The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Comparative Study of the Negro Problem, by
Charles C. Cook

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Title: A Comparative Study of the Negro Problem
The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 4

Author: Charles C. Cook

Release Date: February 17, 2010 [EBook #31301]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The American Negro Academy.

OCCASIONAL PAPERS No. 4.

A Comparative Study
--OF THE--
NEGRO PROBLEM

--BY--
Mr. Charles C. Cook.

Price Fifteen Cents.

WASHINGTON, D. C.
Published by the Academy
1899

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM[1]

Living as we do in the midst of a people, which, if not of unmixed
English blood, is at least English in institutions, language and laws,
where can we better read our destiny than in the pages of English
history? "In our own hearts," some will at once answer. But no, the
thread of our fate is, to-day, more in the hands of the American people
than in our own.

The three nations, which have in modern times, most startled the world
by their progress, are England, the United States, and Japan. In the
early years of the seventeenth century, a part of the English people,
impatient of the restrictions of their time, founded upon this continent
a new and more rapidly progressive civilization than that which they
left behind them in their old homes. But this was no beginning, only an
acceleration of the movement, which had already placed England among the
foremost powers of the earth. To study the conditions attending upon the
entrance of the American people upon their path of progress, we must
follow the pilgrims back to and into their English homes. What, then,
does the history of the American people teach us? A simple lesson, still
more impressively told by the history of Japan: that time may become an
insignificant element in the making of a powerful nation. What it took
England ten centuries to accomplish, the United States has done in two
hun