Eugenics in race and state.

  • International Congress of Eugenics 1921 : American Museum of Natural History)
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Eugenics in race and state. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    228 E. M. EAST progressive agricultural policy, we shall have to pay an immediate premium on our future insurance, but will it not be worth it? You no doubt will ask what I have to suggest? There are many sound proposals that one could make, but our time is too limited to do more than to sketch them roughly. And besides no one could present proposals satisfactory in detail without much more careful study than I have been able to give the matter. Perhaps the most helpful means of putting agriculture on a sounder basis is an indirect one—severe permanent restrictions on immigration and possibly temporary prohibition. Since 1820, 28 million immigrants have arrived at our shores, and at the last census only 53.8 per cent of the popula¬ tion were native whites, born of native white parents. These newcomers have been welcomed and possess all the rights and privileges of the oldest inhabitants, yet it is wholly proper for those on the grounds to forbid further entrance if that be necessary. Is it not necessary? Any present cry for immigration can only be made by fools, hypocrites or ignoramuses. We have grown too fast already and have not moulded our population into a single nation. Those who call for immigrants wish to exploit their labor at low wages, not realizing that cheap labor is generally the most expensive in the long run. Our later immigrants have found their ways largely to the cities where they have been engulfed in the maw of the factory, giving the farmers still more mouths to feed besides tempting the native farmer boys away by seemingly larger wages to be their superintendents. An increased number of mouths to feed does not solve the food production problem, particularly when many of the owners of these mouths are hardly productive enough to earn their keep. The only solution of this predicament, from a purely business point of view, is to pay the immigrant the starvation wage which the pro-immigration propagandist hopes to pay him. But fundamentally this is neither good business policy nor good ethics. It is no doubt the memory of short periods of such treatment, that makes many aliens who may now be receiving more than they really earn, lend ear to any pernicious radical propagandist with an ax to grind. No ! If we are to settle this great economic problem, we must not only cut down this too rapid expansion of population through immigration, but should cut the native birthrate as well—if it be done in the right place. There should be no misunderstanding of the wise position to take on this phase of the problem. Certain transportation companies have always been willing to betray the country into accepting undesirables for the thirty pieces of silver involved in a steerage passage. There are those whose love of race is stronger than their love of country, hoping to transplant their