Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/247

Rh civilized and barbarous peoples is trade. Even when the initial move has been made by the missionary, the trader, scenting the chance for gain, is not slow to follow. In this way one of the earliest forces brought to bear upon the barbarian is that of the sailor and the trader. Unfortunately, there is hardly a class of Anglo-European society whose moral influence is so bad as that of the seamen. The trader sends those commodities which will prove most attractive to the barbarian; and the latter, with his moral nature as yet uneducated, and his power of self-denial undeveloped, is impelled toward the grossest pleasures of intemperance and licentiousness. Even if he only exchange his native indulgences for those brought by the white traders, the effect is most disastrous. The raw American whisky does its deadly work faster than his own "palmy wine."

The policy of the trader finds a response in the attraction of the untutored mind toward the new indulgence; and, too often, the preaching of the missionary is more than offset by the practices of the money seeking trader who has come in the same ship with him. Yet this, it should be remembered, is only incidental. Civilization is to the savage what education is to the child, and one of its objects, attainable perhaps not in one or two generations, is to teach him self-restraint. It certainly is not responsible for his failures in that quality.

The positive influences which are for a time deleterious to a people in process of civilization are probably much more physical than mental. The mind is not sufficiently taxed to create any disturbance in the economy; and the history of the Indian children who have been brought to the schools at Hampton and Carlisle for education does not show any evil consequences to their health from the intellectual impetus given them, they being selected from tribes where the physical condition, food, clothing, etc., were already approximated to the usages of the whites.

Probably no single influence has had so deleterious an effect upon the physique of the rapidly civilized peoples as clothing. Of course, no one will deny Carlyle's doctrine that man is essentially a clothe-swearing animal, and that dress is absolutely necessary in a cultivated community. The climatic conditions of many denizens of the tropics do not require clothing as a matter of protection or comfort, and consequently they do not wear it to any extent. When civilization reaches those people it says, "You must be dressed." Indeed, too often a European or a New England culture says, "You must be dressed in