. Thus there is every reason to expect that, without a sharp limitation of such immigration, the Southwest will become more and more Mexicanized.
By 1928 Los Angeles County had more than a quarter of a million Mexicans, and the City of Los Angeles had the largest Mexican population of any city in the world, with the exception of Mexico City. Whole industries and whole agricultural areas had come to think themselves largely dependent on Mexican labor, while millions of American citizens were out of employment in every State of the Union. The dependence of agriculture in the Southwestern States on cheap Mexican labor, largely of a migratory nature, is particularly disastrous from a racial pointof view, since the maintenance of American civilization depends largely on the maintenance of a healthy and prosperous farm population.
DISTRIBUTION OF MEXICANSThe figures represent distribution of Mexicans by states per 100000 of population in 1930Distribution of Mexicans by States. Except in the border States Mexicans are chiefly concentrated in large urban centers.
Nearly all of the Mexicans who came to the United States were seeking to better themselves economically and to avoid the murder and plunder that had been going on in their country for a score of years under the guise of revolution. Most of them intended to return home as soon as conditions became more satisfactory, but as conditions from year to year failed to improve, the Mexican population tended to become a permanent one. At the same time few of the Mexicans became American citizens, and in every community where they settled in racial groups there were unsatisfactory standards of education and sanitation.
Most of the Mexicans come with their families, thereby differing markedly from some of the other foreign groups, as the Bulgarians, Greeks, Spanish, and Filipinos, which consist mainly of unmarried men. These latter either return home after making money, or else intermarry with the other immigrant groups. The Mexican community, on the other hand, perpetuates itself and increases without much intermarriage with the other population.
Since the depression beginning in 1929 there has been a repatriation of a portion of the Mexican immigration of unknown size but undoubtedly considerable. Lack of work has led many to go home where they can live more economically and be among friends, and at the same time American authoritiesbegan to offer free transportation back to Mexico for those dependent on public charity, and willing to leave. Thus trainload after trainload returned, and at the same time a tightening of the immigration restrictions and procedures on the border cut down the flow of immigrants to almost nothing.
While the census of 1930 counted nearly a million and a half Mexicans in the United States, it is probable that the number has since then diminished, and it is of highest importance that it should not be allowed to increase. The Mexican Indian has no racial qualities to contribute to the United States population that are now needed, and if he has any cultural contribution to make it will not be made by the immigration of hundreds of thousands of illiterate and destitute laborers.
Guatemala. More than half of the population of Guatemala is still pure Indian, and the half breed class which plays such an important part in Mexico and other countries is relatively less conspicuous there. The inconsiderable white population is made up in part of the descendants of old Spanish families and in part from more recent immigrants, especially Germans.
The proportion of Teutonic names among the rulers of Guatemala during the last generation has been growing steadily. With two million population Guatemala is the most powerful of the Central American countries, but the Indians tend to be little more than a subject race exploited by others, and thegeneral progress of the country is therefore in some ways slow.
Honduras suffers partly from its tropical situation but still more from the mixture of races, and the large amount of Negro blood in the population of the lowlands. By contrast with Guatemala the Indian element is here unimportant, and the people are Negroes and half-breeds, or a little of each. With its 600,000 population largely of mongrel origin, the Republic has been a backward member of the Central American group throughout most of its history. British Honduras is an unimportant area with much the same characteristics. The so-called Caribs along the coast are now scarcely distinguishable from pure Negroes.
Salvador. Smaller than the State of New Jersey, Salvador has an importance out of proportion to its size because of the dense population and large amount of cultivable land together with a smaller amount of Negro mixture than in the adjoining Republics. With a population estimated at a million and a half (such a thing as a real census is almost unknown in Latin American countries), its people are largely of mixed blood with the Indian predominating, but the number of pure-blooded Indians is not large compared with Guatemala.
Nicaragua, a synonym for turbulence in the minds of Americans, has also a population of highlymixed character. The Indians did not remain a distinct group as in Guatemala, nor were they largely exterminated as in Costa Rica. They were absorbed into a half-breed population of more than 600,000 which has also in the lowlands a large Negro admixture.
The upper classes of more or less remote European ancestry have maintained a semi-feudal political dominance that has been disastrous to the welfare of the country, and it is doubtful whether the Yankee influence, which during the last generation has been stronger in Nicaragua than in any of the other Latin American states except Panama, has been particularly useful.
Costa Rica has always prided itself on being the whitest of the Central American Republics, and its history of relative peace and prosperity reflects this fact. Apart from a fringe of Indians and Negroes in the lowlands, the population of nearly 500,000 is concentrated in a beautiful and healthful inland region. The Indians of the country having been driven out or destroyed at an early day, the settlers of Costa Rica were unable to live as parasites exploiting serfs as did the upper classes in some of the other Central American countries, but were forced to settle on the land and work out their own salvation. While they were therefore considered in colonial days to be in a pitiable situation, the result was highly advantageous in the long run, for it has given the country a more nearly genuine population of citizens prepared to contribute to the progress and welfare of the country.
A large part of the Spanish blood in Costa Rica is supposed to be Galician, and therefore to have a considerable Nordic infusion. The Gallegos, as natives of this part of the Iberian Peninsula are called, are one of the most law-abiding and hard-working of the numerous peoples that comprise the Spanish Republic, and their descendants in Costa Rica reflect credit on their origin. In most of the other Latin American countries the Spanish element is supposed to be largely from Andalusia and therefore quite different in make-up, with a noteworthy Moorish element.
Panama with its hybrid population of half a million, largely Negro in composition, is unimportant in the picture of Latin America. North American influence has transformed it economically, but cannot change mongrels into a sound and vigorous stock.
Colombia has large numbers of Negroes in the hot lowlands, but the bulk of the six million population is Indian with a slight infusion of European blood. The upper class of Colombia represents the results of geographical isolation, the region until recently having been inaccessible; and by virtue of a sort of intellectual inbreeding it has long been the most conservative and least touched by foreign influence of all the Latin American "aristocracies." The upper-class Colombian prides himself with reason on the purity of his Spanish blood, and still lives to a large degree in the memories of the ancient colonial period. In Bogotá there is an intense anti-Negro social sentiment. The isolation of the half-breeds in Colombia has come nearer to producing a new racial group than is to be found elsewhere in Latin America.
Venezuela, in spite of its nearly three million inhabitants, is an unimportant country, largely hybrid with extensive Negro infiltrations. As in many other Latin American countries, the number of Whites is officially put down as about 10 per cent, but as in most such instances it is doubtful whether one resident in fifty can properly be called a white man, except by courtesy.
Guiana. The three Guianas, British, French, and Dutch, represent one of the least attractive parts of South America in almost every way.
British Guiana has 300,000 inhabitants of whom one-third are Negroes, another third Orientals, mostly Hindu, and the remainder is largely made up of crosses between these two elements, of a few thousand native Indians, and of a handful of Whites.
Dutch Guiana has a population well under a hundred thousand, largely Orientals imported to furnish coolie labor and including Hindus, Javanese, and Chinese. There are many Negroes and a couple of thousand Whites.
SOUTH AMERICA
French Guiana differs from the Dutch settlement mainly in being smaller, its population being not much more than 30,000, including many convicts or ex-convicts, for this has long been a French penal settlement.
Brazil with a territory larger than the continental United States differs from its neighbors in many striking ways, apart from the fact that it was settled by Portuguese, not Spanish, and that its language and culture are therefore Portuguese rather than Spanish.
The Indian population was killed off or driven westward by the early settlers just as in the United States, so that it is now confined largely to the untracked and almost unpopulated forests of the Amazonian Basin, where perhaps a couple of a million aborigines may still exist.
To provide labor the Portuguese imported slaves from Africa, and then fused with them to produce the present-day pre-dominantly Negro population. The Portuguese here thus repeated the experience of the mother country. During the great years of Portuguese exploration and colonization in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, it has been estimated that a million Portuguese, mainly young men, went to the tropics, and for the most part never came back. Negroes were imported to take their places and to do the work of the country. Intermarriage of these Negroes with the old population left Portugal with a larger amount of Negro blood than any other European country, and greatlyimpaired its ability to contribute to the progress of civilization. Thus Portugal, which, when dominated by the Nordics, had set an extraordinary example of progress in many ways, now contributes relatively little to such progress and only the rebirth of a reasonable pride of race, and the application of a sound eugenics program will enable it to regain a position of leadership.
History has repeated itself in Brazil. The salvation of Brazil has been the arrival during the past century of European immigrants. Thousands of Germans poured into the Highlands of the Southern States where large regions have an almost Teutonic civilization at the present time. If a false interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine had not helped to interfere with this process, the results for South America might have been most beneficial.
But the main currents of immigration have been from Latin countries of the Old World. During the past century Brazil has received more than four million foreigners, of whom a million and a half were Italians, a million and a quarter Portuguese, and half a million Spanish. Thus more than three-fourths of the immigration has been from the Latin countries, and only about a quarter of a million from Germany and Austria. Since the World War this overwhelming migration from the Latin countries has slowed down. The German migration has, on the contrary, increased.
Brazil thus consists of two distinct areas: a relatively small, fertile, and healthful highland region inthe south, where the main activities of the country are carried on largely under the influence of Mediterranean and Alpine immigrants; and a huge tropical area given over mainly to the Negro and Mulatto element and the Indians.
With a population of somewhere around 30,000,000 Brazil is not only the largest of the South American republics, but nearly as large as all the rest of them put together.
The future of Brazil depends largely on the nature of its immigration policy during the next generation or two and on the acceptance of a workable program of eugenics. Fortunately, no South American country has taken up such a policy with more interest than has this great republic. It still possesses an aristocracy which has maintained its racial purity, but this is probably too small a nucleus alone to regenerate the whole body politic.
Uruguay. Crossing the boundary from Brazil to Uruguay, one sees a new picture. Uruguay is almost entirely white. Indeed, this whole region of La Plata is one of the future dominant areas of the New World. It contains less Negro blood than does, relatively, the United States. Not only have Negroes been largely kept out, but the remnants of Indian tribes have become inconspicuous, as on the plains of the Mississippi Valley, where the Indians, mere nomads with a negligible culture, were driven back by the march of civilization. The striking parallel between the settlement of this region and that ofthe Western States of North America is often pointed out. Each was a sheep and cattle country, and then farmers took up land and developed it into a region of prosperity and great potentialities.
Uruguay has a cosmopolitan population almost wholly of European origin. Since the World War it has attracted not only a large part of the Spanish emigration but also large numbers of Italians, French, Germans, and others. The earlier immigration was largely of North Italians, mainly of Alpine blood with slight Nordic infusion. The total population of the country is now well over a million and a half.
A wise selection of immigration from now on will still further increase the influence of this small republic, and set a good example for all of South America.
Argentina represents one of the striking examples of a nation built up rapidly by foreign immigration. Nearly 85 per cent of its people are foreign-born or the descendants of recent immigration, with Italians forming by far the largest group. Moreover, the Argentine Republic has attracted the vigorous population of North Italy, which racially is mainly Alpine but still has a Nordic element, and forms a striking contrast to the population of South Italian and Sicilian immigrants that have filled up the slums of North American cities. The North Italians are more akin to the Swiss and the South Germans than they are to the South Italians.
Non-whites do not amount to 5 per cent of the population. The total population of something like 10,000,000 makes the Argentine Republic second only to Brazil in size in South America, and in every respect, except size, it easily takes first rank.
The racial composition of this extraordinary nation with its ultra-modern civilization, and its get-rich-quick atmosphere, deserves more extended treatment than can be given here. The English, though not the most numerous, have taken the first place in its financial world. French immigrants, though fewer in number, have become a very important factor in the progress of its civilization. A hundred thousand Germans have settled in the country and form the backbone of many regions.
Since the war Argentina has been one of the principal destinations of citizens of the former Central Empires who were going overseas. The spirit of the civilization has attracted many Jews. More than 160,000 immigrants during the last two generations are credited to Russia, and almost an equal number to Turkey. These last, however, were Turks only by force and were actually Christian Syrians from the Lebanon who became so completely identified with the retail trade of the country that the colloquial name for a small grocery store is "Turco."
All of these elements together do not begin to measure in importance with the Spanish and Italian elements. But in recent years new currents have set in which, if continued, will profoundly modify the character of the country by introducing a large number of Slavs, particularly Poles, Yugoslavs, Czechoslovaks, and Lithuanians, together with the Slavic element among the Germans. Before the World War the immigration to Argentina was about seven-eighths from the Latin countries, but since then these have furnished only about two-thirds.
Argentina therefore represents a white population largely Alpine and Mediterranean with a considerable Nordic element. It is doubtful whether it stands to gain by allowing Alpines to increase, particularly if this brings in different types of culture and traditions. Argentina might well profit by the mistakes of the United States and immediately orient its immigration policy along sound logical and constructive lines.
Chile, unlike the Indo-Spanish countries just south of the United States, is also a white man's country. The pure Indians are a vanishing minority. The Spanish and dominant element is largely made up of Basques, but there has been a substantial addition of British, whose influence is important in commerce and industry, and of Germans, who have dominated the army and education, and have been an important factor in agriculture. Chile, with four million population, is therefore the least Latin of any of the countries south of the United States. The progressiveness and prosperity of the region have long attracted the attention of every traveller.
Bolivia is another of the pre-dominantly Indiancountries which have made little contribution to the world. The number of Whites here is negligible. Immigration has never been important and the Bolivian has developed a provincial arrogance and hostility to foreigners which is as prejudicial to his own interests as it is unwarranted. Scarcely one-fifth of the people even speak Spanish in their daily life, and two-thirds are primitive Indians, the others being hybrids of varying degrees.
Paraguay is an Indian republic which has not only avoided the Negro influence common elsewhere but has almost escaped the infusion of white blood. There are scarcely any pure Whites. The Guarani Indians of this region were not highly civilized like the Mayas and Incas, and therefore took on a Spanish culture instead of retaining one of their own. It would have been extremely interesting to see what an Indian republic could amount to in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Unfortunately the course of experiment was obstructed by one of the most sanguinary wars in history (1864-69) in which Paraguay carried on a contest with Brazil and Argentina until the greater part of its male population was destroyed. At the beginning of the war, the population of Paraguay was officially said to be 1,337,437. Even if this were extraordinarily inaccurate and exaggerated, the figures afterward were no less so, for the calculation after the close of hostilities credited the country with a loss of more than a million. More exactly, the population was returnedas 221,709, of which 86,079 were children, 106,254 women, and only 28,746 men. Nothing like this situation has ever before been recorded in a large population. Whole regiments had been made up of boys under sixteen. In more than half a century since then, the country has not begun to recover. Even now its population is less than a million. Immigrants from Europe have always avoided it. Paraguay is in a class by itself.
Peru's four or five million inhabitants are mostly pure Indians, while the remainder are nearly all hybrids. Chinese and Japanese as well as Negroes have contributed to the mongrelization of the mass, and not one in ten even claims to be white, which here, as elsewhere in Latin America, by no means guarantees anything more than a homœopathic dose of European blood.
The aboriginal civilization is often described as remarkably high but seems to have been the work of peoples who antedated the Spanish by a long period; and the Conquerors themselves apparently considered the Peruvian Indians to be less intelligent than those they had encountered in Mexico. The number of Indians decreased during the early Spanish regime until some districts were almost depopulated and the loss of leaders especially was irreparable. Whether or not the present inhabitants are the descendants of the Incas, they have not been able to develop a strong and progressive state.
Ecuador is an isolated and unimportant region inhabited largely by backward Indian tribes. Probably not less than two-thirds of the 2,000,000 population are pure Indian. The handful of Whites and the few hundred thousand hybrids rule the country. The Negro element, never large, is gradually being absorbed and is leaving its stamp on the whole population.
The West Indies are more important to the United States immigration policy than would be expected from their size, because of their close proximity to American ports of entry.
Cuba has always received its immigrants pre-dominantly from Spain, and the imported Negro element, numbering about 800,000 of its three millions of population, is not increasing in importance. The island is considered less white than Puerto Rico, but more than a quarter of a million of the inhabitants are Spanish-born, these comprising nearly three-quarters of all the foreigners.
As in many other Latin-American countries, the Chinese have taken a strong hold, beginning nearly a century ago, and are intermarrying with the Whites.
Cuba does not represent a desirable or needed source of immigration to the United States, and should be put under a proper quota.
Puerto Rico has a population of nearly a million and a half. The fact that this dense population cannot make a living under the present and backward conditions on the island, and that it is continually exercising its right of entry to the United States, is one of the most serious features of the present immigration policy.
The Negro and Mulatto element makes up a majority of the population but is relatively losing ground—partly from high death rates and partly by absorption in the mass. The Indian stock is extinct. Immigration from abroad has been negligible for a long time.
As the island is a territory, the inhabitants are citizens of the United States and cannot be prevented from coming freely into the mainland. The number of Puerto Ricans in New York City was at one time estimated as high as 100,000. If economic conditions are attractive there is nothing to prevent half a million of them from migrating to the continent and adding their traits to the much-overloaded "melting pot."
It is now clear that the United States made a great mistake, after the war with Spain, in taking over territories that were already populated by aliens. Previously the territory that was acquired was largely empty and suitable for settlement by the old stock. What has been done is not easy to undo, but it may at least serve as an emphatic lesson against any further acquisitions of inhabited territory in the future. Meanwhile there is an embryonic movement for independence in Puerto Rico, which may have to,indeed should, be encouraged in order to give the United States protection from its own folly.
The Virgin Islands, which the United States bought from Denmark in 1917, have, like other West Indian islands, a population almost exclusively Negro or Mulatto.
The British West Indies are overwhelmingly black, though many of them, such as New Providence, Barbados, Bermuda, and the Bahamas, have substantial English aristocracies that guard jealously their racial heritage. These British islands, particularly Jamaica and Barbados (the latter one of the most densely populated spots in the whole world) have been fertile sources of black emigration to other islands and to the mainland.