there been any long interval, there would have been some form of sedimentary deposit between the Beach and the Head or the blown sands; but there is none. With the commencement of the elevatory movement, effluent currents at once came into play, and, according to their varying velocity, carried down, sometimes the surface soil or the freshly deposited loess, and at others the coarse surface detritus. The conclusion from this is that the upheaval was by fits and starts, or rather by a continuous movement, sometimes very slow and at others more or less rapid, and ending with one of greater rapidity. Where hollows or cavities existed on the surface, the débris fell into them. Open fissures were filled to the brim by the passing débris, while the current, acting as a broom, brushed off any projecting débris on the top of the fissures, and at the same time swept bare the adjacent more exposed surfaces.

"We judge from these conditions that the submergence took place slowly and continuously. I do not mean by slow, that it took years, but so slow possibly as on the whole to be hardly apparent to the spectator of the scene, or, may be, it would give him the reverse impression, such as that experienced when one's own train at a railway station makes a noiseless start and another train is standing still alongside, that that train was moving and your own stationary, or vice versa. So, in this case, the land would seem, to one standing on it, as though it were immovable and stationary, and that it was the waters that were in movement and rising."1

1 On Certain Phenomena belonging to the Close of the Glacial Period and on their Bearing upon the Tradition of the Flood (London: Macmillan & Co.), pp. 64–67.

ARTICLE VII.

THE CRUX OF THE NEGRO QUESTION.

BY THE REVEREND HENRY A. STIMSON, D.D.

THE ultimate solution of the negro question unquestionably lies in the movement for general education which appears now to be so widely felt in the South. A larger intelligence will help to a better understanding, as well as furnish the means by which the race level will be raised. It was in this conviction that Northern philanthropists, more than half a century ago, began to give money liberally to plant educational institutions for the colored people in the South, and in the same conviction others founded and endowed similar institutions for the whites. The enterprise undertaken by Mr. Robert C. Ogden, which has drawn forth the splendid gift of Mr. Rockefeller, has already given an impulse to the movement which gives promise of greatly quickening its development and of securing for it much-needed recognition both at the South and the North. The foundations may now be regarded as thoroughly laid, and steady progress may be anticipated. Every dollar expended for the higher education of the negro has justified itself in proving the possibilities of the race and supplying both the inspiration and the teachers for the mass.

Meanwhile a modus vivendi between the races that shall remove unnecessary obstacles and conserve all progress is greatly required. Inasmuch as economic conditions are primary in all human society, the crux of the negro question, for the time being, lies in them. As there are conditions in which the sound body is essential to the sound

mind; so it is true, that while, in their last analysis, social questions must be carried back to their ethical and religious relations, and these may be held as ultimate, nevertheless, for the time being, the economic question may be all-important, and alone furnish the conditions under which the others can be reached and accorded their free action.

Unique as is the situation in the United States, it is not so exceptional as to close the door to lessons which are to be learned from the experience of other lands. The social question, regardless of questions of color, has always been a bar to the adjustment of difficulties between labor and capital. In England, a half-century ago, when Mr. J. P. Mundella, the well-known member of Parliament, was seeking to establish Boards of Conciliation between employers and laborers, he encountered the same difficulty which is occasioning us so much trouble in America. Employers refused to meet delegates from their workmen and to sit in council with them, lest it would lead to the demand for a social intercourse which they were not willing to yield. If they were to sit at a council-table with their men, they thought they would be expected eventually to sit with them at the dinner-table. After a prolonged and destructive struggle, at last the principle flashed out in one of the arguments: "We consider that in buying labor we should treat the seller of labor just as courteously as we would the seller of coal or cotton." That phrase quickly cast steady and permanent light upon the situation. It was accepted as self-evident and conclusive. The question was not, whether the workman had a right to sell his. labor to whom he would, but whether, in selling it, he should be treated simply as a person having an article to sell. Opposition faded away. Common sense began to reign. And the relations of capital and labor in England, as a consequence, quickly passed into that stage in which

government interference is no longer sought, and mutual Boards of Conciliation are accepted as competent to deal with all problems that arise. The questions of the education of the masses, of their social status and progress, of their taxation, and of their relation to the state, are left to settle themselves without prejudice, and as experience may instruct.

It is not to be supposed that relations so strained as those involved in the labor question as it appears in England, were solved by a phrase, however suggestive and pertinent; but, coming at the right time, the phrase called attention to conditions which had been ignored or unseen, and furnished that illuminating of the situation which led the matter out of a state of opposition into one of acquiescence, and so made permanent the various advantages that from time to time were won.

The way for this final statement was prepared by the struggle that had been going on in England for more than half a century, and had won for workingmen recognition in legislation and improved industrial and social conditions. The happy phrase served to crystallize the new and necessary truth, and to fix men's minds upon a principle which was as vital as it is just. Unequal social conditions are the chief cause of injustice and oppression, as they are of class inferiority. Men who are without rights under the law or without power in the community, are inevitably without respect from their neighbors. Thucydides observed, that, in Greece, at the time of the Peloponnesian war, if one state among the petty Grecian states was more powerful than another, the most frivolous accusations were sufficient ground for apprehension, and appeal to the arbitrament of the sword; whereas, if the states were nearly equal in power, the differences that arose between them were compromised or referred to reason, justice, or arbitration. It would have taken much more than

the murder of a couple of missionaries to have furnished the occasion for Germany's seizing a Chinese province, had China's military position commanded more respect. The successive risings of the serfs in the different countries of Europe in past ages are regarded by some historians at least as having done more to abolish serfdom, and mitigate its hardships, than all the centuries of exhortation by the church. The prolonged agitation in England over the rights of workingmen, and the steady development of power in its trades-unions, have not only increased the wages of its workingmen, they have also greatly increased their political importance. The mere possession of material power to enforce demands, in the relation of masses of men to one another, is almost, if not quite, an essential condition to securing recognition of the justice of such demands as are made. This change of condition, economic and political, is without doubt the chief influence in securing the better condition of the workingman that to-day exists in England. But the adoption of the principle announced by Mr. Mundella has done much to develop the improvement which was thus begun, and to insure progress along the lines which had been opened as the result of controversy and of struggle. That principle, therefore, becomes luminous for the situation as it exists with us.

We have had a long struggle over the negro question in the United States. It has been costly and in many ways unprofitable; so that to-day we are still in deep bewilderment. There is no clear principle accepted for general guidance. The condition of the negro is melancholy to a degree, and the strain upon society and the danger to the state are as serious as they have ever been, notwithstanding the good hope that is cherished by many that widespread education will eventually bring peace, and purer religious conceptions eventually secure justice. No better form of immediate relief has been discovered than that of