ue; the bottom fell out of the commercial slave trade and
its suppression became possible.

The middle of the nineteenth century saw the beginning of the rise of the
modern working class. By means of political power the laborers slowly but
surely began to demand a larger share in the profiting industry. In the
United States their demand bade fair to be halted by the competition of
slave labor. The labor vote, therefore, first confined slavery to limits
in which it could not live, and when the slave power sought to exceed
these territorial limits, it was suddenly and unintentionally abolished.

As the emancipation of millions of dark workers took place in the West
Indies, North and South America, and parts of Africa at this time, it was
natural to assume that the uplift of this working class lay along the same
paths with that of European and American whites. This was the _first_
suggested solution of the Negro problem. Consequently these Negroes
received partial enfranchisement, the beginnings of education, and some of
the elementary rights of wage earners and property holders, while the
independence of Liberia and Hayti was recognized. However, long before
they were strong enough to assert the rights thus granted or to gather
intelligence enough for proper group leadership, the new colonialism of
the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries began to dawn. The new
colonial theory transferred the reign of commercial privilege and
extraordinary profit from the exploitation of the European working class
to the exploitation of backward races under the political domination of
Europe. For the purpose of carrying out this idea the European and white
American working class was practically invited to share in this new
exploitation, and particularly were flattered by popular appeals to their
inherent superiority to "Dagoes," "Chinks," "Japs," and "Niggers."

This tendency was strengthened by the fact that the new colonial expansion
centered in Africa. Thus in 1875 something less than one-tenth of Africa
was under nominal European control, but the Franco-Prussian War and the
exploration of the Congo led to new and fateful things. Germany desired
economic expansion and, being shut out from America by the Monroe
Doctrine, turned to Africa. France, humiliated in war, dreamed of an
African empire from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Italy became ambitious
for Tripoli and Abyssinia. Great Britain began to take new interest in her
African