Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/359

Rh which is highest with that which is lowest in the scale of development."

But such commingling seldom, if ever, takes place from deliberate choice on the part of the reciprocating races; nor, indeed, are many marriages the result of calculation regarding their issue. If, early or late, the nations of the United States are destined to coalesce, the coalition will come about not with observation, but through the gradual and almost imperceptible obsolescence of prejudices.

There is one point which, in dealing with the subject of miscegenation on this continent, has hitherto received meager attention—the diversity of the stocks from which the African emigration to America has been derived. Some of them were more distinct from others than the Spaniard from the Norwegian or the German from the Italian. With several of them there came, no doubt, a considerable share of darkened Semitic blood, while others could claim kindz'ed with races that had won power and renown while Europe was yet in barbarism. Apart from any consideration of white admixture, there has, therefore, been an interblending of dusky tribes which must have materially modified Africa's contribution to the population. As for the more serious question of its relations to the Aryan element there is, as already intimated, difference of opinion. According to the census of 1880, the colored population of the United States was 6,577,497, that of the whites being 43,402,408. During the ten years from 1870 to 1880 the ratio of increase in the former (34•8 per cent) was larger than it had been during any decade except one, that from 180O to 1810. The fact that the ratio of increase of the white population during the period from 1870 to 1880 was only 29•2 per cent, according to the census, naturally occasioned comment and even alarm. In "The Popular Science Monthly" for February, 1883, Professor E. W. Gilliam, in an article on the subject, based on the statistics of the last two censuses, maintained that the colored people were increasing at a rate which, unless prompt measures were taken to prevent it, would result in the inhabitants of the country becoming Africanized. Mr. Henry Gannett, in a recent contribution to the same journal, disputes the data on which Professor Gilliam founded his argument, and denies that the negroes, either in the cotton States or in the country at large, are increasing so rapidly as the whites, and holds that the fear entertained of the latter being ultimately outnumbered is entirely groundless. Nevertheless, even if the colored people were pretty evenly dispersed through the States, the proportion is large enough to cause uneasiness to those who think that their absorption would not improve the nation. As it is, while, since the close of the war, the