MIND AND MATTER
roons are often very pretty and look down upon the blacker types, preferring a white lover to a black husband."
"In that case," said Giles slowly, "it seems to me that the laws of the State in this regard tend toward moral degradation. Why not legitimatize the intermarriage of whites and half-castes?"
"And get a yellow nation?" demanded Manning fiercely.
"But you just said that mulattoes preferred to mix with whites and in this way tended gradually to eliminate the negroid characteristics; it seems to me a lot better to have a community of legitimate and respectable mixed breeds than a race of bastards who are brought into the world morally, and, therefore, often physically handicapped from the very start. Don't you think so, Leyden?"
"Yes, I think the point is well taken. Morality should always prevail; nor do I think that sanctioning intermarriage between whites and those of mixed breed would in any wise threaten the color of your nation, Mr. Moultrie. Even in States where the intermarriage of blacks and whites is legalized, the commonwealth does not appear to be affected; there is no law compelling a white person to marry a black, and to my mind the person who wishes to do so isn't such a great distance removed from the black anyway. As far as the mixed-breed is concerned, did you ever realize, Mr. Moultrie, what a gratuitous insult you people of the South have paid your race by decreeing that an individual possessing a half or any fraction less of negro blood should be classed as a negro?"
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