The Passing Of The Great Race

Introductions by Professor Harry Fairfield Osborn. First published in 1916, this work established Grant as an authority in racial thought. Its success laid the groundwork for the emerging science of eugenics, and was widely read by US presidents, scientists and became a popular best-seller in its day. It is also widely credited with creating the 1924 Immigration Act, which restricted immigration to the U.S. to those of its original founding population nations of north-western Europe-a policy which was only reversed by the 1964 amendment. "The Passing of the Great Race," in its original form, was designed by the author to rouse his fellow-Americans to the overwhelming importance of race and to the folly of the "Melting Pot" theory . . . The days of the Civil War and the provincial sentimentalism which governed or misgoverned our public opinion are past, and this generation must completely repudiate the proud boast of our fathers that they acknowledged no distinction in "race, creed, or color," or else the native American must turn the page of history and write: FINIS AMERICA -from the introduction to the fourth edition. The book is a sweeping and classic study of racial anthropology and history which starts with a complete explanation of the term "race," and its practical meaning. It then studies Nordic European racial history from the earliest times to the present day, concluding that Third World immigration would destroy Europe and America. It was a call to American whites to counter the dangers both from non-white and non-North Western European immigration. Unashamedly Nordicist in outlook, Grant used history and anthropology to argue against an open-door immigration policy, which, he said, would lead to the destruction of the founding American population.