A. H. Currier, The Present Day Problem of Crime.

R. M. McConnell, Criminal Responsibility and Social Constraint.

T. S. Mosby, Crime and its Causes and Cures.

F. Tannenbaum, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 125, p. 433.

H. A. Overstreet, in International Journal of Ethics, vol. 25, p. 277.

CHAPTER IX

RACIAL EQUALITY

THE toleration of negro slavery was, of course, the great crime, the great inconsistency, in a nation founded upon the principle that "all men are created equal." That crime was atoned for by the blood and tears of the Civil War, and ended by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Now Lincoln, the Emancipator, is known and reverenced by the poorest child who earns or is given a copper cent.

Scarcely less serious a stain upon our record has been our treatment of the natives of our land, the American Indians. They were subjugated with comparative ease by the superior numbers and weapons of the European settlers, and thereupon denied citizenship, banished to the far West, cooped up upon Reserves, and treated in a way that justifies the title of a recent volume, A Century of Dishonor. A commission appointed by President Grant to report upon Indian affairs published this conclusion: "The history of the Government connection with the Indians is a shameful record of broken treaties and unfulfilled promises. The history of the border white man's connection with the Indians is a sickening record of murder, outrage, robbery and wrongs committed by the former, as the rule, and occasional outbreaks and unspeakably barbarous deeds of retaliation by the latter, as the exception."

The nation has now generally recognized the wrong that was done the negro and the Indian. What remains of the latter race seems in a fair way to be absorbed into the common American stock. But the negro race remains a sharply distinct race, whose intermarriage is not usually regarded as desirable. Human nature being what it is, a certain racial antipathy seems unconquerable; and the presence of eleven millions of negroes in this country gives rise to a very serious problem.

It is not that the negroes are an "inferior" race. Modern biology has been undermining that complacent assumption of innate superiority which the white man has until recently taken for granted. Recent investigations seem to indicate that there is no very great difference in average mental ability between the members of the white, red, yellow, brown and black races. It may be though it has not yet been decisively proved that the average of negro capacity is somewhat below the average capacity of the white race. But in any case, the range of capacity within each race is so great as compared with any average difference that there may be between the races, that no difference in attitude toward any race as a whole is justified because of different mental capacity.

It would seem, if these biological investigations are trustworthy, that the apparent lower capacity of the negroes, as of every backward race, is to be explained mainly, if not altogether, by the absence of an environment favorable for development. Give the negroes equal educational and cultural advantages, and in a generation there will be no more problem of a backward race there than there is with the Japanese, who, in a generation, have leaped from a semi-civilized status to be one of the world's great

neighbors are doing their best to keep the negroes down, retarding the only possible solution. What with the educational disqualification, from which most of the illiterate whites are exempt, and the polltax laws, and the pressure of white disapproval of negro participation in politics, the negroes are not in a position to relieve their own situation at the ballotbox. It is necessary to awaken the conscience of their white compatriots to the true implications of Americanism.

The act of freeing and giving the franchise to the negroes was, as Professor Hartley Alexander has said, "the most heroic act of political faith in history." They have not had a fair chance to justify that faith. But some of their leaders are making heroic efforts to uplift their people. The return of negro soldiers from participation in the War, with its broadening outlook, the growing appreciation of the economic value of the negro in a time when farm-labor is increasingly scarce, the work of the few endowed negro schools, and of such bodies as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, offer hope for the alleviation of an intolerable situation. At any rate, the negroes are not dying out, not emigrating, not being blended with the rest of the population. Their degradation involves the degradation, in some degree, of their white neighbors; as Booker Washington used to say, "You can't keep a man in the ditch without staying in the ditch with him." The only possible solution of the negro problem lies in a frank recognition of the American principle of equality. This does not imply intermarriage or unnecessary social contact. It does imply equal rights to education, to the ballot, to all the privi

leges available to the white population. America is theirs as well as ours.

The crux of the negro problem lies in the fact that, on the one hand, we do not want to assimilate them biologically, and, on the other hand, the presence of an unassimilated race so different from our own creates an unhappy social situation. The situation seems permanently unsatisfactory, with no way out. We can, and must, insist on fair treatment for the negroes; we must respect them and cease to look upon them as inferiors. But we should learn the lesson of our fathers' blunder in bringing them to our shores, and make sure that another such situation does not arise.

Yet just such another situation might arise if the Chinese or Japanese or Hindus were to be allowed to enter our country in any considerable numbers. It is not, again, that these are inferior races. The Chinese and Hindus were civilized while our Caucasian ancestors were still savages; and the Japanese have already shown a capacity for modern methods that everyone admires. It is likely that within a comparatively short time, as history goes, these nations will all be as civilized as our own.

But do we want to intermarry with these races? Are we sure that it would be wise? Certainly most of our people would vigorously repudiate the idea; and these Orientals would form a separate race in our midst, not so ignorant, and-let us hope-not so illtreated as the negroes have been, but still aliens, separate, and made to feel their separateness. Candidly, we cannot count on our courtesy to such an alien race living in our midst. Race-prejudice rests on deep-seated human instincts, and it is