in order to survive. Thus, white, Anglo-Saxon Americans were urged to marry and conceive large numbers of children in order to prevent the takeover of the country by the darker immigrants. President Theodore Roosevelt railed against the use of birth control by Anglo-Saxon Americans, arguing that a high birth rate was necessary to prevent the "suicide" of the race (Higham 131-57).
Pseudo-scientific theories propounding the idea of white Northwestern European superiority had been floating around since the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. One of the first proponents was Count Arthur de Gobineau, a French monarchist. Gobineau argued that members of the French nobility were still basically Teutonic and that the Teutons were best ruling class in Europe. He divided the races into three separate types: the white, yellow, and black; of these three, the white race had reached the pinnacle of achievement and intelligence. He departed from other racial theorists by insisting that the races had to be mixed to a certain extent; however, too much mixing would resu
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