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Title: Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States
The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12

Author: Archibald H. Grimke

Release Date: February 20, 2010 [EBook #31330]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Occasional Papers, No. 12.

The American Negro Academy.

Modern Industrialism and
the Negroes of the
United States

BY ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKE.

Price 15 Cts.

WASHINGTON, D.C.:
PUBLISHED BY THE ACADEMY,
1908

MODERN INDUSTRIALISM AND THE NEGROES OF THE UNITED STATES.

What is that tremendous system of production, organization and struggle
known as modern industrialism going to do with the Negroes of the United
States? Passing into its huge hopper and between its upper and nether
millstones, are they to come out grist for the nation, or mere chaff,
doomed like the Indian to ultimate extinction in the raging fires of
racial and industrial rivalry and progress? Sphinx's riddle, say you,
which yet awaits its Oedipus? Perhaps, though an examination of the past
may show us that the riddle is not awaiting its Oedipus so much as his
answer, which he has been writing slowly, word by word, and inexorably, in
the social evolution of the republic for a century, and is writing still.
If we succeed in reading aright what has already been inscribed by that
iron pen, may we not guess the remainder, and so catch from afar the
fateful answer? Possibly. Then let us try.

With unequaled sagacity the founders of the American Republic reared,
without prototype or precedent, its solid walls and stately columns on the
broad basis of human equality, and of certain inalienable rights, such as
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, to which they declared all men
entitled. Deep they sunk their foundation piles on the consent of the
governed, and committed fearlessly, sublimely, the n