Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/496

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488
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

recognize in the different national types. Upon looking up the nationality of the Cuban teachers as recorded on their cards, we find that of the men 74 per cent, had Cuban fathers and mothers, 17 per cent, had Spanish fathers and Cuban mothers, while 2 per cent, descended from parentage of mixed Cuban, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Negro and American origin.

Among the women, 71 per cent, had Cuban fathers and Cuban mothers, 22 per cent. Spanish fathers and Cuban mothers, 3 per cent. Spanish fathers and Spanish mothers, while 4 per cent, had mixed descent of Cuban, American, French and Mexican origin. In both the men and women the descent is so largely Cuban and Spanish that the influence of the other nationalities would hardly be appreciable. We must look, then, to Spanish and Cuban ancestry and to the conditions under which they have lived to account in a large measure for the poor physique of their descendants as we see them to-day.

Looking up the physical status of the Spaniards, as shown by their height and weight, we find the height of the average Spaniard to be 65.64 inches, according to the report of the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and Baxter's report of the soldiers entering the U. S. Army during the Civil War. In the latter report, the men from Italy, Spain and Portugal, in the order given, are shown to have had the lowest average stature of all the recruits that entered the service. Assuming that the Spanish soldiers were built on the same lines as the Cuban teachers, that is, weighing about 1.77 pounds to every inch in stature, it would make them average about 116.18 pounds. This is a very low standard of physical attainment, and ranks the Spanish immigrants who come to this country with the Portuguese, Hungarians, Hindoos, Bavarians, Chinese and North American Esquimaux.

Concerning the causes that have led to Spain's physical, mental and moral deterioration, it is hardly necessary to speak. When we consider that during the dark days of the Inquisition, from 1481 to 1808, more than 340,000 persons were punished for their religious convictions, and 32,000 of these were burnt alive, and that thousands who represented the nation's best blood fled from the country—what other result could have been expected? Let us turn now to the island of Cuba. Columbus described the native Cubans as 'loving, tractable and peaceable; though entirely naked, their manners were decorous and praiseworthy.' Another authority says 'the early Cubans seem to have been men of medium height, broad shoulders, brown skinned, fiat-featured and straight-haired.' Into this native element has been poured an infusion of Spaniards, Creoles, Negroes, Chinese and other foreign blood, with its inevitable tendency to mix races.

Prom a physical point of view, the Cubans of to-day are inferior to