FRANZ BOAS AS POLITICAL ACTIVIST
Harvey A. L-evenstein
The University of Wisconsin
The question of the relationship between scientific thought and
political thought is both a complicated and a touchy one.  It becomes espe-
cially touchy when one tries to deal with this relationship on the level of
the mind of an individual scientist. For when a scientist's political con-
clusions obviously coincide with his scientific conclusions, one is justi-
fied in asking the question: which came first? This applies to the
Paulings and Tellers of the world as well as the Lysenkos. It also applies
to Franz Boas.
The image of himself that Boas appears to-be transmitting to poster-
ity is that of the dispassionate, "objective," scientist, far removed from
the problems of the day, sitting quietly in his ivory tower allowing the
"tfacts" to lead him where they may. In part this is of his own doing. In
his teachings and writings he repeatedly emphasized this view of the scien-
tist. His concept of the scientist was that of someone engaged in the
never-ending quest for "truth."' Certainly Boas believed in and tried to
follow this ideal. But he also had other, more prosaic ideals which forced
him to descend into the arena to do battle with people engaged in much less
admirable endeavours. In this paper I shall examine the way in which Boas
used some of his scientific beliefs to buttress his "political" beliefs,
concentrating upon his ideas on the most pressing questions he had to deal
with in his lifetime--those of race and nationalism. But, first I shall
examine his views on the question of the relationship between scientific
and political beliefs and his general political outlook.
It is obvious that Boas' political and scientific views complemented
each other, that each supported the other. If one tries to answer the ques-
tion of which came first in a strictly chronological sense, finding the
answer is easy. Boas himself has described his early intellectual influenc-
es: "The background of my early thinking was a German home in which the
ideals of the revolution of 1848 were a living force" (1938a:201). The
ideals of the abortive 1848 Revolution in Germany were the ideals of nine-
teenth century European liberalism, of Kant and the Enlightenment. Trans-
ported to the United States by Germans like Carl Schurz, they became even
more liberal and democratic. Indeed, Schurz, who is one of the classic
nineteenth century "laissez-faire" liberals in the United States, was one
of Boas' political idols and Boas frequently referred to and identified with
him. The emphasis of these ideals was on political and intellectual- free-
dom, on the maximum freedom for the individual from governmental and social
restraint. Boas fought consistently throughout his life for these ideals of
intellectual freedom; indeed, one of his last public forays was an article
condemning the whole concept of the Dies Committee, the first House Un-
American Activities Committee, for its intrusion upon the rights of free
speech (1940a:156-157). It is from these ideals, and, probably, also from
his Jewish background, that Boas derived his emphasis on judging people as
individuals, and not as members of social or racial groups, and his animus
towards prejudice of any kind. He repeatedly stated that he did not believe
that all individuals were endowed with equal talents but that they did have
16
the right to equal opportunity to develop what talents they had. Thus his
firm opposition to racism of every kind.
That these ideals were implanted in Boas before he became interested
in anthropology is apparent. Whether they influenced the conclusions he
drew from his scientific studies is a moot point, and in the end, probably
unanswerable. Yet Boas himself, indicated that possibly his interest in the
subject was a very didactic one.. In 1938 he wrote that one of the major
shocks which shaped his intellectual life was his confrontation with a friend
who asserted that we have no right to doubt what the past has transmitted to
us.l He reacted strongly against this tradition-bound outlook, "In fact,"
he continued, "my whole outlook upon social life is determined by the ques-
tion: how can we recognize the shackles that tradition has laid upon us?
For when we recooize them, we are also able to break them" (1938a:202; em-
phasis supplied    Whether tFTsTi an accurate account ofthe origin of
Boas' interest in anthropology or not, and unless the fr'iend was a Baffin
Island Eskimo, it would appear to conflict somewhat with the standard account
of his switch to anthropology, this statement brings out the underlying as-
sumption behind all of Boas' lay work. In essence it was the confidence of
the reformer that if only the people could be made to percei've the truth
about certain issues, that once the influence of the irrational was broken
through the continual explication of the rational, they would act in a de-
sirable may. It is a reflection of what today seems to be the somewhat
naive optimism which underlay nineteenth century European liberal thought.
In the United States this confidence reached its apogee in the Progressive
Movement around the turn of the centur"y. Boas was a part of both movements.
As for the question of whether Boas' orlginal cholce of anthropology
was prompted by the didactic reasons that the above quote would seem to indi-
cate, it would appear that the little story was somewhat aphoristic.  If not,
then Boas was certainly remiss throughout the nineteenth century in helping
the general public to break the chains of tradition that bind them. In his
early years at Columbia, Boas was notorious as an anti-popularizer. "To his
German-trained mind," said Time, "the idea of popularilzation was repugnant"t
(1936:h41). Until the turn of the century, Boas appears to have wrltten only
monographs. The earliest contributions to lay periodicals which I was able
to find were his review of a book by W. Z. Ripley which appeared in Science,
September 1, 1899, and "What the Negro has Done in America," in The Ethical
Record, March, 190h. The earliest reference to his involvement in anything
even vaguely political is in 1902, when, along with the financier Jacob
Schiff, he planned a school for the study of the cultures of the Far East to
promote international understanding (Benedict 19h315).2
It would appear that Boas did not really start his descent to the
level of popular culture until after the turn of the century. As to the
reasons for this shift, they remain obscure. Undoubtedly, the rise of Pro-
gressivism and the whole atmosphere around Columbia, where the two leading
Progressive intellectuals, John Dewey and Charles A. Beard, were teaching
and f ighting with the conservative Pres ident, Nicholas Murray Butler and
other members of the faculty, stimulated Boas to participate, however meager-
ly, in the intellectual revolt taking place around him. It is hard to con-
ceive of a Columbia faculty member at that time not taking sides in the grow-
ing split and Boas' natural propensities would lead him to side with the
reformers. Another stimulus may have been what he later described as "the
rude awakening" he experienced when confrornted with the sight of American
imperialism in 1898 (1916)e
17
Whatever his reasons, Boas became a more frequent and more famous
contributor to the important debates of the time as the century drew on.
At first he dwelt primarily upon the immigrant and Negro problems, but with
the advent of the First World War in Europe he became involved in the
question of nationalism. In the twentles his emphasis shifted back to the
problems of racism and in the thirties, with the rise of fascism, he dealt
with both nationalism and racism together. In this changing emphasis Boas
was moving with his times and continually confronting what seemed to him to
be the major problems of the day.
Although Boas himself was active in popularizing his anthropological
ideas and in using them to buttress his case in the more mundane conflicts
of the outside world, this attitude towards science and politics was not
necessarily inherent in his approach to anthropology. Indeed, as Paul Radin
pointed out in an article in the New Republic in 1939, Boas' major contribu-
tion to anthropology in the United States, his emphasis upon a scientific,
objective approach to culture, was a double-edged sword. For although it
was a great liberating factor for his students, and it did help to break
down myths of racial superiority, this view of the social scientist along
with Boas' stress on the deterministic aspects of culture and environment
could be used to buttress quietism in politics, traditionalism in society,
and the justification of the status quo.(Radin 1939). Of course Radin
didn't accuse Boas himself of this; he praised him for being in the fore-
front of the fight against fascism.
Radin's point is a valid comment on Boas' approach but it is not a
valid criticism. Certainly, Boas' approach can be used to justify quietism
and the status quo. But the example of the many students of his who swerved
to the Left during the thirties and, of course, Boas himself, can also be
used to show that it does not necessarily have to be so. Like any other
intellectual approach which emphasizes the power of forces outside the con-
trol of individual human beings, from medieval Catholicism to Hegel's dia-
lectical idealism to Marx's economic determinism, Boas' environmentalism
can be used to justify submission to established order. Similarly, his
emphasis upon the purity of science and the search for truth can be used
to justify quietism. But like the other systems it can also be used to
justify change and activism. The conservative aspect of Boas is inherent
in his merely stating that there are forces outside of individual human
nature which shape it. Although Radin was obviously thinking of the crusad-
ing nature of Marxism in the 1930's when he wrote this, the history of
Marxism, and especially of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, shows
that it too can be used to justify submission to the established order. As
for Boas' own stand on this question, a year earlier, he had justified his
political action in a consistently environmentalist, if somewhat sophistic
way: "My ideals have developed because I am what I am and have liyed where
I have lived; and it is my purpose to work for these ideals, because the
conditions of my culture that run counter to my ideals stimulate me to ac-
tion" (1938a-:204).
The first issue to stimulate Boas to action was the race issue. It
was his views on this problem that first brought Boas to national attention.
In order to understand the impact of Boas' views on race, one must
continually bear in mind the context in which he was stating them. The idea
of equality of the races, in the sense that all races are endowed with an
18
equal distribution of talents, had never been held by more than a small
minority of Americans. Not even the Abolitionists believed that the Negro
was really equal in endowments to the white. The period after the Compro-
mise of 1876 had seen a growing reconciliation of North and South in this
country and a growing tendency in the North to either ignore the Negro prob-
lem completely or to accept the southern view of the Negro.3 By the turn of
the century, the domlnant view of the Negro, as expounded by the northern
media of both popular and haut culture, was that of the docile, innately
inferior Sambo. This view was not current just among conservatives; most of
the Progressives subscribed to it too. Woodrow Wilson, a Virginian with
Virginia's conceptions of race, was able to oversee the impositions of segre-
gation in federal offices in Washington and the demotion of hundreds of Negro
civil servants throughout the South with nary a protest from his progressive
supporters. At the same time, there was a growing restiveness among at least
the more educated Negroes over the reimpos1tion throughout the South of their
pre-Civil War status in a different guise.    Thus, when he first started agi-
tating over the race issue, Boas' views coincided wlth those of only a small
minority of the white population.
Boas' first forays into the public debate on race were thus oriented
towards the problem of the American Negro. By 1906 his vi'ews on the subject
were well known enough for him to be asked to give the CommenCement Address
at Atlanta University. There he gave a glorious picture of the Negro's Afri-
can past, said it showed what the Negro was capable of when gi'ven a chance,
and urged the assembled students to go out into the world and fight for
their rights (1945L61-69).
Simultaneously, Boas was getting involved 'in another problem that
became the subject of bitter dispute as time wore on.   This was the question
of immigration to the United States. In 1909 he submitted his famous report
to the Immigration Commission which showed that the mlove to America tended
to change certain physical characteristics in the children of immigrants and
modify them in a way suggestive of tending towards a common American norm
(1940b:60-81).  Thus he answered the contention of the opponents of Southern
and Eastern European immigration that continued i'mmigration would lead to
"'mongrelization" with the contention that rather than affect the physical
characteristics of native Americans, it would tend to affect the character-
istics of the immigrants, who would tend to become physically more like
native Americans. He also provided what seemed to be striking proof of the
great effect of environment upon human beings and the instability of racial
characteristics. It was on these two themes that Boas constantly hammered
away in his arguments against raclsm and immigration restriction.
In the 1920's, the conflict over restrictive i'mmigration legislation
came to the fore and Boas Joined the losing battle against it.   The restrict-
ive legislation, which was aimed primarily at eliminating Southern and East-
ern European immigration, found many people who were willlng to defend it on
the grounds of the necessity for keeping the "Nordic race"t pure. At the
time it seemed as if the whole western world was about to be carried away by
a tide of racism and feelings of racial superiority. Melville Herskovits, a
student of Boas', descri:bed the sltuation as It appeared to him in an article
of his own in the Nation:
That the psychology of superiority--and particularly of the superiority
of the white race and that part of it that comes from Northern Europe--
is rampant in the country today is obvious to the most casual observer.
19
The books and articles from the pens of prolific writers such as
Professor MacDougall, Dr. C. C. Josey, Mr. Madison Grant, Mr. Ernest
Cox, and Lathrop Stoddard, and the works of Dr. Brigham and other
psychologists plus deductions drawn from the psychological tests
given in the army during the war, all lend sanction to official ac-
tions such as the recent immigration legislation which changed quotas
so as to favor North European stock. In addition to this, other laws
are advocated enforcing the study of English, or making the require-
ments for citizenship more and more difficult, and we have the folk-
lore current about the lack of ability and low intelligence of the
large Negro section of the population. This phenomenon is a growing
thing; we find the identical works that are produced here published
in England and seriously discussed; a controversy about the value of
race raging in Germany, and a large institute for the study of race-
biology in Sweden maintained by the state under a director who believes
that the salvation of his country lies In the-maintenance of racial
purity (Herskovits 1925).
It is interesting to note that even so august a newspaper as the New York
Times refused to accept Boas' conclusions. In an editorial in 1927 it cited
Brigham's study of the results of army intelligence tests which seemed to
prove that Italian immigrants were mentally inferior to rmtive Americans.
It also cited Boas' criticism of it, which was based upon a criticism of
the utility of American Army intelligence tests as a measure of the intel-
ligence of Italians brought up in a different environment. It also cited
another professor at Columbia, M. R. Niefeld, who argued that if valid, all
that these tests would seem to prove would be that the less intelligent
Italians migrated to the United States. The Times evaded Boas' contentions
completely and sourly concluded: "For us it is presumably enough that cer-
tain countries send us 'high grade' and other countries 'low grade' intelli-
gence"' (January 27, 1927).
In his lay works on race, Boas continually restated the conclusions
he had come to in The Mind of Primitive Man: that no physical characteris-
tics exist which doom any particular race to mental and social inferiority
and that judged on their own basis, the people who we label "primitive" are
no less intelligent than we are; they merely cope with the world in a differ-
ent, and often more complex way (1938b). Thus he explained what appeared to
be the inferior capabilities of minority groups on a historical and environ-
mental basis. At the end of the 1938 edition of The Mind of Primitive Man
he wrote:
The traits of the American Negro are adequately explained on the
basis of history and social status. The tearing-away from the African
soil and the consequent complete loss of the old standards of life,
which were replaced by the dependency of slavery and by all it entailed,
followed economic struggle against heavy odds, are sufficient to ex-
plain the inferiority of the status of the race, without falling back
upon the theory of hereditary inferiority (1938b:270).
Of course Boas couldn't deny that individuals possessed varying mental
traits. What he did deny was that these traits were determined by race.
In 1925 he summed up his position in another article in the Nation:
The occurrence of hereditary mental traits that belong to a partic-
ular class has never been proved. The available evidence nakes it
much more likely that the same mental traits appear in varying distri-
bution among the principle racial groups. The behaviour of an indivi-
dual is therefore not determined by his racial affiliation, but by the
20
character of his ancestry and his cultural environmento We may Judge of
the mental characteristics of families and individuals, but not of
races (1925).
Boas felt that race prejudice stemmed from the human mind's tendency
to group people together in classes of outsiders. By ascriblng its origins
to this deep-rooted mental quality, Boas was forced to take a very pesslmis-
tic view of the chances of eradicating it and was never able to come up with
any solution to the problem other than intermarriage and the eradication of
physfcal differences among men. After the First World War, and possibly as
a partial result of his experiences during the war, he appears to have been
quite pessimistic about how much education and reason could do to change mass
prejudice. He wrote, "We nay, perhaps, expect that an increasing number of
strong minds will free themselves from race prejudice and see in every person
a man entitled to be judged on his merits. The weak-minded will not follow
their example" (1921).
By 1931, howevere, possibly under the influence of the rise in econo-
mic class consciousness brought on by the Depression and the example which
left-wing groups seemed to be creating, of uniting the discontented lower
classes along interracial lines, Boas hinted at a closer possible solution
than intermarriage. "We may be reasonably certain,," he said, "that whenever
members of different races form a single social group with strong bonds,
racial prejudice and racial antagonisms will come to lose their importance.
They may even disappear entirely. As long as we insist on stratification
of racial layers, we shall pay the penalty in the form of interracial strug-
gle" (1931: 16-17).
In spite of the pessimism about the possibility of eliminating racial
prejudice through reason and education which he expressed in 1921, Boas was
too much of a liberal to carry this pessimism over into the realm of personal
action, or rather inaction. Throughout the 1920's and 1930's he continued to
publish and speak on the topic of race prejudice, predicating his action on
the belief that rational explication could change men's minds.
Boas was forced to confront the question of nationalism by the out-
break of World War I. He appears to have been torn between his loyalty to
the land of his birth and the rabidly nationalistic aims which many of its
supporters professed. A month after the outbreak of the war in Europe he
wrote that nationalism was an emotional, narrow concept, doomed to give way
to that of the "federation of nations . . . the next necessary step in the
evolution of nankind" (1914). Yet, if he thought it somewhat outmoded and
narrow, Boas was still willing to accept it and live with it. In 1915, in
a tract written for a pro-German group in this country, he differentiated
between German and Russian nationalism and the claims of each to unite all
of their respective language groups under one flag, asserting that this was
not really a very important consideration in Germany, and not very disruptive
of the status quo, whereas Russian pan-Slavism was a dangerous, aggressive
idea. He pleaded for understanding of the emotional force of these issues,
concluding: "We shall not learn the lesson of this war if we condemn Austria
and Germany, and praise ourselves on account of our higher humanityO We
should remember that we ourselves have acted in just the same way under sim-
ilar type of provocation" (191515).
21
Up until the very eve of U.S. entrance into the war, Boas continued
to defend the German position publicly and presumably Wilson's Declaration
of War did not change his mind. After the Armistice, when a measure of free
speech was restored, Boas again began tp voice his opinions on international
affairs. This time a subtle shift in his views is perceptible. His opposi-
tion to rationalism now became more strident and to him, the federation of
nations became more than just a hope for the future, it became a necessity
for the present. In a letter to the New York Post three days before the
actual signing of the Armistice, Boas urged theiWormation of a real league
of nations. The principles upon which it was to be based were similar to
those of Wilson's Fourteen Points, but Bos' league would have been one
which would act on these principles. He perceived the inherent weakness in
the League of Nations before it was even formed:. "A purely legal agreement
guaranteeing to each what he has, will not meet the problem, because it will
not overcome the causes that lead to strife* It may easily become a covenant
for the perpetuation of injustice." Boas went on-to say that in order to be
able to function in a way that would enable it to-adjust the world order to
a changing world, the league would have to demand of its members the aban-
donment of all ideas of national prestige and sovereignty.    In other words,
the preservation of world peace was dependent upon the abandonment of the
idea of nationalism.  It would nrturally also involve the abandonment of
all forms of imperialism (1915).'
It soon became clear that the Versailles League was not going to
bear much resemblance to Boas' ideal and Boas was one of the first to pro-
test. It is interesting to note that the parts of the Versailles Settlement
on which he concentrated his attack were not the harsh terms imposed upon
Germany, although he could not have agreed with them, but the way in which
the German Empire was disposed of. He saw through the fasade of the mandate
system: "Mandatories have an ugly habit of forgetting their mandates and
considering their temporary charges as permanent property.   . l 0 The result
is very apt to turn out as though 'annextion' had been meant" (1919). Boas
painted a dark picture of the results of colonialism--exploitation, cultural
disintegration, starvation, disease--and had a distinctly economic interpre-
tation of its causes:   "The essential motive for interference in the affairs
of foreign countries is the need in our life for the products of these coun-
tries. When these cannot be obtained except by native labor, the nativ'e Is
forced to produce what we want and is exploited for our purposes" (1919).
He supported the "most radical application of" the program of the British
Labor Party, which involved decolonization, international protection of all
the former colonies against exploitation and government in the interests of
the natives (1919).
The First World War appears to have shaken Boas' faith in the effi-
cacy of reason. As was pointed out above, immediately after the war he be-
came very pessimistic about how much could be accomplished by words alone
in the fight against racial prejudice. This pessimism must have been con-
nected with the profound disillusionment wi th intellectuals in general which
Boas appears to have experienced as a result of their performance during the
war. World War I witnessed a mass betrayal of ideals on the part of most
Vestern intellectuals. The same thing happened to the international com-
munity of intellectuals, which Boas felt himself to be a part of, as happened
to the Socialist International--the members split along national lines and
scrambled all over each other to support and justify the war effort of their
own nations. This was especially true of American intellectuals, and of the
22
progressives most especially. Boas, in opposing America's participation in
the war was part of a lonely, oppressed minority. Thus, in reacting against
nationalism and the war it caused, Boas also condemned the intellectuals who
he felt created and supported it: "Ideals of this kind can arise in the ed-
ucated class only and we see, therefore, that rational feeling is always
based on the efforts of the educated to impress ratiomalistic ideas upon the
mass of the people" (1919). The converse side of this disillusionment with
the "educated classes" was a glorification of the untutored masses, whom he
saw as-repositories of the "general human interests which are always, even
in simple tribal life, present among the mass of the people"' (1919).
But the disillusiomnent could not last long. For an acceptance of
the futility of education would also have involved an acceptance of the fu-
tility of his work and a withdrawal back into the kind of quietism that Boas
obviously was not prepared to indulge in. The rationalism issue dropped out
of the spotlight during the 1920's, superseded by the race issue. In the
1l30'sp however, with the rise of Nazism in Germany, the two became fused,
and Boas, in attacking the Nazis, found himself attacking both racism and
nationalism. He attacked the myth of Aryan and Gernan superiority in the
1930's from the same basis that he had attacked the claims of Anglo-Saxon
superiority in the 1920's--the conclusions which he drew from his academic
work. It is interesting to note that three months after Hitler came to
power, Boas' works were proscribed and publicly burned in Germany (New York
Times, May 6, 1933).
Boas' view of nationalism was basically altered by the rise of Hitler;
he had never supported it, but his opposition to it became more strident.
Before World Wkr I he had seen it as something that could be lived with, and
after the war as the great obstacle to world peace; in 1939, however, he
viewed it as an unmitigated evil. He agreed with the idea of preserving the
cultural diversity of rational groups but insisted that this has nothing to
do with modern rationalism, "which is based on the assumption, often too
true, that every nation is the enemy of all others, and is duty bound to
protect its members and itself.   Thus rationalism becomes concentrated on
the idea of developing power, and its cultural mission is lost sight of"
(1938a).
As for the solution of this and the other problems of the world,
Boas in the end returned to his old faith in education. Shortly before his
death, in an international broadcast to the scientists of the world after
the outbreak of World Var II, he reaffirmed the necessity for promoting
rationality among the masses and stated explicitly the duty of the scientist
to come down from his ivory tower and participate in this process.   The sci-
entist must continue the pursuit of truth for its own sake, he said, but a
new duty also arises. n"e no longer can keep the search for truth the priv-
ilege of the scientist. We must see to it that the hard task of subordinat-
ing traditional lore to clear thinking be shared with us by larger and larger
masses of people. We must do our share in trying to spread the art, and to
engender the habit of clear thinking" (1945:2)o
This solution, of course, is implicit in Boas' analysis of the causes
of prejudice and rationalism. In this analysis he stressed the irrational
nature and origin of race prejudice and nationalism. In both cases he also
emphasized the force of tradition in perpetuating and reinforcing them.
23
Thus, if the causes of the problem lie in the realm of the mind, the solu-
tion must lie there too. But the solution is both too easy and too diffi-
cult. It is too easy to arrive at and too difficult to effect. In essence,
it not only represents a utopian hope, it also ignores other, more realis-
tic solutions.
The difficulty appears to lie in Boas' analysis itself. He saw
both racial prejudice and nationalism as ultimately originating in the prim-
itive instinct to regard all strangers as hostile. This progressed through
different stages, taking the form of privileged classes buttressing their
privileged position by regarding the lower classes as inferior races, and
extending itself to the idea of nationhood. Although this seems to be an
historical explanation, it is obviously quite ahistoricalo  Nowhere does
Boas try to document this transition0 Although it does provide some insight
into the type of psychological need that race prejtdice and nationalism
satisfy, Boas' analysis fails because it is not historical enough. It does
not take into account the changing circumstances that have caused race pre-
judice to wax and wane during the centuries, to affect some societies very
deeply and others hardly at all, and it fails to place modern nationalism
in its proper context. It ignores completely what is probably the basic
factor beneath the rise of nationalism, that is, the rise of national econo-
mies. Thus, Boas' plea for world federation and the abandonment of the con-
cept of national sovereignty were impractical pipe dreams because they were
not linked to any scheme which would have facilitated the creation of an
international economy. Boas occasionally indicated that he believed in free
trade, but he never saw that, even if this became a reality, it would rele-
gate the underdeveloped world to a position of permanent underdevelopment.6
Similarly, by emphasizing the irrational basis of race prejudice, Boas vir-
tually ignored the very real economic bases of that too. Thus, he failed
to come up with any program that would raise the economic status of the
American Negro, and, if not eliminate prejudice completely, at least lessen
racial tension.
Thus, Boas' contribution was essentially a negative one; he helped
in the attack against racial prejudice and virulent nationalism on the
intellectual level.  But racist views did not fall into disrepute because
Boas, Herskovits, and others proved them to be fallacious. They ceased to
be widely proclaimed when immigration restriction became a dead issue and
when theories of racial superiority became so identified with the enemies
of the United States that to justify them publicly became "Un-American."
It was then that Boas' views on race became part of the conventional wisdom.
One wonders how current they would be had Hitler preached the unity of all
mankind.
ENDNOTES
1. Boas' description of this as a "shock" is probably the use of a bit of
poetic license. This was a very comnon idea among German conservatives
of the time, especially those still under the sway of the Rlght Hegeli-
ans.
2. That Schiff had extensive financial interests in the Orient and that
his interest in having people study it to promote "goodwill" among the
Chinese might be anything more than anthropological apparently did not
occur to Boas. Still, whatever Schiff's motives were, Boas' consistent
24
stand against imperialism of any kind would indicate that if he had sus-
pected something he would not have had anything to do with the plan.
However, the plan never got off the ground, and the only information I
have been able to find on it is Benedict's cryptic reference to it, so
perhaps Boas did smell a rat.
3. See Paul H. Buck, The Road to Reunion 1865-1900 (New York, Vintage Books,
1959) for an account of this change in Northern opinion.
4.  It should be remembered that the institutioralization of segregation did
not occur until the 1890's and early 1900's. It was still a relatively
new phenomenon then. See C. Van Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim
Crow (New York, Oxford University Press, 1957).
5, He said: "It is clear that this step forward cannot be made by a nation
that claims for itself the right to control the foreign policies of other
states, as we do with the Spanish-American republics. . . . A league of
imperialistic powers will never lead to a lasting peace" (1915:15).
6. He justified his opposition to tariffs on anthropological grounds. See
1945:181).
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benedict, Ruth
1943   Franz Boas, Nation (January 2).
Boas, Franz
1914   Race and nationality, Everybody's Magazine (November). Reprinted
in-Race and democratic society.  New York, J. J. Augustin.
1915   Nationalism in Europe. Chicago, Germanistic Society of Chicago.
1917   Lecture before Barnard class in anthropology, November. Reprinted
in Race and democratic society. New York, J. J. Augustin.
1919   Colonies and the peace settlement, Nation (February 15).
1921   The problem of the American Negro, Yale Review (January).
1925   What is race, Ntion (January 28).
1931   Race and progress, address of the President of the American Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Science, June 15. Reprinted in
Race, language and culture. New York, Macmillan, 1940.
1938a An anthropologist's credo, Nation (August 27).
1938b The mind of primitive man, rev. ed. New York, Macmillan.
1940a  The Dies Committee, Forum (March).
1940b Changes in bodily form of descendants of immigrants. Reprinted
in Race, language and culture. New York, Macmillan.
1945   Race and democratic society.  New York, J. J. Augustin.
Herskovits, M. J.
1925   Brains and the immigrant, Nation (February 11).
Radin, Paul
1939   The mind of prilmiti-re man, New Republic (April 19).