CHAPTER XLI

THE RACE PROBLEM AND SOCIALISM

740. Its Importance. The race problem is a real problem and a most difficult one. The problem is not solved by denying its existence or by belittling its importance.

741. The Chinese Question.-The Chinese civilization is very ancient. Chinese labor coming into competition, in the world labor market, with the labor of more modern and more progressive nations, places the Caucasian worker in a position where he must yield his opportunity to live at all, or consent to live according to the standard of living accepted by his Mongolian competitors.

742. The Negro Question.-The black race either exists in Africa as savages or barbarians, or, as a rule, in other countries as the children of kidnaped savages, with no further knowledge of civilization nor opportunity to develop from the status of savagery to the status of civilized society than has been afforded during the three hundred years of bondage in the cotton fields and sugar plantations of our Southern states.

743. Race Competition.-The problem resulting from the competition of Chinese labor and of black labor with workers of European birth, or workers of

European ancestry, is particularly a problem of the United States. The race problem involves more than the labor problem which results from the competition of white men with those just out of savagery, as is the case with black men, or with those exhausted and overborne by an ancient and different civilization, as is the case with Chinese labor. There are the further problems as to the outcome of the mixing of these races, of their social relations and of their political and social rights when living together under the authority of the same government. It is not the purpose of this chapter to attempt to deal with these questions further than to discuss their relations to current economic problems and to point out how largely all these problems will lose their importance on the coming of Socialism.

744. Industrial Training.-Industrial training for the negro is no solution of the negro problem. Unquestionably it will make the negro a more effective competitor with the white man in the labor market, but it in no way affects the problem of establishing peace between the races. As the intelligence and efficiency of the black man is increased, it does not solve the problem; it only emphasizes the necessity for some solution.

So far the black man has surrendered. Industrial training will add to his strength, and as his conscious power increases he will be less willing to surrender. The demand for justice will be intensified rather than satisfied by the industrial schools.

745. Disfranchisement. — Disfranchising the colored man and enforcing his economic dependence by depriving him of his political power, cannot settle the problem. As his industrial power and his general intelligence increases, either with the ballot or without the ballot, he will find some means of demanding his

economic rights. It does not settle the problem. It simply gives further temporary control to the master, while it leaves untouched all the wrongs incident to the economic dependence of this untrained race.

746. Forbidding Marriages. - Forbidding marriages across race lines will not prevent the mingling of African and Caucasian blood. It is not because of marriages that the kidnaped black men have been losing the density of their blackness during the three hundred years of enforced residence in America.

747. Transporting.-Transporting the black man to other and distant countries could not be a solution of the question, because if capable black workers should be taken to Africa, means for the employment of their labor in producing for the markets of the world would be taken with them. While some of the social features of the problem would in this way be largely disposed of, their industrial competition with the white producer would still remain.

748. "A White Man's World."-It has been proposed that this shall be made a white man's world, that the black and yellow races shall be given certain boundaries within which they may operate, and that some means shall be provided for their practical extermination everywhere else. It is interesting to note that a part of the same program is to provide for the industrial exploitation of the so-called inferior races by the same forces which propose to make this a white man's world. It does not matter how closely yellow men and black men are held to any certain or distant territory. So long as it is understood that their labor is to be exploited and any share of their products placed in the world's market in competition with the products of white workers, the industrial race problem will remain.

749. Chinese Exclusion. The exclusion of the

Chinese from the United States has not been accompanied by, nor has it anywhere been proposed that it should be accompanied by the exclusion of American machinery from Chinese territory or the exclusion of Chinese products from the world's market. If cheap Chinese labor is forbidden to use American machinery in American shops, that will not prevent cheap production by the use of Chinese labor and American machinery. It simply means that if the Chinaman cannot come to the United States, the American machine will go to China and the products of the yellow working man, equipped with the white man's tools and subject to the white man's management, will compete in the world's market with the products of the white man's labor.

750. Race Antagonisms and Economic Interests.Let us give attention to the inquiry as to the cause of the intense antagonism between races. Surely neither the black man nor the Chinaman are inferior to the inferior animals which are made the pets and servants of white men with no feeling of antagonism or of race hatred existing between the animals and the men. So long as the black man remains "in his place," as it is said, so long as he performs the duties of a servant and assumes in no way whatever to ask for the opportunities of a man, there is no feeling of antagonism between the races. It is when the negro or the Chinaman, as it is said, "assumes to be a white man" that the trouble follows. The white man assumes the relations of mastery with himself the master. The white man holds the position of economic and political power and will not countenance any action on the part of an inferior race which involves social recognition or the possession of economic or political power on the part of the inferior race in competition with himself.

751. Mastery and Servitude.-But the antagonism

between one white man who is a master and another white man who is his personal servant is just as keen and as bitter as it can be between white masters and black servants. Whenever the menial who is a white man assumes the prerogatives of a master, he too must stay "in his place," or the class war becomes as intense as the result of these antagonistic economic relations between white men with each other as it is between men of different races, so far as the cause of the conflict between the different races is an economic

cause.

752. Labor Unions and the Race War.-Formerly the labor unions refused membership to the black men and attempted to protect themselves from the competition of the black workers by excluding the black man from the opportunity to earn his bread in any trade where organized white men were employed, but the industrial schools have been making the black worker a skilled worker, and labor unions, even in southern states, have conceded the necessity of the organization of all laborers whether black or white, if the economic interests of either are to be in any way protected by the labor unions. The fact that they are usually organized in separate unions in no way affects the force of the fact that the right to organize and to hold charters from the same organizations as white unions has been conceded to the black workers along with the rest.1

1. Because of this boycotting of black workers in shops where white people are employed, some curious things have happened in northern shops taken to southern states. In both Alabama and Georgia organizers of the trades unions have found towns where the white children refuse to work if black children are employed, with the result that the white children get the jobs in the shops, and the black children -unable to secure employment-are putting in their time attending school.

"I asked one of the largest employers of labor in the South if he feared the coming of the trade union. 'No.' he said, 'it is one good result of race prejudice, that the negro will enable us in the long run to weaken the trade union so that it cannot harm us. We can keep wages down with the negro, and we can prevent too much organization,”—Brooks: Social Unrest, p. 28.