of the North,
where, moreover, their numbers are being further depleted by a harsh
climate, which finds in them a large proportion of the unfit. The
presence of a big negro laboring class in the South, itself primarily a
result of climate, has long served to exclude foreign immigration, which
sought therefore the unoccupied lands and the congenial climate of the
more bracing North. Hence it is both a direct and indirect effect of
climate that the North shows a large proportion of aliens, and the white
population of the South an almost unadulterated English stock.

[Sidenote: Climate and race temperament.]

The influence of climate upon race temperament, both as a direct and
indirect effect, can not be doubted, despite an occasional exception,
like the cheery, genial Eskimos, who seem to carry in their sunny
natures an antidote to the cold and poverty of their environment. In
general a close correspondence obtains between climate and temperament.
The northern peoples of Europe are energetic, provident, serious,
thoughtful rather than emotional, cautious rather than impulsive. The
southerners of the sub-tropical Mediterranean basin are easy-going,
improvident except under pressing necessity, gay, emotional,
imaginative, all qualities which among the negroes of the equatorial
belt degenerate into grave racial faults. If, as many ethnologists
maintain, the blond Teutons of the north are a bleached out branch of
the brunette Mediterranean race, this contrast in temperament is due to
climate. A comparison of northern and southern peoples of the same race
and within the same Temperate Zone reveals numerous small differences of
nature and character, which can be traced back directly or indirectly to
climatic differences, and which mount up to a considerable sum total.
The man of the colder habitat is more domestic, stays more in his home.
Though he is not necessarily more moderate or continent than the
southerner, he has to pay more for his indulgences, so he is economical
in expenditures. With the southerner it is "easy come, easy go." He
therefore suffers more frequently in a crisis. The low cost of living
keeps down his wages, so that as a laborer he is poorly paid. This fact,
together with his improvidence, tends to swell the proletariat in warm
countries of the Temperate Zone; and though here it does not produce the
distressing impression of a proletariat in Dublin or Liverpool or
Boston, it is always degrading. It levels