country is very quick to discover and applaud Negroes who display any unusual talent or render any meritorious service. From Frederick Douglass to W. E. B. DuBois the white press has been the open door for the recognition of Negroes of merit. Rarely has any Negro won recognition for meritorious achievement save through the white press.

A more discriminating attitude on the part of the Negro press toward the grievances which exist would have a greater tendency to correct them. A man who habitually shouts at the top of his voice will find that it will only squeak when the occasion comes for it to thunder.

Instead of representing the white man as ever striving to keep the Negro in a state of degradation, it would be more wholesome for the Negro masses and more in accordance with the truth, if the Negro press would dwell on the fact that in America the Negro has been given an opportunity and a helping hand not accorded to him in any other part of the world and that the rapid progress of the Negro in the United States is a tribute to the white man's good will and humanitariar spirit. Despite his handicaps the Negro in the United States has more grounds for gratitude toward the white man than for animosity.

It is much to be desired in the interest of both races that they understand each other better and draw nearer together in sympathy and in common quest of what is good for all concerned; and the obligation belongs alike to the Negro and the white press to bring about this better understanding and relationship.

PART SEVEN

PROPOSED SOLUTIONS OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM

CHAPTER 46

THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM

Approach from the Standpoint of History, Biology, Anthropology, and Psychology -The Author's Personal Observations of the Negro in the United StatesDefinition of Race-The Problem of Harmonizing the Interests of Two Unlike Races in the Same Territory and under the Same Government

I

AM drawing to a close of my twenty years' study of the Negro races. At the beginning of this study I was impressed with the fact that an understanding of the Negro problem in the United States would not be possible without a study of the Negro in his original habitats, and in regions to which he had been transplanted. I have, therefore, devoted several volumes of my work to Negro history. In addition to the light thrown upon the Negro problem from the standpoint of history, I have found it necessary to make excursions into biology, anthropology, eugenics, and psychology, all of which sciences. have made valuable contributions to our understanding of racial problems within the past twenty years. And fortunately I have been able to supplement my knowledge of the Negro obtained from books by personal observation of him in all sections of the United States.

I spent my youth in North Carolina, where the Negroes constituted a very large and important factor in the life of the whites; and, since attaining to manhood, I have had opportunity to know the Negro in the North and West through my residence in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Oklahoma. Up to my eighteenth year the only domestic servants I knew were Negroes. I remember with distinctness many of the cooks, nurses, butlers, farm hands, and wood-choppers employed by my father. I also remember several Negro cooks and nurses employed in my own home. I have rented land and houses to Negroes, and sold land and houses to them. I have chopped cotton with Negroes on a farm owned by my uncle, and, while working in a grocery story, I used to accompany an old Negro truckman to and from the railway station to assist him in loading and unloading barrels of molasses, boxes of bacon, and sacks of flour. I have played with Negro children and

danced to Negro music. On various occasions I have ridden beside Negroes in wagons, carriages, and railway trains. I have sat beside them in the classrooms, and have had them sit as pupils in my own classes. I have sat beside them at the theaters, and even at the same table with them on board ships, in restaurants, and at public banquets. I have lectured to Negro audiences, and often listened to Negro preachers, teachers, and campaign orators. And lastly I have served with Negroes on the Inter-Racial Commission of Oklahoma.

So far as my personal acquaintance with the Negroes is concerned, I feel friendly toward them. The great majority of those I have known have been Negroes of very superior virtues, and for some of them I have an abiding respect and affection. I count as one of my dearest friends, and as one of the most beautiful Christian types of men, an old Negro slave who belonged to my grandfather. I have known a great many more good Negroes than bad ones, and I feel very thankful to Providence that I grew up in a community the life of which was interwoven with that of the blacks. The ties of affection which have bound me to Negro servants, and the splendid loyalty which has characterized their behavior toward me and mine, are very precious memories. Because of their childish naturalness and originality of thought and action, they have been a source of absorbing interest, of wholesome animation, good cheer, and lively humor. Whatever else may be said of the Negroes they are certainly the most interesting race in the world. And there are few Southern people of my age whose lives have not been brightened by Negro associations and memories. I cannot but deem it a misfortune for anyone not to have had the charm and picturesqueness of the Negro as a background to his life.

My general attitude toward the Negro being one of kindliness, I hope I have not been unduly biased in the interpretation of his history. I would certainly feel much mortified to realize that I had consciously colored any fact or circumstance to his disparagement.

The Negro problem is only one aspect of the ever present fact of racial conflict, which has been the chief factor in all of the great wars that have scourged mankind, and which is now the greatest obstacle to world peace. Anthropology teaches us that exterminating wars began on our earth as soon as mankind differentiated into races. In palæolithic times the Neanderthal and the Cro-Magnon races, which flourished in Europe, seem to have been completely exterminated by later invaders. And in neolithic times, when the Nordic, Alpine,