54o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ness is thoroughly reprehensible. Ancestral pride is sometimes carried 

 to this extreme. There is a proneness to regard foreigners as inferiors. 

 Every community beyond the frontier stage has its social cliques. Shop- 

 girls sometimes refuse to fraternize at dances with domestic servants. 

 The work of the latter is commonly regarded as menial. The privilege 

 of exclusiveness is one of the things paid for in Pullman cars. Social 

 precedence is with some the main thing in life. Some rich heiresses 

 make marriage with the titled nobility of Europe their chief ambition. 



No people ever displayed the passion for inequality more greedily than we. 

 One builds a yacht, and if he can dine an English prince at the Cowes races, or 

 entice the German Emperor on board at Kiel, this single breath of royal atmos- 

 phere at once endows the enterprising host with the rarest social privileges at 

 home. Every circle breaks at the touch of the king's hand. 2 



The white man loves to lord it over the black man. In some states, 

 many whites are exempt from the educational or property qualifications 

 to which the negro is subject. The railway, hotel and educational fa- 

 cilities provided for the colored race are frequently greatly inferior to 

 those provided for the white race. The person of negro descent is 

 greatly circumscribed in his opportunity to earn a living. In Syra- 

 cuse, Ohio, a negro is not permitted to stay over night. Some churches 

 have been rent asunder over the question of admitting a negro to mem- 

 bership. It is with great difficulty that a negro can buy property in 

 many communities. The average white man may contribute to save 

 the soul of the black man in Africa, but he does not care to have a negro 

 who is not his servant reside in the same block. This attitude is often 

 as marked among the descendants of abolitionists as among any other 

 class. To call a white person a negro in some states renders one liable 

 to a suit for damages. 3 



*o v 



The present era of reform has made few serious mistakes in meeting 

 the foregoing difficulties. It has reduced passenger fares and freight 

 rates in some instances without due consideration. It has blundered 

 more or less in trying to solve the trust problem. In many states it has 

 not taken the first steps toward preventing the feeble-minded from pol- 

 luting the race at its source. It has not addressed itself seriously 

 enough to the solution of the race problem. " I will permit no man to 

 injure me by making me hate him," Booker T. Washington once re- 

 marked. The present era has made little progress toward this lofty 

 ideal. Perhaps the most ominous mistake has been the increasing ex- 

 penditures for militarism including pensions. The competitive build- 

 ing of armaments has become a crying evil. 



2 John Graham Brooks, "The Social Unrest," p. 235. 



3 Gilbert Thomas Stephenson, ' ' Eace Distinctions in American Law, ' ' pas- 

 sim; Frank U. Quillan, "The Color Line in Ohio," passim. 



