(1906) white capital and colored labour

8/14/2019 (1906) White Capital and Colored Labour

1/202


2/202

THEMARTIN P. CATHERWOOD

LIBRARY

OF THE

SCHOOLOF

INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR

RELATIONS

AT

CORNELL UNIVERSITY


3/202

Cornell University

Library

The original of this book is in

the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in

the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924078705856


4/202


5/202

The Socialist Library. IV.


6/202


7/202

The Socialist Library IV.Idited by J. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P.

White Capitaland

Coloured Labour

BY

SYDNEY OLIVIER,C.M.G.

If

LONDON:INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY,

2j, Bride Lane, E.C.

igo6.

-'HO,

PROPERTY OF LIBRARYIII V?M1!/ CI*"" 's*"5"'1


8/202


9/202

( 7

!^ . t

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS.

Chapter I,

Introductory.

Intention of the book. The doctrine of the WhiteMan's Burden. Industrial Confrontation ofWhite and Black as Employer and Employee.Industrial relation complicated by distinctionof Race. Imperialist sentiment philanthropic,

but Imperial Expansion not imdertaken forreasons of philanthropy. Endeavour to clearthe subject of illusion. The efficient motive ofcolonisation economic, not humanitarian ... i

Chapter II.

Race.

Causes of Racial distinctions. These distinctionsa limitation of humanity and do not over-rideindividuality. Completeness and limitation ofracial consciousness. Racial Godhead. Inter-racial criticism necessarily partial and imper-tinent II

Chapter 111.

Race Fusion.

The Theory of insuperable race-barriers. Itsnecessary instability. Inter-breeding. Physio-

logical aspect of hybridization. Psychological

consequences : double and multiple conscious-ness. Theological consequences : dethronementof the racial God. Invincibility of conqueredraces. Analogy of racial and sexual differentia-

tion and limitations 19


10/202

Chapter IV.

The Transplanted African.

Race Relations in the United States and the

British West Indies. Social and industrial

conditions in the West Indies. Society in

Jamaica. Attenuation of colour-prejudice.

Aversion to inter-mixture by marriage. Con-sideration of the results of inter-breeding.

Social value of the class of mixed descent 29

Chapter V.The Transplanted African. (2)

Colour relations much healthier in the WestIndies than in the United States or South

Africa. Examination of colour-prejudice in

the United States. The terror of "SocialEquality." American apprehensions contra-

dicted by West Indian experience. The impu-dence of the Negro. His alleged licentiousness.

His provocations in the American attitude ... 41

Chapter VI.

The Transplanted African. (3)The political difficulty in America an important

source of trouble. Democracy and universalsuffrage avoided in the West Indies. The self-protective illegalities of the Southern Whites.

The dangers of Negrophobia. Its absence inthe West Indies. Irrationality and danger ofthe colour-line 52

Chapter VII.

American Corroborations.

Testimony of American writers, Mrs. Ella WheelerWilcox and Professor Josiah Royce, in corrobo-ration of views set forth in the foregoingchapter ... ... ... ... ... ... 5i

Note. Since this book has been in the Press a similararticle, by P. F. Mather, corroborating the views set forth,has appeared in the Arena for October, igo6.


11/202

Chapter VIII.

The Idleness of the African.The standard of servile virtue, applied in England

to the working class, in the tropics to the Negro.The European worker works hard because he iscompelled by fear of starvation. The Africandoes not because he is not under such compul-sion. Why he works better in some respects asa slave. Why indentured Indian labour isemployed in the West Indies. The intractabilityof the African to the capitalist industrial system. 72

Chapter IX.

Black Labour in South Africa.

TheBantu Race. The South African Native

Affairs Commission. Their view of the indus-

trial disposition of the African. The Nativelabour supply, its deficiency to the demand.Character of this demand, not an organic needof the community, but a demand on the part offoreign capital for labour force to be used for

the profit of foreign investors. Unlimited

character of this demand. Effects of thecapitalist demand for labour on the attitudeof White towards Black. The theory that theNative must be taught and induced to work.The Commission's criticism of a land policydirected to this end 85

Chapter X.

The Uncolonised African.

Conditions in West Africa. Earlier European

contact mainly for purposes of trade. The

Natives willing traders. Hardly any settlement

of Europeans for productive agriculture or

manufacture, except a few mining ventures.

British administration devoted to opening up.

countries to trade, and imposing peace between


12/202

tribes. The new departure in certain districts,such as the Congo Free State. Capitalistexploitation carried on by forced levies insteadof by employment of wage labour. Modernslavery in Portuguese East Africa. Apart fromforcible oppression and the compulsion ofstarvation no human being tolerates theunregulated demands of capitalist employment no

Chapter XI.

Indentured Immigrant Labour.

The general basis of Indentured Immigration ; thepressure of hunger. Legal penalties for idlenessin the employee unnecessary in civilisedcountries, but necessary to the employer where

starvation does not threaten. Protection of theemployee against the employer secured byimmigration laws in British colonies as it hashad to be secured by Factory Laws in GreatBritain ... ... ... ... ... ... 121

Chapter Xli.

The Industrial Factor in Race Prejudice.The danger of unlimited authority. Its aggrava-

tions by racial distinction. The providentialinsensibility of coloured races. The increase ofcolour prejudice in America concurrently withthe increase of manufacturing industry in theSouth. The negation of native rights in the

Congo State. Change in the European theorywith regard to the humanity of the Africanraces as European contact has changed frommissionary and trading connection to industrialand exploiting connection 126

Chapter XIII.

J The Missionary Plea.The motives bringing white men into contact with

black, the missionary and the economic. Should


13/202


14/202

development. The long view, justified by its

application in the British West Indies, thatsavage characteristics in the African will yield

the same influences as have modified them in

the European i^o


15/202

WHITE CAPITALAND

COLOURED LABOUR.

I.

LNFTRODUCTORY.

The purpose of these chapters is to discusssome aspects of the problems that arise out ofintercourse between civilised Europeans,considered characteristically in their com-mercial and employing activities.and coloured,especially African, races, confronted with theWhite man in the character of manualproducers and labourers, employed or soughtto be employed by the commercial and pro-ductive enterprise of the European. What isthe White man going to make of the Black,or the Black of the White in industry ?

Agood deal has been written of late on this

subject, under the stimulus of the rapidly

growing interests of White capitalism inTropical labour, since the principal European

Governments arranged for the partition of

Africa. Mr. Rudyard Kipling has idealised

one view of it for popular currency inhis

catchword "The White Man's Burden,"


16/202

Other writers have discoursed of "The Control

of the Tropics," and "The Governmentof

Tropical Dependencies." A theory is declar-ing itself, not essentially inhumane or re-actionary, but adopted in cruder forms by thecolonising class whose activity and enterprisecreate the situation to be dealt with, and

markedly influential with some of the states-men and administrators who have to dealwith that situation, a theory which may bebriefly summarised thus : Tropical countriesare not suited for settlement by Whites.Europeans cannot labour and bring up

families there. The Black can breed andlabour under good government, but he cannotdevelop his own country's resources. He isbrutish, benighted, and unprogressive. Theprincipal reason of this condition is that his

life is made so easy for him by nature that heis not forced to work. The White man,therefore, must, in the interests of humanity,make arrangements to induce the Black manto work for him. To him the economic profit,which the Black does not value and cannotuse ; to the latter the moral and social

advancement and elevation. To effect thisdevelopment is the " White Man's Burden "in this way must we control the tropics ; alongthese lines alone can the problem of racialrelations in our new possessions be solved.

To the writer it appears that the problemcontains gome elements of which this diagnosis


17/202

takes too little account. "Half-devil andhalf-child " is the generic description offered

of the material to be dealt with, and we neednot altogether protest against it. But doubtand demur begin to make themselves felt assoon as we begin to consider the questionWhat kind of a saint it is supposed can bemade of the Devil, and what kind of a manof the Child. The savage is not " civilised "is he capable of growing at all into theindustrial forms of our civilisation ? Arewe quite sure, that it is desirable that heshould do so ? We speak of racial charac-eristics. What is Race? How deep do itscharacteristics go? What is there inhumanity that is beneath or beyond Race?And is it not conceivable that some partof that which in savage races is devilishor childish to our ideas is the evidence of aforce or potentiality that may be a wholesomesolvent of the conventions of our own racialand particular civilisation ?

The African races, considered especially intheir two principal stocks of Negro andBantu, make up the most important uncivil-ised mass of coloured humanity. The Negrorace has already, more than any other, beenbrought into intimate and influential contactwith Europeans in the institution of slavery ;with this we have experimented in the West

Indies and in America under varying socialfipd economic co^^ditions. The Asiatic r^ces,


18/202

4

in some cases less alien from us, seem to be

further matured in their evolution, more stereo-typed, and to offer less material for develop-ment and specialisation. They have evolvedcivilisations of their own, their populations

have grown to the limit of their economicresources. European permeation and exploita-

tion of China are hardly conceivable, in thesense in which we are beholding Europeanpermeation and exploitation of Africa. Thepopulations of India seem little likely, withinimaginable time, notwithstanding the probable

growth of manufacturing industry underforeign direction among them, very greatly toalter their industrial and commercial relationstowards us. The Indian, indeed, perhapsbecause he is less alien in race, is much moreamenable to capitalist industrial methodsthan the African : the problems which thelatter offers do not arise with him. The RedIndian, the American Indian races in general,are a dwindling and effete survival, the PacificIsland races have not the expansive fertilityand the colonising vigour of the Negro.

I propose, then, to discuss, first of all the

topic of Race, so as to clear the ground as faras possible of prejudice, and of some dogmaticassumptions which superficial observers areprone to make about the unalterable limita-tions of racial faculty. It is unquestionablethat the special racial cliaracteristics of onerace may fail entirely to find a sympathetic


19/202


20/202

examine the conditions prevailing in Europeadcolonies there, overlying a native population,

and follow the track of our survey into thoseregions where real colonihation is notattempted but the problem is simply that ofthe opening and control of tropical countriesfor the profit of the White investor.

Under all these diverse conditions onecomplaint on the part of the White is con-stant : that the Black man is lazy. And atthe back of the Black man's mind there per-sists (not, as a rule, expressed sometimesmost profoundly dissembled) a rooted convic-tion that the White man is. there to get thebetter of him, the Black. Both impressionsare justified, and neither is entirely and finallyjust.

It must be admitted and borne in mind,that the public opinion that supports EuropeanImperialism in Africa is, on the whole, aphilanthropically disposed public opinion,

and that there is a good deal of justificationfor satisfaction with the results, even allow-ing for all that must be said of loss to thenatives.

White administration does whatnativea dministration in African communitiesnever has succeeded in doing with any perman-ence, either at home or in Hayti : it does keepthe peace and establish a basis for civil devel-opment. It is hardly, however, legitimate for

any European nation to take credit for theseresults, as though they had been the object of


21/202

its colonisation. With rare and particularexceptions, so peculiar in their circumstancesas to serve merely as proof of the rule (suchas the annexation of British Bechuanaland)no nation has ever colonised, annexed, or es-tablished a sphere of influence from motivesof philanthropy towards the native popula-tion. The motive cause of such action hasbeen the interest, immediate or future, ofEuropean colonists, merchants or treasure-seekers, or to punish aggression on missionariesor explorers. And where punishment has beenthe object, or even where allegiance has beentendered for the purpose of getting protection,

it has frequently been refused (notwithstand-

ing all the benefits that European rule wouldbring), where no economic interest backed thedemand. The recent partition of Africa wasnot engaged in and carried out from anyphilanthropic or humanitarian motive, but

in order to ensure that the markets

of the several divisions should be kept

open to the several Powers that appropriated

them, or, in some cases, to guarantee the

frontiers of previous acquisitionsfrom mo-

lestation.

It is essential that this subject be approached

with an intelligence clear of cant. It is unjust

to denounce the partition of Africa and the

intercourse of the White with the Black as an

unmixed evil for the latter ; it is unjust (inmost cases) to condemn European administra-


22/202


23/202

9

through such pursuit of our interests, we SOorder our dealings that benefits, on the whole,result to them (which is far from being entirelyor always the case), if it may really be tothe natives' interest that the White manshould exploit his labour, that is no reason

atall for

taking moral credit to ourselves forcolonisation. The native (bear this alwayswell in mind) is not deceived in this matter.Hence arises that fundamental suspicion inhim that we resent as so unjustifiable anduncharitable. Hence what we denounce as

his treacheries and his rebellions. Moreover,no more than the trading or settling colonistsdo the men who go to these colonies to take;part in the government go there from philan-

ithropy. They go, as a rule, primarily tojmake their living, and though they mayI exhibit the spirit of a devoted public service,

it must always be remembered that to thenative they and their dependents are merelya set of rulers, making a living out of hiscoimtry and out of the taxes he pays,because they cannot make it at home, andinterfering with him as a pretext for doingso. We must disenchant the facts andeliminate all the glamour which our assuranceas to our own moral standards and our desireto think the best of ourselves hang aboutthem, before we can hope to form any judg-ment of the aspect in which those facts appearto the African.


24/202

1 writewithout

prejudice either as " Irri-

perialist" or as "Anti-Imperialist," because

it appears to me that in matters of colonisa-tion and conquest the moral or philosophicalcriticism follows after, and is quite secondaryin importance to, the facts of the will and

interest. These lead:

thenecessities of

survival determine expansion. No colony canbe made by a theory of Imperialism : it canonly be made by people who want to coloniseand are capable of maintaining themselves ascolonists. And it is between these persons

and the natives of colonised countries that thequestions I wish to deal with arise. Theproblems of conquest and settlement thetopics of native wars and rebellions arepreliminary to those of industrial relations,

and it is no part of my purpose here to discusstheir ethics.


25/202

11.

RACE.

What makes Race ? It is possible, evidently,since many people habitually do so toconceive of races as special creations andof the individuals that compose them asbeings independently created : characters

entering life on earth in suitably assignedor chosen environment. But we are, I think,entitled to deal with the moulding causesof Race from the point of view of evolutionarybiology, to believe, that is, that the cerebral andtemperamental distinctions of Races have been

determined and established, like their bodilydifferences, by the pressure of environment

throughout the course of material evolution.

1 take it that the distinctions (1 do not say the

human similarities) exhibited by Races canbe validly explained on Darwinian principles,

and that whatever may be deemed essentiallyhuman (or essentially divine, if you will) inMan, it is certainly not his distinctions in the

category of Race. There are qualities

common to all races, in greater or less degree,which we recognise as specifically human, and

about whichgreat controversy has indecisively

raged, as to how they could have been pro-


26/202

Hduced by Natural Selection: the musical

sense, for example ; and, still more remark-

ably and puzzlingly, we find in distinct races,remote in time and place, exhibitions of veryspecialised and elaborate human faculty andachievement in Art, Science, Philosophy, andReligion, for the birth of which it appearsquite impossible to assign any plausible ex-planation in parallel biological causes arising

out of identity in physical environment. Butspecial differentiating characteristics of races

may confidently be said to be, in great measureat any rate, reactions of the physical environ-ment of a stock realising its will-to-livecontinuously and progressively under adverse,but not insuperable conditions, little altered

through long periods of time. We may evengo so far as to say that the special race

characteristics which such protracted processwill evolve, although they are, for the Raceconcerned, a necessary condition of its exis-

tence in its environment, are probably, at anyrate, are often, limitations, excrescences or

shortcomings of Humanity. It is possible to

hold this judgment, both as to the savage andthe civilised, without implying the dogmaticassertion of any essential or final Human type.

Moreover, as a further preliminary caution,one salient, ubiquitous reality must also beborne in mind : the infinite, inexhaustible

distinctness of personality between individuals,so much a fundamental fact of life that one


27/202

13

almost would say that the amalgamating

race-characteristics are merely incrustationsconcealing this sparkling variety. It is

common enough, indeed, for hasty observers,whose faculties of perception and sympathyare baffled by their racial limitations, to tellus that the people of some foreign tribe or

nation are all precisely alike, both in face andcharacter : intelligent and sympathetic obser-vation, however, will always disclose, underevery human complexion and civilisation, thesame independent definition of each individualthat everyone imputes unquestioningly to the

persons of his own intimate circle. Not even" two peas " are really alike, and no observantgardener would use the vulgar adage. Yet,again, notwithstanding all this variety

amongst individuals far wider than thevariety among races we meet, so far as Racedoes not preclude us from seeing it, in every

human being an ultimate, unmistakable like-ness, transcending Family, Race, and Nationalike, yet in no wise overbearing, nor trans-cending, nor neutralising his own individuality,but rather establishing and completing it, andat the same time knitting it up with our own.

What circumstances produce the typicalrace, the race that the Greek poets spoke of as" autochthonous " sprung from the soil ?First and chiefly the Earth long settlementin the same country and climate. These in-

livieRces having done their work, a racial type


28/202

may persist in a race become nomadic andcosmopolitan, as the Jews and the Gipsies,

yet even these are modified by their domicile,

and the Jew of different countries is notdifficult to distinguish at sight to a trained

observer. The ancient race -theory the mythof actual earth-parentage is practically thetrue account of the greater part of the matter.

! Whatever may be the cause or creative forceI

of Humanity, the cause and moulding force

Iof Race appears as local environment. It isnecessary, perhaps, to emphasise this, because,

to a mongrel town-dwelling population ittends to present itself as merely a poetical

figure of speech. Towns do not produce races,they destroy them, as London kills out itsimmigrant families by the third generation.

Towns doubtless produce popular types, as

Londonthe cockney, but that is a different

thing. Such types vary rapidly. The town-dweller who has not himself experienced themoulding and nourishing power of Earth innatural surroundings is likely and prone tosuppose that the city may do what the country

does, which is not the case- The productionof the Boer race, one of well-marked physicaland mental characteristics, notwithstandingthat it is of mongrel immigrant origin, Dutch,French, and in some degree British, is aninstance of a people developed into a Race,

within modem record, by the motherhood ofthe Sou^h African yeldt, a witness of the race-


29/202

15

making power of the Earth still at work inher uncocknified regions.

When a race lias established and maintaineditself for generations in a particular environ-ment a primitive race not reaching as yet avery high degree of civilisation and hasstaved off the revolutionary effects of excess

ofpopulation by means of infanticide, organ-

ised emigration, or moderate chronic warwith its neighbours, it will have fitted all itsbodily adaptation and the processes of itsdaily life so accurately and so fully into themould of its natural surroundings that it will

not be conscious of itself as other than a partof nature. Such a race, in the vigour of itsmaturity, is a full cup ; its form is saturatedto the skin with the energy that has forced itinto the mould of life appointed ; it is sensitiveat the surface, reacting immediately according

to its own native impulse, not critical of itsimpulses, not hesitant between feeling andaction, thought and word, not sceptical whereit believes. It is very fully aware of thethings of its own world ; it is not aware of,and does not imagine, things outside of it.

The invisible, for it, abuts entirely upon, andis concerned only with, its own visible world.The habitual religiosity of the pagan result-ing from this condition is unimaginable,

unintelligible to the faculties of the Christian

invader, whose religion is for the most part a

detachable property, a matter of clergy anc}


30/202

i6

Sundays. The only forces the primitive race

knows are those that mould, impel, and attackit: its Gods arid Devils are all concernedwith itself ; and thus it comes about thateach natural race, when it comes to personifythe invisible, no matter whether its god besingular or plural, its devils one or legion,

believes and feels and knows itself to be a"chosen people." I say "knows itself"because its knowledge, like the rest of its life,

will have followed the mould of its biologicalevolution, and because it will have acquiredonly such faculties of theory and understand-

ing as its environment has determined. Andaccordingly when, confronted with other tribal

gods, it enters upon theological criticism, itlays down unhesitatingly (if it has anysufficient self-respect) that all those gods are

but idols, but that it is its Lord that made theheavens.

Moreover, it will, from precisely similar

causes, develop the belief that it is the crownof Creation, free Man, and it only, and thatall other nations are outer barbarians, Gentiles,

savages, and by nature designed to be slaves,which it, the chosen people, will never, neverbe. This has constantly been the expressed

theory of national sociologists in more or lessprimitive peoples, when they have passed intoa self-conscious critical stage. Even Aristotlecould not transcend this universal illusion.

In this country, even among our confusedly


31/202

i7

blended people, it had come, a few years ago, tdbe so unquestioningly and universally held,that Mr. Kipling's " Recessional," whichexpressed some post-piandial qualms in regardto it, was hailed by our national critics as aneffort of superhuman inspiration, almost

blasphemous in the audacity of its humility.Because of their evolution in different en-

vironments and their differences in physicaladaptation, all pure races of necessity differ

one from another in their capacities, theirknowledge, and their powers ; and each pure

race, so far as it works by the light of its ownformulated conscious knowledge and criticaland logical habits, is constitutionally unfittedfor understanding or even imagining the exist-

ence of much that enters into the life of each ofall other races and may be either the most sacred

or the most commonplace thing in that life.Further, it is noticeable that more thanone of the races of which we habitually speakas inferior, and which appear to be effeteor decaying, are far in advance of the com-

mercial Caucasian who is our own type andstandard, not only in some of the mostdesirable and pleasant human qualities, butin artistic, poetical, and other of the higherspiritual forms of genius or faculty. Whentherefore individuals of different races are

confronted, each is largely devoid of mental

appliances for apprehending even the exis-

tence, far more so for understanding the sig-


32/202

nificance of much that is vividly alive andpermanently important in the consciousnessof the Alien. The one cannot perceive thatthe other is a full cup ; he makes for himselfa ridiculous broken caricature of a few strik-ing characteristics as a hypothesis of the

foreign creature's nature, and fills out thefigure with the attributes of the children, theimbeciles and the criminals of his own na-tionality. I cannot refer to a better corrective

of the style of illusion in relation to savage

races than the late Miss Mary Kingsley's

books on West Africa, in which, with afine

direct sympathy, the insight of the plain wo-

man of genius, she analysed and appreciatedthe psychology of the native tribes of the" Coast " ; quite seriously taking them asrational human beings to be weighed in the

same scales as the white races.The criticism, therefore, which one race

may pass upon another will almost always besomewhat impertinent and provincial. Com-plete apprehension of the racial point of view,

complete recognition of what it really is that

the alien means by his formulas, is hardly tobe attained. In many cases a meaning com-mon to both races is disguised by differentmodes of expression ; in many the two are con-stitutionally incapable of meaning quite thesame thing. A clear understanding is essen-tial between those who are to be fused intoone organic community. What avenues havewe towards inter-racial understanding ?


33/202

III.

RACE FUSION.

We are confronted, in the United States, inSouth Africa, in India and elsewhere, with abelief on the part of the naajority of theEuropean section that the white and thecoloured can blend no more than oiland water.Whatever be the explanations of race prejudice,and whatever our judgment of its significance,we must recognise its existence as a fact of solidimportance in regard to coloured societies.On the other hand, it is evident that with avigorous native stock no stable mixed community can grow up so long as colour-prejudice and race antagonism maintain theirsupremacy. Such a condition is only com-patible with the institution of slavery.

Whether the white man likes it or not, thefact must be faced that imder the modernsystem of industry, which deals with thecoloured man as an independent wage-earner,and in which he has the stimulus of the whiteman's ideals of education, the coloured manmust advance, and he visibly does advance, to

alevel of imderstanding and self-reliance in

which he will not accept the negrophobist

theory of exclusion. Especially will this be

19


34/202

20

the case if the doctrines of Christianity ar6

communicated to the natives, and the NewTestament placed in their hands; as thefeudalism of Europe discovered when the samerevolutionary matter got into the heads and

hands of its peasantries. The condition ofthe society in which this process is takingplace grows increasingly unstable, unless therace prejudice and race division are modified"How can this come about ?

In the history of the world it has practic-

ally come about to a vast extent by inter-breeding and mixture of races. And thoughthe idea of this method may be scouted asout of the range of practical consideration

or influence in connection with modern colourproblems, and though I should admit that it

may tend to diminish in importance as com-pared with direct mental influences, yet I

consider that the tendency of opinion and

sentiment at the present in the ascendant is

unduly to undervalue its real importance, and

I propose to give reasons for thinking that

where it takes place it is advantageous. Weshould at least give full credit to its possibil-

ities before passing to consider other methodsof fusion.

The question of the relations between blackand white is obscured by a mass of prejudice

and ignorance and blindness, proportional tothe isolating differences in their evolved con-stitutions. These barriers are not different in


35/202

21

kind or in strength from those which onceseparated neighbouring European tribes.What has happened as between these we cantrace and recognise, and this recognition willhelp us to approach the contemporary problem.

What happens when two persons of differ-ent race intermarry? Each race, we haveargued, has evolved its own specialised body,adapted to a certain range of human cap-acities- In neither case, one may say in nopossible case, is the race-body (including thebrain and nervous system) anything approaching to a competent vehicle of all thequalities and powers that we imply byhumanity. Of course, we have had Verysplendid and comprehensive human typesamong those races of whose activities andproductions records remain, and doubtlessthere have been others equally capable, ofwhich we have no record, but none that we

can judge of(I

certainly should not accept theGreeks of the Periclean age) come near tosatisfying us as completely capable of all the

human apprehension and activity known tous. I do not wish to overweigh this idea ofthe limitation of racial faculty which will

always yield, more or less, to educational influ-ences. The truly great men of all races arevisibly near akin. Each race, too, I haveargued, is likely to exhibit habitually a gooddeal of human faculty that is absent in theOther. So far, then, as there survives in ^


36/202

mixed race the racial body of each of itsparents, so far it is a superior human being,or rather, I would say, potentially a morecompetent vehicle of humanity. I say this

with reservation, because there are certainsets-off to the advantages of hybridisation

which must be taken into account, and towhich I shall return later. To people whohave a horror of " colour " I would here ob-serve that lam thinking not only of mulattoes orcrosses with coloured races, but equally of theEuropean interbreedings that have producedthe most progressive of " white " nations, in-cluding our own, and of blends of colouredraces.

The physiological aspect of hybridisationmay be likened to the process of candy-pulling,in the making of sticks of striped sweetstuff.The human body, we learn (at this stage ofmicroscope manufacture), originates from theunion of two cells. Each cell, theoretically(so I read) can build up a whole new body byitself. In practice it habitually combines forthe work with another cell, supplied by aparent of opposite sex. Now these two cells,if I do not misrepresent the accepted physio-logical hypothesis, do not set to work on theprinciple of the division of labour andspecialisation of function, each to build upthat part of the new body which it can dobest in which case we might have theCaucasian brain protected by the African


37/202


38/202


39/202

25

part there appears to be a mixture of character

with a good deal of double consciousness, so

that to a fortunately constituted hybrid hisancestors are a perpetual feast ; he knowsthem from inside, and he sees them from out-side simultaneously. I do not go so far as tosay that a man to be a good critic must be ahybrid, but I fancy it would be found to bepretty true. The foreigner constantly makesthe mistake of thinking that Englishmen andScotsmen are hypocrites. Only one who isboth an Englishman and a foreigner whetherIrish, Welsh, Cornish, French, Spaniard,

German, or Jew on his alien side, can reallyappreciate and enjoy to the full the gorgeousfeast of contemporary British psychology. Its

most humorous, because most sympathetic,satirists are Englishmen of mixed race.

A further characteristic in the hybrid asdistinguished from the man of pure race maybe usefully noted. Whereas the pure race in

its prime knows one Man only, itself, and oneGod, its own Will, the hybrid is incapable ofthis exclusive racial pride, and inevitably

becomes aware that there is something, the

something that wecall the

Human,which is

greater than the one race or the other, andsomething in the nature of spiritual power

that is stronger than national God or Will.What were, to each separate race, final formsof truth, become, when competing in the focus

pf our human consciousness, inutually


40/202

26

destructive, and each recognisably insufficient.Yet the hybrid finds himself still very muchalive, and not at all extinguished with thecollapse of his racial theories.

An experience somewhat similar occurs toa race whose racial God is deposed by con-quest : and where a conquered race has not, asthe Jews and several other nomad races havedone, transcended the usual domiciliary andsettled habits of permanent races, has notspiritualised and mobilised its God and movedconquering among its nominal conquerors, wehave seen either a practically Atheisticphilosophy adopted, of renunciation of theWill, or a second new God set up, as amongthe mixed broken peoples of the RomanEmpire, the God of the human and theconquered, who knows himself somethingmore than his conqueror. Even ImperialRome, which went further in its deification ofof its own will than any great people on earth,by making its Commander-in-Chief, its Caesar,its national God, was captured by the reactionof the culture of the nations whom it overran.The flood of Oriental mysticism swamped the

old tribal fetichism of Rome, and thus preparedthe way for much of what grew intoChristianity.

But it is not only cultured and civilisedraces that know themselves more than thebeefwitted race that conquers them. I pass

from the case of hybridised peoples and deal


41/202

27

with that of the survivors of an ancient con-quered race. If they avoid physical degenera-tion, as, retaining their old habitat, there is nopresumption that they will not, they do remainto a great extent invincible. So long as theyremain a race their God, their Will, their prideof place as the chosen people, survives ; andthey see, often, that the conqueror is only aheavy-fisted brute, to whom they know them-selves superior, not, indeed, in all valuablequalities, but in many of those which man-kind most values and which are mostdistinctively human. We need not speak yetof the African, or even of the Hindoo. TheIrish, doubtless, recognise that the Englishhave great qualities, and yet it has not beenpossible for them to accept English rule. Allother nations of the world do Irishmen thejustice of perceiving that they have a share ofthe

qualities the absenceof

which in thetypical Englishman has rendered him prettywidely disliked, and when not feared, despised,as lacking in essential humanities. Now notonly the Irish race under the English, but every

conquered race that remains unmixed, retains

in itself this seed of invincibility, this treasurethat it has and its conqueror has not, whichmakes it the superior of its conqueror, so longas he treats it not as human but as alien andinferior. I believe that every race (not

hybridised) despises its conqueror, just as

woman treated likewise by man despises hirn^ ;


42/202

28

to the full as much as he in his claim to thelordship of creation disparages her.

In fact, the lack of mutual understandingthat arises from Race is strikingly analogousto that which arises from difEerence of sex,both in its origins and in its manifestations.The origin is bound up with differences of bodilyadaption and function. How common it is foreach sex, in moments of irritation, to charge theother with perfidy and lack of straightforward-ness. How universal is this same accusationbetween different races But the fact is thatthe truth is really different for different races

and for the different sexes. They live to some

extent in different worlds. A conquered racethat speaks two languages will tell the truthin its own language, and will lie in that of itsconquerors very often from an honest desireto tell what it supposes to be the conqueror'struth, namely, what he desires, what is realfor him through expressing his will. Thisphenomenon is familiar from the Groves ofBlarney to the haunts of the Heathen Chinee.


43/202

tv.

THE TRANSPLANTED AFRICAN.

(I.)

The future of the relations between WhiteCapital and Coloured Labour depends solargely on the possibility of Race-fusioneither by the bodily process of blending byintermarriage, or by some alternative psychicalprocess of establishing sympathetic under-standing, that we must examine what, be itlittle or much, has been done in this directionin those communities in which people ofEuropean and African races have been forcedinto close social contact. This has been mostmarkedly the case in European Colonies intowhich Africans were introduced as slaves, andin which such contact has been closely main-tained for generations without the neutralisinginfluence of a background of savagery, such as

has existed in African countries. Here, then,I will proceed to deal with the resultswhich have been manifested in such mixedcommunities in the West Indies and the UnitedStates, glancing first at the results of inter-

breeding, and subsequently at the effects and

promise of other influences.The writer of these chapters has for many

years been connected with and concerned in29


44/202

30

tlie administration of British West IndiaiiColonies, in which the great bulk of the

population is descended from African slaves

and is still very largely of pure African race.He has resided in or has visited all theseColonies, except the Bahama group, in-cluding British Guiana and British Honduras.He has spent nearly five years in the Islandof Jamaica, and has a special and fairlythorough knowledge of that community. Inno field is there better material for a study of

the effects of the prolonged collocation of

White and Black in the relationof

employerand employed ; and, whilst the different con-ditions of other colonies have produced some-

what different results, an understanding ofthe phenomena of Jamaican society may beregarded as affording a very good founda-

tion for a judgment as to the possibilities ofracial interaction in any such British com-munity. With regard to Foreign Colonialcommunities, of which I have no direct know-ledge, I do not propose to attempt to

generalise.

It is still not uncommon to hear WestIndian eulogists of the good old days en-larging on the industrial virtues of the old-time slave as compared with the type of freenegro produced by two generations of eman-cipation. These moralists belong strictly to

the same school as those who preach, else-where, the necessity for forced labour for the


45/202

31

improvement of the African in his owiicountry. Whatever may be the weight oftheir argument on that line, we may at anyrate accept from them the implied admissionthat the African is capable of improvement,that there was evolved imder slavery in the

West Indies something humanly superior tothe West African pagan. They will evenmaintain that the old-time negro exhibited

often a high and effectual example of theChristian religion, that he was personallyloyal and devoted to his masters and their

families, and that he was a capable and in-dustrious labourer and artisan. Let us bear inmind these admissions and survey the presentcondition of the transplanted negro, and seewhat vestiges of social virtue are left him.

We will then approach his position in indus-trial relations, and consider what this por-tends.

In all the British West Indies the colouredpopulation enormously outnumbers the White.

The social and industrial conditions varyconsiderably. Where the sugar industry sur-vives as the principal support of the com-munity, the land is still for the most part

held in biggish estates, and the labouring

population is employed at wages. This is

especially the case in Barbados, Antigua, and

St. Kitts. It is the circumstance that land

has been so monopolised, and that the descen-

dants of the slaves have therefore been com-


46/202

3^

pelied to work on the estatesfor

such wagesas the estates would give, that alone main-tained the sugar industry in these islands,

whilst it failed to so great an extent where

the negro was not under like compulsion towork. And it is in islands and districts where

the sugar estate industry has been thus main-tained that the condition of the West Indiannegro is poorest and most degraded. In themore important colonies of Trinidad andDemerara the labour supply for estates isprincipally provided by indentured East

Indian coolies, whilst the bulk of the negropopulation is settled, as it is in Grenada,

Dominica, and Montserrat, under conditionsmore nearly approaching those which are tobe found most fully established in Jamaica,that is to say, as a peasant proprietary, not

primarily dependent upon wage employment,but supplying a more or less uncertainamount of labour available for the largerplantations. Setting Barbados apart as a

unique community, the future of which it

would be exceedingly difficult to forecast,

because there, owing to close land monopolyand great density of population, there isa thoroughly European confrontation ofcapitalist and proletariat classes, Jamaicamay be taken as the type of what the ordinaryBritish West Indian Colony appears destinedto become.

The people of Jamaica are mostly negroes,


47/202

33

with but little admixture of white blood.The predominant status is that of peasantproprietors, although in some districts con-siderable numbers still live and work forwages on estates, and own no land. Butwhere they do not own land they almostalways rent land, and depend largely for their

maintenance upon its produce. The numberof this class amounts to about 700,000. Theextent to which land is distributed amongthem is indicated by the fact that out of1 13,000 holdings of property on the ValuationRoll of the Island in 1905, io5,ooo were

below /"loo, and 91,260 below /^o in value.Practically all these small holdings are ownedby the black peasantry and coloured people,the acreage varying from less than an acre to

50 or 100 acres. Next in number to the nearlypure negro peasant class comes the consider-

able coloured class of mixed African andEuropean descent, which largely supplies theartisans and tradesmen of the community.Very many of this class are landowners andplanters, many are overseers and bookkeeperson estates, many commercial clerks, and someare engaged in the professions of law andmedicine. Many clergy of all the Protestantdenominations are black or coloured ; so are

all the elementary schoolmasters and school-

mistresses and some of the teachers in the

few second grade schools. There are not

more than 15,000 persons in the island (in-


48/202

34

eluding Jews) who claim to be of unmixed

white race. These whites predominatein

the governing and employing class, and asmerchants or planters direct and lead theindustrial life of the island.

Now what are the social relations in thismixed community ? There is no artificial or

conventional disqualification whatever to barany Jamaican of negro or mixed race fromoccupying any position for which he is intel-lectually qualified in any department of thesocial life of the island, including the public

service. Many coloured men are magistrates

of Petty Sessions, more than one holds theoffice of Custos that is to say, of chief magis-trate of their parishes ; more than one hold orhave held stipendiary magistracies under the

Government. These positions they fill withcredit. According to their professional posi-

tion they associate with the white residentson precisely the same terms as persons of pureEuropean extraction. In practice it is thefact that the pure negro does not show thebusiness capacity and ambition of the man ofmixed race, and there are few, if any, personsof pure African extraction in positions of highconsideration, authority, or responsibility.

I would not be understood as asserting thatthere is not colour-prejudice in Jamaica, or in

any other British West Indian Colony thatis to say, that there is in the minds of domi-ciled Europeans nothing answering to the


49/202

35

hostility and contempt towards black and

coloured people which is boasted by manyspokesmen of white folk in the SouthernStates of America and prevalent now in SouthAfrica ; or that there is not, conversely, alatent jealousy of and hostility towards the"buckra" in the temperament of the black

and coloured, which may lend itself on occa-sions to the inflammatory excitement of a cryof " Colour for colour. Race for race." Suchprejudice, however, does not appear on thesurface, and such as there is is unquestionablydiminishing. It is strongest (on both sides)

in the wom?n and on the woman's side oflife. The late Mr. Grant Allen's novel, " Inall Shades," depicting his impressions of

colour-prejudice in Jamaican white society,as remembered from thirty or forty years ago,reads to-day as a grotesque extravagance,

and might appear to have been imagined bya writer who had never been in the island,but who had read into its society the virulentcolour-prejudice prevailing to-day in the

Southern States of the American Union.But though in Jamaica and in other West

Indian Colonies, there may be, in generalsocial and professional relations, no barrieragainst intermixture, there is, beyond ques-tion, an aversion on the part of white Creolesto intermarriage with coloured families, and

this aversion may,I think,

berelied

on, atany rate for a long time to come, to check, in


50/202

36

practice, any such obliteration of race dis-

tinctions as is foreboded by negrophobists inthe United States as the necessary result of

the admission of social equality.

It is true that in these Colonies you willoccasionally find Creoles of mixed race ingood positions married to ladies of pure

European blood. But, as a rule, such mar-riages will not have been made in the Colony,but in England, where there is less sensibility

on such matters. Again, you will find men ofpure European extraction and good positionwith Creole wives of mixed race, though

perhaps not without special information to beidentified as such, nor disposed to be so identi-

fied. Moreover, in the lower social ranks of em-

ployees in stores, so far as these are recruited

from Europe, such mixed marriages may fre-quently be met with.

On the whole, however, it does not appearto me that admission to social and profes-sional equality, when resulting from compati-bility of temperament and interests, does, infact, conduce necessarily or strongly to likeli-

hood of intermarriage : at any rate of fre-quent and habitual and unhesitating inter-marriage.

I myself began my connection with theWest Indies under the prejudices of the theoryof the degeneracy of the ofEspring of inter-

breeding, which was commoner, perhaps, atthat time, in the writings of anthropologists


51/202

37

than it is now ; but I have found myselfunable to establish any judgment on the factsin support of any such sweeping generalisa-tion. The effects of a first cross are, no doubt,constitutionally disturbing, and many personsof mixed origin are of poor physique. Butthe phthisis and other diseases from whichthey suffer are equally common among theWest Indian negro population of apparentlypure African blood, and arise among thesefrom the overcrowding of dwellings, badnutrition, insanitary habits, and other pre-ventible causes. There may naturally beaversion on the part of and a strong socialobjection on behalf of the white womanagainst her marriage with a black or coloured

man.- There is no correspondingly stronginstinctive aversion, nor is there so strong an

ostensible social objection to a white man's

marrying a woman of mixed descent. Thelatter kind of union is much more likely tooccur than the former. There is good biolo-

gical reason for this distinction. Whateverthe potentialities of the African stocks as a

vehiclefor

humanmanifestation, and I myself

believe them to be, like those of the Russian

people, exceedingly important and valuable

a matrix of emotional and spiritual energiesthat have yet to find their human expressionin suitably adapted forms the white racesare now, in fact, by far the further advancedin effectual human development, and it would


52/202

3

be expedient on this account alone that their

maternity should be economised to the utmost.A woman may be the mother of a limitednumber of children, and our notion of thenumber advisable is contracting : it is badnatural economy, and instinct very potentlyopposes it, to breed backwards from her.

There is no such reason against the begettingof children by white men in countries where,if they are to breed at all, it must be withwomen of coloured or mixed race. The off-spring of such breeding, whether legitimateor illegitimate, is, from the point of view ofefficiency, an acquisition to the community,and, under favourable conditions, an advanceon the pure bred African. For noitwithstand-tflg all that it may be possible to adduce injustification of that prejudice against the

mixed race, of which I have spoken, and whichI have myself fully shared, I am convincedthat this class as it at present exists is a

valuable and indispensable part of any WestIndian community, and tliat a colony of black,coloured, and whites has far more organicefficiency and far more promise in it than acolony of black and white alone. A commu-nity of white and black alone is in far greaterdanger of remaining, so far as the unofficial

classes are concerned, a community of em-ployers and serfs, concessionaires and tribu-taries, with, at best, a bureaucracy to keep

the peace between them. The graded mixed


53/202


54/202

40

spring of the illicit interbreeding that invari-

ably takes place in such conditions, but tomake our account for a certain amount oflegitimate and honourable interbreeding, andto look upon it, not as an evil, but as anadvantage. ' We need not be much afraidthat those persons, the race-purity of whose

'

offspring it is essential for the world to main-tain, are going to plunge into a cataract ofmixed matrimony. Such a development is

I, not at all probable.


55/202

V.


(2).

It is obvious from the present state of social

relations between white, coloured and blackin Jamaica that it is possible for a very muchhealthier balance of feeling to be arrived at

in such a community than has been attainedin the United States of America, or in our

own South African Colonies. In visits tothat country during the last fifteen years, andin talks with Americans in the West Indies,I

haveconstantly been impressed with what,

in the light of West Indian experience, haveappeared to me exaggerated and ill-foundedapprehensions of the dangers and difficulties

inherent in a community predominantly com-posed of coloured folk, apprehensions which

practically do not affect or disturb us at all.Visitors to Jamaica British as well asAmerican discussing with me our conditionsthere prevailing have asked me how we con-front this or that problem or difficulty con-

nected with the intermixture of races which

is, or threatens to be, a perplexity in theUnited States. On such occasions I have

41


56/202

42

found myself as a British West In dian u nableto entirely

accountfor an attitude of

mindwhich impressed me as superstitious, if nothysterical, and as indicating misapprehensionsof premises very ominous for the UnitedStates in the future, but which would appearfrom the tone of the Southern Press on this

subject to be increasingly general in thecommunity in regard to the race question.

I was consequently led to examine, in visitsto the United States, in what respects theattitude of white towards coloured is differ-

ent in our Colonies, and how far such

difference of attitude contributes to explainthe greater security and promise of mixedsociety there. Being convinced that industrialharmony between white and dark racesmay be established more effectually byhuman understandings and sympathies than

by what the sociologists call " economicmotive," a fact which, because of the character-

istics of the African temperament, is muchmore saliently true in regard to the confronta-tion of white capital with coloured labour

than in purely European communities, I think

it important to pursue the question of themoral capacity of the African in the lightwhich is thrown upon it by his position inthe United States.

I pass over for the present, but shall return

to, the charges of the industrial vices of lazi-

ness and slovenliness, admitting that there is


57/202

43

abundant groxind for these, and also for the

charges of thievishness and sexual instabilityagainst the normal negro. It may benoted that these charges are made againstthe African in all parts of the world, evenby his most sympathetic critics. On theother hand, very many examples, both in

America and the West Indies, have provedthat the sons and daughters of the race cantranscend these racial propensities. It is

abundantly proved that the prejudice whichdifference of skin and repugnant savage habitshave sown, to say nothing of industrial

jealousy and the hatred which abides in theinjurer against the race he has once oppressed,but now sees free and nominally before thelaw his equal cannot be defended by appealto any insuperable distinction in any categoryof human quality or capacity : doubt onlyarises as to whether the exceptional individ-uals who may be chosen for test comparisonsare really of unmixed African blood. If so, itis nothing to the point that they are excep-

tions : they suffice to disprove the theory of the

negrophobist : the theory which, as held

in the Southern States of America and in someBritish Colonies, comes, in substance, to this

that the negro is an inferior order in nature tothe white man, in the same sense that the apemay be said to be so. It is really upon thistheory that American negrophobia rests, andnot upon the viciousness or criminality of the


58/202

44

negro. This viciousness and criminality are,

in fact, largely invented, imputed, and ex-aggerated, in order to support and justify thepropaganda of race exclusiveness.

The determined opposition in the UnitedStates to the admission of the possibility of" social equality," such a degree of social and

professional equality as I have described asestablished in the West Indies, springs prin-cipally, if not entirely, from two sources, thefear of race mixture by intermarriage, and thefear of industrial competition. The firstappears to a stranger to be tlie more active :

perhaps because it appeals more to the classwho write, or whom he meets in discussion,upon the subject. It is to be feared that if"social equality" is tolerated, the "poorwhite " man will be attracted to marry thewell-to-do coloured young woman; the "poorwhite " girl the capable and pushing mulatto.No doubt this probability is greater in theUnited States, where there is a large " poorwhite " class, than in the West Indies, wherethere is little of such a class. But, as I have

explained, the social and professional equalityattained in the West Indies has not yetobliterated race prejudice in regard to marri-

age. Nor, where there has been interbreeding,have the effects been at all disastrous to thecommunity, nor, where there has been someevil in it, is the evil uncompensated by distinctadvantages. The principal evil, indeed,


59/202

45

appears to me to be that the offspring ofinterbreeding are liable to be despised andinsulted and held in indefensible disparage-ment by unintelligent and ill-conditionedwhite people.

It is interesting to note how experience inthe West Indies disproves the theory ofAmerican negrophobists that the vices whichthey impute to the negro as justifying theirrace-persecution are unchangeably inherent inthe race. I was in the United States justbefore the last Presidential election ; and atthat time the Southern Press was threatening

Mr. Roosevelt that he would lose votes in theSouth, not only because he had allowed Mr.Booker Washington, the foremost coloured

man in the nation, to lunch with him, butbecause, it was alleged, the effect of a Re-publican administration was to encourage a

saucy attitude in the negro, whereas Demo-cracy knew how to keep him in his properplace. On investigating what was meant bya saucy attitude, which editors were not slowquite frankly to explain, it appeared that it

meant no more than that the negro was more

disposed to assume, under a Republican ad-ministration, that he was to be regarded asjust as much a liuman being as the whiteman, whereas (strange interpretation of the

idea of democracy) it was essential that thecommunity should insist upon the fact thathis race, or any admixture of such race, ren-


60/202

46

ders him essentially and permanently differ-ent, so that he must ever remain a creaturebound by nature to pay respect and subservi-ence to white Americans of whatever extrac-tion, no matter what his and their relativequalifications in other categories than those

of race may be.Now, it may be that the United States have

produced quite a different type of negro orcoloured person from what has been producedby the different conditions in Jamaica- Im-pudence sauciness is an offensive humanquality, to be found in great perfection amongthe city populations of all white communities.

Doubtless, Nature has largely endowed thenegro with the faculty of impudence, and itmay well be that this faculty is more offen-sively developed by some social conditionsthan by others. But the phenomenon is not

a necessary one. It is not obtrusive inJamaica. White people there do not sufferfrom impudence -on the part of black orcoloured unless it is provoked by bad mannersand unwarrantable pretensions. In the matterof natural good manners and civil disposition

the black people of Jamaica are very far, and,indeed, out of comparison, superior to the

members of the corresponding class in Eng-land, America, or North Germany. Any manor woman who addresses a native Jamaicanwith reasonable civility and without condes-

cension or arrogance that is to say, in a


61/202


62/202

very valuable social quality, and it is a greatloss to any community that such a qualityshould be destroyed or obscured by socialantagonism.

The typical and characteristic excess of thenegrophobist tendency in the United States is

exhibited in the lynching and torturing ofcoloured persons convicted, accused, or sus-

pected of crime : or even on less tangiblepretexts or provocations. I do not desire tocriticise these extravagances on the score oftheir special atrocity as methods of socialdiscipline. The normal processes of Britishcriminal law are themselves a nightmare ofinsane and degrading futility. I am hereonly concerned with the practice of lynchingin regard to its alleged necessity as a terror

to coloured oJienders on account of theirspecial propensities.

"

Wemust protect our

Women" : that is

the formula. It is true that the statistics of

lynchings show that by far the greatest pro-portion of them follow cases of murder orcomplicity in murder, and only about 20 percent, cases of criminal assault or attempts at

such assault. This plea, therefore, reallycovers but a small part of the ground. But

as it is the last entrenchment of those whoadvocate differentiation against the negro,

and appeals to the same sentiment as doesthat argument for social injustice as an anti-

dote to the menace of"

social equality"

with


63/202

49

which 1 have dealt above, it is important to

examine it in the light of social experience inBritish West Indian Colonies.

Now the fact is that in the British WestIndies assaults by black or coloured men onwhite women or children are practicallyaltogether unknown. No apprehension ofthem whatever troubles society. I say this asan administrator familiar with the judicialstatistics, as a resident familiar with all partsof Jamaica and all classes of its population,as the head of a household of women and girlswhich have frequented the suburbs of Kingston,and lived for weeks and months in remotecountry districts with neither myself nor anyother white man within call. Any residentin Jamaica will tell the same story. A youngwhite woman can walk alone in the hills orto Kingston, in daylight or dark, throughpopulous settlements of exclusively black orcoloured folk, without encountering anythingbut friendly salutation from man or woman.Single ladies may hire a carriage and driveall over the Island without trouble or molesta-tion. Offences against women and childrencome into the courts : but they are notagainst white women and children. Whatevermay be the cause, it is the indisputable factthat Jamaica, or any other West IndianIsland, is as safe for white women to go aboutin, if

not safer than anyEuropean

countrywith which I am acquainted. There have


64/202

50

been no savage punishments here, no ter-

rorism, no special laws, no illegal discrimina-tions against the coloured. If, then, there is

special ground for fearing assaults of thischaracter by coloured on white in America, itclearly cannot possibly be due to any neces-sary or special propensity of race.

I cannot but surmise that any propensitythere may be to such assaults in the UnitedStates is stimulated by the very character ofthe attitude of the white towards the colouredpopulation. There is maintained a constant

storm of suggestion to the most imaginative

and uncontrollable of passions in an excitableand imaginative race. If we had anythinglike the same amount of suggestion abroad inthe British West Indies I should fear that wemight begin to hear of these criminal assaultsin something like the same proportion to other

crime as we hear of them in discussions of thecolour- difficulty in the United States. Whenone class makes to another, whose women it hascontinually made the mothers of its own off-spring, the preposterous and self-damnatoryannouncement that it is an animal of aninferior order, so soon it not only arouses all

the irrepressible self-assertiveness of the humanclaim to equality, which is as fundamental inthe African as in any other race, but alsointroduces a special prompting to the asser-tion and demonstration of that equality in acategory that might otherwise pass as neutral


65/202

5I

in regard to any such claims. It seems to me,

then, that this danger, such as it is, is enor-mously increased, if indeed it is not entirely

created, by the extreme race-barrier theory.


66/202

vi.


(3).

I BELIEVE that the most important of allfactors in bringing about the unpromisingdistinction of feeling on colour questionsobservable as between the British West Indiesand the United States has been the operationof the American Constitution. The politicalconditions under which the African stock hashad to develop during the last forty yearshave been quite different in the two countries.

Emancipationin

the West Indies, moreover,took place thirty years earlier and the modusvivendi which then established itself has hadso much longer to produce its more concilia-tory effects. The negroes did not, in ourcolonies, receive, in fact or in name, direct

political power. This was limited by asubstantial property test. The industrial andeconomic results of emancipation in the WestIndies were far-reaching, but there was nopolitical revolution, no vast new class ofcitizens enjoying the franchise and totally un-

prepared and imqualified for its responsible orefficient exercise was created. In administra-

52


67/202

53

tive matters there was continuity of govern-ment controlled by humane and reasonableprinciples ; and when the class-partiality ofthe magistracy in Jamaica produced the so-called "Rebellion" of 1865, the politicalresult was to substitute for an oligarchicalconstitution the benevolent despotism of CrownGovernment, which does not acknowledgethat the negro, or, indeed, any other class ofcitizen in a West Indian community, has anatural or indefeasible right to the franchise.

It placed responsible power in the hands ofthe Governor and rendered his administration

much more amenable to the control of Britishpublic opinion than the administration of alocal white oligarchy could be. Since theinstitution of Crown Government in Jamaica(now modified by an elective element in theLegislature) it may safely be said ' that the

black population has had no acute classgrievance. The government has been admin-istered with a full regard to its rights andinterests, and with just repression of disorderlytendencies.

In the United States these conditions have

been markedly absent. Political power wasconferred on great masses of the emancipatedslaves ; their ignorance, their incapacity, their

vanity, and their cupidity were appealed toby political adventurers, and the exercise oftheir political power became necessarily a

matter of apprehension to the class hitherto


68/202

54

their masters and rulers. The situation was

not met, it could not, under the AmericanConstitution, be met in the manner in whichit was dealt with in the British Colonies. Thepolitical dangers apprehended, and the socialirregularities of the coloured population were

met and fought by underhand, unjust and

violent methods. In politics the constitutionwas strained and the voting system openlyjockeyed and set at nought. In judicialmatters resort was had to popular violenceand terrorism against the negro. The colouredpopulation there not only has an ostensible

grievance, but is continually made to feel thatgrievance with greater acuteness. The intelli-gence and critical power of the coloured folkadvance, and they see the significance of theirposition more and more clearly. The tend-ency of the Southern Press and of Southern

public men is more and more to urge theirprogressive exclusion from equal considerationin politics or in law. There is in the UnitedStates not only a democratic political fran-chise for their National and State Legislatures,but a Civil Service and a Judicial Bench, the

appointments to which rest also in theory onthe votes of the citizens. We in Englandconsider an elective civil service and anelective judiciary to indicate a mistake inconstitution building ; but, it would seem tous a far greater insanity to suppose such

arrangements workable in a community iq


69/202

55

which the majority of electors are newly-freed

plantation negro slaves, or even a populationon the level of the average Jamaica peasant.It was natural and practically inevitable thatsuch a situation should be fought as intoler-

able by the whites of the South, and that, theAmerican constitution being in fact unwork-

able without disaster under such circum-stances, its provisions should have been evadedby methods constitutionally indefensible andunjust. If the same mistake had been madein any British community, similar violence, ifnot by the same method, would have been

done to the constitution. The form of theAmerican constitution, j.sserting full and equalrights of citizenship for all adult males, gives

the coloured race a permanent plea of in-

justice when those rights are abrogated inpractice, and places the white in the permanentfalse situation of holding by violence andconstitutionally unjust expedients a position

socially expedient and proved by the historyof the West Indies to be favourable to thedevelopment of the coloured people. Such asituation is acutely demoralising to white andblack alike, and to justify it the minority vilifythe character of coloured people, and depreciatetheir abilities by all kinds of misrepresenta-

tions. It not only foments and stimulates thehysteria which finds vent in the exaggerated

suggestions of outrageous propensities, in

those outbursts of the lust of blood and tor-


70/202

56

ture ; it sets up a social terrorism and ob-scurantism within the white class which is

spreading as such mob hallucinations tend tospread, into a formula of national patriotism.

Just as in this country a few years ago anyEnglishman or woman who kept a clear headon South African matters was liable to bepelted as a pro-Boer and at best was alegitimate butt for public insult, so in America

any person within the colour-belt who ven-tures to attribute human equality to acoloured citizen is promptly dubbed a " negro-philist" (as it were one enamoured of theblack

manas such),

andhis arguments are put

out of consideration as those of a social out-

cast and traitor. The pressure of the terror-ism so exercised by the bullies and cowardswho form, in seasons of panic, the articulatemajority of every social community, is so

great that sane men in America keep silence,or, at best, half-silence, in the face of an in-creasing negrophobia, which is becoming avery threatening national danger.

I judge that negrophobia race prejudiceipstinctive race prejudice if you will is, inthe United States, the most active source ofdanger, because I see that, so far as a morewholesome and hopeful equilibrium has beenattained in other mixed communities, it hasbeen brought into being by the steadfastexclusion of all theory of race discrimination.

Race discrimination not distinction of


71/202

57

human capacity. The civilisation and moral-

ity of the Jamaica negro are not high, but heis on a markedly different level from hisgrandfather, the plantation slave, and hisgreat grandfather, the African savage. Thenegro in Jamaica has been so far raised, somuch freedom of civic mixture between the

races has been made tolerable, by the contin-uous application to the race of the theory of

humanity and equality : equality, that is, inthe essential sense of endowment in theInfinite, a share, however obscure and un-developed, in the inheritance of what we callthe Soul. Evangelical Christianity, mostdemocratic of doctrines, and educational effort,inspired and sustained by a personal convic-tion and recognition that, whatever thesuperficial distinctions, there was fundamentalcommunity and an equal claim in the Black

with the White to share, according to personalcapacity and development, in all the inherit-ance of humanity these chiefly have createdthe conditions that have done what has beendone for the negro in the lands of his exile.

Emancipation, Education, identical justice,

perfect equality in the Law Courts andunder the Constitution, whatever the lawof the constitution might be, these take

away the sting of race difference, and ifthere is race inferiority, it is not burdened

with an artificial handicap. Negroes are nowindisputably the equals of the white men in


72/202

58

categories in which one hundred years ago

their masters would have confidently arguedthat they were naturally incapable of attainingequality. All such positive and materialisedprogress has been made by ignoring the ob-vious ; by refusing to accept as conclusive thedifferences and the disabilities ; by believingin the identities, the flashes of response andpromise ; by willing that there should belight where there seemed to be no light;by the methods of the visionary whose king-dom is not of this world, but who is insensatelybent on assimilating this worldto that kingdom;

in part even by less than this, by the mereresolute maintenance in the State of principlesof common justice. The vast transplantationof slavery, the intercourse of white and black,have, in fact, brought advance in humanity tothe coloured people. This has been done, anddone only, and further advance towards healthin a mixed community can only be looked forby adherence to the attitude, nay, indeed, bythe personal recognition and consciousness ofequality. Whatever mob prejudices maydictate, statesmen and educated observers atleast cannot fail to recognise this, and mustrecognise that to set up the opposite principle,the allegation of inequality, of insuperable

race differences and degradation, and to takethis as a guide for internal policy, is a sinagainst light that is certain to aggravate thedisorders of any mixed community as it is to


73/202

59

day demoralising tlie Southern States of the

Union.The colour line is not a rational line, the

logic neither of words nor facts will upholdit. If adopted it infallibly aggravates thevirus of the colour problem. The more it isignored, the more is that virus attenuated. Itis quite possible to justify a politicalgeneralisation not as a truth, but as a work-ing formula that where the majority of thepopulation nre negro peasants, it is advisable

to restrict the franchise. It is not possible,

either as a working political formula, or asan anthropological theorem, to justify ageneralisation that there is any political orhuman function for which coloured personsare by their African blood disqualified. Invarious categories of human activity one maymaintain that, as a rule, black and colouredfolk are not up to the normal standard ofwhite, and are difficult and disheartening todeal with. But in other categories they aremore liberally endowed than the averagewhite man, not only with sympathetic andvaluable human qualities, but with talentand executive ability for their expression.

My study and comparison of conditions inthe United States and in the West Indies hasbrought me to the conviction that no solutionof the American colour difficulties will be

found except by resolutely turning the backto the colour-line and race-difEereijtiation


74/202

theory. American and Colonial politiciansand public men are not Exeter Hall Aboli-tionists, nor Evangelical Christian mis-

sionaries. I do not prescribe the formulas

and methods of any such sects as a remedy.But it cannot be ignored that it happenedthat the religious formulas of the men wholaid the foundations for a peaceful develop-

ment of the mixed community of Jamaicawere democratic and humanitarian. No morethan this is required in regard to tempera-

mental attitude. Where the race-difEerentia-tion formula is held to it will doubtless in

timebring

aboutcivil war. If statesmen and

citizens face in the contrary direction I do

not say they will immediately attain civil

peace, but I am confident that they will betravelling the only road towards it.


75/202

VII.

AMERICAN CORROBORATIONS.

The substance of the preceding three chapters,in which I have compared racial relations inJamaica with those prevailing in the UnitedStates was published, with some additionalcommentary, in an American Review in April,

1905. The statements made as to the superiorresults attained in the British Colony weresuch as American citizens might reasonablyhave been expected to receive with somescepticism. The facts are so important thatI am glad to be able to substantiate my ownimpressions by quoting those of two well-known American writers who have, since myobservations appeared, quite independently but

very precisely endorsed them.

Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, writing fromJamaica (which this lady has visited several

times) to the New York American, in January,1906, speaks as follows :

" The man or woman who visits Jamaicaand does not acknowledge the ability of the

coloured race to occupy positions of dignity

and trust, and to acquire education andculture, is either blind or utterly pig-headed.

" Three coloured men acted on the jury in61


76/202

62

Kingston this week. The policemen, the

trolley and railway officials are coloured ; soare the post office officials. Scores of menstamped with the indelible marks of theAfrican occupy prominent places in largeindustrial concerns, and the most remarkableman teacher I ever met with is Mr. of

, Principal of the Schools, and a man ofvery dark, albeit of very handsome, features.

" There is no question but the coloured manis more evenly developed and better treated,better understood on this island than anywherein America.

" Nowhere has the man with coloured bloodin his veins a better opportunity to rise in the

world than right here. Stay here and proveto all " doubting Thomases " what thecoloured race can do. It is miraculous tothink what it has accomplished here in sixty-eight years, since slavery was abolished.

" What may it not achieve in the next halfcentury ? "

Professor Josiah Royce, of Harvard Univer-sity, in an otherwise notable article on " Race

Questions and Prejudices," published in. the" International Journal of Ethics " for April,

rgoS, from which I am fain to quote againhereafter in support of the views of these

questions which experience has impressed up-on myself, has written at some length on the


77/202

63

topics which I have discussed in these chap-

ters on "The Transplanted African." Histestimony is so explicit and coming indepen-dently from such a source so significant andso weighty, that I think it necessary to quote

the following somewhat lengthy extract withonly trifling excisions.

"How can the white man and the negro,once forced, as they are in our South, to live

side by side, best learn to live with a minimumof friction, with a maximum of co-operation ?I have long learned from my Southern friendsthat this end can only be attained by a firm,

and by a very constant and explicit insistenceupon keeping the negro in his proper place, as

a social inferior who, then, as an inferior,should, of course, be treated humanely, but

who must first be clearly and unmistakablytaught where he belongs. I have observed

that the pedagogical methods which mySouthern friends of late years have found it

their duty to use, to this end, are methods

such as still keep awake a good deal of verylively and intense irritation, in the minds notonly of the pupils but also of the teachers.

"Must such increase of race-hatred first come,in order that later, whenever the negro has

fully learned his lesson, and aspires no morebeyond his station, peace may later come?Well, concerning just this matter I lately

learned what was to me, in my experience, anew lesson. I have had occasion three times,


78/202

64

in recent summers, to visit British West Indies,Jamaica and Trinidad, at a time when fewtourists were there. Upon visiting Jamaica Ifirst went round the coast of the island, visitingits various ports. I then went inland, andwalked for miles over its admirable countryroads. I discussed its condition with men ofvarious occupations. I read some of its officialliterature. 1 then consulted with a new interestits history. I watched its negroes in variousplaces, and talked with some of them, too. 1have since collected such further informationas I had time to collect regarding its life, asvarious authorities have discussed the topic,and this is the result

"Jamaica has a population of surely notmore than 14,000 or 15,000 whites, mostlyEnglish. Its black population considerably

exceeds 600,000. Its mulatto population, ofvarious shades, numbers, at the very least, some

40,000 or 50,000. Its plantation life, in the daysbefore emancipation, was much sadder andseverer, by common account, than ours in theSouth ever was. Both the period of emancipa-tion and t

(1906) white capital and colored labour

Documents