ouraged, modern religious ideas are carefully
limited, sound political development is sternly frowned upon, and industry
is degraded and changed to the demands of European markets. The most
ruthless class of white mercantile exploiters is allowed large liberty, if
not a free hand, and protected by a concerted attempt to deify white men
as such in the eyes of the native and in their own imagination.[112]

White missionary societies are spending perhaps as much as five million
dollars a year in Africa and accomplishing much good, but at the same time
white merchants are sending at least twenty million dollars' worth of
European liquor into Africa each year, and the debauchery of the almost
unrestricted rum traffic goes far to neutralize missionary effort.

[Illustration: Distribution of Negro Blood, Ancient and Modern]

Under this last mentioned solution of the Negro problems we may put the
attempts at the segregation of Negroes and mulattoes in the United States
and to some extent in the West Indies. Ostensibly this is "separation" of
the races in society, civil rights, etc. In practice it is the
subordination of colored people of all grades under white tutelage, and
their separation as far as possible from contact with civilization in
dwelling place, in education, and in public life.

On the other hand the economic significance of the Negro to-day is
tremendous. Black Africa to-day exports annually nearly two hundred
million dollars' worth of goods, and its economic development has scarcely
begun. The black West Indies export nearly one hundred million dollars'
worth of goods; to this must be added the labor value of Negroes in South
Africa, Egypt, the West Indies, North, Central, and South America, where
the result is blended in the common output of many races. The economic
foundation of the Negro problem can easily be seen to be a matter of many
hundreds of millions to-day, and ready to rise to the billions tomorrow.

Such figures and facts give some slight idea of the economic meaning of
the Negro to-day as a worker and industrial factor. "Tropical Africa and
its peoples are being brought more irrevocably every year into the vortex
of the economic influences that sway the western world."[113]

What do Negroes themselves think of these their problems and the attitude
of the world toward them? First and most significant, they are thinking.
There is as yet no great single centralizing of thought or unification of
op