mon with other Teutonic peoples. The Southerner built the first railroad in America, the first street car line, the first and second steamboats, the first ironclad, the first submarine; invented the first reaper; was first to apply electricity to street car locomotion; was first to municipally build and operate a street car service; inaugurated municipal government by commission, an innovation that is spreading beyond the borders of America; gave to America and to the world the public free school which has become the glory of modern civilization; lastly, but, in the opinion of some, not the least, constructed the first golf links in the Western World. The South could create, but the South could not develop its own creations as the white North has done. Teutonic genius is in the race, but the race has been imperiled by the jungle.

It is necessary to remind the people of the great white North that the portion of their race, which is by virtue of circumstance custodian of civilization in the Southern States, has demonstrated that it possesses cultural capacities like unto themselves, but that "Experience in all parts of the world shows that the presence of an inferior race in large numbers tends constantly to lower the standards of the dominant race," and, "If he (the American negro) could be eliminated from the Southern States, their future would be much brighter than it is now.'

991

1Address of Ellsworth Huntington, Ph. D., Assistant Professor of Geography, Yale, given at Clark University, 1913. See Latin America, published by Clark University, p. 368.

The South has been submitted to the acid test of the white ideal. The South has preserved the colorline and the color-line has maintained a white South. The color-line has preserved the white race, but the color-line will not make the South a great industrial civilization. Civilization proceeds from and is dependent upon the white man, and the white American surely must have an intense interest in remedying matters in the South. The negro is not, save in a restricted sense, the Southerner's problem. He is a national problem.

In a speech delivered in the Senate August 7, 1916, Senator James K. Vardaman of Mississippi, speaking of the negro problem, said: "We realize that nothing definite looking to the solution of the race problem can be effected without National aid. . . . It is a problem which the Nation made, and the Nation alone can solve it." This is true. It is the greatest problem of our civilization, and constitutes the "only problem beyond which we cannot see." (Grover Cleveland.)

When tyranny, backed by immense power, attempted to intimidate the Northern colonies, the South, though not immediately concerned in the struggle, cried, "Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle?" (Henry.) We know the result. The South made common cause with their endangered "brethren" and the American nation sprang into existence. Race and culture are

imperiled in the South as they never were in the North. There are millions of Southerners who wait for the powerful white North to say, "Our brethren are in the field! Why stand we here idle?"

CHAPTER XI

PROBLEMS OF CIVILIZATION IN CONTACT WITH COL

CORED RACES:

Economic Problems

For more than two years the writer was employed as an underground workman in the diamond and gold mines in South Africa. His lengthy experience with the white workingmen of South Africa enabled him to enter into the spirit of their problems. The problems arising from the white man's contact with the negro are similar throughout the world. The differences are those of degree, not kind. The white laboring class of South Africa is extremely hard pressed by reason of disastrous competition with the low standards of the colored, who outnumber the whites five to one. If the writer has been seemingly severe in criticism of the institutions of South Africa, it is because his living there identified him with the present status and the needs of the white laboring class upon which the civilization depends. The white workingmen will have to arouse themselves if civilization is to continue in South Africa. They need to realize that their present danger is a man-made danger and can be remedied by human agency.