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THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF ANTHROPOLOGY TO OUR
NATION.
By
A. E. Jenks
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[Reprinted from SOIENCE, N. S., Vol. LIII., No. 1864, Pages 147–156, February 18, 1921]
A.E. Janks.
THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF ANTHRO POLOGY TO OUR NATION1
THE last few years have taught American
scientists the lesson of service to our nation in
time of crisis. It had seemed to be a condition
of our American civilization that the vast bulk
of our people spent their energies solely on
their private interests. Most of these private
interests were producing things demanded and
sold in the market, hence were esteemed at all
times of practical value. A science which did
not benefit commodities hawked and sold in
the public market was given only scant passing
notice. This condition has had much to do
with the slowness of certain sciences in devel-
oping their practical phases. But in our time.
of national peril it was demanded of every sci-
ence that to the utmost limit of its practical
possibilities it be useful to the state. So great
was the impetus given to the development of
the practical side of scientific research that in
pragmatic America of this hour a science
which can not develop its practical side of
service to its nation and to its day can not
long retain respect among other sciences.
It is probably true, as Earl Gray said, that
nationalistic statesmen are largely opportunists
who see only a little way ahead, and who are
entitled to congratulate themselves if they
steer their powerful nations safely among the
rocks and bars which appear unexpectedly in
the uncharted course along which they sail.
A long look at nations as they have come and
gone reveals the tragedies of the opportunist
statesmen. In modern times the nations of the
old world seem to have had their courses quite
largely projected into the future by the inev-
itable continuity of a long historic past. Yet
we now see their statesmen too were largely
1 Address by the vice-president and chairman of
Section H (Anthropology), of the American Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Science, at Chi-
cago, December 28, 1920.
only opportunists; they could not foretell the
future. Since this is true, can Americans
easily overstress the need our nation has of all
data obtainable to assist her along her course
so infinitely new?
I have no hesitation in saying that of Amer-
ica's recognized problems those most unique,
and most difficult to foresee in solution are
anthropological at base. Because of these
problems confronting America our anthropol-
ogists have the opportunity and the duty of
service to our nation second to no other group
of scientists. I put them first.
Psychologists have given us the scientific
procedure for thinking through great prob-
lems: First, there must be a clear statement
of the problem; second, the accumulation of all
obtainable data; third, a survey of the accumu-
lated data with all possible judgment and
guided imagination, resulting in conclusions
which, after constant efforts at refutation and
verification, should furnish grounds for future
action. I fear that we as anthropologists have
sometimes stopped at the second point without
going on to the most vital part of the proced-
ure covered by the third. A step further than
this is necessary, however. In a nation with
government by public opinion and universal
franchise any conclusions which are to affect
national policies and actions must be so popu-
larized that an educated public opinion will
irresistibly dominate the nation in questions
affected by these conclusions. Public opinion
so engendered concerning anthropological ques-
tions would put their solution in the scientific
class-that of deliberative thought and action.
It would take their solution out of the disre-
putable but still existing class of chance or
luck; and out of the still more common but
extremely wasteful class of trial and error.
From anthropologists should come the data, as
2
SCIENCE
far as possible the conclusions, and to a certain
extent the programs for the solutions of our
national problems which have an anthropolog-
ical basis.
We shall not have time in one brief paper to
state all the anthropological problems whose
solution would be of practical value to our na-
tion. I wish to touch in a general way on the
fundamental value to our nation of practical
anthropological research as a whole and then to
pass on to a more extended discussion of the
relation of anthropology to two of the gravest
problems before the nation to-day.
Stated broadly the bed-rock national anthro-
pological problem is the survival and improve-
ment of the human element of our nation.
The sine qua non of civilization at any time is
man's survival on physical, intellectual, and
moral planes as high as those he possessed at
that time. Civilization is lost to the extent
that man's survival-planes are lowered. The
goal of civilization seems to be for increasing
numbers of mankind to survive on more ele-
vated planes of mutual physical, intellectual
and moral freedom. It appears to be a part
of cosmic evolution for each generation to
press toward that goal. But to a large extent
even to-day our generation is pressing blindly
toward this goal with its mind on remedial fac-
tors rather than on causative factors. There
is a pertinent question and its answer in Ells-
worth Huntington's new book, "World-Power
and Evolution":
Shall we despair because the church, the school,
the charity organization, and the state have not
yet destroyed war, pestilence, lust, greed, cruelty
and selfishness? Far from it. These agencies can
not possibly play their proper parts unless science
comes to their aid.
The time has come when anthropologists who
study breeds of men from the disinterested
scientific point of view should help create
dominating constructive public opinion
founded on research to assist our nation
toward her goal of developing civilization.
In my "Report on the Science of Anthro-
pology in the Western Hemisphere and the
Pacific Islands," published by the Carnegie
Institution of Washington in 1914, I discussed
this question at some length under the section
99 66
with the general title of "Modern Problems"
and the sub-titles of "Ethnic Heredity," In-
fluence of Environment on Mankind," "Hu-
man Amalgamation," and "An Anthropolog-
ical Laboratory." I here quote from the open-
ing and closing paragraphs of that section of
the "Report":
It must not be supposed that the anthropologist
is limited i interest and his field of work to
man's evolution of the past. He knows man is still
in the making. He studies man's present-day evo-
lution in its individual and ethnic aspects. He
makes his studies of both the past and the present,
with an eye to the future, in order that those things
which vitiated or benefited the evolutionary proc-
ess in the past, and which vitiate or benefit it to-
day, may serve as guides for future generations.
241
The field of anthropological study of modern
people is new and unoccupied, only the barest be-
ginnings having been made. The horizon of this
coming field for research among present and fu-
ture man and ethnic groups is seen to extend in-
definitely into the future. It would be difficult to
overestimate the practical value of these continued
studies. Their utility would be world-wide.2
A permanent laboratory should eventually be
established in connection with these studies in
ethnic heredity, environment, and amalgamation
where records of research would continually ac-
cumulate and where they would be kept indefi-
nitely. From this laboratory new data should be
published frequently, not alone for conclusions
which might have been arrived at, but that such
data might assist investigators in various parts of
the world. . .
It may be argued that, even were the facts of
heredity, environment, and amalgamation obtained
and available, they would be of little use to-day,
since influences are already at work which would
be impossible to control. To a certain extent this
is true, but one of the essentials of human progress
is that man works not for his own generation
alone, but for future generations. One can not
measure the beneficial results to future genera-
tions of a body of accurate and scientific facts
available on these subjects. Moreover, facts of
this kind to-day in America become a part of edu-
2 Page 54 of "Reports upon the Condition and
Future Needs of the Science of Anthropology,'
presented by W. H. R. Rivers, A. E. Jenks, and S.
G. Morley, at the request of the Carnegie Institu-
tion of Washington, printed 1914.
12:26
JAN
SCIENCE
J42 pal
cated public opinion surprisingly soon, and have
their inevitable and far-reaching influences.3
The president of the Anthropological Sec-
tion of the British Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science in his recent address at
Cardiff emphasizes in no uncertain terms the
necessity of making anthropological research
of service to the nation, and urges the estab-
lishment of "anthropological institutes" in
British universities to further this end.*
There can be no question of the service an-
thropological knowledge and research might
render to the United States to-day.
In the improvement of plants and animals
in the economic life of the United States our
experts are constantly at work using as their
ready tools every latest fact of scientific
knowledge. We have carefully studied, se-
lected and improved the native American
maize, potatoes, yams, tobacco and turkey, and
built them into our everyday life.
The United States government keeps in con-
stant employ experts who in recent years have
imported many varieties of plants and animals
which are successfully and permanently built
into our economic production.
Among such plants, I quote from a personal
letter received from Dr. Fairchild, Agricul-
tural Explorer in Charge, United States De-
partment of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant In-
dustry, Washington, D. C., 66 are the durum
wheat brought since 1898 from Russia with
now an annual value in increased wealth to
the farmers of the United States of $50,000,-
000, the Sudan grass imported in 1909 from the
Sudan with a crop in 1918 valued at more
than $10,000,000, the Rhodes grass from
Rhodesia, represented now by an industry of
several millions, the feterita from the Sudan,
which since 1906 has grown to an industry of
over $16,000,000 annual value, the Egyptian
long staple cotton, which since 1899 has be-
come an industry worth over $20,000,000 in
southern California, the soy bean crop, which
to-day amounts to six and one third million
dollars, and the newer things, such as the
avocado, the dasheen, the chayote, the Chinese
8 Page 58, ibid.
4''Institutes of Anthropology," by Professor
Karl Pearson, in SCIENCE, October 22, 1920.
3
jujube, the Oriental persimmon, the Japanese
bamboo, the tropical papaya, the Japanese
rices, which cover now 60,000 acres of land in
California alone."
To this list must be added the date brought
from the Sahara or the deserts of Arabia. It
was estimated in 1919 that there were 200
acres of date palms already established in the
Coachella and Imperial Valleys of California.
Concerning this industry Dr. Fairchild says.
not only have our experts "been instrumental
in building up this industry, but their study
of the methods of propagation, the diseases
and methods of their control, the insect pests
and the requirements of the date palm con-
stitute the largest collection of exact data now
in existence in regard to this industry, and
the Old World has had to come to America for
the latest information in regard to this in-
dustry. Too great emphasis can not be placed
upon this accomplishment and the manner in
which he [Mr. Swingle] has brought it about.
It represents in my mind one of the most re-
markable pieces of agricultural work which
has been done in recent times."
Among the recent most successful animals
imported into the United States are the Aber-
deen-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 an-
nually, 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 com-
mon 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,
• Personal letter from George M. Rommel, chief,
Animal Husbandry Division, U. S. Department of
Agriculture, Washington, D. C.
4
SCIENCE
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 segre-
gated as enforced dependents, not only rob-
bing them of their native life which had de-
veloped their own peculiar strengths, and
preventing them from building into the com-
mon life of America, but condemning them to
sure deterioration. A scientific study of the
American Indians as the men who had ad-
justed themselves to American environments
for thousands of years would have been rea-
sonable. What elements of strength, resist-
ance or immunization had those men devel-
oped to have so long withstood the varied
harshness of our American environment?
Perhaps these qualities may be seen to be the
prerequisites of permanent survival in Amer-
ica. The American plant breeder has long
made use of hardy native plants to make his
more prolific hybrids more resistent to cold,
drought, disease and insect pest. Had we
been as intelligent in the matter of the In-
dians as we have been with plants and ani-
mals there is little question that conditions
would have been better for the Indians, and
they might have added desirable strength to
our nation.
Again shift the picture. While we have
imported so many plants and animals, and
with scientific knowledge and care have built
them into our common life, there have been
coming to our shores, of their own volition,
peoples from over the earth of many breeds
and many cultures who have distributed them-
selves here in many different environmental
areas. In striking contrast with our state of
knowledge about imported plants and animals
we possess almost no scientific knowledge
about these peoples such that it has become
public opinion even among educated persons—
to say nothing about its dictating nation-wide
policies and practises.
I wish to state again as I stated in 1914, but
with added emphasis, the imperative need in
America of scientific research among modern
peoples along the lines of ethnic heredity, en-
vironmental influences, amalgamation and as-
similation, and the need of laboratories to
further this research and conserve its results.
That we to-day should have abundant labora-
tories for practically every science except
anthropology, and ignore the richness of the
materials in our midst for anthropological
studies of practical value to our nation is a
mistake whose consequences will be far-reach-
ing in their disaster. "Legislation which ig-
nores the facts of variation and heredity must
ultimately lead to national deterioration," said
the British birth-rate commission in 1917.0
Every day henceforth in the life of the Amer-
ican 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 sen-
tence from Pearson's recent address at Car-
diff above referred to: "The future lies with
the nation that most truly plans for the fu-
ture, that studies most accurately the factors
which will improve the racial qualities of fu-
ture generations either physically or men-
tally."7
We come now to the first of the two prob-
lems vital to America which we wish espe-
cially to consider.
Mr. Frederick A. Wallis, Immigration Com-
missioner 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
• 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.
SCIENCE
5
whom history has taught the great internal
difficulties which were caused in every ancient
state by the metoipoi or peregrini [i.e.,
aliens]." This great problem of the admis-
sion, the distribution, and the assimilation of
the immigrant in America is at base anthropo-
logical.
(6
Ethnic groups differ one from another. It
is commonly supposed to be true that their
differences are only "skin deep," but you and
I know that ethnic groups differ beneath the
skin. We know that the processes of pigment
metabolism are so unerring and persistent
that patches of skin taken from one person
and grafted on another take on the proportion
(6 stock" or
of pigmentation natural to the
seat on which the transplanted skin lives. We
know also that ethnic differences are so much
more than only "skin deep" that ovaries
transplanted from one person to another per-
son would reproduce children of their own
kind without influence by the person who
served as
stock” or seat for the transplanted
ovaries. There are no experiments of this sort
known to me, but what has been proved true
with other animals would without question be
true of human animals. Thus there is scien-
tific reason to speak of different "breeds” of
people whose differing physical characteristics
are to-day due to the factors of heredity resi-
dent in the reproductive germ cells. Ethnic
differences are not simply "skin deep." They
are germinal. They begin at the functional
innermost center of the person, and they con-
tinue through to the outside. The man who
runs sees the outside differences between
breeds of people. The anthropologist knows
they begin inside in the seeds of the breeds.
Out of the physical man grows the psychic
man. As out of these different physical char-
acteristics of the different breeds of people
come the psychic characteristics of those
breeds of people, it should be expected that
the reactions of the different breeds of people
would exhibit differences. The practical
handler of peoples knows such is the case-
whether he is an administrator of colonies, a
8 Pages 139-140, Guglielmo Ferrero, "Ancient
Rome and Modern America,'' 1914.
""
policeman in any large cosmopolitan city, or
boss of a gang of mixed "foreigners on any
American railway job. At the present moment
it can not be said that these differing reac-
tions 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 cen-
tered in the various breeds of people who are
clamoring to come to our shores or who are
already in our midst. What facts and tenden-
cies of strength and weakness for the future
of the American nation are in those various
ethnic groups? On the answer to this ques-
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 anthro-
pologists 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 prac-
tise 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
be expected so to develop without due educa-
tion and often tedious application. Others
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 assimila-
tion.
So also in the problem of the distribution of
immigrants in America wise use should be
made of anthropological data. Practically
each one of the peoples coming to us from Eu-
rope has lived for many generations in one
type of environment, in many cases has pur-
6
sued one kind of employment, so it has de-
veloped rather fixed reactions which have
saved it. The anthropologist should be able to
put at the service of the nation such knowl-
edge of European environments and peoples
and of American environmental areas that
the different immigrant peoples could be sent
to, or educationally advised to go to, those
areas and employments most likely to prove
helpful rather than injurious to the immigrat-
ing generation.
SCIENCE
Let me cite a few illustrations of immigrant
distribution personally known to me. A group
of well-to-do Holland-Dutch farmers was
brought as entire families with some thou-
sands of dollars each from the wet alluvial
lands of Holland, and planted in the sand of
a northern Minnesota county on farms previ-
ously selected for the colony. Those families
did not know how to farm on land which
leaches dry in a few hours after a light rain,
and which in the hot growing period of July
and August could profit by heavy rains every
other day. In ten years' time the members of
that colony of industrious and hopeful immi-
grants who came to us prosperous farmers are
scattered, their accumulations wasted, and,
disillusioned, they work for a wage where
they can.
Between 1850 and 1860 a small group of
Finns came from the copper mines of Sweden
to northern Michigan to work in the Calumet
and Hecla mines. Since that time, particu-
larly since 1900, northern Michigan and espe-
cially northern Minnesota have attracted many
Finns from Finland. I know well their homes
in Minnesota. There they find as nearly as
well may be an environment identical with
that of Finland. It is a heavily glaciated
area with ridges of drift strewn with immense
bowlders. Glacial lakes, marshes and small
streams are everywhere. The forest is "Ca-
nadian" and identical with that of Finland.
Other peoples, even the Scandinavians, have
passed by those rough lands with their ridges
and marshes, which the Finns actually seek
out. There they continue to settle, clear the
forests and make small farms. They are pro-
ductive immigrants, happy and successful in
their own sort of familiar climate, forests, soil
1
1
and country life. I know some of them who
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 ex-
tensive 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 im-
ported 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 environ-
mental researches in Europe and America
could be so popularized as to become impor-
tant factors in the matter of immigrant dis-
tribution, and so assist in checking the grow-
ing and fatal disease of urbanization in Amer-
ica.
The problem of the assimilation of our im-
migrant peoples has become of such impor-
tance in the last few years that it has at-
tracted nation-wide attention and started a
nation-wide movement known as Americaniza-
tion. 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 sec-
tion in Baltimore on the plan then recently
passed at the University of Minnesota to at-
tempt to make a practical application of the
The Finn in America," by Eugene Van
Cleef. Reproduced from Bulletin of The Ameri-
can Geographical Society, 1918.
SCIENCE
7
science of anthropology to the great Ameri-
canization problem about which the whole na-
tion was so much concerned and yet at the
same time about which it was so much be-
wildered as to practical methods of approach.
The Americanization Training Course has
now been established at the University of
Minnesota for more than two years. Its ob-
ject is the training of Americanization lead-
ers to hasten the assimilation of the various
peoples in America toward the highest com-
mon standards and ideals of America practic-
able for that generation. The course is
founded on our anthropology courses which
have been developing in our university for
fourteen years. Those courses consisted not
only of the usual foundation courses on the
development of man, races and culture, but of
courses dealing with modern anthropological
problems especially those of vital importance
to our immigrant nation. They have dealt
with the peoples who have come and who are
coming to America as immigrants, and with
the negroes who came as slaves. They also
dealt with the resulting peoples in America
due to amalgamation and adjustment, and
those psychic results so essentially American
that we called them "Americanisms." On the
establishment of the training course these
courses were emphasized and developed, and
on top of them we developed professional
courses on the technique, the method, and the
organization of Americanization work, also
technical courses on the principles of adult
elementary education, the adult elementary
learning process, and the adult elementary
teaching process, and also such practical field
courses as supervised work with foreign peo-
ples in homes, residence communities, indus-
trial plants, public schools, etc. There have
been difficulties, since we were so largely in an
untried field. Some of the courses of neces-
sity were at first only experimental. Instruct-
ors had not always all the training we might
have wished. But the contact with workers
in the same field, especially as we have been
able to bring them in during our summer ses-
sions, when they have come as instructors and
students from New York, California, and cen-
ters in our middle states, has given a splendid
impetus to the development of the work to-day.
The practical value of modern anthropolog-
ical knowledge can no longer be questioned by
one who knows the practical work done by
those who have gone out from the training
course. We have sent our trained Americani-
zation leaders into several different states and
into many different positions, such as those of
state directors, city directors, school directors,
directors with Y. M. and Y. W. C. A.,
churches, women's clubs, and as teachers in
schools, homes, communities and industries.
The continuous demand for these trained lead-
ers is greater than our supply, and a gratify-
ing aspect of this demand is that it so often
comes from centers where already some of our
trained workers are. Our trained leaders are
making good in this practical effort to hasten
assimilation in America, not only because they
are trained in the professional, technical and
practical courses, but, more especially, because
through their anthropological courses they are
equipped to know the different necessary ap-
proaches to, and reaction of, the different
breeds of peoples among whom they work.
Their work is among peoples. They have been
trained to know peoples. This training course
is not yet fully manned or as complete as is
desired due to the almost universal shortage of
funds in higher education. We need espe-
cially research men in physical anthropology,
amalgamation, and environmental influence,
as well as experts in certain practical fields.
In fact, there should develop a genuine labora-
tory of research and of practical application
of anthropological knowledge. The time is
coming quickly when this will be developed
somewhere.
Not only is this work being done in the
University of Minnesota but under the impetus
of the Americanization movement many col-
leges and universities which before had no
anthropology courses of any nature have re-
cently been putting in courses on modern
peoples, especially our immigrant peoples, and
some have added various professional courses
on technique and method. Not only are these
anthropology courses of value in purely Amer-
icanization work, but it will come to be recog-
:
8
SCIENCE
nized more and more that with America's vast
heterogeneous population her public school
educators, her social workers, her police and
correction agencies will have to make practical
use of anthropological knowledge of the vari-
ous peoples with whom they deal.
To sum up the immigration problem which
is of such dominant importance to-day is in all
of its phases anthropological at base, and if we
are to arrive at any correct solution of the
questions of restriction, distribution and as-
similation of the immigrant in America, use
must be made of anthropological knowledge
and data and research.
1
The second problem before our nation to-
day which is at base anthropological which I
wish to consider is the Negro problem. One
person in ten in our nation is Negro. We
know practically nothing of scientific anthro-
pological value about the American Negro.
Toward him there is more fierce race prejudice
than toward any other people, yet probably not
stronger ties of personal friendship exist be-
tween members of different races than exist
between individual southern whites and south-
ern Negroes. As to the relative intellectual
capacity of the American Negro probably
greater disagreement of opinion exists between
white persons who think they know than about
any other people. There is imperative need
of scientific research and the accumulation of
scientific data to help our nation in the solu-
tion of the Negro problem.
The careful student of our national affairs
sees four great Negro movements setting in in
America like deep-swelling tides.
The first is that of Negro segregation. A
great natural segregation movement is taking
place in at least three extensive areas in three
southern states. Negroes flourish better than
white people in those areas. The whites are
decreasing and the Negroes increasing until
they not only outnumber the whites, but out-
number them increasingly year by year. A
similar natural segregation is taking place also
in many of our large cities.
The national problem for us is what type of
Negro and culture is being produced in the
areas of natural Negro segregation. A those
areas to maintain men and culture of a fair
level with the remainder of the nation, or will
they be lowered so that a sort of cultural and
physical quarantine would need to be main-
tained? Will those areas spread their inferior-
ity out over their borders? Haiti and Liberia
are contemporary examples of slackening
Negro culture. We should study the tenden-
cies of this movement in America-this un-
sought for, uninvited, unintended environ-
mental segregation of the two peoples.
A second Negro movement is the present
unprecedented acceleration of Negro migra-
tion from south to north. Ever since the Civil
War the Negro has been a restless migrant,
but during the past three years the migration
has turned particularly away from the south,
and one million or more Negroes have come
directly from their old southern homes into
our northern cities.
The south and the Negro mutually under-
stand each other. The white south will tell
you that it has no Negro "problem," because
there is a perfectly understood procedure in
all interrelations between individuals, or
groups, of the two races. The north and the
Negro are almost total strangers. If the
Negroes become proportionately as numerous
in the north as they are in the south, will the
interrelations between the two peoples be simi-
lar to those now in the south where the public
opinion and the practise of the white south is,
as expressed to me by men in several different
southern areas, just this "The white man
will run the south. Whether just or not, it is
necessary." The recent northern race riots in
East St. Louis, Omaha, Chicago and Duluth
are, in this connection, suggestive.
The most accurate data should be at hand
in regard to this northward migration, and
daily research should be carried on in its many
varying aspects. We need scientific facts to
understand the tendencies of so unprecedented
a movement.
In one aspect of this northward migration
of Negroes decisive opinion should be uttered
without further research, and that is the
movement of alien Negroes into the United
States-largely from the West Indies. Only
those who are so uninformed as not to know
we have a tragically serious Negro problem in
1
SCIENCE
9
;
America can, on any except selfish grounds,
favor the admission of alien Negroes to Amer-
ica. Have we not wisdom and character
enough to prevent the further aggravation of
the problem by the admission of some 6,000
more such aliens yearly?
A third of these Negro movements is the
amalgamation of the Negro and the white, and
the consequent effacement of Negroes by their
physical incorporation with the remainder of
the nation's population.
The growth in the per cent. of mixed-bloods
shows that an increasing per cent. of "Ne-
groes possess mates with white ancestry.
Unless the tide turns the descendants of a
very large per cent. of our present Negroes in
time will be incorporated in the then Ameri-
can breed of men.
1
""
The migration of the Negro to our northern
cities and the large per cent. of foreign-born
whites in these cities greatly complicates this
phase of the Negro question. The foreigner
coming fresh to our shores almost entirely
lacks the racial prejudice which is native to
America. I was told in Cleveland last summer
by a student of the problem there that in that
city intermarriage between the Negroes and
Italians is taking place at a rapid rate in the
two chief Italian centers of residence.
A most careful and conclusive study of our
people of Negro-white ancestry should be made
that we may know how the wholesale absorp-
tion of our Negroes by our whites will affect
the qualities of the nation as a whole. At no
given era in history has one nation probably
been inherently greatly superior or inferior to
another in the same general stage of culture,
yet some competing nations have gone down
while others have advanced. Apparently very
slight physical, intellectual or moral superior-
ity is enough to give successful advantage,
and very slight inferiority enough to result in
disastrous disadvantage between two nations
quite equally favored by environment. His-
tory has no truths to tell of the relative
strength or weakness of a nation so largely
Negro as ours seems at present destined to be-
come. If we are not to blunder on in the
dark, it is well to learn what forecasts of the
future can be made by asking scientific ques-
tions of the present.
The fourth Negro movement I shall note is
that of growing political power due to develop-
ing race consciousness and purposeful organi-
zation for political action.
August 19, 1920, the newly elected president
of the Universal Negro Improvement Associa-
tion is quoted in the press as saying, "The day
is not far distant when the Negro will be a
power in politics." In the October, 1920, num-
ber of The Journal of Negro History an article
by Norman B. Andrews entitled "The Negro
in Politics," closes with these words:
In several of the cities of the North there is
such a large Negro population and so much appre-
ciation among the Negroes of their political power
that they are now launching a movement to nomi-
nate and elect members of their race to represent
them in Congress. It is likely that this may soon
be effected in Chicago, New York and Philadel-
phia.
The National Association for the Advance-
ment of Colored People says that in 1913 it
defeated bills in eleven states out of twelve
which aimed to prevent Negro-white inter-
marriage.10 When an organization in the
interest of one race in America, a race
which numbers one tenth of our total popu-
lation, can control legislation in eleven out
of twelve states as far separated as New
York on the Atlantic and Washington on the
Pacific, it is very evident that that race is
rapidly becoming an important political factor
in the life of our nation.
A few years ago one of the foremost admin-
istrators of research funds in the United
States said the American Negroes could not
be researched by his institution because they
were a political factor in America. Is this
not the all-sufficient reason why we should
have all possible scientific data and knowl-
edge concerning the Negro? The Negroes and
whites in America have become too dynamic
for national disaster longer to be trusted to
adjust their differences mainly on the basis
10 Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Di-
rectors of the National Negro Protective Associa-
tion.
10
of race prejudice on the one hand, or un-
thoughtful sentimentality on the other.
I have endeavored to show in this paper that
our nation should make large use of definite
and specific anthropological knowledge to help
insure her national development. I am as
interested as any anthropologist in all re-
search into the development of man. I am in-
terested in the development of culture. I prize
SCIENCE
as one of my very richest experiences my in-
timate contacts with primitive peoples, but, as
an American believing in America and her
possibilities, I am to-day first of all anxious
that anthropologists use their scientific knowl-
edge to assist America in the solution of her
momentous problems.
ALBERT ERNEST JENKS
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

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UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Jenks, Albert Ernest, 1869-1953.
The practical value of anthropology to o
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