purchasing centres, communicates by mail with the individual trappers, far and near, have robbed the fur trade of all its old romance. Most of the Indians of today are as peaceful, and nearly as unpicturesque, as the average white man. In Mrs. Sigourney's words, however:

But their name is on your waters,
Ye may not wash it out.

'Tis where Ontario's billow
Like ocean's surge is curled,

Where strong Niagara's thunders wake
The echo of the world.
Where red Missouri bringeth

Rich tribute from the West, And Rappahannock sweetly sleeps On green Virginia's breast. The railways of Messrs. Harriman and Hill traverse the trails along which the Blackfeet, the Sioux, and the Arikaras drove Andrew Henry, Ashley, Colter, and their associates; yet the names of the stations, of the streams, and of the mountain passes along those lines ought to enable the average intelligent patron of those roads to reconstruct, in imagination, a little of the stirring life of the old dead days.

A little over a third of a century ago, travelers on the railways in Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado would sometimes find the buffalo in rather embarrassing profusion. The writer of this article chanced to be on the old Kansas Pacific road, in 1868, in a train which was delayed about two hours by an immense herd which were leisurely crossing the track, and seven or eight years later he still met them in as great numbers in the present Oklahoma, in Wyoming, and even in Colorado. Though this spectacle will not be seen again, the buffaloes which are in Yellowstone Park will preserve the race in the United States from extinction. Moreover, an act passed by Congress in the spring of 1908 insures the mustering of a national herd in the Flathead reservation, in Montana, and soon the passengers on the Northern Pacific railway will be able to see a range extending seven miles along that road, in which the buffalo, secure from molestation, will roam with a little of his old-time freedom.

Battling with hunger, thirst, blizzards, wolves, and bears, the hunter of the larger game still finds some of the adventurous life of the earlier times.

Give me the lure of the long white trail, With the winds blowing strong in my face as I go;

Give me the sound of the wolf-dog's wail,

And the crunch of the moccasins on the snow.

From the far-off Yukon last winter a trapper traveled over the "long white trail" 5330 miles to St. Louis, with his packs of mink, marten, lynx, and silver fox-skins loaded on a sled drawn by about a dozen dogs; and after disposing of the furs to Funsten Brothers for $11,000, he went on to Washington with his principal "huskie," his lead-dog, and presented it to President Roosevelt.

Up on many of the streams of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, the beaver is making what may turn out to be his last stand, yet he is likely to remain as long as the present generation of trappers. On the northern border of Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, elk, moose, and an occasional antelope are found, while all of them are more numerous across the international boundary line in Manitoba, Assiniboia, and Saskatche

wan.

Have all of America's trails been broken? Are there no more hidden places to be discovered under the stars and stripes? Is 1909 unable to furnish us with any Wild West except what it shows us under Buffalo Bill's tent? No, we have not broken with the spacious times of the 20's and the 30's of the recent century quite so completely as that. Along the valleys of the Yukon, the Tanana, and the Kuskokwim there are great stretches of territory in which the white man would be almost as strange a visitor as he would have been a century and a half ago. From his lair in the Rocky or the Cascade Mountains, the grizzly, as belligerent as when he was encountered by Lewis and Clark, and with the spirit of the gladiator of old when about to die, still stands ready to salute Cæsar.

THE adjustment of the forward and backward races of mankind is, without doubt, the most urgent problem that presses upon the twentieth century for solution. The range of this problem is not limited to any country or continent or hemisphere; its area is as wide as the inhabitable globe. The factors involved are as intricate in their relations, and as far-reaching in their consequences, as any that have ever taxed human wisdom for solution. A problem as wide as human interest, and as deep as human passion, will not yield to hasty nostrums or passionate dogma, but calls for statesmanlike breadth of view, philanthropic tolerance of spirit, and exact social knowledge.

The local phase of this question in the United States has become so aggravated and acute that our solicitous philosophers are prone to treat it as an isolated phenomenon, separate and apart from the world-wide problem of which it forms but a fragment. But the slow processes of social forces pay little heed to our fitful solicitude. Indeed, the bane of sociological endeavor is the feverish eagerness of the extemporaneous reformer to apply his premature programme of relief to every local symptom, without adequate knowledge of social law and cause. We get a broader and better grasp upon the race problem in America, when we view it in the light of the larger whole. As the astronomer cannot divine the course and career of a particular planet without a broad knowledge of the underlying laws that govern the solar system, nor the naturalist gain any adequate notion of a single animal or plant unless his observation and study is based upon a general conception of the species to which it belongs, so the student of social problems will not wisely draw conclusions

from a single contributory factor, to the neglect of the general product. In the great social scheme of things, the adjustment of man to man is a unitary problem, and the various modes of manifestation, growing out of place and condition, are but parts" of one stupendous whole.”

In attempting the solution of any problem of a social nature, we should first seek to separate those factors that are universal and unchanging in their operation from those that are of a special and peculiar nature. The primary principle which runs like a thread through all human history is the communicability of the processes of civilization among the various branches of the human family. This is indeed the determining factor in the solution of the universal race problem that confronts the world to-day.

It so happens, in the process of human development, that the whiter races at present represent the forward and progressive section of the human family, while the darker varieties are relatively backward and belated. That the relative concrete superiority of the European is due to the advantage of historical environment rather than to innate ethnic endowment, a careful study of the trend of social forces leaves little room to doubt. Temporary superiority of this or that breed of men is only a transient phase of human development. In the history of civilization the various races and nations rise and fall like the waves of the sea, each imparting an impulse to its successor, which pushes the process further and further forward.

Civilization is not an original process with any race or nation known to history, but the torch is passed from age to age, and gains in brilliancy as it goes. Those who for the time being stand

at the apex of prestige and power are ever prone to indulge in "Such boasting as the Gentiles use," and claim everlasting superiority over the "lesser breeds." Nothing less could be expected of human vanity and pride. But history plays havoc with the vainglorious boasting of national and racial conceit. Where are the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Egyptians, who once lorded it over the earth? In the historical recessional of races, they are "one with Nineveh and Tyre." Expeditions must be sent from some distant continent to unearth the glorious monuments of their ancestors from beneath the very feet of their degenerate descendants. The lordly Greeks who ruled the world through the achievements of the mind, who gave the world Homer and Socrates and Phidias in the heyday of their glory, have so sunken in the scale of excellence that, to use the language of Macaulay," their people have degenerated into timid slaves and their language into a barbarous jargon." On the other hand, the barbarians who, Aristotle tells us, could not count beyond the ten fingers in his day, subsequently produced Kant and Shakespeare and Newton. The Arab and the Moor for a season led the van of the world's civilization.

Because any particular race or class has not as yet been caught up by the current of the world-movement is no adequate reason to conclude that it must forever fall without the reach of its onward flow. If history teaches any clear lesson, it is that civilization is communicable to the tougher and hardier breeds of men whose physical stamina can endure the awful stress of transmission. To damn a people to everlasting inferiority because of deficiency in historical distinction shows the same faultiness of logic as the assumption that what never has been never can be. The application of this test a thousand years ago would have placed under the ban of reproach all of the virile and vigorous nations of modern times.

In present-day discussion concerning the advanced and backward races of men, much stress is laid on what is called the white man's civilization, as if this color possessed exclusive proprietorship in the process. We might as well speak of the white man's multiplication table. It is impossible to conceal the secret and method of civilization as a quack secretes the formula of his patent nostrum. The lighted candle is not placed under a bushel but on a candlestick, and gives light unto all who come within range of its radiant influence. We reward with a patent right the originator of a new process, guaranteeing him the benefit of the first fruit of the creation of his genius; but its value to the inventor is always proportional to the diffusion of benefits among his fellow-men. And so the race or nation that first contrives a process or introduces an idea may indeed enjoy its exclusive benefit for a season, but it will inevitably be handed down to the rest of the world which is prepared to appropriate and apply its principles. When a thought or a thing is once given to the world, it can no more be claimed as the exclusive property of the person or people who first gave it vogue, than gold when it has once been put in circulation can be claimed as the exclusive possession of the miner who first dug it from its hiding place in the bowels of the earth. The invention of letters has banished all mystery from civilization. Nothing can be hidden that shall not be revealed. There can be no lost arts in the modern world. England to-day can utilize no process of art or invention that is not equally available to Japan. The most benighted people of the earth, when touched by the world-current, become at once the heirs of all the ages, in the foremost files of time."

There is in every potential cult the pent-up spirit to multiply and expand itself. The impulse to disseminate as widely as possible that which stirs our own feelings or moves our own imagination is a law of social, as well as of individual,

psychology. It becomes the gospel of glad tidings which we are constrained to proclaim to all the people. "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature is a vital mandate that applies to every type of civilization as well as to the religion of Jesus. While it is true that it is only in religious propagandism that the missionary motive is conscious and purposive, yet the principles of secular civilization are no less effectively imparted because the altruistic motive may not be a conscious part of the policy of those promoting them. The blessings of a higher civilization have always been vouchsafed to overridden peoples by their ambitious exploiters, and its secret and method proclaimed to every creature within the expanding circle of its influence. The self-seeking aggressor becomes the unconscious missionary of the language, laws, institutions, customs, manners, and method of the higher form of development which he represents; the soldier in quest of dominion brings system and discipline; the merchant's greed for gain introduces the comforts, conveniences, and refinements of the higher life; the pedagogue looking for a livelihood spreads a knowledge of literature and the subtler influences that minister to the higher needs of the mind.

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The European races are now overrunning the world in quest of new resources to exploit, and are thus coming into close and intimate contact with the various weaker breeds of men. The commercial spirit is the ruling passion of the dominant world to-day. The whole surface of the inhabitable globe is practically parceled out among the stronger nations within defined spheres of influence. It is easy to predict the continuance of this process until " every creature" has been touched by modern civilization. The wonderful growth of exact knowledge and its application to the forces of nature is rendering this contact easy and inevitable. Steam and electricity have annihilated distance and banished the terrors of the deep; preventive and remedial

medicine has neutralized the baleful influence of climate, and checked the ravage of disease; the hardship of pioneer life is lessened by the easy transportation of material comforts, and the loneliness of isolation is relieved by the transmission of intelligence which is flashed around the world swifter than the wings of the morning. We may naturally expect that less and less heed will be paid to the fixity of the bounds of habitation of the various races and nations that dwell upon the face of the earth. The outcome of this contact constitutes the race problem of the world. As water when unrestrained flows from a higher to a lower level till equilibrium is established, so we may expect this stream to flow down and out from the higher fount until the various races and tribes of men reach an equilibrium of civilization and culture.

The place of education in human development is a principle whose importance is just beginning to dawn upon the world. Knowledge is the great equalizing factor in modern civilization. At one time it was thought that divine favor made one man lord over another. It was but a short step from the divine right of the ruler to the divine right of race. But we are gaining a clearer and clearer conviction that racial, like individual, superiority depends upon knowledge, discipline, and efficiency, which may be imparted largely by education. A people may gain or lose its place according as it holds aloof from or keeps in touch with the highest attained efficiency of the world. The powers and forces of nature are not enchanted by any sorcery of race, but yield their secret and mystery to the application of knowledge. Steam and electricity, wind and wave and sunlight, will work as willingly for a backward as for a forward race. The only advantage that the latter possesses is a predisposition to a better discipline, and a higher social efficiency. It does not appear that it possesses a better grasp upon the recondite principles of knowledge. Education can be relied upon to discount, if not to liquidate, the disadvantage under

which the backward races labor. Nor is it necessary for such races to repeat the slow steps and stages by which present greatness has been attained. He who comes at the eleventh hour is placed on equal terms with him who has borne the heat and burden of the day in the vineyard of civilization. It takes the child of the most favored race twenty-five years to absorb the civilization of the world. The child of the backward race can accomplish the same feat in the same space of time. Japan is teaching the world that she can appropriate and apply the agencies of civilization as readily, and wield them as effectively, as the most favored nations of Europe. What Japan has done can be repeated by China, or India, or Africa, or by any hardy people with territorial and national integrity who will assimilate the principles of modern progress through education, and helpful contact with those nations which are now in the forefront of things.

There are three distinct modes of racecontact: (1) where the European takes up permanent residence among the weaker race, as in Australia, South Africa, and Hawaii; (2) where the white man has no expectation of permanent residence, but aims merely at political and commercial domination, as in India, North and Central Africa, and the Polynesian Isles; and (3) where the weaker race has been introduced into the land of the stronger for the sake of industrial exploitation, as in the United States, South America, and the West Indian archipelago. The several phases of the race problem growing out of these different modes of contact are too often overlooked in current discussion.

The conceivable lines of outcome of race contact are: the enslavement of the weaker, or, what amounts to the same thing, its subordination into an inferior caste; the extermination of the weaker; expulsion either of the weaker or of the stronger; amalgamation or absorption; and amicable adjustment and continuance of distinct ethnic types. All of these processes will doubtless contribute in

part to the solution of this problem. The outcome will not be uniform and invariable, but will depend upon the nature and complexity of underlying conditions.

In the United States this problem presents many interesting and unique phases which cause the student of social subjects to bestow upon it a degree of attention beyond that accorded any other point of race-contact throughout the world. Its workings are watched with the keenest interest, and much reliance is placed upon its indications, because it presents the widest types of ethnic divergence in the closest intimacy of contact.

1. In this terrible process of race-attrition, millions of the weaker races will be utterly destroyed. Whole tribes and groups and sub-races will perish from the face of the earth. Civilization is a savor of life unto life and of death unto death, and its beneficence is reserved only for those who are endowed with power to endure. The red and brown races have faded before the march of civilization as a flower before the chilling breath of autumn. The Australian has gone; the red Indian has been dispatched to his happy hunting-ground in the sky; many of the scattered fragments of the isles of the sea have vanished away, while others are waiting gloomily in the valley of the shadow of death. These people have perished and are perishing, not so much by force and violence, as because they were not able to adjust themselves to the swift and sudden changes which an encroaching civilization imposed. In Hawaii they have faded under the mild and kindly dispensation of the missionary of the Cross, quite as inevitably as if swept away by shot and shell. Even the American Indian has not succumbed so much as the victim of violence as the prey of the easily communicable vices of civilization. The frontier of civilization will always be infested with social renegades and outcasts, who flee from the light to hide their evil deeds. They carry with them the seeds of degenerative evil which destroy