428 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

largely determined by custom. It is evident from these traits that we should
expect to find a high rate of illiteracy, a condition which characterizes the population
 of Mexico. According to their last census only 3,000,000 persons in sa
population of 15,000,000 could both read and write, while over 7,000,000 Mexisans,
 12 years of age or over, could neither read nor write. We can search in vain
throughout the countries of Europe—the source of white immigration—for biological,
 economic, and social conditions fraught with a fraction of the danger
inherent in the immigration of Mexicans into the United States.
The same dangerous conditions exist in the countries of Central America, the
West Indies, and most of South America. In Central America the general social
conditions are poor. Illiteracy is common. Illegitimate births equal or exceed
legitimate ones as a rule. The governments are unstable. Peonage as a problem
still persists. The prevailing indifference to racial intermixture creates the same
serious problems as in Mexico. In Colombia and Venezuela the situation differs
only in the presence of a much larger negro element. As in the Latin-American
countries to the north there is no social barrier whatever and intermarriage is
common.
If Brazil is not an Indian commonwealth, neither is it, according to Professor
Foerster, a white commonwealth. In order to supplement or to supplant the
enforced yet incompetent labor of Indians, negro slaves were imported from very
early days, so that by 1820 the negroes of Brazil were estimated to number more
than 2,000,000, or about three times the whites.
From the beginning the Portuguese interbred freely with the negroes, for here,
too, there was never such a feeling of caste or race reluctance as has served in the
United States to act as a pronounced check upon white intermixture with the
black element. This interbreeding has continued to the Present time in Brazil,
with the result that the principal element is negroid. ’ ‘
Nearly 8,000,000 of people to-day inhabit the islands of the West Indies. Of
this vast number there are to-day almost no pure-blooded Indians, and of Indians
of mixed blood with the Indian element pronounced enough to be still recognizable,
 there are extremely few. Whereas the race stock of Mexico, Central
America, and most of South America is largely composed of elements anciently
present in America, the stock of the West Indies is almost new in its entirety. A
substantial majority of them to-day are African negroes of pure blood, though
born in the New World.
It is evident from what has been written that of those who comprise the ninety
or more million people living in Mexico, Central America, the West Indies, and
South America, only a minor fraction are of the race elements usually regarded
as white. If Argentina and Uruguay are removed from the picture, an overwhelmingly
 large proportion of those who remain are found to belong to races
classed as colored; some being of pure blood, others deriving from crosses between
colored and white or between different colored races. In no comparable area of
the earth’s surface has there been so extensive a crossing of diverse or distant
races as in these countries, especially in Mexico, Central America, and Brazil.
It is not that different white stocks have inter-bred to any great extent. The
crossing has been between Spanish and Indian, between Portuguese and the
other white stock and negro, and somewhat between Indian and negro. Nor is
there anything to suggest that the mixture of types will terminate. On the
contrary, it is natural to expect that, with the exceptions noted, the mixture will
continue to increase without real check until the primary stocks have as such
altogether ceased to exist.
Such are the conditions existing in the nonquotsa countries to the south of us—
where political equality is only a form of speech; where manual labor is despised;
where peonage is universal, enabling a superior stratum to exploit an inferior one;
where all standards are low since the standards of the largest class are low. In
view of these facts can we honestly and sensibly restrict European immigration
if we continue to admit immigrants without numerical limitation from the
countries to the south of us?
It is true as the business men’s commission on Agriculture stated in the report
already quoted that this labor may be ‘‘immediately advantageous” to certain:
interests in this country, especially to absentee landowners, who would otherwise
likely be below the marginal producer and hence unable to farm at a profit.
Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that such immigrants from the southern
countries would be of permanent economic value—an assumption that even those
against the restriction of Mexican immigration grant is without foundation—it
would be an argument full of danger. Professor Foerster points out that no man
is a worker alone. He is a member of the body politic and must further be viewed: