Chapter I: Foreword

The following pages attempt a discussion of the most important question that is likely to engage the attention of the American People for many years and even generations to come. Compared with the vital matter of pure Blood, all other matters, as of tariff, of currency, of subsidies, of civil service, of labour and capital, of education, of forestry, of science and art, and even of religion, sink into insignificance. For, to judge by the past, there is scarcely any conceivable educational or scientific or governmental or social or religious polity under which the pure strain of Caucasian blood might not live and thrive and achieve great things for History and Humanity; on the other hand, there is no reason to believe that any kind or degree of institutional excellence could permanently stay the race decadence that would follow surely in the wake of any considerable contamination of that blood by the blood of Africa.

It is this supreme and all-overshadowing importance of the interests at stake that must justify the earnestness and the minuteness with which the matter has been treated. The writer does not deny that he feels profoundly and intensely on the subject; otherwise, he would certainly never thus have turned aside from studies far more congenial and fascinating. But he has not allowed his feelings or any sentimental considerations whatever to warp his judgment. It has been his effort to make the whole discussion purely scientific, an ethnological inquiry, undisturbed by any partisan or political influence. He has had to guard himself especially against the emotion of sympathy, of pity for the unfortunate race, "the man of yesterday," which the unfeeling process of Nature demands in sacrifice on the altar of the evolution of Humanity.

It may be well to indicate at the outset the general movement of thought through this volume:

Chapter One in its title strikes the keynote. In the following pages the main issue is stated, the position of the South is defined, and her lines of defence are indicated. But there is no attempt to justify the fundamental assumption in the Southern argument.

In Chapter Two this shortcoming is made good. The assumed inferiority of both the Negro and the Negroid is argued at length, and proved by a great variety of considerations.

In Chapter Three the notion that this inferiority, now demonstrated, is after all merely cultural and removable by Education or other extra-organic means, is considered minutely and refuted in every detail and under all disguises.

In Chapter Four the powerful and authoritative plea of Dr. Boas, for the "primitives," is subjected to a searching analysis, with the decisive result that, in spite of himself, this eminent anthropologist, while denying everything as a whole, affirms everything in detail that is maintained in the preceding chapters. Inasmuch as the Address of this savant may be regarded as the _ne plus ultra_ of pro-African pleading, both in earnestness and in learning, it has seemed that no treatment of the subject would be complete that did not refute it thoroughly--"so fight I as one not beating the air." To do this was not possible without quoting extensively, which is the less to be regretted as the Address has been too little read.

In Chapter Five the obvious and instant question is met. What then is to become of the Black Man? The answer is rendered in general terms and is supported by the remarkable testimony of the distinguished statistician, Professor Willcox. But only general sociologic moments are regarded, and the statistical argument in detail is held in reserve.

In Chapter Six this omission is fully supplied. The Growth rate, the Birth rate, the Death rate, the Crime rate, and the Anthropometry of the Negro are discussed minutely from every point of view, and the positions of the preceding chapters are bulwarked and buttressed unassailably.

It has been the one aim of the writer, who is perfectly convinced in his own mind, to convince the reader. To this end no pains have been spared and no drudgery avoided. Since it appeared necessary to regard the matter from various nearly related points of view, under only slightly divergent angles, it has happened that the same argumentative materials have come to hand more than once in almost equivalent forms. But in this there is no disadvantage; factors of such sovereign potence do not suffer from repetition. The whole discussion is biological in its bearing and turns about a few pivotal points; and these deserve to be stressed by every device of emphasis. "For twice indeed, yea thrice, they say, it is good to repeat and review the good."

There remain yet certain important political and economical and even juridical aspects of the subject, concerning which the writer has not neglected to gather relevant material of evidence; but any adequate discussion would carry the reader too far afield and would mar the unity of the work as it now stands. Accordingly these aspects are left unregarded.

The writer fancies one may forecast the only reply likely to be brought forward under even a thin guise of plausibility. It will be said, as it is said, that the much-dreaded contamination of blood is the merest bugaboo. But nay! it is a tremendous and instant peril, against which eternal vigilance is the only safeguard, in whose presence it is vain and fatuous to cry "peace, peace" when there is no peace, a peril whose menace is sharpened by well-meant efforts at humanity and generosity, by seemingly just demands for social equality masquerading as "equal opportunity." The one adequate definition of this "equal opportunity" has been bravely given by that most able and eloquent Negroid, Prof. William H. Councill: "Will the White man permit the Negro to have an equal part in the industrial, political, social and civil advantages of the United States? This, as I understand it, is the problem." All this is quite beyond question to the mind that cherishes no illusions and insistently beholds things as they are. Neither is it less sure that even the Southern conscience needs quickening at this vital point. The writer has been appalled at the cool indifference with which amalgamation is contemplated as necessary and inevitable by certain highly intelligent philanthropists in the Southland. The matter is delicate and difficult to argue, and in the body of the book it has perhaps been stressed too lightly; but the danger signals are clearly discernible, even as they were to Prof. E. D. Cope, and it is madness not to heed them. If the race barrier be removed, and the individual standard of personal excellence be established, the twilight of this century will gather upon a nation hopelessly sinking in the mire of Mongrelism.

It can hardly be hoped that any reader will be satisfied with the glimpse here disclosed of the future. Certainly not the Negro, nor his apologists; nor even such as sympathize most fully with the writer. The solemn secular processes, to which the solution of the problem is relegated, are so very leisurely in their working, closing down upon their final result with the deliberation of a glacier, or like some slowly convergent infinite series. But Nature is once for all thus leaden-footed, and it is extremely difficult to quicken her pace.

We have bestowed merely a glance upon the scheme of Deportation, which is alas! not now a question of practical statesmanship, though it may indeed become one sooner than we think.

However, the outlook is not hopeless to him who has a sense of the world to come, who lives in his race, who feels the solidarity of its present with its future as well as with its past. "Of men that are just, the true saviour is Time." Besides, it seems not at all strange that a disease, chronic through centuries, should require centuries for its cure, that the multiplied echoes of the curse of African slavery should go sounding on, even to the years of many generations.

W. B. S.
_Tulane University,
25th October, 1904._

THE COLOR LINE