United States should take
place. To agree to this is not to be hostile to or scornful of the
yellow man. The higher classes are fully as intelligent and capable of
as much energy and achievement as the American, but the vast mass of
those who would come here if immigration were unrestricted are
undesirable, because of their low industrial and moral standards,
their tenacity of old habits, and with all the rest because of their
immense numbers, that would overrun all the western part of the United
States. When the Chinese Exclusion Act passed Congress in 1882, the
Chinese alone were coming at the rate of nearly forty thousand a year,
and that number might have been increased tenfold by this time, to say
nothing of Japanese and Hindoos. While, therefore, the United States
must treat Asiatics with consideration and live up to its treaty
obligations, it seems the wise policy to refuse to admit the Asiatic
masses to American residence.

A part of the Asiatic problem, however, is the political relation of
the United States and the Asiatic Powers, especially in the Pacific.
This is less intimately vital, but is important in view of the rapidly
growing tendency of both China and Japan to expand in trade and
political ambitions. This is a problem of political rather than social
science, but since the welfare of both races is concerned, and of
other peoples of the Pacific Islands, it needs the intelligent
consideration of all students. It is desirable to understand one
another, to treat one another fairly and generously, and to find
means, if possible, of co-operation rather than conflict, where the
interests of one impinge upon another. All mediating influences, like
Christian missions, are to be welcomed as helping to extend mutual
understanding and to soften race prejudices and animosities.

347. =The Negro Problem.=--Not a few persons look upon the negro
problem as the most serious social question in America. Whatever its
relative merits, as compared with other problems, it is sufficiently
serious to call for careful study and an attempt at solution. The
negro race in America numbers approximately ten millions, twice as
many as at the close of the Civil War. The negro was thrust upon
America by the cupidity of the foreign slave-trader, and perpetuated
by the difficulty of getting along without him. His presence has been
in some ways beneficial to himself and to the whites among whom he
settled, but it has been impossible f