lond,
long-headed, and tall Teutonic type. The phenomenon of urban selection
is something more complex than a mere migration of a single racial
element in the population toward the cities. The physical
characteristics of townsmen are too contradictory for ethnic
explanations alone. To be sure, the tendencies are slight; we are not
even certain of their universal existence at all. We are merely watching
for their verification or disproof. There is, however, nothing
improbable in the phenomena we have noted. Naturalists have always
turned to the environment for the final solution of many of the great
problems of nature. In this case we have to do with one of the most
sudden and radical changes of environment known to man. Every condition
of city life, mental as well as physical, is at the polar extreme from
those which prevail in the country. To deny that great modifications in
human structure and functions may be effected by a change from one to
the other is to gainsay all the facts of natural history.

4. Inter-racial Competition and Race Suicide[191]

I have thus far spoken of the foreign arrivals at our ports, as
estimated. Beginning with 1820, however, we have custom-house statistics
of the numbers of persons annually landing upon our shores. Some of
these, indeed, did not remain here; yet, rudely speaking, we may call
them all immigrants. Between 1820 and 1830, population grew to
12,866,020. The number of foreigners arriving in the ten years was
151,000. Here, then, we have for forty years an increase, substantially
all out of the loins of the four millions of our own people living in
1790, amounting to almost nine millions, or 227 per cent. Such a rate of
increase was never known before or since, among any considerable
population over any extensive region.

About this time, however, we reach a turning-point in the history of our
population. In the decade 1830-40 the number of foreign arrivals greatly
increased. Immigration had not, indeed, reached the enormous dimensions
of these later days. Yet, during the decade in question, the foreigners
coming to the United States were almost exactly fourfold those coming in
the decade preceding, or 599,000. The question now of vital importance
is this: Was the population of the country correspondingly increased? I
answer, No! The population of 1840 was almost exactly what, by
computation, it would have been had no increase in foreign arrivals
taken place. Again, between