150 SCIENCE was estimated in 1919 that there were 200 Among the recent most successful animals imported into the United States are the Aberdeen-Angus cattle, the Herefords, and the Belgian draft horses. Among the Hereford cattle, solely since 1901, America has developed a polled or hornless variety which has added another virtue-that of early maturity, thus producing "baby beef."5 Thus through national, state, county and private expenditure of millions of dollars annually, we now have as integral parts of our economic life scores of plants and animals which were alien importations only a few years ago. Over extensive areas there is so much of common knowledge about these plants and animals that as public opinion it dictates common policies and practises. Shift the picture just a little. While we carefully nurtured many of our native plants, the native Indians who were here so long that they had become a distinct breed of mankind, and who in thousands of years of adjustment to American conditions had fitted American environmental areas better than did their plants, we either slew, or as remnants segregated as enforced dependents, not only rob 5 Personal letter from George M. Rommel, chief, Animal Husbandry Division, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. bing them of their native life which 1 Again shift the picture. While I wish to state again as I stated in 1 with added emphasis, the imperative America of scientific research among peoples along the lines of ethnic here vironmental influences, amalgamation similation, and the need of labora further this research and conserve its That we to-day should have abundan tories for practically every science anthropology, and ignore the richnes materials in our midst for anthropological studies of practical value to our nation is a mistake whose consequences will be far-reaching in their disaster. "Legislation which ignores the facts of variation and heredity must ultimately lead to national deterioration," said the British birth-rate commission in 1917. Every day henceforth in the life of the American nation anthropological data should be recorded just as our Treasury Department daily keeps its fingers on the financial pulse of the nation. In leaving this point I quote as a pertinent scientific fact of to-day a sentence from Pearson's recent address at Cardiff above referred to: "The future lies with the nation that most truly plans for the future, that studies most accurately the factors which will improve the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally." We come now to the first of the two problems vital to America which we wish especially to consider. Mr. Frederick A. Wallis, Immigration Commissioner at the port of New York, recently said that the greatest problem before America to-day is the Immigration Problem. The whole nation is coming to a realization of the truth of this statement. The seriousness of the problem is equalled only by our lack of data, our lack of methods and technique, our general ignorance in dealing with it. Ferrero, the Italian historian, recently said: My first surprise [on coming to the United States], and a very great one it was, arose from my examination at close quarters, of the policy pursued by the United States in dealing with the immense hordes of immigrants, who yearly pour into their harbors from all parts of the Old World. This question was of especial interest, as he said, "to a historian of Rome, like myself, to whom history has taught the great internal difficulties which were caused in every ancient s Pages 139-140, Guglielmo Ferrero, "Ancient Rome and Modern America, '' 1914. Page 45, "The Declining Birth-rate by the National Birth-rate Commission,'' London, 1917. 7 Page 376, "Institutes of Anthropology," by Professor Karl Pearson, SCIENCE, October 22, 1920. state by the metoipoi or peregrini aliens]." This great problem of the ad sion, the distribution, and the assimilatio the immigrant in America is at base anthr logical. 66 Ethnic groups differ one from another. is commonly supposed to be true that differences are only "skin deep," but you I know that ethnic groups differ beneath skin. We know that the processes of pig metabolism are so unerring and persis that patches of skin taken from one pe and grafted on another take on the propor of pigmentation natural to the "stock seat on which the transplanted skin lives. know also that ethnic differences are so n more than only "skin deep" that ov transplanted from one person to another son would reproduce children of their kind without influence by the person served as stock" or seat for the transpla ovaries. There are no experiments of this known to me, but what has been proved with other animals would without questio true of human animals. Thus there is s tific reason to speak of different "breeds people whose differing physical characteri are to-day due to the factors of heredity dent in the reproductive germ cells. Et differences are not simply "skin deep." are germinal. They begin at the functi innermost center of the person, and they tinue through to the outside. The man runs sees the outside differences bet breeds of people. The anthropologist k they begin inside in the seeds of the breed Out of the physical man grows the psy man. As out of these different physical acteristics of the different breeds of pe come the psychic characteristics of t breeds of people, it should be expected the reactions of the different breeds of p would exhibit differences. The prac handler of peoples knows such is the ca whether he is an administrator of coloni policeman in any large cosmopolitan city boss of a gang of mixed "foreigners" on American railway job. At the present mo 152 SCIENCE it can not be said that these differing reactions of the different breeds of men are due to physical differences or to psychic differences or to social and cultural differences, or to something yet unnamed. All that is known is that different breeds of people commonly possess distinguishing reactions in many of the affairs of life. The American immigration problem is centered in the various breeds of people who are clamoring to come to our shores or who are already in our midst. What facts and tendencies of strength and weakness for the future of the American nation are in those various On the answer to this quesethnic groups? tion hinges the whole immigration problem. It is a question for the most careful study, the accumulation of accurate data, and for effort at scientific conclusions on the part of anthropologists in order that an intelligent public opinion based on known facts, instead of sentiment or prejudice or commercial profits for the few, may dictate our policies and practise in regard to the peoples coming to us or already here. Some peoples can, do, and will continue to build into the American plan of development. Others do not, and should not Others be expected so to develop without due education and often tedious application. probably never would. We must have a public opinion on this question based on scientific facts as to the relative assimilability of the various peoples already here, and also on the actual attitude of the leaders of the several groups toward the necessary American goal of rapid and complete assimilation. If further immigration is to be allowed or encouraged, the national policy should welcome those groups most favorable to assimilation, and should restrict those unfavorable to assimilation. So also in the problem of the distribution of each one of the peoples coming to us from Eu- saved it. The anthropologist should be a put at the service of the nation such k edge of European environments and p and of American environmental areas the different immigrant peoples could b to, or educationally advised to go to, areas and employments most likely to helpful rather than injurious to the imm ing generation. Let me cite a few illustrations of imm A distribution personally known to me. of well-to-do Holland-Dutch farmer Between 1850 and 1860 a small g Finns came from the copper mines of to northern Michigan to work in the and Hecla mines. Since that time, larly since 1900, northern Michigan a cially northern Minnesota have attract Finns from Finland. I know well the in Minnesota. There they find as well may be an environment identi It is a heavily that of Finland. area with ridges of drift strewn with bowlders. Glacial lakes, marshes a streams are everywhere. The forest nadian" and identical with that of Other peoples, even the Scandinavia passed by those rough lands with th and marshes, which the Finns actu out. There they continue to settle, forests and make small farms. They ductive immigrants, happy and suc their own sort of familiar climate, fo and country life. I know some of are joyous on those farms after having lived some years in the hustle of our Twin Cities. The Finns found their own environment by accident." The German-Russians also by accident went to the open plains of the Dakotas, and there in areas so like their Russian farms they have become contented and many are wealthy farm ers. The chief adjustment they had to make was to larger farms, and American citizenship and language. While around many of the extensive mines and plants of our fundamental industries the Slavic-Russians are struggling to adjust themselves from the open-air life of Russian farms to the intense breathless life of the industrial gang. Many of those Slavs have been as misplaced as were the Holland-Dutch. With expert care and study we put our imported plants and animals in the areas to which they are best adapted, but we allow the peoples coming to us to go where chance or material profit for the moment leads them. The results of anthropological and environmental researches in Europe and America could be so popularized as to become important factors in the matter of immigrant distribution, and so assist in checking the growing and fatal disease of urbanization in America. The problem of the assimilation of our immigrant peoples has become of such importance in the last few years that it has attracted nation-wide attention and started a nation-wide movement known as Americanization. It is in this field of national endeavor that anthropology has an opportunity for paramount service to our nation. I wish in discussing this point to bring to you not simply a theory of what might be done but to tell you what actually has been done along this line in the University of Minnesota. Two years ago I presented a paper before this section in Baltimore on the plan then recently passed at the University of Minnesota to attempt to make a practical application of the science of anthropology to the great Ameri9"The Finn in America," by Eugene Van Cleef. Reproduced from Bulletin of The American Geographical Society, 1918. canization problem about which the whole tion was so much concerned and yet at same time about which it was so much wildered as to practical methods of approa The Americanization Training Course now been established at the University Minnesota for more than two years. Its ject is the training of Americanization le ers to hasten the assimilation of the vari peoples in America toward the highest c mon standards and ideals of America prac able for that generation. The course founded on our anthropology courses wh have been developing in our university fourteen years. Those courses consisted only of the usual foundation courses on development of man, races and culture, bu courses dealing with modern anthropolog problems especially those of vital importa to our immigrant nation. They have d with the peoples who have come and who coming to America as immigrants, and v the negroes who came as slaves. They dealt with the resulting peoples in Ame due to amalgamation and adjustment, those psychic results so essentially Ameri that we called them "Americanisms." On establishment of the training course t courses were emphasized and developed, on top of them we developed professi courses on the technique, the method, and organization of Americanization work, technical courses on the principles of a elementary education, the adult elemen learning process, and the adult elemen teaching process, and also such practical courses as supervised work with foreign ples in homes, residence communities, in trial plants, public schools, etc. There been difficulties, since we were so largely i untried field. Some of the courses of n sity were at first only experimental. Inst ors had not always all the training we m have wished. But the contact with wo in the same field, especially as we have able to bring them in during our summer sions, when they have come as instructors students from New York, California, and 154 course. ters in our middle states, has given a splendid Not only is this work being done in the icanization work, but it will come to be nized more and more that with America heterogeneous population her public educators, her social workers, her poli correction agencies will have to make p use of anthropological knowledge of th ous peoples with whom they deal. To sum up the immigration problen is of such dominant importance to-day of its phases anthropological at base, ar are to arrive at any correct solution questions of restriction, distribution similation of the immigrant in Amer must be made of anthropological kn and data and research. The second problem before our na day which is at base anthropological wish to consider is the Negro proble person in ten in our nation is Neg know practically nothing of scientific pological value about the American Toward him there is more fierce race than toward any other people, yet pro stronger ties of personal friendship tween members of different races th between individual southern whites a ern Negroes. As to the relative in capacity of the American Negro greater disagreement of opinion exists white persons who think they know th any other people. There is impera of scientific research and the accumu scientific data to help our nation in tion of the Negro problem. The careful student of our nation sees four great Negro movements set America like deep-swelling tides. The first is that of Negro segreg great natural segregation movement place in at least three extensive area southern states. Negroes flourish b white people in those areas. The decreasing and the Negroes increa they not only outnumber the whites number them increasingly year by similar natural segregation is taking many of our large cities. in The national problem for us is wh |