Expansion of races

Front matter

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Class ___^ii_l^

Preface

In compliance with the custom which obliges one to apologize for presenting to the public anything new, it must be explained that this work is an anthropological study of one of the reasons for migration, war, famine and pestilence, and why mankind, in obedience to natural law, is unconsciously organizing to prevent these disasters and to make it possible for every babe to reach old age — excepting those meeting unavoidable fatal accidents, and even these become avoidable as knowledge increases.

Harmful customs cannot persist or they would destroy the species. War has survived because its advantages were greater than its disadvantages, and it is an instance of the survival of the fittest custom. There is no doubt, nevertheless, that on account of its disadvantages it is being constantly replaced by other methods cheaper in life and money, but which serve the same ends — survival of the most — and in time national wars will cease, but it will be a long time, for such a consummation requires a world-wide organization. In the absence of war there are other factors which prevent survival of all children, and necessitate a large birth rate.

The work, therefore, takes up the reasons for the increase, spread and organization of populations, together with the checks to overpopulation. It merely applies to man the natural laws which are known to govern the spread of all other species of plant or animal. It then explains the relationships of higher and lower races of man, and shows why we expanded across the Atlantic to America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centui'ies, and thence across the Pacific, and why the higher races must always control the tropics, though acclimatization and colonization are not possible.

To explain the reasons for om- expansion to the Philippines and why such a move is but a part of the course of human events.

VI PREFACE

which can be traced back to prehistory, it was necessary .to prove the one fact of universal overpopulation. This brought into the discussion many other topics which are apparently disconnected but which are really all bound together, and which must be explained if we are to understand why the retention of the Philippines may be our future necessity. To reduce the text to reasonable limits, much has been omitted which merely emphasized what had already been explained. On a few topics, such as the need of nitrogen nourishment in or out of the tropics, there is a profusion of evidence, which would be unduly extensive were it not for the fact that it is not otherwise possible to dispel popular misconceptions.

Throughout it has been the object to describe merely the facts and the laws governing them. There is no right or wrong in natural phenomena, and therefore no attempt has been made to hide the awful brutality, suffering, poverty and morality which have been part and parcel of man's evolution to the present point in which modern civilization makes the suffering of a new kind.

Above all else there has not been presented any Utopian plan for curing nature. The facts are stated, and if we are shocked we must remember that it is natural that most of us must be crowded out of existence long before reaching the biblical age of three score and ten. Ethics never bothers nature, and we are governed by natural law to an extent we have never realized.

Most of the manuscript was written in various parts of the world, while actually collecting the data and observing the phenomena described. Particular emphasis, of course, has been given to the conditions in the Philippines — topics of which most Americans are sadly ignorant.

My thanks are due to Dr. George M. Gould and Mr. H. I. Brock for most valuable scientific and literary criticisms, to Dr. Clark I. Wertenhaker for his careful revision of the proofs, and Dr. Victor E. Watkins for revision of manuscript. For the index I am indebted to Messrs. Max Weinberg and Frank H. Rand, to whom thanks are also expressed.

Chapter I Page

Man Subject to Natural Law — The Earth Saturated with Life — Equality of Births and Deaths — Migration is Natural and Universal — Movements in Confined Fluids and Populations — Wave Motions — Present Crises in Population Movements.

CHAPTER II Saturation Point op Populations . . . , . .11

Definition of Saturation — Constant Increase of Foods — Tenuity of Primitive Populations — Slowness of Population Increases — Forced Increases of Lower Races— Diminution of Population when Civilization Decays — Relation of Saturation Point to Rainfall — Soil Exhaustion — Density of Tropical Populations — Culture May Diminish Populations — Subdivision of Farms — Migrations for Larger Farms.

Chapter III

The Farmers Increasing Surplus Food — Undersaturation of America — Loss of Industries Prevents Supersaturation — Industries Produce Supersaturation — Density and Productiveness — Increase of Urban Population — Decrease of Western Drift — Specialization of Farms.

Chapter IV

Evidences or Universal Overpopulation . . . . .42 Some Starve where Food is Plentiful — Low Wages in Dense Populations — Cheapness of Life in Crowded Masses — Insufficient Housing — Urban Overcrowding — Medieval Overcrowding — Poverty of the ITnfit — Wealth of the Efficient — The Unemployable Unemployed — Gradual Uplifting of the Efficient — Labor Combinations Due to Overcrowding — Surplus Workmen Necessary — The Necessity for "V Poverty — Poverty Irremediable — Diseases of the Unfit — Starving the Children — Famines — Poverty of the Early Christians.

Chapter V

Enemies Limit Populations — Cleanliness and Civilization — Evolution of Disease Germs — Plague and Dirt — Tuberculosis and Overcrowding — Civilization Avoids Disease — Typhoid an Index of Overcrowding — War, Famine and Plagues.

Vlll CONTENTS

Chapter VI Page

Evolution of the Brain — Cradles of the Two Races — Time of Man's Origin — Length of Life — Migration Alters Evolution — Modifications Due to Change of Environment — Man's Evolution Due to Overpopulation.

Chapter VII

Migration of the Least Efficient — Earliest Human Currents — Early Streams from Asia — Aryan Streams from Europe to Asia — Later Aryan Streams — Migration of Languages — Later Baltic Streams — Tartar Streams — Southern and Western Streams — Organization of Migrants — Migrants are Always Young — Peopling of America — Slowness of Early Migrations.

Chapter VIII

Early Southern Migrations Caused the First High Civilizations . . . . . . . . . . . .110

Conquest of Lower Types — Tribal Exclusiveness — Aristocratic Aloofness.

Chapter IX

Extermination of Competitors — Right-handedness Due to War — Losses Due to War — Denunciation of War — Evils of Peace — Beneficence of War — Murder Formerly Necessary — Legal Executions — Fatal Customs — Suicide — Murder of the Infirm — Infanticide — Calamities.

Chapter X

Famine Causes War and Follows War — Famines are Local and Periodical — Indian Famines — Chinese Famines — Old World Famines — Japanese Famines — American Conditions.

Chapter XI

Nitrogen Starvation or the Modern Famine .... 147 Nitrogen is the Basis of Life — Source of Nitrogen — Nitrogen is our Main Food — Results of Nitrogen Deficiency — Nitrogen Never in Sufficient Amounts — Defective Development in Nitrogen Starvation — Diseases of the Nitrogen Starved — The Dangerous Fad of Low - Nitrogen Diet — The High Price of Nitrogen.

Chapter XII

Reduction of Births an Old Natural Phenomenon — French Birth Rates — Large Birth Rates in Colonial America — Child Labor Necessary for Large Families — Large Families Cause Poverty.

CONTENTS IX

Chapter XIII Page

The Causes op the Reduced Birth Rate ..... 188 Marriage Customs — Sexual Selection — Elimination by Prostitution — Delay of Marriage — Increasing Celibacy — Proper Age for Marriage , — Abortion — Prevention of Conception — Birth Rate Among the Overcrowded.

Chapter XIV

Relation of Birth Rate to Saturation Point and to Death Rate , 210 Birth Rates Vary with Prosperity — Large Rates in Undersaturation — Birth Rates Lessen with Death Rates — Diminishing War Losses — Lessening Death Rate from Disease — Lengthening of Average Life — Every Life-saving Device Lessens the Birth Rate.

Chapter XV

Mutual Assistance in Unions — Adaptation of Parasites — Mutual Dependence of All Living Things — AH Men Aid Society — Human Life Sacred Because Useful — Mutual Benefit of International Unions — American Nations Mutually Dependent — Imperialism is Commensalism.

CHAPTER XVI The Myth op Acclimatization ....... 242

Tropical Infections — Adaptation to Environment — Uses of Pigmentation — Elimination of Migrants — Disappearance of Hybrids — Colonization in Zones — Illustrations of Misplacement — Opinions of Observers — Negro Decay — American Deterioration — There Can Be No American Type.

Chapter XXVI

Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces — Centralizing and Democratic Parties — Foreign Political Parties — Immigrants are Normally Democrats — Roman Law of Aristocracies — Opposing Interests of Democrats — Savage Life and Despotism — Industrial Democracy — Past and Future Politics.

Chapter I

MAN SUBJECT TO NATURAL LAW — THE EARTH SATURATED WITH LIFE — EQUALITY OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS — MIGRATION IS NATURAL AND UNIVERSAL — MOVEMENTS IN CONFINED FLUIDS AND POPULATIONS — WAVE MOTIONS — PRESENT CRISIS IN POP- ULATION MOVEMENTS.

MAN SUBJECT TO NATURAL LAW

Man, being an animal, is under the influence of all the natural laws governing the evolution, increase and spread of other species. The possession of intelligence is generally, though falsely, assumed to upset law, yet the brain is a material thing, after all is said, and its functions are natural phenomena. Intelligence merely makes new phenomena and modifies old ones, but does not change any laws. The invention of balloons and aeroplanes has not upset gravitation. The great saurians once overran the earth, but later a few frail mammals became dominant because possessed of enough intelligence to survive conditions which killed the more stupid saurians. In like manner man became the dominant mammal, and the more intelligent races have long been exterminating or controlling the lower.

The basic fact, governing the evolution and spread of any species, is the fact that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive to raise offspring of their own. The surplus are killed off in one way or another, and only the fittest for survival remain. If these fittest are markedly different from the parent forms there is a new species, though biologists have not yet determined why offspring vary from ancestral types.

It is amazing that though man's enormous birth rate has been under discussion for over a century— ever since the epochmaking essay on Populations by Thomas R. Malthus— yet the full significance of the phenomenon has never been realized. Darwin himself called attention to the fact that unless we are thinned out by war, famine, disease and other accidents, our birth rate would so populate the earth in a few centuries that there would not be standing room. That is, in accordance with the laws governing all living forms, our birth rate is so large that there is chronic overpopulation, and always has been. The fact has been ignored and even denied, probably because of our neglect to apply to man to their fullest extent, all the laws governing his existence. Until we coldly consider him as merely one of the earth's animals, it is not possible to understand the past and present expansion of races.

THE EARTH SATURATED WITH LIFE

Like every other organism, man spreads over the earth in search of food, for if he can obtain subsistence he is loth to move. Consequently there can be but one reason for shifting of residence — relative overpopulation at the native place.

It is a biological axiom that every part of the earth supports as many living things as can find food, or that the earth is always saturated with life. This does not mean that all the food is consumed, for that would result in extermination of supplies — some must be left for reproduction, and some may be unattainable. j|

The number of individuals in any species does not vary much from year to year, for if there are too many, some must starve, and if there are too few, they have increased chances of rearing offspring, and the balance is restored at once. If the numbers are too great they also destroy their own food supply, and in subsequent years the saturation point is much reduced. A visitation of a swarm of locusts, for instance, may so far destroy vegetation, that no locusts can exist in that place for months or years. Again, an increase in numbers of one species, is soon followed by an increase of the enemies which prey upon it, for every species of living thing is a food for some other. The increase of enemies destroys this increase, then the enemies die out from lack of food, and both species revert to their normal saturation points or the maximum numbers which can obtain food. Averaging up all this constant shifting and balancing of food and feeders, we see that in the long run the death rate in any species is exactly equal to the birth rate — a law which holds universally for surviving species, and which cannot be persistently violated without one of two results — either the species will eventually overrun the earth, crowding out all competitors, or else it dies out. The law holds irrespective of the birth rate, and is as true for elephants, which have but few offspring, as for the fish, which have thousands, for in each case the number of deaths is equal to the births. After the two old elephants die they are succeeded by but two survivors of all their children, and similarly the myriads of young fish all die but two.

EQUALITY OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS

The number of deaths being due to the number and activity of enemies and the severity of the environment, it follows that when no care can be given to the offspring the birth rate is strictly proportional to the severity of the struggle for existence. If the enemies are very slowly increased then there isi a greater survival of the offspring of those having the largest families, and a progressive increase in the birth rate, from the extinction of those with the least number of offspring. Thus, certain sea birds have so few enemies that they survive though they. lay buM)ne egg a year at their nesting homes on the barren rocks in mid-ocean. On the other hand, the increasing enemies of the codfish gradually killed off the descendants of those having a small number of offspring, until now the cod lays many thousand eggs a year, and no matter how many hatch out, all but two of them, on an average, are eventually killed before leaving descendants. The number of offspring is also inversely proportional to the protection they receive from their parents. The lower animals, giving them no care whatever, allow the enemies full play, but this is really only one element in the problem.

Certain ground birds must have twenty or thirty hatched eggs a year, even if they do not give the young the greatest care, far greater than the sea birds having but one egg a year.

If the enemies increase suddenly, not allowing for adjustment to the environment by increase of offspring or increased ability to escape the enemies, then extinction results as in the case of our buffalo. If the enemies are lessened as by changing the environment then the animal increases prodigiously. The mongoose in India has six litters a year, of five to ten offspring each time, but its enemies kill them all except two, and can then kill the parents also, yet the mongoose runs no risk of extinction. Transported to Jamaica to kill rats, it has overrun the Island and bid fair at one time to ruin all the plantations. There is the similar rabbit pest of New Zealand and Australia, a pest which also ruined one of the Madeiras* about 1435.

Evolution cannot take place unless there are adversities to kill off those whose variations make them the least fit, so that there will be a survival of those better fitted to the environment, and a gradual change in the species. Under no other conditions can change take place, for if all are preserved there cannot be a survival of the fittest. We need not go into an explanation of why there are no two individuals exactly alike in any species, how all vary from the average, and how some of these variations make the individual better fitted for the environment than his brothers or cousins and more likely to survive and leave offspring. What is necessary for the present discussion is to realize that there is always a ruthless destruction of life in the ^wiggle for existence when evolution occurs, and that this struggle depends upon overpopulation.

The average of a species must necessarily be out of adjustment to its environment if evolution occurs, because it is those varying from the average which survive. If the average were the best fitted then they would survive in the largest number and there would be no change in the species, a condition existing among a few marine animals, which after millions of years are the same as their paleozoic ancestors.

* Porto Santo.

MIGRATION IS NATURAL AND UNIVERSAL

We can apply all these rules to man, for he always exists in as dense masses as he can. He has advanced the most of all, has always been out of adjustment, and those better fitted than the average are the survivors. Death of excessive numbers is the price paid for the advance of the survivors. The tendency to spread is, then, a natural phenomenon wholly beyond our control. The courtiers who thought that the Norse king could control the sea waves, and Xerxes who whipped the Hellespont, were not more foolish than modern men who think that by a word we might control the spreading waves of population. It is common knowledge that the ocean waves are under the guidance of perfectly definite and rigid natural laws, and that their speed, size and power can be calculated almost as accurately as eclipses of the moon. There are spreading waves of every species of living thing, man included, and they are as rigidly controlled by definite laws as are the currents of water. Though! the laws relative to the movements of population have actually \ little in common with the laws of fluids, yet the analogy between ) the two is remarkable. A fluid is a mass composed of particles • which move about freely among themselves, the higher the temperature the more rapid and the greater are the excursions of each particle. Population is likewise a mass composed of units which move about freely among themselves, and the greater i the excitement the greater and more rapid the movements. '

Population sometimes flows sluggishly like lava, as in the [ gradual spread of Teutonic races into America, sometimes j fiercely like volatile ether, as in those frightful excursions of the i Mongols into Europe. In the former case there is adhesion to the surface, as with oils ; in the latter there was separation | from the surface, as with fluid mercury.

The path selected is that of least resistance. Though most rivers are now flowing as they have for untold thousands of years, yet they are constantly deviating in obedience to new forces, and though the channels of human travel are virtually the same on land as they have been since prehistoric times, yet there are constant deviations in obedience to new forces, such as the steam engine, which make new paths of least resistance.

MOVEMENTS IN CONFINED FLUIDS AND POPULATIONS

Confined fluids which do not move as a whole, are still in internal motion, and there is a restless "convection" by which internal currents cause a ceaseless mixing of particles. In the same way there are minor currents in each nation at peace, or from nation to nation, causing a ceaseless movement of mixing, so that the inhabitants of a district are constantly changing. The longer a confined fluid is kept at rest, the less become the currents of convection, and the longer a people is at peace the quieter it becomes, and the more steadfast is the population of any one district. Our own spreading currents were comparatively feeble and sluggish until stirred up by the Mexican War and the discovery of gold in the West, when they became tremendous. Currents which overflow political boundary lines are now just as constant as ever, but they are more evidently overflows. It seems as though the effect of modern governments is to build high walls along the borders to confine the fluid so that it is deeper, like a mill pond. Thus, population may be dense in one place and thin in another, but no marked mixing occurs as of old, until the fluid rises above the retaining walls and the surplus flows over. If the counter pressure on the other side should diminish, the wall might break and the fluid pour out, like the recent German flood into Alsace-Lorraine. In that case the nations build new retaining walls around the flooded territory.

A homogenous population, if allowed to rest, settles itself into layers like liquids of different densities, and this phenomenon is due to the normal variations in brain power. There is an upper, middle and lower class in every nation, except possibly among the lowest savages. We have our submerged tenth, and our best people, just as they have in England; and likewise in both countries, there are constant currents carrying men from one class into another. After a few generations in an upper or a lower class, the descendants are apt to die out or seek the great middle class — the real people. It is usually three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves, in spite of some notable exceptions.

We may pour unmiscible fluids into a bottle and shake them together to get an emulsion of separate particles, but the fluids will settle into layers again. Similarly unmiscible populations forcibly shaken together will naturally separate. This is best illustrated in the Pacific Islands, where the original black, short, woolly-haired negritto type in the North, and the Melanesians, a similar type in Australasia, were the original inhabitants. They were forced to the hills or subdued by the second or pre- Malay race. A third people, the Malays, leaving Asia comparatively recently, have forced themselves in here and there. These three types have been enormously mixed, and yet are as distinct as they were hundreds of years ago. Japanese and Chinese have spread to the Pacific Islands and mixed with the rest of the population, and yet the frail half-breed types gradually disappear. It seems as though the various races of man were almost of different species, for by the law so mu^h used by Darwin, different varieties of the same species, such as the domestic dog, produce vigorous fecund offspring, while hybrids (like mules) between animals of different species, are sterile or soon die out. Though the Negro and the Aryan had the same ancestor, if we go far enough back geologically, they have diverged so much as to be almost different species instead of being different varieties of the same as usually taught — indeed, a few scientists believe them to be different species.

WAVE MOTIONS

There are wave motions in fluids wherein each particle describes a tiny movement and then returns to its original place, the wave spreading widely. So, in population, a commotion at one spot is spread by wave motion throughout the whole mass, and the further from the center the less effect. A crime of a negro in Mississippi produces a commotion resulting in a lynching, but in New England this wave is not felt at all, as they are too far away. They only note an after-wave caused by the second crime. Popular excitements increase the movements of populations and are analogous to rise of temperature, indeed, it seems as though they boil and exert increased pressure. The *'mob mind,"* is the motion in an excited mass. It closely resembles the action of all gregarious animals, for a tiny disturbance is transmitted to the herd, which takes instant flight — a habit due to natural selection.

War is merely a whole nation in movement like a boiling fluid, for some cause is acting on each particle. It always has the "will" of the nation behind it, in spite of the fact that many if not most of the units do not understand what is impelling them to form that "will." Leaders only lead, they never drive, and indeed statesmen often find that they cannot prevent war even when they know it will be disastrous. It is a flood. Now, when an ocean moves, as in the tides, the force causing it is tremendous, and similarly the force causing war is the irresistible struggle for existence among nations. Evolution depends upon these contests. Isolated populations are like dead seas, but unconfined warlike ones are clear rivers carrying on civilization. It seems as though war actually purifies nations, in the same way that agitation clarifies water by mixing oxygen to consume the filth. It certainly stirs up the filth temporarily, and makes it more evident and, like a muddy river, may even accumulate more, but that should not blind us to the fact that it has been a natural phenomenon whose benefits have outweighed its disadvantages. It will subsequently be explained how the warrior nations themselves are ending war because they are attaining its purposes in other ways; we are here concerned merely with its origin and fluid-like nature.

National diseases due to peace, are far worse than those due to war. War is hell because its destruction is more evident, but the destruction of peace is immeasurably more infernal, as we will shortly see. Our late war did not destroy nearly as many lives as Philadelphia destroys in a short period by typhoid fever. We often hear of the number of Filipinos killed in their war, but the number is inconsiderable compared with the quarter million or more kiUed by cholera after that war

*See Prof. E. A. Ross, Popular Science Monthly, July, 1897.

ended. The deaths in war are not a particle more ruthless than the deaths in peace in the lower classes from sheer inability to secure a living.

PRESENT CRISIS IN POPULATION MOVEMENTS

At the present time, and since 1896, we are in one of those frequent periodical crises of great excitement and movement in more than one part of the world. The average man cannot resist these wave riiotions and currents any more than a particle of water can resist the ocean currents. He is a particle in a fluid and an obedient subject of the laws under which he worked out his own evolution as a unit in society, and he instinctively obeys the laws governing the mass. He may think he is a free agent and that his conduct is the result of his own reasoning. What a man thinks is to such a large extent the result of his inheritance that we know that there is very little real logical reasoning on any topics even among civilized nations. In international affairs most men as particles of the mass are ruled by biological forces just as rigidly as the ocean particles are ruled by mechanical forces.

When the wind blows the seed of a tree broadcast, each seed obeys the forces acting on it, whether it is to survive or not, and when populations thus spread, each man obeys the forces acting on him whether he is to survive or not. It is not fate nor destiny. This nation shows a tendency to spread to a climate so different from the native one that extinction is positively certain. It behooves us to pause and see whether our impulse is as fatal as that which carries a moth to the flame.

In true representative countries, the representatives obey the popular will, and as a rule such nations are more quickly influenced by natural law than those with hereditary rulers. To be sure men are easily led, like sheep, and are intensely sensitive to suggestion, absorbing ideas which they subsequently think are their own. In race wars and expansion — they are far more under natural law than suggestion — nevertheless they can be guided by leaders even if they cannot be restrained, just as waters may be guided when we cannot confine them. It is the part of wisdom, then, to teach what leads to survival, and not obey the popular will leading to destruction.

By keeping in mind the fact that populations obey the laws of fluids in a general way, we can appreciate the result — wherever it is possible for this fluid to spread, it instantly does so. It is under constant internal pressure forcing it in every direction. A dam does not prevent water reaching the ocean to which gravity draws it, and immigration laws may temporarily check human currents, but the ultimate result is not changed in the slightest.

Chapter II

DEFINITION OF SATURATION — CONSTANT INCREASE OF FOODS — TENUITY OF PRIMITIVE POPULATIONS — SLOWNESS OF POPU- LATION INCREASES — FORCED INCREASES OF LOWER RACES — DIMINUTION OF POPULATION WHEN CIVILIZATION DECAYS — RELATION OF SATURATION POINT TO RAINFALL — SOIL EX- HAUSTION — DENSITY OF TROPICAL POPULATIONS — CULTURE MAY DIMINISH POPULATIONS — SUBDIVISION OF FARMS — MI- GRATIONS FOR LARGER FARMS.

DEFINITION OF SATURATION

Before discussing our fluid-like migrations, it is necessary to determine what is overcrowding. We will call a place saturated when it contains as many men as can be fed with food raised in that place. Here, again, population acts like a fluid. The soil cannot possibly hold all the rain poured upon it. Some must run off or be evaporated after collecting in pools, nor can the surface hold the rain of babies poured upon it. They, too, collect in pools of humanity to be evaporated by death, or they must flow off in migrating streams as soon as able.