towns where the birth rate in the native
population for some years past has fallen below the death rate, so that
the native stock has long since ceased to reproduce itself. The foreign
peoples, on the other hand, are rapidly replacing the native stocks, not
merely by the influence of new immigration, but because of a relatively
high excess of births over deaths.

It has been assumed that the prejudice which blinds the people of one
race to the virtues of another and leads them to exaggerate that other's
faults is in the nature of a misunderstanding which further knowledge
will dispel. This is so far from true that it would be more exact to say
that our racial misunderstandings are merely the expression of our
racial antipathies. Behind these antipathies are deep-seated, vital, and
instinctive impulses. Racial antipathies represent the collision of
invisible forces, the clash of interests, dimly felt but not yet clearly
perceived. They are present in every situation where the fundamental
interests of races and peoples are not yet regulated by some law,
custom, or any other _modus vivendi_ which commands the assent and the
mutual support of both parties. We hate people because we fear them,
because our interests, as we understand them at any rate, run counter to
theirs. On the other hand, good will is founded in the long run upon
co-operation. The extension of our so-called altruistic sentiments is
made possible only by the organization of our otherwise conflicting
interests and by the extension of the machinery of co-operation and
social control.

Race prejudice may be regarded as a spontaneous, more or less
instinctive, defense-reaction, the practical effect of which is to
restrict free competition between races. Its importance as a social
function is due to the fact that free competition, particularly between
people with different standards of living, seems to be, if not the
original source, at least the stimulus to which race prejudice is the
response.

From this point of view we may regard caste, or even slavery, as one of
those accommodations through which the race problem found a natural
solution. Caste, by relegating the subject race to an inferior status,
gives to each race at any rate a monopoly of its own tasks. When this
status is accepted by the subject people, as is the case where the caste
or slavery systems become fully established, racial competition ceases
and racial animosity tends to disappear. Tha