n of the contact of diverse races of men is to
have new exemplification during the new century. Indeed, the
characteristic of our age is the contact of European civilization with
the world's undeveloped peoples. Whatever we may say of the results of
such contact in the past, it certainly forms a chapter in human action
not pleasant to look back upon. War, murder, slavery, extermination,
and debauchery,--this has again and again been the result of carrying
civilization and the blessed gospel to the isles of the sea and the
heathen without the law. Nor does it altogether satisfy the conscience
of the modern world to be told complacently that all this has been
right and proper, the fated triumph of strength over weakness, of
righteousness over evil, of superiors over inferiors. It would
certainly be soothing if one could readily believe all this; and yet
there are too many ugly facts for everything to be thus easily
explained away. We feel and know that there are many delicate
differences in race psychology, numberless changes that our crude
social measurements are not yet able to follow minutely, which explain
much of history and social development. At the same time, too, we know
that these considerations have never adequately explained or excused
the triumph of brute force and cunning over weakness and innocence.

It is, then, the strife of all honorable men of the twentieth century
to see that in the future competition of races the survival of the
fittest shall mean the triumph of the good, the beautiful, and the
true; that we may be able to preserve for future civilization all that
is really fine and noble and strong, and not continue to put a premium
on greed and impudence and cruelty. To bring this hope to fruition, we
are compelled daily to turn more and more to a conscientious study of
the phenomena of race-contact,--to a study frank and fair, and not
falsified and colored by our wishes or our fears. And we have in the
South as fine a field for such a study as the world affords,--a field,
to be sure, which the average American scientist deems somewhat beneath
his dignity, and which the average man who is not a scientist knows all
about, but nevertheless a line of study which by reason of the enormous
race complications with which God seems about to punish this nation
must increasingly claim our sober attention, study, and thought, we
must ask, what are the actual relations of whites and blacks in the
South