nature of the race at that stage of its development. The race question in America has found its most intense expression in the relations between the white and the negro races, and has there shown itself to be the most fundamental of all American social and political problems. For it was this race question that precipitated the civil war, with the ominous problems that have followed upon that catastrophe; and it is this same race problem that now diverts attention from the treatment of those pressing economic problems of taxation, corporations, trusts and labor organizations which themselves originated in the civil war. The race problem in the south is only one extreme of the same problem in the great cities of the north, where popular government, as our forefathers conceived it, has been displaced by one man power, and where a profound distrust of democracy is taking hold upon the educated and property holding classes who fashion public opinion.

This changing attitude toward the educational value of self government has induced a more serious study of the nature of democratic institutions and of the classes and races which are called upon to share in them. As a people whose earlier hopes have been shocked by the hard blows of experience, we are beginning to pause and take invoice of the heterogeneous stock of humanity that we have admitted to the management of our great political enterprise. We are trying to look beneath the surface and to inquire whether there are not factors of heredity and race more fundamental than those of education and environment. We find that our democratic theories and forms of government were fashioned by but one of the many races and peoples which have come within their practical operation, and that race, the so-called Anglo Saxon, developed them out of its own island experience unhampered by inroads of alien stock. When once thus established in England and further developed in America we find that other races and peoples, accustomed to despotism and even savagery, and wholly unused to self government, have been thrust into the delicate fabric.

Like a practical people, as we pride ourselves, we have begun actually to despotize our institutions in order to control these dissident elements, although still optimistically holding

that we retain the original democracy. The earlier probl was mainly a political one-how to unite into one self gove ing nation a scattered population with the wide diversity natural resources, climates, and interests that mark a cour stretching from ocean to ocean and from the arctics to subtropics. The problem now is a social one-how to u into one people a congeries of races even more diverse t the resources and climates from which they draw their sistence. That motto, e pluribus unum (one out of ma which in the past has guided those who through constituti debate and civil war worked out our form of governm must now again be the motto of those who would work the more fundamental problem of the union of races. is something deeper than the form of government-it is essence of government-for it is that union of the hearts lives and capacities of the people which makes govern what it really is.

The conditions necessary for democratic governmen not merely the constitutions and laws which guarantee e ity, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, for these after a but paper documents. They are not merely freedom foreign power, for the Australian colonies enjoy the most ocratic of all governments, largely because their mother try has protected them from foreign and civil wars. N are wealth and prosperity necessary for democracy, for may tend to luxury, inequality and envy. World p however glorious and enticing, is not helpful to demo for it inclines to militarism and centralization; as did in the hands of an emperor, or Venice in the hands of a garchy. The true foundations of democracy are in the acter of the people themselves, that is, of the individual constitute the democracy. These are first, intelligence power to weigh evidence and draw sound conclusions, on adequate information; second, manliness, that whi Romans called virility, and which at bottom is dignifie respect, self control, and that self assertion and jealo encroachment which marks those who, knowing their dare maintain them; third, and equally important, the ity for co-operation, that willingness and ability to org

to trust their leaders, to work together for a common interest and toward a common destiny, a capacity which we variously designate as patriotism, public spirit, or self government.

These are the basic qualities which underlie democracyintelligence, manliness, co-operation. If they are lacking, democracy is futile. Here is the problem of races, the fundamental division of mankind. Race differences are established in the very blood and physical constitution. They are most difficult to eradicate and they yield only to the slow processes of the centuries. Races may change their religion, their forms of government and industry, and their language, but underneath all these changes they may continue the physical, mental and moral capacities and incapacities which determine the real character of their religion, government, industry and literature. Race and heredity furnish the raw material, education and environment furnish the tools, with which and by which social institutions are fashioned; and in a democracy race and heredity are the more decisive, because the very education and environment which fashion the oncoming generations are themselves controlled through universal suffrage by the races themselves whom it is hoped to educate and elevate.

Closely connected with race division in its effect upon democracy are the divisions between social classes. In America we are wont to congratulate ourselves on the absence of classes with their accompanying hatred and envy. Whether we shall continue thus to commend ourselves depends partly on what we mean by social classes. If we compare our situation with an extreme case, that of India, where social classes have been hardened into rigid castes, we can see the connection between races and classes. For it is generally held that the castes of India originated in the conquests by an Aryan race of an indigenous dark or colored race. And, while the clear cut race distinctions have been blended through many centuries of amalgamation, yet it is most apparent that a gradation in the color of the skin follows the gradation in social position, from the light colored high caste Brahman to the dark colored low caste or outcast Sudra. Race divisions have been forgotten, but in their place religion has sanctified

a division even more rigid than that of race, for it is sacrilege and defiance of the gods when a man of low caste ventures into the occupation and calling of the high caste. India's condition now is what might be conceived for our southern states a thousand years from now, when the black man, who had not advanced to the lighter shades of mulatto, should be excluded from all professions and skilled trades and from all public offices and should be restricted to the coarsest kind of service as a day laborer or as a field hand on the agricultural plantations. Confined to this limited occupation, with no incentive to economize because of no prospect to rise above his station, and with his numbers increasing, competition would reduce his wages to the lowest limit consistent with the continuance of his kind. Such a development is plainly going on at the present day, and we may feel reasonably certain that we can see in our own south the very historical steps by which in the forgotten centuries India proceeded to her rigid system of castes.

There is lacking but one essential to the Indian system, namely, a religion which ascribes to God himself the inequalities which man has contrived. For the Indian derives the sacred Brahman from the mouth of God to be His spokesman on earth, while the poor Sudra comes from the feet of God, to be forever the servant of all the castes above him. But the Christian religion has set forth a different theory, which ascribes to God entire impartiality as regards races and individuals. He has "made of one blood all nations." It is out of this doctrine that the self evident assertion in the Declaration of Independence originated, and it is this doctrine which throughout the history of European civilization has contributed to smooth out the harsh lines of caste into the less definite lines of social classes. For it must be remembered that Europe, like India, is built upon conquest, and the earlier populations were reduced to the condition of slaves and serfs to the conquering races. True, there was not the extreme opposition of white and colored races which distinguished the conquests of India, and this is also one of the reasons why slavery and serfdom gradually gave way, and races coalesced. Nevertheless, the peasantry of Europe to-day is in large part

the product of serfdom and of that race subjection which produced serfdom. Herein we may find the source of that arrogance on the one hand and subserviency on the other, which so closely relate class divisions to race divisions.

"The European peasant," says Professor Shaler, a keen observer, familiar with the peasant on his native ground, "knows himself to be by birthright a member of an inferior class, from which there is practically no chance of escaping. He is in essentially the same state as the southern negro. There is a wall between him and the higher realms of life. The imprisonment is so complete that he rarely thinks about the chances of escaping. Centuries of experience have bred in him the understanding that he is by nature a peasant, and that, save in rare instances, he can acquire no other station in the land of his birth. It is characteristic of peasants that they have accepted this inferior lot. For generations they have regarded themselves as separated from their fellow citizens of higher caste. They have no large sense of citizenly motives; they feel no sense of responsibility for any part of the public life save that which lies within their own narrow round of action."

How different from the qualities of the typical American citizen whose forefathers have erected our edifice of representative democracy! It was not the peasant class of Europe that sought these shores in order to found a free government. It was the middle class, the merchants and yeomen, those who in religion and politics were literally protestants, and who possessed the intelligence, manliness and public spirit which urged them to assert for themselves those inalienable rights which the church or the state of their time had arrogated to itself. With such a social class democracy is the only acceptable form of government. They demand and secure equal opportunities because they are able to rise to those opportunities. By their own inherent nature they look forward to and aspire to the highest positions.

But the peasants of Europe, especially of southern and eastern Europe, have been reduced to the qualities similar to those of an inferior race that favor despotism and oligarchy rather than democracy. Their only avenues of escape from