ore probably be some distinct gain, but a
greater loss. There is danger that complex and valuable traits of a race
will be broken down in the process of hybridization, and that it will
take a long time to bring them together again. The old view that racial
crosses lead fatally to race degeneration is no longer tenable, but the
view recently advanced, that crosses are advantageous, seems equally
hasty. W. E. Castle has cited the Pitcairn Islanders and the
Boer-Hottentot mulattoes of South Africa as evidence that wide crosses
are productive of no evil results. These cases may be admitted to show
that such a hybrid race may be physically healthy, but in respect of
mental traits they hardly do more than suggest the conclusion we
advanced in our chapter on the Color Line,--that such miscegenation is
an advantage to the inferior race and a disadvantage to the superior
one.

On the whole, we believe wide racial crosses should be looked upon with
suspicion by eugenists.

The colonizers of North America mostly belonged to the Nordic race.[143]
The earlier immigrants to the United States,--roughly, those who came
here before the Civil War,--belonged mostly to the same stock, and
therefore mixed with the early settlers without difficulty. The
advantages of this immigration were offset by no impairment of racial
homogeneity.

But the more recent immigration belongs mostly to other races,
principally the Mediterranean and Alpine. Even if these immigrants were
superior on the average to the older population, it is clear that their
assimilation would not be an unmixed blessing, for the evil of
crossbreeding would partly offset the advantage of the addition of
valuable new traits. If, on the other hand, the average of the new
immigration is inferior in quality, or in so far as it is inferior in
quality, it is evident that it must represent biologically an almost
unmixed evil; it not only brings in new undesirable traits, but injures
the desirable ones already here.

E. A. Ross has attempted to predict some of the changes that will take
place in the population of the United States, as a result of the
immigration of the last half-century.[144] "It is reasonable," he
thinks, "to expect an early falling off in the frequency of good looks
in the American people." A diminution of stature, a depreciation of
morality, an increase in gross fecundity, and a considerable lowering of
the level of average natural ability are among other result