Chapter L

THE COLOR LINE. By WILLIAM BENJAMIN SMITH. McClure, Phillips and Co.,
New York.

It is always a satisfaction when what has been dumbly felt is put at last into a clear-cut scientific concept. This is what William Benjamin Smith has done for us with his book on the negro problem. The South has always felt that the problem was not one involving philanthropy or the rights of man or any sort of altruism. Those are considerations that have to do with individuals. The negro problem is purely a question of race. As Mr. Bagehot pointed out in his clever book, “Physics and Politics,” the differences existing to-day between the Aryan races and the negro are greater than any causes now acting are capable of creating in present-day men. The laws of heredity are not fully known, but it is certain that the descendants of cultivated parents have an inborn aptitude for civilization due to the structure of their nervous systems. The uncivilized races do not improve; they have not the basis on which to build, but instead have inherited natures twisted into a thousand curious habits, a thousand strange prejudices and a thousand grotesque superstitions. The moment it is admitted that the difference between white and black is the product of evolution the hope of bridging the difference by education is gone. That it must be admitted is the thesis of Mr. Smith’s book, which ought to be read by every man and woman in the country who is open to reason. Once admitted, the conclusion follows swiftly and irresistibly. The duty of the white man to maintain in its purity the germ plasm of the white race justifies the denial of social equality to the black man. This is a duty which no sentimentality can excuse for it is a duty to civilization, to posterity, to the country. Neglect it, and mongrelization follows inevitably. We quote from the book: “It is this immediate jewel of her soul that the South watches with such a dragon eye, that she guards with more than vestal vigilance, with a circle of perpetual fire. The blood thereof is the life thereof; he who would defile it would stab her in her heart of hearts, and she springs to repulse him with the fiercest instinct of self-preservation.”

Mr. Smith has brought to his argument a wealth of learning and research which places his book in the rank of an authority on a much misunderstood question.