ANTHROPOLOGY APPLIED… (3)
By:
July 31, 2025
An excerpt from Robert Gilbert Wells’ Anthropology Applied to the American White Man and Negro (1905). Set in post-Reconstruction America, with numerous sf and fantastic elements, including invisibility, time travel and a drug that allows one to change skin color. HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize an excerpt for HILOBROW’s readers.
ALL INSTALLMENTS: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5.
MR. JONES TELLS THE ELDER HOW TO IMPROVE HIS RACE.
Sam — Mr. Jones, this is an old friend of mine, Elder Big Foot. I have known him for ten years.
Mr. Jones — Elder Big Foot, where do you preach?
Elder — Sometimes at one place and then again at another, Boss.
Mr. Jones — Now, Elder, I wish to question you a little.
Elder — All right, Boss; Big Foot have been answering questions ever since the good master started him out to carry the truth, but I would not dare say that my answers have always been correct at all, Boss.
Mr. Jones — My question is, viz.: Do you teach your flock how to educate a generation before its birth, just as they like to.
Elder — No, sir, I do not. I think that is the business of the Master, and not mine or yours, Boss.
Mr. Jones — Do you teach them how to make a moral and religious generation of children.
Elder — No, sir; that is a strange doctrine to me, what do you think of it, Brother Sam?
Sam — Brother Big Foot let me tell you a little something about Mr. Jones. He is the most scientific man that you ever heard talk upon the science of Anthropology.
Elder — Upon what? What kind of fallacy is this you are talking about?
Sam — The science of matter and mind, Brother Big Foot. You just keep your mouth open wide enough to ask Mr. Jones a question now and then to keep him from asking you too many. You will learn more about humanity from him than ever before.
Mr. Jones — Elder, have you ever taught your people how and when to expect the natural born generation of musicians?
Elder — No, sir; pray tell me how such wonderful results are brought about. Now I would like to know, if I would not lay myself liable to a trial before the brethren if I began to teach such doctrines; they would try me for denying the faith.
Sam — Brother Big Foot you mean heresy.
Elder — Well, Brother Sam, just call it any of the big names you wish too, but I am not going to teach the people any such strange doctrine as that because the brothers would not stand for it.
Mr. Jones — Elder, have you ever taught your folks that mankind alone are responsible for the conduct of every character that is in this busy work of life? It is the people that make the idiots, the dumb, the blind, the deformed, the black-mouthed swearer, the immoral degenerate, the drunkard, the vain and wicked man, the lazy sluggard, the thief and liar, the intellectual and gallant statesman. The logician that writes our codes of law, the humble and moral leader, the general and the captain, the preacher, the doctor and lawyer is the work of man, let it be good or bad. If good it is good manifested through man by nature, if bad, it is the weakness of the flesh manifested through the mind that came from the parents or grandparents.
Elder — Mr. Jones, if your strange doctrine is correct why, I cannot see why the generation that always precedes the progeny could not make any kind of character desired, from the most degenerate ignoramus, set of thieves, or why the entire generation could not be like Harriet Ward Beecher. The sainted immortal Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Mr. Roosevelt, the greatest mortal now living, or B. T. Washington, the greatest educator in the world.
Mr. Jones — Elder, I thought you were to listen to me, but as it appears, I am to hear you talk instead. Well, as I had started to say, that it is not all; to raise a people or generation of reasoners or songsters or merchants or doctors or lawyers. But the people of every country should remember that every generation should possess as strong a body physical as it is in every particular intellectual.
Mr. Jones — You know that your people are an agricultural class of this population of ours, and as such the greatest care and judgment should be exercised by them. The progenitor or the preceding generations should lay the foundation for a strong, healthy body for the succeeding or coming generation.
Elder — Now, Boss, please tell me how in the world can one generation give healthy bodies to the ones following it?
Mr. Jones — Why, of course, it can be done by carefulness and precautiousness, first, by continually exercising both body and mind at hard work in some way or another. It will depend entirely upon what the present people of your race would have the succeeding progeny to be. This generation should not only follow whatever they wish the succeeding ones to understand, love and be. But should make a study of it, cherish it in their minds, cause it to seat itself and rest amidst the fine fibers and convolutions of the brain. In fact the matter and mind of this generation must practice and be just whatever it expects the coming one to be, to love and to keep. Now I wish to relate a wonderful story to you, that happened away back in the middle ages, when Greece flourished and was the leader of the world in a literary way and art and science. Remember well the methods of that Greece that was and is not the same today. On my visit to this flourishing country I chanced to meet an old gentleman by the name of Peter Polly. This man conducted me to the homes of many families and to my surprise I found in each house the husband and wife engaged in the study of literature, art and science, and upon the walls of the parlor I found many beautiful pictures. In one house I remember well that a lady was carefully engaged in the study of mathematics; by her side lay a book on natural science; under it lay the science of botany, nearby was the astronomical science, next was the scientific head of music, peeping out from under them all and upon a table near a window was some of the most artistical drawing and painting I ever beheld. These ladies gave their particular attention to the studies mentioned above and may I tell you the walls to the very inch was covered with beautiful paintings of nature in every conceivable form. Sublime to behold.
Now, by this time I had become quite interested with the surroundings and was more than anxious to converse with this studious lady of Grecian birth and could not conceal it longer and she herself became quite as interested as I and proceeded at once to flood me with questions, viz.: Who are you. A son of Ham. Where are you from? The United States of America. And in what age were you born? In the nineteenth century of our Lord Jesus Christ. What are you doing back here in this age? In search of information. The needs and wronged, despised and maltreated people require it. Are the shadows of man and womanhood yet remaining? The true fabric of anthropology yet remains and the flame of reason is yet aglow.
Well, sir, if the emblems of reason are yet aglow, why your people are undoubtedly doing pretty well. Then this lady conducted me through the palaces of three decades or thirty years in the future; so I inquired where these beautiful, cultured and learned people came from? With that dignity that all Grecian ladies are entailed with, she began to answer me. First, these are the children of the people that made up the population of Greece three decades ago or thirty years ago. Then she pointed out a strong muscular, bony young man with a fine shaped head especially in the region of the cranium where construction is located. That part was as elegantly shaped and formed as I ever looked upon. She then addressed me as follows: The grandfather of this young man is a wheel-wright, his grandmother is a garment cutter, his father is a saddler and harness-maker, his mother teaching cooking and book-keeping, and do you know that this young man is a natural born mechanic and taught bookkeeping when he was sixteen years of age, and became an inventor when he was twenty-one years old. At the age of twenty-eight he became president of a manufacturing firm and if your people ever become what you desire them to be, the progenitors or parents and especially the women must train, learn and educate themselves from twenty to thirty years before each generation and you must understand when you educate your women you educate the progeny. In fact, whenever the generation of husbands sit down and read to their wives and deliver orations to them, sing and play music for them and when they shall have taught their wives how to develop the strong large muscles and have respected the moral law themselves, may I tell you, they have succeeded in educating the following generation.
There is a special period in the life of every generation of wives when they should place their minds upon the modern things of the times, viz., economical, commercial, mechanical, literature, moral, science, mathematics, music and language with all the assistance that her husband can afford her, at this time mentioned. This generation of wives should get out of the sight of the profaned pictures and sceneries, should never hear swearing or profaned language by any means. When this law is respected and followed correctly, you may be sure that the generation that is to come will settle the negro problem for once and forever. Have your people to understand that this is the key to the American problem and that the world is looking to them to solve it and to understand that the Negro alone can solve it correctly. Yonder comes Mr. Wells, the Anthropologist; he is a true lover of human nature. Have you ever read the piece that he published to the world at large, upon the unequally mated couple? You will find it on the next page to the one that you were reading a moment ago. I think every young man and woman should read that piece, not only the piece, but the book; it contains the main life spring of young married people. I would say to every young couple get that book and read it. They will find the living waters of marriage life contained between its lids, that will often quench life’s thirsty troubles, while you are tossed upon the unsound foam of lifes times rolling ocean. It will train your mind to understand the one that you may choose to accompany you through this short span of life. If you would have the blossom of peace and happiness to bloom in your home, to fill your house with the fragrance of love and joy, why you read the piece called “The Unequally Mated Couples.” Young ladies, and men old and middle age all should have that book to read. I think you would do well Brother Foot to advise all of your people to get a copy of that book and keep it in their homes, have each one in the family above twelve years of age read it. Some of its pages should be read publicly other parts of it privately, but under all circumstances it should be heeded in all cases possible.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.