Applied Eugenics Part 29

The Immigration Commission made a report to Congress on Dec. 5, 1910, in which it suggested the following possible methods of restricting the volume of immigration:

1. The exclusion of those unable to read and write in some language.

2. The reduction of the number of each race arriving each year to a certain percentage of the average of that race arriving during a given period of years.

3. The exclusion of unskilled laborers unaccompanied by wives or families.

4. Material increase in the amount of money required to be in the possession of the immigrant at the port of arrival.

5. Material increase in the head tax.

6. Limitation of the number of immigrants arriving annually at any port.

7. The levying of the head tax so as to make a marked discrimination in favor of men with families.

Eugenically, it is probable that (3) and (7), which would tend to admit only families, would be a detriment to American welfare; (1) and (2) have been the suggestions which have met with the most favor. All but one member of the commission favored (1), the literacy test, as the most feasible single method of restricting undesirable immigration, and it was enacted into law by Congress, which pa.s.sed it over President Wilson's veto, in February, 1917.

Records for 1914 show that "illiteracy among the total number of arrivals of each race ranged all the way from 64% for the Turkish to less than 1% for the English, the Scotch, the Welsh, the Scandinavian, and the Finnish. The Bohemian and Moravian, the German, and the Irish each had less than 5% illiterate. Races other than the Turkish, whose immigration in 1914 was more than one-third illiterate, include the Dalmatians, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Russians, Ruthenians, Italians, Lithuanians, and Roumanians."

It is frankly admitted by the proponents of this method of restriction that it will keep out some who ought to come in, and let in some who ought to be kept out. It is in some cases a test of opportunity rather than of character, but "in the belief of its advocates, it will meet the situation as disclosed by the investigation of the Immigration Commission better than any other means that human ingenuity can devise.

It is believed that it would exclude more of the undesirable and fewer of the desirable immigrants than any other method of restriction."

On the other hand, it is argued that the literacy test will fail of success because those who want to come will learn to read and write, which will only delay their arrival a few months without changing their real character. But the effect of such attempts will separate those who succeed from those who are too inferior to succeed, which would be an advantage of the plan rather than a defect.

The second method of selection enumerated (2) above, was proposed by Rev. Sidney L. Gulick, particularly with a view to meeting the need of restriction of Asiatic immigration.[151] This immigration will be discussed shortly, but in the meantime the details of his plan may be presented.

"Only so many immigrants of any people should be admitted as we can Americanize. Let the maximum permissible annual immigration from any people be a definite per cent. (say five) of the sum of the American-born children of that people plus those who have become naturalized of the same people. Let this restriction be imposed only upon adult males.

"Taking the 1910 census as our basis, the 5% Restriction Proposal would have fixed the maximum permissible immigration of males from North and West Europe at 759,000 annually, while the actual annual immigration for the last 5 years averages but 115,000. The permissible immigration from South and East Europe would have been 189,000 annually, while the average for the last five years has been 372,000. When applied to China, the policy would have admitted 1,106 males per year, while the number admitted on the average for the last 5 years has been 1,571. The proposal would provide for the admission of 1,200 j.a.panese annually, here again resulting in the exclusion on the average of 1,238 males yearly during the years 1911-1915. No estimate is made here of the effect of the exclusion of males on the arrival of women and children."

The percentage restriction is unsatisfactory to a eugenist, as not sufficiently discriminating.

The literary restriction has been a great step forward but should be backed by the addition of such mental tests as will make it fairly certain to keep out the dull-minded as well as feeble-minded. Long division would suffice as such a test until better tests relatively unaffected by schooling can be put into operation, since it is at this point in the grades that so many dull-minded drop out of the schools.

Oriental immigration is becoming an urgent problem, and it is essential that its biological, as well as its economic and sociological features be understood, if it is to be solved in a satisfactory and reasonably permanent way. In the foregoing discussion, Oriental immigration has hardly been taken into account; it must now receive particular consideration.

What are the grounds, then, for forbidding the yellow races, or the races of British India, to enter the United States? The considerations urged in the past have been (1) Political: it is said that they are unable to acquire the spirit of American inst.i.tutions. This is an objection which concerns eugenics only indirectly. (2) Medical: it is said that they introduce diseases, such as the oriental liver, lung and intestinal flukes, which are serious, against which Americans have never been selected, and for which no cure is known. (3) Economic: it is argued that the Oriental's lower standard of living makes it impossible for the white man to compete with him. The objection is well founded, and is indirectly of concern to eugenics, as was pointed out in a preceding section of this chapter. As eugenists we feel justified in objecting to the immigration of large bodies of unskilled Oriental labor, on the ground that they rear larger families than our stock on the same small incomes.

A biological objection has also been alleged, in the possibility of interbreeding between the yellow and white races. In the past such cases have been very rare; it is authoritatively stated[152] that "there are on our whole Pacific coast not more than 20 instances of intermarriage between Americans and j.a.panese, and ... one might count on the fingers of both hands the number of American-Chinese marriages between San Diego and Seattle." The presence of a body of non-interbreeding immigrants is likely to produce the adverse results already discussed in the earlier part of this chapter.

Eugenically, then, the immigration of any considerable number of unskilled laborers from the Orient may have undesirable direct results and is certain to have unfavorable indirect results. It should therefore be prevented, either by a continuation of the "gentlemen's agreement"

now in force between the United States and j.a.pan, and by similar agreements with other nations, or by some such non-invidious measure as that proposed by Dr. Gulick. This exclusion should not of course be applied to the intellectual cla.s.ses, whose presence here would offer advantages which would outweigh the disadvantages.

We have a different situation in the Philippine islands, there the yellow races have been denied admission since the United States took possession. Previously, the Chinese had been trading there for centuries, and had settled in considerable numbers almost from the time the Spaniards colonized the archipelago.

At present it is estimated that there are 100,000 Chinese in the islands, and their situation was not put too strongly by A. E. Jenks, when he wrote:[153]

"As to the Chinese, it does not matter much what they themselves desire; but what their descendants desire will go far toward answering the whole question of the Filipinos' volition toward a.s.similation, because they are _the_ Filipinos. To be specific: During the latter days of my residence in the Islands in 1905 Governor-General Wright one day told me that he had recently personally received from one of the most distinguished Filipinos of the time, and a member of the Insular Civil Commission, the statement that 'there was not a single prominent and dominant family among the Christianized Filipinos which did not possess Chinese blood.' The voice and will of the Filipinos of to-day is the voice and the will of these brainy, industrious, rapidly developing men whose judgment in time the world is bound to respect."

This statement will be confirmed by almost any American resident in the Islands. Most of the men who have risen to prominence in the Islands are mestizos, and while in political life some of the leaders are merely Spanish metis, the financial leaders almost without exception, the captains of industry, have Chinese blood in their veins, while this cla.s.s has also taken an active part in the government of the archipelago. Emilio Aguinaldo is one of the most conspicuous of the Chinese mestizos. Individual examples might be multiplied without limit; it will be sufficient to mention Bautista Lim, president of the largest tobacco firm in the islands and also a physician; his brother, formerly an insurgent general and later governor of Sampango province under the American administration; the banker Lim Hap; Faustino Lechoco, cattle king of the Philippines; Fernandez brothers, proprietors of a steamship line; Locsin and Lacson, wealthy sugar planters; Mariano Velasco, dry-goods importer; Datto Piang, the Moro warrior and chieftain; Paua, insurgent general in southern Luzon; Ricardo Gochuico, tobacco magnate.

In most of these men the proportion of Chinese blood is large.

Generalizing, we are justified in saying that the cross between Chinese and Filipinos produces progeny superior to the Filipinos. It must be remembered that it is not a very wide cross, the Malayans, who include most of the Filipinos, being closely related to the Chinese.

It appears that even a small infusion of Chinese blood may produce long-continued favorable results, if the case of the Ilocanos is correctly described. This tribe, in Northern Luzon, furnishes perhaps the most industrious workers of any tribe in the islands; foremen and overseers of Filipinos are quite commonly found to be Ilocanos, while the members of the tribe are credited with accomplishing more steady work than any other element of the population. The current explanation of this is that they are Chinese mestizos: their coast was constantly exposed the raids of Chinese pirates, a certain number of whom settled there and took Ilocano women as wives. From these unions, the whole tribe in the course of time is thought to have benefited.[154]

The history of the Chinese in the Philippines fails to corroborate the idea that he never loses his racial ident.i.ty. It must be borne in mind that nearly all the Chinese in the United States are of the lowest working cla.s.s, and from the vicinity of Canton; while those in the Philippines are of a higher cla.s.s, and largely from the neighborhood of Amoy. They have usually married Filipino women of good families, so their offspring had exceptional advantages, and stand high in the estimation of the community. The requirement of the Spanish government was that a Chinese must embrace Christianity and become a citizen, before he could marry a Filipino. Usually he a.s.sumed his wife's name, so the children were brought up wholly as Filipinos, and considered themselves such, without cherishing any particular sentiment for the Flowery Kingdom.

The biologist who studies impartially the Filipino peoples may easily conclude that the American government is making a mistake in excluding the Chinese; that the infiltration of intelligent Chinese and their intermixture with the native population would do more to raise the level of ability of the latter than a dozen generations of that compulsory education on which the government has built such high hopes.

And this conclusion leads to the question whether much of the surplus population of the Orient could not profitably be diverted to regions occupied by savage and barbarian people. Chinese immigrants, mostly traders, have long been going in small numbers to many such regions and have freely intermarried with native women. It is a matter of common observation to travelers that much of the small mercantile business has pa.s.sed into the hands of Chinese mestizos. As far as the first few generations, at least, the cross here seems to be productive of good results. Whether Oriental immigration should be encouraged must depend on the decision of the respective governments, and considerations other than biologic will have weight. As far as eugenics is concerned it is likely that such regions would profit by a reasonable amount of Chinese or j.a.panese immigration which resulted in interbreeding and not in the formation of isolated race-groups, because the superior Orientals tend to raise the level of the native population into which they marry.

The question of the regulation of immigration is, as we have insisted throughout this chapter, a question of weighing the consequences. A decision must be reached in each case by asking what course will do most for the future good both of the nation and of the whole species. To talk of the sacred duty of offering an asylum to any who choose to come, is to indulge in immoral sentimentality. Even if the problem be put on the most unselfish plane possible, to ask not what will be for this country's own immediate or future benefit, but what will most benefit the world at large, it can only be concluded that the duty of the United States is to make itself strong, efficient, productive and progressive. By so doing they will be much better able to help the rest of the world than by progressively weakening themselves through failure to regulate immigration.

Further, in reaching a decision on the regulation of immigration, there are numerous kinds of results to be considered: political, social, economic and biologic, among others. All these interact, and it is hard to say that one is more important than another; naturally we have limited ourselves to the biologic aspect, but not without recognizing that the other aspects exist and must be taken into account by those who are experts in those fields.

Looking only at the eugenic consequences, we can not doubt that a considerable and discriminatory selection of immigrants to this country is necessary. Both directly and indirectly, the immigration of recent years appears to be diminishing the eugenic strength of the nation more than it increases it.

The state would be in a stronger position eugenically (and in many other ways) if it would decrease the immigration of unskilled labor, and increase the immigration of creative and directing talent. A selective diminution of the volume of immigration would tend to have that result, because it would necessarily shut out more of the unskilled than the skilled.

CHAPTER XVI

WAR

War always changes the composition of a nation; but this change may be either a loss or a gain. The modification of selection by war is far more manifold than the literature on the biological effects of war would lead the reader to suppose. All wars are partly eugenic and partly dysgenic; some are mainly the one, some are mainly the other. The racial effects of war occur in at least three periods:

1. The period of preparation.

2. The period of actual fighting.

3. The period of readjustment after the war.

The first division involves the effect of a standing army, which withdraws men during a part of the reproductive period and keeps most of them in a celibate career. The officers marry late if at all and show a very low birth-rate. The prolonged celibacy has in many armies led to a higher incidence of venereal diseases which prolongs the celibacy and lowers the birthrate.[155] Without extended discussion, the following considerations may be named as among those which should govern a policy of military preparedness that will safeguard, as far as possible, the eugenic interests:

1. If the army is a standing one, composed of men serving long terms of enlistment, they should be of as advanced an age as is compatible with military efficiency. If a man of 35 has not married, it is probable that he will never marry, and therefore there is less loss to the race in enrolling him for military service, than is the case with a man of 20-25.

2. The army (except in so far as composed of inferior men) should not foster celibacy. Short enlistments are probably the most valuable means of avoiding this evil.

3. Universal conscription is much better than voluntary service, since the latter is highly selective, the former much less so. Those in regular attendance in college should receive their military training in their course as is now done.

4. Officers' families should be given an additional allowance for each child. This would aid in increasing the birth-rate, which appears to be very low among army and navy officers in the United States service, and probably in that of all civilized countries.

5. Every citizen owes service to his nation, in time of need, but fighting service should not be exacted if some one else could perform it better than he where he is expert in some other needed field. The recent action of England in sending to the front as subaltern officers, who were speedily killed, many highly trained technicians and young scientists and medical men who would have been much more valuable at home in connection with war measures, is an example of this mistake.

Carrying the idea farther, one sees that in many nations there are certain races which are more valuable on the firing line than in industries at the rear; and it appears that they should play the part for which they are best fitted. From this point of view, the Entente allies were wholly justified in employing their Asiatic and African subjects in war. In the United States are millions of negroes who are of less value than white men in organized industry but almost as valuable as the whites, when properly led, at the front. It would appear to be sound statesmanship to enlist as many Negroes as possible in the active forces, in case of war, thus releasing a corresponding number of more skilled white workers for the industrial machine on whose efficiency success in modern warfare largely rests.

The creation of the National Army in the United States, in 1917, while in most ways admirably conducted, was open to criticism in several respects, from the eugenic point of view: