the prosperous folk there have been
ever many classes of occupations tempting the abler youths, while among
the laborers the church has afforded the easiest way to rise, and that
which is most tempting to the intelligent. The result has been, that
while the priesthood and monastic orders have systematically debilitated
all the populations of Catholic Europe, their influence has been most
efficient in destroying talent in the peasant class."[3]

Thus it is that the peasants of Catholic Europe, who constitute the bulk
of our immigration of the past thirty years, have become almost a
distinct race, drained of those superior qualities which are the
foundation of democratic institutions. If in America our boasted freedom
from the evils of social classes fails to be vindicated in the future,
the reasons will be found in the immigration of races and classes
incompetent to share in our democratic opportunities. Already in the
case of the negro this division has hardened and seems destined to
become more rigid. Therein we must admit at least one exception to our
claim of immunity from social classes. Whether with our public schools,
our stirring politics, our ubiquitous newspapers, our common language,
and our network of transportation, the children of the European
immigrant shall be able to rise to the opportunities unreached by his
parents is the largest and deepest problem now pressing upon us. It
behooves us as a people to enter into the practical study of this
problem, for upon its outcome depends the fate of government of the
people, for the people, and by the people.

=Races in the United States.=--We use the term "race" in a rather loose
and elastic sense; and indeed we are not culpable in so doing, for the
ethnographers are not agreed upon it. Races have been classified on the
basis of color, on the basis of language, on the basis of supposed
origin, and in these latter days on the basis of the shape of the skull.
For our purpose we need consider only those large and apparent divisions
which have a direct bearing on the problem of assimilation, referring
those who seek the more subtle problems to other books.[4]

Mankind in general has been divided into three and again into five great
racial stocks, and one of these stocks, the Aryan or Indo-Germanic, is
represented among us by ten or more subdivisions which we also term
races. It need not cause confusion if we use the term "race" not only to
designate these grand di