centers to which the migration has led, with the usual results of congestion in the breeding of those types and qualities that readily yield to the rioting impulse.

(3) The overflow of negroes from crowded colored colonies into white residential blocks, with a resulting depreciation of property values as far as white occupancy is concerned, and the inevitable inter-race irritation.

(4) The exploitation of negroes by real-estate agents, both black and white, in the boosting of rentals and purchasing prices.

(5) The impressions left upon the minds of our returning negro soldiers by the measure of social equality which they enjoyed in France, and the inevitable contrast they are drawing between that attitude and the attitude they find upon their return.

(6) An intensified race consciousness and race pride on the part of the American negro resulting from his having done his share, as soldier and civilian, in the war.

(7) A new sense of the possibility and freedom of movement which the negro has acquired from having learned that a Southern negro apparently can stand the Northern climate and make a living in the new surroundings.

(8) A freshened resentment on the part of the negro against his social and industrial limitations when he thinks of them in the light of the ideals of freedom, democracy, and equality for which he fought during the war.

(9) The stimulus to social-equality aspirations growing out of the relations between blacks and white prostitutes who have moved into negro districts following the breaking up of segregated vice districts in cities, as in Chicago, together with the resentment aroused among near-by whites.

(10) The irritation of many of our returned soldiers when they find their old jobs being held by negroes, while they are having difficulty in getting back to work.

(11) A conflict of interests between non-union negro labor and organized white labor.

(12) A "changed attitude" on the part of the negro that nourishes the

idea of revolutionary methods for the attainment of his aspirations-an attitude fostered by one wing of negro leadership, and cultivated by ultra-radicals who dream of a social revolution in the United States.

I have not listed here such factors as a white attempt to "teach the negro his place," which negroes charge as being a vital factor. I am not at the moment in a position to speak regarding this charge from personal knowledge or investigation, but such an attempt would have to be listed a result more than a cause at any rate.

So much, then, for an analysis of the situation. How are we to meet it? Is there a "solution" for our negro problem? Certainly there is no simple patent remedy that can be offered. In a problem so predominantly biological, the statesman is not the final man that he may be in problems that are primarily economic or political. The problem is complicated by many intangible factors of sentiment and prejudice. When a problem is rooted in both biology and prejudice, it is folly to hope for quick solutions. The best we may do is to clear the field of every manifest injustice regarding which the better elements of both races are in agreement, and then set about the educating of the public mind on the fundamental facts in the case. The one thing that groundless prejudice cannot withstand is an onslaught of facts.

NO "QUICK SOLUTION"

At the outset both black and white leaders should frankly discourage the hope for an over-night settlement of the race problem. An ill-founded hope, when defeated, frequently leaves behind a legacy of bitterness, disappointment, and despair that defeats the steady progress that might normally be realized. This point has been well stated by Dr. Jackson, a negro leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, in an article he has contributed to the New Orleans "Southwestern Christian Advocate," in which he reaffirms his confidence that the war has meant "an irreversible victory for righteousness and the beginning of applied democracy."

But he warns his constituency that "no miraculous change of sentiment nor of race relations should be expected." On this matter he says:

Such, however, seems to be the imperative demand of certain race leaders. The subsidence of race prejudice was not coinIcident with the downfall of Germany, nor will it be with the formation of a League of Nations, if effected. The white man has it, the black man has it-most men, everywhere, still have it. He who arouses in the negro expectations of a speedy democratic solution of all his depressing race problems will, I fear, do him much harm. It will give frequent occasions for irritating disappointment, which would work evil in various ways. I say to my people: Be patient! Not the patience of insensible apathy nor, indeed, of passive docility, but of active, peaceful effort.

It is small comfort, I know, to say to the negro that despite his valorous defense of the principles of freedom, democracy, and equality in the war, he must return to his home and there begin again the slow upward climb of racial evolution. Four and a quarter years in the atmosphere of dramatic issues and dramatic solutions have made him dream of some swifter solution of his problem. But he is building for bitter disappointment if he goes on the assumption that the war has radically changed human nature either among blacks or whites.

THREE KINDS OF NEGRO LEADERSHIP

Much will depend upon the type of leadership the mass of American negroes choose to follow. Speaking in the broad, there are three types of negro leadership to-day bidding for the allegiance of the race. These are:

First, the ultra-radical or revolutionary type of leadership to which reference has already been made. This type of leadership is clearly described in a recent issue of "Unity," a Chicago periodical, in a paragraph which reads:

Long years of oppression through disfranchisement, "Jim Crow" laws, segregation policies, lynching, economic discrim

ination, and so forth, coupled with the bitter experiences incident to the great war, have raised up a group of young men and women in the negro ranks who are impatient with the old leaders of the race, of both the Booker Washington and Du Bois school, and are clamoring for more aggressive action along lines of uncompromising social radicalism. These militants . . . represent not only extreme revolt against racial oppression, but also the appearance among negroes of that same movement of political and economic revolution which is now sweeping the world from end to end. . . It is too early, as yet, to estimate the significance of this sudden appearance among colored people of this movement for radical social change, but that it marks the entrance of the negro problem upon a wholly new period of development is not altogether unlikely.

It will be unfortunate if the American negro to any marked extent follows these leaders. It would inevitably bring down upon the negro the wrath of the conservative white world and make more difficult his fight for even the most elementary justice. And it appeals to me as very short-sighted policy upon the part of ultra-radicals to attempt the winning of the negro to their side. They will succeed only in confusing their social and economic issues with the unreasoning hatreds, prejudices, and passions that cluster around the race question.

Second, there is the Du Bois school of leadership, which urges the negro to wage an uncompromising fight for the full and unqualified rights of American citizenship. This school would transplant in America the European conception of the negro as a white man with an accidental blackness of skin. This school, in the main, is no more averse to aggressive methods than the first sort of leadership mentioned, but is more concerned with the dogma of equality than with radical social revolution as an economic consideration. Du Bois, in the earlier days of his public career as scholar and writer, wrote in a style of liquid beauty his protests against the color line in American life. His writings were touched with an appealing sadness.

The poet in him spoke in those days. For instance, in his "The Souls of Black Folk," he wrote:

I sit with Shakespere and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they all come graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil [the color line]. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?

Third, is what may best be called the Booker Washington school of leadership. This type of leadership covets the best for the race no less than do the two schools just mentioned, but frankly recognizes the existence of race prejudice and puts its faith in evolution rather than in edicts. I can illustrate the ideals of this type of negro leadership no better than by recalling an interview that H. G. Wells had with Booker Washington several years ago when Mr. Wells was making an American tour preparatory to writing his "The Future in America."

The interview took place in Boston. Mr. Wells argued strongly against the idea which Mr. Washington held that blacks and whites might live side by side without mingling and without injustice. Mr. Wells held this to be impossible, and said:

"You must repudiate separation, no peoples have ever yet endured the tension of intermingled distinctness."

"May we not become a peculiar people?" Mr. Washington suggested. "Is n't that possible?" He pointed

Mr. Wells did not agree. out that negroes had no common religion, culture, or racial conceit to hold them together, that the colored people were always ready to disperse and interbreed, that they were not a community in a peculiar racial sense.

All this was so much empty rhetoric to Booker Washington. Mr. Wells might talk lightly of destroying race prejudice. Washington knew better. Statesman that he was, Booker Washington accepted the fact of race prejudice and shaped his policies around that central fact. The color line saddened Washington just as it saddened Du Bois, but he felt that his mission was to achieve all possible progress, and he knew that battering his brains against a stone wall would help very little. So he accepted exclusion as inevitable, and worked out his Tuskegee program of making useful men who would, as skilled engineers and farmers, as trained artisans, make it more and more difficult to launch the charge of incompetence, ignorance, slovenly farming, and careless house management against his race.

"I wish you would tell me," said Mr. Wells, "just what you think of the attitude of white America towards you? Do you think it is generous?"

He looked at Mr. Wells for a moment, and with an evasive smile said:

"No end of people help us." "Yes," said Mr. Wells, "but the ordinary man. Is he fair?"

"Some things are not fair," Mr. Washington replied, evading the general question. "It is n't fair to refuse a colored man a berth on a sleepingcar. ... I happen to be a privileged person, they make an exception for me; but the ordinary educated colored man is n't admitted to a sleeping-car at all. . . . Then in some places, in the hotels and restaurants-it 's all right here in Boston-but southwardly he can't get proper refreshments. All that 's a handicap. . The remedy

lies in education," Mr. Washington said, "ours-and theirs."

"The real thing," Washington later

told Mr. Wells, "is n't to be done by talking and agitation. It's a matter of lives. The only answer to it all is for colored men to be patient, to make themselves competent, to do good work, to live well, to give no occasion against us. We feel that. In a way it 's an inspiration.

"There is a man here in Boston, a negro, who owns and runs some big stores, employs all sorts of people, deals justly. That man has done more good for our people than all the eloquence or argument in the world. . . That is what we have to do-it is all we can do."

Interpreting this point of view in his volume of impressions, Mr. Wells refers to it as a policy that made each educated and efficient negro an ambassador to civilization, a representative and vicarious character, by keeping decent and honorable, doing a little to beat down racial prejudice.

When all is said and done, nothing since his death has invalidated the essential soundness of Booker Washington's policy. In this time of universal unrest and fresh aspirations it will not be easy for the negro to accept the full implications of the policy, but it is the most statesmanlike program that the race has yet evolved, simply because it reckons with facts and looks toward possible progress rather than theoretical perfection.

The poorest friend the negro has is the sentimental philanthropist who, sweeping all of the biological facts in the case aside, thinks to lift the race by according to black men smatterings of classical education and social equality. Some one has suggested that to these well-meaning, but blind, guides the negro might address the words of Andres to Don Quixote: "For the love of God, Signor Knight Errant, if ever you meet me again, though you see me beaten to pieces, do not come to my help, but leave me to my fate, which cannot be so bad but that it will be made worse by your worship." The negro is not a white man with a black skin; he is a different race at a different stage in racial evolution. It is not fair to judge him by the standards of the white race. It is folly to expect him

to respond with white alacrity to the opportunities that white men enjoy. We must remember that the AngloSaxon did not leap to his present supremacy at one bound; he has walked over the slow road of racial evolution. That fact should counsel the negro to patience under certain discriminations that may off-hand appear unjust, and should also throw light upon the white man's program for the negro.

TRAINING THE NEGRO'S HAND

As a nation we must develop and extend the facilities for the industrial education of the negro. It is not higher education that the negro primarily needs. The advantages of higher education should be open for every individual negro who displays the appetite and ability for its attainment, but it is a matter of history that sound racial development demands that the education of the hand precede the education of the head. The races that have built cathedrals and universities and art galleries have first been hewers of wood and drawers of water. The negro cannot take a short cut. The invention and use of tools have been reliable tests of racial advance. As a race the negro has not, to the present, been an inventor and user of tools. This distinction he must achieve through the best industrial education that the nation can give him and help him to acquire. The political and educational statesmanship of the nation, joining hands in this matter, can make a fundamental contribution toward the solution of our race problem.

A BILL OF LABOR RIGHTS

It is not enough, however, to train the negro for industry. Industry must be open to him upon a basis of justice. In the past it has been the industrial part of the color line that has most impeded the negro's progress. He has been barred from the trades to a serious extent by the facts of his being barred from membership in the laborunions of the country. But now a start has been made toward correcting this feature of the race situation. At its

Atlantic

recent Atlantic City meeting the American Federation of Labor voted to grant unconditional membership to the negro. Afro-American periodicals here and there refer to this step as next in importance to the abolition of chattel slavery. Theoretically this decision of the federation makes it possible for the negro workman to enter all of the skilled and better-paid trades and carry on a genuine test of merit unhampered by racial discrimination. This action of the federation was not inspired by any abstract theory of the race problem, but was the inevitable result of conditions brought about by the war. I have already referred to the fact that the withdrawal of many white American workmen from industry for military service, the return of so many Italians and other South-European laborers to their native lands for war duty, and the practical cessation of immigration during the war resulted in a labor shortage in Northern industries; that this resulted in a great influx of negro labor into the Northern States. The American Federation of Labor had to reckon with the presence of this great body of colored workmen already in Northern industry as a result of the migration of the last three years. It saw that the great need for labor during the reconstruction period, coupled with an imminent restriction of immigration by Congressional act, would probably keep a steady stream of negro labor flowing from the South for some time to come. If this mass of colored workmen should be left unorganized or admitted to a qualified membership only, there would be great danger to organized white labor in the use of colored workmen as strike-breakers. If the mass of negro workmen in Northern industries, dissatisfied with discriminatory treatment at the hands of organized labor, were made available as "scab" labor, a complicated situation would obtain. The American Federation of Labor saw this and hastened to throw its doors open to the negro. If this vote can be translated into fact, labor will face the issues of the new era with a solid front.

There are two factors that will make difficult the carrying out of this vote.

In the first place, there is bound to be much friction between white and black workmen as the negro enters the unions and takes his place alongside the white workman. The old race prejudice will not be exorcised by executive order. In the second place, it is not at all certain that negro workmen will readily adapt themselves to a far-reaching program of organization. They may feel that their best interests lie in playing a separate game with capital. Mr. John Mitchell, the editor of a negro periodical in Richmond, Virginia, has stated these two difficulties clearly. He writes:

The greatest menace to organized labor as opposed to organized capital is the black multitude that entered the industrial plants of the country and demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that they could execute and master the tasks assigned. It was organized capital and not organized labor that gave to black labor the position that it now occupies. Will the colored men accept the invitation and join the white labor-unions or will they stand out as independent units under their own leaders and from their respective platforms deal directly with the moneyed interests of the country? On this decision will depend the fate of the white laboring interests of America as represented by the American Federation of Labor.

It is also an interesting question as to whether the American Federation of Labor can hold in leash its own membership should the invitation be generally accepted by the colored men of this country.

Mr. Samuel Gompers said regarding the admission of colored workmen into unqualified membership in the federation that "it is one of the most important steps taken by the federation in many years." It is undoubtedly a challenge to the good temper, the patience, and the statesmanship of the leaders of black and white labor.

JOINT COUNCILS ON RACE RELATIONS

It will materially help the situation if throughout the country, particularly in our industrial centers, there can be organized joint councils on inter-racial adjustment and coöperation, composed