been brought into close contact under the same government, they have been slow to amalgamate and produce a common culture. The Jewish people, who take rank with any other race in physical type and intellectual capacity, have never assimilated the culture of any other race, and have rarely, if ever, enjoyed equal rights under any government of which they have been subjects. The nearest approach to a harmonious coöperation of different ethnic groups under the same government is found in the Republic of Switzerland; but, even there, we find the different ethnic groups geographically isolated, preserving their respective language and traditions, and, through the system of local government, each living largely independent of the other. The experience of Switzerland throws no light whatever upon the problem of ethnic contact such as we have in the United States. The French nation might be cited as an example of rather complete assimilation of several originally different ethnic elements, but in this case the racial contrasts have been so slight that, from pre-Roman times to the present, they have been freely intermarrying. The example of France, therefore, throws no light on the situation in the United States, for the reason that there is no race problem where ethnic groups differ so slightly that they spontaneously amalgamate. In any state where the Negro population is in a majority or constitutes a large proportion of the citizenship, the feeling of racial consciousness prompts the Negroes to vote together, and they, with an element of scalawag whites who wish to ride into office on the backs of the Negro, gain control of the state governments to the exclusion of the whites. Aside from the incompetence and corruption which necessarily follow such rule, the outstanding thing is the strange contradiction which the conditions and consequences reflect upon our constitutional declarations of equality; on the one hand the declaration forbids civil discrimination on the basis of color and, on the other hand, imposes a régime wherein the whole civil control actually depends on color. This is a political reductio ad absurdum. What happened in the South as a result of the effort to enforce civil equality between the whites and the blacks would have happened in any other country where any other two races visibly different existed together in large masses. All races of men are more or less gregarious, and wherever, in the same territory, two conspicuously different races come together in masses, there is developed a consciousness of kind which inclines the members of each race to draw together in common sympathy for common action. In each race a sentiment of loyalty is awakened which leads its members to prefer each other in every sphere of competition or rivalry with another race. The natural tendency of the Negroes to feel a consciousness of kind and to sympathize with races of kindred kind, is evidenced in the fact that when the Japanese defeated the Russians in 1905, the Negro press gave "a quite clear cry of exaltation over the defeat of a white race by a dark one." 5 In political action, each race stands together, and the strongest, in numbers or otherwise, dominates the government. Therefore, human nature being constituted as it is, it is impossible for two races visibly different to live together in large masses in the same territory on terms of equality. In the domain of social science, as in that of natural science, a truth can be arrived at only by experiment and induction. If the chemist finds that two elements, subjected to innumerable tests, have never united, he will tell you that they are not assimilable, and he would not think of writing a formula calling for their amalgamation; and so in social science, when we find that two races, subjected to innumerable tests, have never assimilated, we are rational in assuming that they are not assimilable, and we need not be surprised to find that political formulæ calling for their assimilation fail to work. We would have had a race problem in California, similar to that in the Southern states, and with no less deplorable consequences, if our national government had not put a stop to the Mongolian immigration, but had attempted to enforce social and civil equality between the Mongolians and the native whites. The Mongolians, becoming a large element of the population, would have been drawn together, like the Southern Negroes, by their consciousness of kind, and would have voted according to color; and wherever, in any city or county they were in a majority or nearly so, they would have dominated the government, and their government would have been one in fact based on color. The Chicago Tribune in a recent editorial says: "We admit frankly that if political equality had meant the election of Negro mayors, judges, and a majority of Negroes in the city council the whites would not have tolerated it. We do not believe that the whites of Chicago would be any different from the whites of the South in this respect." "Mecklin, Democracy and Race Friction, p. 240. Quoted in Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 551. 6 WE in th ress preme son in It m regate a mer in social do not as preme Cour tioned the wis the Negro ful stitution. He which he may Tery root of our John Stuart Mill long ago announced the sociological law that two unlike races, occupying the same territory, cannot enjoy equal civil rights, that only one race in fact can constitute the governing power. Wherever two or more dissimilar races are found in large masses within the same political boundaries, each is drawn together by consciousness of kind, and there is a perpetual and destructive conflict for supremacy. Was not the World War set in motion by such racial friction in Southeastern Europe? It may be argued that the consciousness of kind, which tends to segregate races and prevent their harmonious coöperation on equal terms, is a mere prejudice which ought to be overcome by enlightenment. But in social science, as in physical science, we have to be governed by facts. We cannot decree the assimilation of two races any more than a chemist can decree the mixing of oil and water. The fact is that certain races do not assimilate; and cannot do so for the reason that their consciousness of kind, which separates them in sympathy, is the outcome of ineradicable impulses of human nature. Civil equality or any other kind of equality between races as unlike as the white and black, and mingled as they are in the same territory, is a dream which can never be realized. In attempting to apply our constitutional declarations against discriminations on account of race or color, it is necessary to be governed by "the rule of reason": on the one hand, the Supreme Court, in endeavoring to protect the Negro against injustice, has to guard against injustice to the white people en masse. In the last analysis our Supreme Court can only decide whether the de facto government shall be Caucasian or Negro. Charles Francis Adams, writing in the Century Magazine in 1906, expressed a doubt if it were possible for the Negro and Caucasian to live on equal terms under the same government, and therefore he questioned the wisdom of the United States government in attempting to give the Negro full civil rights through the several amendments to our Constitution. He quotes this statement by Sir Samuel Baker: "So long as it is generally considered that the Negro and the White Man are to be governed by the same laws and guided by the same management, so long will the former remain a thorn in the side of every community to which he may unhappily belong." Commenting upon this, Adams says: "If true, this strikes at the very root of our American polity, the equality of man before the law. We cannot conform to it. If the fact must be conceded, so much the worse for the fact. By all good Americans at least, the theory will none the less be maintained, the principle confidently asserted. We are thus confronted by a condition. The existence of an ineradicable and insurmountable race difference is indisputable. The white man and the black man cannot flourish together, the latter being considerable in number, under the same system of government. Drawing apart, they will assuredly become antagonistic. An opposite theory can be maintained, and will work with more or less friction where the white greatly dominates, and the black element is a negligible quantity; when, however, the black predominates, the theory breaks down, and some practical solution is reached not in conformity with it. As Hamlet was led to observe in a quite different connection,-'This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.' "What, then, is to be our American outcome? The negro squats at our hearthstone; we can neither assimilate nor expel him. The situation in Egypt is comparatively simple. The country will be developed by European money and brain; and the African will find his natural place in the outcome. Facts will be recognized, and a polity adopted in harmony with them. Will the results reached there react on us in America? Who now can say? The problem is intricate. Meanwhile one thing is clear: the work done by those who were in political control at the close of our Civil War was done in utter ignorance of ethnologic law and total disregard of unalterable fact. Starting the movement wrong, it will be yet productive of incalculable injury to us. The Negro, after emancipation, should have been dealt with, not as a political equal, much less forced into a position of superiority; he should have been treated as a ward and dependent,-firmly, but in a spirit of kindness and absolute justice. Practically impossible as a policy then, this is not less so now. At best, it is something which can only be slowly and tentatively approximated. Nevertheless, it is not easy for one at all observant to come back from Egypt and the Soudan without a strong suspicion that we will in America make small progress towards a solution of our race problem until we approach it in less of a theoretic and humanitarian, and more of a scientific, spirit. Equality results not from law, but exists because things are in essentials like; and a political system which works admirably when applied to homogeneous equals results only in chaos when generalized into a nostrum to be administered universally. It has been markedly so of late with us.' ་ Adams, "Light Reflected from Africa," Century Magazine, Vol. 72, p. 106. CHAPTER 63 WHITE SUPREMACY AS A SOLUTION Unwillingness of the Caucasian to Divide Responsibility with Another Race in the Same Territory-The Caucasian's Strong Sense of Consciousness of Kind and Strong Sense of Property Rights-Theory of Carlyle That the Right to Hold and Control Any Territory Belongs to the Race Best Fitted to Use It-Superior Claims of the Caucasian to Territory in America SIN INCE civil equality between the Negro and Caucasian seems to be impossible of realization, a great many white people in the United States think that the only solution of the Negro problem is white supremacy, and that we should guarantee this by suitable franchise laws, or, if necessary, by removing the obstructions to it in our Constitution. Among the white people of the United States there is a wide-spread feeling that this is a white man's country. In the South and in the Pacific Coast states this feeling is especially strong. It is not at all surprising, therefore, that a considerable number of people think that the solution of the race problem is white supremacy. This proposed solution seems on the surface to be entirely feasible, for the reason that it is in agreement with historical facts. White supremacy seems to have prevailed in all parts of the world where the white race has settled and planted its culture, except in Haiti, where the white race has been exterminated by the Negro. Wherever the white race has taken root upon any soil it does not yield to the supremacy of any other race, and will resist to the point of total extinction rather than suffer any other race to domineer over it. It may be said in criticism of this trait of the white race that it is a relic of barbarism which should be eliminated by the progress of civilization, but calling it names does not alter the fact. The Caucasian race, and the Nordic branch of it in particular, will not submit to the control of any other race in a territory which it has purchased by its enterprise and sacrifice of life; and in any discussion of the race problem it is necessary to reckon with this fact if we would arrive at any workable procedure. There are two reasons why the white race will not divide responsibility with other races in the control of any territory. The first is a con |