404 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 



tion such as this is untrue to the fundamental characteristics of our 

 civilization. A return to the caste system, even with our race as the 

 ruling order, would be a denial of the essential principle of social 

 mobility. The wealth that would be drawn from the subject terri- 

 tories under a system of this kind would inevitably lead to national 

 degeneracy. The social and political attitude thus introduced 

 would have a most pernicious reflex influence upon the internal in- 

 stitutions of the Western nations. As they are not so constituted as 

 to form in themselves a compact caste, the result w r ould be that an 

 inflexible social stratification would be developed within them, and 

 the laboring classes reduced again to a position of virtual serfdom. 

 It is due, therefore, to the very ideals which constitute our superiority 

 and secure our welfare that we should allow to the territories which 

 come under the control of the Western nations the same freedom of 

 economic development which has rendered the latter powerful and 

 prosperous. 



The movement which we are considering carries with it the danger 

 of a revival of actual slavery. As the former stages of evolution 

 which our civilization has passed through began with the existence 

 of a large slave population, - - in the ancient cities and in the societies 

 of medieval Europe, - - so there is now, with the entry upon that 

 phase in which the whole world will constitute a unified economic 

 organism, an unavowed but powerful tendency to reduce a large part 

 of mankind to a position of servitude. The belief in the perfect- 

 ibility and ultimate unity of the human race is on the wane, and 

 present inferiority is treated as necessarily permanent. With the 

 economic development of the new regions that are now coming under 

 European control there is created a great demand for unskilled labor, 

 far greater than the slight inclination of the black races to work 

 prompts them to fill. It is not surprising, therefore, that the intro- 

 duction of a system of compulsory labor is advocated. The dignity 

 of labor is to be taught the natives by force, and methods which 

 we have been accustomed to consider among the worst abuses of 

 slavery are freely advocated as the only means of endowing the back- 

 ward races with the progressive spirit of industry. Should this 

 tendency continue to gain strength, it is clear that the world will 

 have to fight the anti-slavery struggle over again from the beginning, 

 but on a far wider area and involving far more powerful interests 

 than the recent national anti-slavery crusade which we had thus 

 far considered as the final word in this matter. 



We have thus far looked at the movement of expansion from the 

 point of view of the interests of our own civilization. We now ap- 

 proach the far more difficult question as to what is to be our attitude 

 towards the civilizations and social systems with which we have to 

 deal in colonial administration. At first sight it would seem an 



