Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/481

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A WORLD-WIDE COLOR LINE
477

come stronger in offensive ability and attempt to win back piecemeal what they have lost in the past while still "undrilled." "That they must become at least masters of their own houses can not any longer be doubted."[1]

Against this alarmist view two objections may properly be offered on the score of population increase. In the first place, as the colored races approach the standard of the white civilization, the same influences which have reduced white fecundity will increasingly operate among them. As has already been shown, improved modes of living are already making possible a greater population economy among the colored, and the acquisition of still higher standards will lower the birth-rate to a point consistent with these better standards of living. Secondly, it is not at all true that the expansion of the white race has now reached its final geographical limits. Not to assume that certain elevated districts within the tropics may in time be open to white colonization, there are still vast areas in Siberia, South America, South Africa and Australasia so sparsely settled as to be practically uninhabited. It is therefore nearer the truth to say that the habitat of the colored races is now fixed beyond the possibility of notable change except by sporadic migrations, while the greater regions at present sparsely peopled are within the white sphere of influence.[2]

Colored

Per Square Mile.
China 266
Japan 320
British India 211
Java 600

White

Per Square Mile.
United States 25.6
Canada 1.48
Argentina 5.4
Siberia 1.4
Australia 1.5
Cape Colony 8.7
Transvaal 10.0

That there already exists, since the rise of Japan, a well-marked sense of race solidarity among the yellow peoples of eastern Asia need

  1. Estimating the total population of the world at 1,705,000,000, Weale makes the division by color as follows:
    Whites 566,000,000
    Mixed whites 40,000,000
    Absolute yellow, brown and black 1,099,000,000

    Of the whites 453,500,000 are assigned to Europe, and of the colored 947,000,000 belong to Asia and 140,000,000 to Africa (p. 111).

  2. The density of population in certain of the greater habitable areas peopled by the whites and by the colored outside of Europe shows some significant contrasts: