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Rh especially, are concerned, as a problem it is solving itself. Proportionately, the African infusion is becoming less—never large, it is incomparably less now than it was in the days of my own youth. Thus manifestly a negligible factor, it is also one tending to extinction. Indeed, it would be fairly open to question whether a single Afro–American of unmixed Ethiopian descent could now be found in Boston. That the problem presents itself with a wholly different aspect here in Carolina is manifest. The difference too is radical; it goes to the heart of the mystery.

As I have already said, the universal "melting-pot" theory in vogue in my youth was that but seven, or at the most fourteen, years were required to convert the alien immigrant—no matter from what region or of what descent—into an American citizen. The educational influences and social environment were assumed to be not only subtle, but all-pervasive and powerful. That this theory was to a large and even dangerous extent erroneous the observation of the last fifty years has proved, and our Massachusetts experience is sadly demonstrating to-day. It was Oliver Wendell Holmes, who, years ago, when asked by an anxious mother at what age the education of a child ought to begin, remarked in reply that it should begin about one hundred and fifty years before the child is born. It has so proved with us; and the fact is to-day in evidence that this statement of Dr. Holmes should be accepted as an undeniable political aphorism. So far from seven or fourteen years