races seen to be more evident, but it actually is more frequent, and the results all the more disastrous, while there likewise exist harmful influences of a widely different nature. In Washington, D. C, for example, where I studied the blacks and the hybrid types for many years, all the truth of Thomas's observations in his work, cited above (The American Negro), become glaringly evident. Long contact with American civilization has had but the effect of making, of the better class of negroes, admirable mimics of the whites in the matters of dress, some of the social requirements, and in ordinary conversation, while it has in no way improved them morally, physically or in other respects. American civilization, indeed, has but endowed them with the most superficial veneering of apparent refinement, while, as a matter of fact, the pure negro in this country is, in his real nature, just as much of a savage as he was three hundred years ago. Were the bulk of the blackest ones in the South taken back to their native haunts in Africa, they would, in my opinion, and in the opinion of other far-seeing anthropologists, resume all of their savage practices and customs again within an incredibly brief space of time. This makes the ethnic argument all the more forcible for sending them there and giving them the opportunity to work out their own destiny. Of the probability of this, however, more will be said further on.
Coming back to Washington again, we find that if the negro has benefited but superficially through his long contact with our civilization, he has been by no means lacking in the harm he has worked with our own race in morals and good ethics. This harmful influence has been of such an insidious nature, so varied
