conclusion as to the character of the persons intermarrying is hardly warranted. However, it would seem that if such marriages were a success, even to a limited extent, some evidence would be found in a collection of thirty-seven cases. It is my own opinion, based on personal observation in the cities of the South, that the individuals of both races who intermarry or live in concubinage are vastly inferior to the average types of the white and colored races in the United States; also, that the class of white men who have intercourse with colored women are, as a rule, of an inferior type."

A study of the Negro-white unions in Minneapolis and St. Paul shows that the white women entering into such unions are mostly foreign-born, and with few exceptions "social wrecks." In summing up the results of the study, the investigator says: "From personal observation there would seem to be not a single case in which the white wife of a Negro is truly happy over her marriage. In such cases as were investigated there invariably have been unfavorable circumstances which forced the white woman or girl to accept the approaches and attentions of the Negro. Outside of the innocent and ignorant foreignborn and country-bred girls, none of these women are to be pitied, for, leaving out the exceptions referred to, the majority are social degenerates or moral outcasts. There is not a self-respecting white woman or girl who would marry a Negro of the class visited or investigated. Those who have done so, from whatever cause, are, in a certain sense, white slaves, who try to make life happy by selfdeception." 10

11

The white wife of a Negro: "finds herself ostracized by both white and Negro women." ". . . "She is severed from all intercourse with her white neighbors; she does not go out in public with her Negro husband; she would not recommend her sisters or others to marry Negro men, obviously on the ground that such mixed marriages bring social unhappiness and dissatisfaction." 12

Fortunately the union of whites and blacks results in few offspring. The investigation in Minnesota shows that: "The average number of children will not exceed two to a family.”

" 13

"Hoffman, Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, p. 210.

10 Quoted by Hoffman, "Problem of Negro-White Intermixture and Intermarriage," Eugenics in Race and State, reprint, Vol. 2, p. 186.

"Ibid., p. 184.

12 Ibid., p. 185. "Ibid., p. 185.

The records of charity organizations in large cities show not infrequently that the white women who are married to Negro men are often helped. Superintendent Spindler, of the poor department of Milwaukee, stated through the Milwaukee Sentinel "that a large percentage of the white women in mixed marriages at one time or other receive aid from his office." 14

There are several cases of the marriage of reputable white women to Negro men. The second wife of Frederick Douglass is an example. But it would be difficult to name examples to the number of half a dozen. The wife of Jack Johnson, the pugilist, whatever her standing before marriage, was led to commit suicide, assigning as her reason loneliness and unhappiness.

In commenting upon the Negro-white marriages in Minnesota, Hoffman says: "Race intermixture, on the fringe of social decrepitude, is not in the slightest degree an indication towards a tendency which may possibly lead to race fusion. . . . Intermarriage between whites and blacks, just as much as wrongful sexual relations without marriage, are essentially anti-social tendencies and therefore opposed to the teachings of sound eugenics in the light of the best knowledge available to both races at the present time." 15

The number of mulattoes in our population may throw some light upon the extent of racial intermixture which has been, and is, going on outside of marriage.

There are no statistics as to the number of mulattoes of earlier date than 1850. Some idea, however, can be formed of their number in Colonial times from the census records of Maryland. In 1755 the census of that colony showed that eight percent of the Negroes were mulattoes, i. e., there were 42,764 colored people, and of these 3,592 were mulattoes. On the assumption that the percentage of mulattoes was the same in the other colonies there would have been 27,552 mulattoes in the country at that date.16

The percentage of our colored people who were mulattoes in 1850 was 11.2; in 1860, 13.2; in 1870, 12; in 1890, 15,2; in 1910, 20.9. Since 1910 our census has not attempted to make a separate count of mulattoes. The increase of mulattoes has been general throughout all sections of the country, and the ratio of mulattoes to pure Negroes has

14 Mar. 12, 1903.

"Problem of Negro-White Intermixture and Intermarriage," Eugenics in Race and State, reprint, Vol. 2, p. 188.

also everywhere increased except in the Mountain, Pacific, and East North Central divisions.17

The mulatto increase has been due mainly to the intermarriage of Negroes and mulattoes, and not to the intermarriage or miscegnation of Negroes and whites.

The percentage of the mulattoes in the colored population of our country has always been greater in the Northern sections.18

According to the census of 1910 the percentage for each section was as follows:

"The distribution of the mulatto population at all times," says Reuter, "for which the facts are known, has been in general accord with the ratio of the races. Where the proportion of whites in the population is highest, the mulatto population as a rule is highest; and where the proportion of Negroes in the population is highest, there, as a rule, the percentage of mulattoes is lowest." 19

The greater percentage of mulattoes in the Northern sections has been due probably to two facts: First, the colored population in the North has always been more concentrated in cities, where Negro women come into contact most frequently with dissolute white men. "It is there, too, that the opportunity to conceal the relationship makes the control of the situation by the prevailing sentiment less effective than in the rural situation." 20

Second, the migration of colored people has been mostly from the South to the North, and the mulattoes, more largely than the Negroes, have formed this migration.

It is evident that the mulatto increase in the United States has been due mainly to the intermixture of Negroes and mulattoes, and not to

17 Reuter, The Mulatto in the United States, p. 119.

the intermixture of Negroes and whites, that the intermixture of whites and blacks was at its maximum in early Colonial times and has been diminishing every year since.

The concensus of opinion of competent observers supports the view that sexual intercourse between whites and blacks is everywhere rapidly diminishing.

Bruce, referring to Virginia, expresses the opinion: "that illicit sexual intercourse between the races has diminished so far as to have almost ceased outside of the cities and towns, where the association, being more casual, is more frequent." 21

A. H. Stone, a planter of Mississippi, and the author of Studies in the American Race Problem, says: "There was a vast amount of this amalgamation up to perhaps twenty years ago. Since then there has been a decided change of sentiment on the part of southern white men. I know that not long ago it was not an uncommon thing to find an overseer or superintendent on the plantation who would have from one to half a dozen concubines. This practice has practically been done away with. The planters will not permit their overseers to do such things, and the overseers themselves will not offend in this regard, although they are placed in an extraordinary position, frequently being the only white person in a great multitude of colored people."

The testimony of Southern men on this subject is confirmed by the opinions of outsiders who have had opportunity to acquaint themselves with the facts. For example, James Bryce, referring to the Negro in the United States, says: "There is practically no admixture; and so far as can be foreseen they will remain, at least in the sub-tropical part of the South, distinctly African in their physical and mental characteristics for centuries to come. The same remark holds true of the white and black races of South Africa, where the processes of blood mixture, which went on to some extent between the Dutch and the Hottentots, has all but stopped." 22

Raymond Patterson, a Northern man, and author of The Negro and His Needs, remarks that he found the opinion prevailing "over all the south, that the amalgamation of the black and the white races is rapidly disappearing."

" 23

The Plantation Negro as a Freeman, p. 53.

"Assimilation of Races in the United States," printed in the Smithsonian report, 1893, p. 587.

*P. 39.

CHAPTER 58

OPPOSITION TO AMALGAMATION

Sentiment of the Whites and Negroes against Amalgamation-Representative Opinions of Men of Both Races-Unity of Spokesmen for the Negroes of the South against Amalgamation-The Futility of Advocating Amalgamation as a Solution of the Race Problem

UTTING aside all scientific or theoretical considerations, the overwhelming sentiment of both the Negroes and Caucasians against amalgamation ought to be convincing proof of the futility of holding out racial intermixture as a possible solution of the race problem.

Wherever in the United States, or elsewhere, the Negroes constitute a considerable mass of the population they naturally segregate, and find a satisfying social life among members of their own race, and consequently have no desire to intermarry with the whites. In the Southern United States, for instance, the Negroes have a highly developed social life among themselves, and they not only prefer intermarriage with their kind, but cannot understand why any one should even discuss the subject of amalgamation. If they were left alone, the idea of intermarrying with the whites would never enter their minds.

The only champions of amalgamation among the Negroes are found in the Northern states among the mulatto class who do not want to be mixed with or be classed with the blacks, and who have an inadequate. social life among themselves.

Among the white people in the United States there has never been any advocacy of amalgamation except among the few fanatics who flourished during the period of anti-slavery agitation preceding the Civil War. The white race, especially the Nordic branch of it, has always been outspoken against any intermarriage with the Negro. As illustrating the strength of Caucasian sentiment against such mixture, I quote from the writings of several representatives of the race as follows:

Dr. James Hunt, F. R. S., president of the London Anthropological Society in 1864, made the following statement: "It has been a