Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE COLOR LINE A Brief IN BEHALF OF THE UNBORN BY WILLIAM BENJAMIN SMITH _Consider the End_ SOLON NEW YORK McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. MCMV _Copyright, 1905, by_ McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. _Published February, 1905, N_ _To_ John Henry Neville _in_ _Admiration and Gratitude_ Transcriber's Note: Superscripted characters are indicated by being preceded by a carat, such as z^r. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER ONE 3 THE INDIVIDUAL? OR THE RACE? CHAPTER TWO 29 IS THE NEGRO INFERIOR? CHAPTER THREE 75 NURTURE? OR NATURE? CHAPTER FOUR 111 PLEA AND COUNTERPLEA CHAPTER FIVE 158 A DIP INTO THE FUTURE CHAPTER SIX 193 THE ARGUMENT FROM NUMBERS FOREWORD The following pages attempt a discussion of the most important question that is likely to engage the attention of the American People for many years and even generations to come. Compared with the vital matter of pure Blood, all other matters, as of tariff, of currency, of subsidies, of civil service, of labour and capital, of education, of forestry, of science and art, and even of religion, sink into insignificance. For, to judge by the past, there is scarcely any conceivable educational or scientific or governmental or social or religious polity under which the pure strain of Caucasian blood might not live and thrive and achieve great things for History and Humanity; on the other hand, there is no reason to believe that any kind or degree of institutional excellence could permanently stay the race decadence that would follow surely in the wake of any considerable contamination of that blood by the blood of Africa. It is this supreme and all-overshadowing importance of the interests at stake that must justify the earnestness and the minuteness with which the matter has been treated. The writer does not deny that he feels profoundly and intensely on the subject; otherwise, he would certainly never thus have turned aside from studies far more congenial and fascinating. But he has not allowed his feelings or any sentimental considerations whatever to warp his judgment. It has been his effort to make the whole discussion purely scientific, an ethnological inquiry, undisturbed by any partisan or political influence. He has had to guard himself especially against the emotion of sympathy, of pity for the unfortunate race, "the man of yesterday," which the unfeeling process of Nature demands in sacrifice on the altar of the evolution of Humanity.