was a considerable admixture of Indian blood in the Negro

race.

Thus, historic causes have prepared the soil for an exclusively negro slavery, but this process was working out gradually, taking more than a century, probably because of the existence of other sources of involuntary labor. Thus, in Virginia in 1671, there were to be found about 2000 negro slaves, and about 6,000 indentured servants. According to the estimate of the economist Carey, there were imported up into the British colonies from 1619 up to 1714 about 30,000 negroes, and the total number of negro slaves amounted approximately to 58,850, in a white population of 375,750.

In the very beginning of the history of negro slavery in the United States, the natural fitness of the negro for a warmer climate made itself felt. Of the estimated population of 58,850 negroes, 23,000 were in Virginia 3,700 in North Carolina, and 10,500 in South Carolina. Constituting only about 14 per cent. of the total population of the colonies, the negroes of Virginia, were 24 per cent., in North Carolina 33 per cent., and in South Carolina even as much as 62 1-2 per cent., i. e.. much more than one-half of the population. It would hardly show a great insight into philosophy of history to look for the causes of the comparatively insignificant number of slaves in New England or the middle colonies in the greater humanitarianism of the population of these colonies, or any theoretical objections to slavery as an institution. For one thing, exceptional and cruel laws against negroes, the slaves as well as the few freedmen, were in the beginning of the eighteenth century no less frequent in the North than in the South. All colonies had passed specially severe penalties for crimes performed by negroes. In New Maryland, according to the law of 1723, a negro who would strike a white man, was subject to penalty of having his ears cut off. In 1741, a white man's house was robbed by negroes; this led to a suspicion of a negro conspiracy, and within 4 months 154 negroes were arrested, of whom 12 negroes were burned and 18 hanged. The most cruel negro code existed in South Carolina, where the negro had to suffer capital punishment for the pettiest larceny, or have his face branded, and his nose pierced. Conditions were not much better in North Carolina.

As was stated above, during the eighteenth century the centre of gravity of the institution of slavery gradually shifted itself towards the negro race, and negro slavery was shifting towards the South. The involuntary labor of the white indentured servants was not a permanent state, sooner or later the indentured servants became free citizens of the colony. The negro slave was not fit to work in the New England

farm, and gradually the negro slaves of the North were concentrated in the cities as the domestic servants. There was hardly a house in Boston without one or two negro servants, and many had as many as five or six. As late as 1719 the Boston papers contained advertisements of sale of negro men, women, and even small negro children.

Thus slavery in the North was rapidly becoming a luxury, and therefore could sooner call forth ethical protests than in the South, where slavery was rapidly becoming an important economic factor. The climate of the Southern field, while more fit for the negro, was at the same time less fit for the white man. The same cause, which stimulated the growth of negro slavery in the South, directed the stream of white immigration towards the North. Later, the very growth of the negro population in the South began to limit the immigration of white colonists into the southern colonies. The supply of free labor therefore grew in the North, and fell in the South, so that through the action of these forces, slavery was becoming less profitable in the North, and more necessary in the South. As long as tobacco was the main crop of the South white labor could still compare with negro labor. But with the development of rice and indigo culture in the low lands, the white population of the South began to avoid farm work more and

more.

Gradually the conviction grew, that field work in the southern farms was not at all a fit occupation for the white man. In consequence the importation of African negroes in the middle of the eighteenth century grew to enormous dimensions. From 1715 to 1754 the number of negro slaves increased from 58,900 to 260,000 and in 1776 their number equaled about 500,000, of which 430,000 were located in Virginia, Maryland and the two Carolinas. Rapidly, the negro question was becoming a southern question.

But is there, at this stage of the story, any justification for the use of this word "problem?" In view of the growing dependence of the white population of the South upon the institution of slavery, it did not call forth any questions in the South.

How the white population of the South viewed the institution of slavery, how it justified it, and brought it in harmony with its political theories and ideals (at this period of radical political fermentation, and preparation for the revolution) with its religious beliefs and with all those humanitarian tendencies, so characteristic of the middle of the eighteenth century, - those are all very interesting historical and philosophical questions which have been much less studied, than the economic or the political aspect of slavery. This is especi

ally true in regard to the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries. For the necessity to defend the institution of slavery from the attacks of the Northerners arose a great many years later, and then this necessity created a vast literature.

But those opinions and views of the South and even of the North upon the slavery question during the 17th and the 18th centuries are very important, for these opinions have undoubtedly contributed a great deal towards shaping the future course of the negro problem for many years to

come.

I have before me a very large volume, of modern literary make, bearing the sensational title, "The Negro a beast."

The author of this volume is a fanatic of modern days, hailing from St. Louis, far from the centers of the Black belt; and with the assistance of many quotations from the Bible, and other scriptures, biological and other scientific authorities, he endeavors to prove that the Negro is not a human being at all, but a beast created according to the image of man, with power of speech and human hands.

From these facts the natural deduction is made that the Negro was created by the Almighty for the very explicit purpose of serving the white man. The work often reads like the delirious talk of a very ill man, but as a matter of fact the book was taken quite seriously even in our day by the civilized American public. This is shown by the startling fact that it was dignified by numerous replies from the pens of many noted clergymen, and publicists, who take great pains, to demonstrate, again with the assistance of the Holy scriptures, that the Negro is a human being, though one of a special, lower order, truly created to be a servant of the white man.

It is true that we are dealing here with opinions expressed in the beginning of the twentieth century, but in reality these are but manifestations of atavistic repetition of the opinions universally held in the 17th and the 18th centuries.

Many reasons explain, if they do not justify, the origin of such views upon the nature of the Negro during the early history of slavery in this country. The absence of even a rudimentary anthropological science, especially among the colonists who were people of a very limited educational standard, and the scanty supply of ethnological information, must have necessarily led the early colonists towards making an estimate of the strange race entirely upon the basis of external phenomena of the stage of culture in which they lived; for that matter, many supposedly educated people may be found to-day, who do not suspect the presence of any other

criteria of the anthropological worth of other races than their

own.

The Negroes, who arrived in America, were half naked, wild from fear and danger, chained, could not be understood, and did not understand the language spoken to them; they did therefore resemble beasts more than man in the eyes of the uneducated colonists. "Whether the Creator originally formed these black people a little lower than other men, or that they have left their intellectual power through disuse, I will not assume the province of determining but certain it is, that a new Negro (as those lately imported from Africa are called) is a complete definition of indolent stupidity .... Their stupidity does not however allow us to consider them as beasts for our use ....

If those were the opinions of an English Missionary, it is not difficult to guess what the prevailing views among the American colonists were.

Here undoubtedly "The wish was father to the thought." And soon the South was taking measures to keep the Negroes in that condition of ignorance and heathenism which served as evidence of their racial inferiority. In many colonies the teaching of Negroes and their conversion to Christianity was strictly prohibited. The multiplicity of laws aiming at the prevention of the awakening of Negro revolts and insurrections in the middle of the 18th century shows that the Southern slave owners were beginning to fear the possibility of the development of human feelings and desires in the Negro beast's breasts. And finally the rapid increase in the number of Mulattoes notwithstanding the many prohibitions of marriages between the White and the Black, seemed to be a living refutation of the theory of the beastly origin of the Negro. When the system of slavery has accomplished the changes in the common law, according to which the place of the child in the society was determined by the position of his father, and the children of slave women were recognized as slaves, the production of Mulattoes became a very profitable undertaking. A Mulatto slave represented a much greater value than a plain Negro. Since the female slaves were at the disposal of the slave owners without any restrictions, the owning of one's own children as slaves became a matter of common every day occurrence in the Southern colonies.

(Continued.)

T

Immigration at Stuttgart.

HE resolution on Immigration adopted by our last International Congress has called forth a discussion of this subject in our press which could have been more apropos before the Congress, but ought to be welcomed even at this late date. It is unfortunate, however, that the discussion has assumed a somewhat personal character. Our Party's delegates at Stuttgart have been criticized for neglect of duty in not pressing the "American" point of view. It is quite natural that I should be criticized more than any other delegate, and should feel the general criticism more keenly, because I not only "failed and neglected" to press this point of view, but actually opposed it, doing my level best to defeat the resolution proposed by our National Committee. That my position should be criticized was to be expected and I am not surprised to find Comrade Hillquit, the author of the ill-fated resolution, complain of me, although he refrains, in very comrade-like fashion, from openly criticizing

But there is no mistaking the temper in which the following passage which I quote from Comrade Hillquit's article in The Worker, was written: "When it came to a vote, says Comrade Hillquit,-we found that on the particular point in issue we could probably count on the support of Australia and South Africa, each represented by one delegate, as against almost 900 delegates representing the other twenty-two countries. And what was worse, the American delegation was by no means a unit on our proposed resolution: The Socialist Labor Party had naturally taken the extreme impossibilist view of opposing not only all restrictions of labor immigration, but also all safeguards against the dangers arising from it, and even among the delegates of our own party there were those who were opposed to all restrictions, and refused to be bound by our own resolution on the subject."

I feel therefore in duty bound to inform the comrades of the reasons which actuated me in the course which I adopted at Stuttgart, and incidentally to state just what happened at the Congress, as Comrade Hillquit's article in The Worker leaves much to be desired on these points both in clearness and accuracy. Comrade Hillquit makes a labored attempt to create the impression that the "American" Resolution was not rejected in toto and that the resolution actually adopted was a compromise. What actually happened was quite different: our resolution was rejected in toto "on the particular point in issue," by the over