Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/544

540 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. Shopgirls 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.

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 facilities 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 Syracuse, Ohio, a negro is not permitted to stay over night. Some churches have been rent asunder over the question of admitting a negro to membership. 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.

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 polluting 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 remarked. The present era has made little progress toward this lofty ideal. Perhaps the most ominous mistake has been the increasing expenditures for militarism including pensions. The competitive building of armaments has become a crying evil.