ility of an individual to consumption."[37]

In order to explain away this apparent advantage in favor of the Negro,
the author has invented a unique physiological principle, viz: "A
physiological law may hold good for one race and not for another."[38]
It is noticeable that the author applies this principle only when it
suits his convenience but withholds it whenever it runs across his
theory.

By a series of measurements based, confessedly, upon insufficient data,
it is concluded that the Negro has a smaller lung capacity, smaller
chest expansion, and a higher rate of respiration than the white man,
and that the Mulatto is inferior to both the parent races in these vital
functions. These differences are considered a powerful factor in lung
degeneration, and proof positive of physical inferiority. In these
respects he tacitly repudiates his erstwhile principle that "a
physiological law may hold good for one race and not for another," and
assumes that the two races are subject to like conditions of disease and
death.

On the whole it may be said that this is the least interesting chapter
in the whole book. The data are so slender and the arguments are so
evidently shaped to a theory, that we are neither enlightened by the one
nor convinced by the other. But the author's judgment must be justified.
The gloomy warning comes with Catonian regularity at the end of each
chapter. Listen to his last words: "A combination of these traits and
tendencies must in the end cause the extinction of the race."[39]

If the Negro is inferior in vital function and power to the Caucasian,
he will be a public benefactor who scientifically demonstrates the fact.
But the colored race most stubbornly refuses to be argued out of
existence on an insufficient induction of data and unwarranted
conclusions deduced therefrom.

CHAPTER IV.

_Subject._ Amalgamation.

_Gist._ "The crossing of the Negro race with the white has been
detrimental to its true progress and has contributed more than anything
else to the excessive and increasing rate of mortality from the most
fatal disease, as well as to its consequent inferior social efficiency
and diminishing power as a force in American national life."[40]

The importance of this proposition is apparent when we consider that the
Negroes in this country are a thoroughly mixed people. The pure African
type has been well nigh obliterated. It is pointed out also that the
mongrel progeny has