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.