Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 201, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 August 1919 — Blondes Dying Out In America [ARTICLE]

Blondes Dying Out In America

Big Wars Gradually Eliminate Northern Types, Says Ethnologist. DAY OF BRUNETTE AT HAND American Women Are Tending to Neutral Type, With Brown Rather Than Golden Hair and Brown , Eyes Instead of Blue. New York.—The blondes are doomed as a result of the world war! They will be swallowed up—racially •—by the brunettes. « Real blonde Americans are becoming fewer. American women are tending to a neutral type, with brown rather than golden hair and brown eyes Instead of blue. This foreshadows the triumph of the still darker brunette type in America, where the old strains of northern European blood are being swallowed by the later immigration to this country. Soon a blonde beauty will be an exception, and * American beauty” will mean the Spanish, French or Italian type. Such is the prediction, expressed in scientific language, of course, of Madison Grant, trustee of the American Museum of. Natural History and councilor of the American Geographical society, who has made a study of the effect of the war, superimposed on centuries of slow progression on the part of the brunette, in his book, “The Passing of the Great Race,” published by Scribner’s. Makes Matters Worse. The world war, he says, has made matters worse for the blonde because It is the blonde Nordic element in all peoples that invariably makes the greatest sacrifices in war, while the less energetic brunette element

emerges from each world struggle stronger in number than before.

Up to the middle of the nineteenth century the native American, Mr. Grant points out, was the almost purely Nordic. The Civil war destroyed a large part of the breeding stock of the blonde races, and the immigration since then has been largely from the Mediterranean basin and the Balkans. Mr. Grant believes that the destruction of life of the blondes in the present war has been so immensely greater than that of the brunette that a great step has been taken in wiping out the blonde type. “The world war will leave Europe much poorer in Nordic blood.” he says. He points out how the blonde race has been absorbed by the brunette all over the world, and cites the Aryan conquerors of northern India, who imposed their language and customs on the natives, but were swallowed up

tn the darker stream of blood. He thinks that the same thing will happen in the United States, and that the only hope of a relatively pure type of blonde community is in northwest Canada, which because of its climate Is suitable for the blonde types and unsuitable for the brunettes.