Whatever may be the real truth about the economic status of the race, and after all it is the relative progress of the mass that determines the future of the race, there can be no doubt that there is an increasing "race consciousness" which will have to be reckoned with. The more conservative school, led by Booker T. Washington, is working to secure for the negro an industrial training that will give him some kind of an economic standing in the community, and if this is achieved for large numbers, a radical change in social and political outlook will follow, unless all signs of history fail. On the other hand, there is growing up a radical party, under the inspiration of Dr. W. B. Dubois, which pleads for unconditional political and social equality as a measure of immediate justice. Dr. Dubois demands "the raising of the negro in America to full rights and citizenship. And I mean by this no halfway measures; I mean full and fair equality. That is, a chance to work regardless of color, to aspire to position and preferment on the basis of desert alone, to have the right to use public conveniences, to enter public places of amusement on the same terms as other people, and to be received socially by such persons as might wish to receive them." With both of these influences at work and all the forces of modern life playing upon the keener section of the colored population, nothing but congenital disabilities can prevent a movement which ruling persons, North and South, will have to take into account. How serious this movement becomes depends, however, upon the innate capacity of colored masses to throw off the shiftlessness and indifference to high standards of life that, their best friends admit, stand in the way of their gaining a substantial economic basis, without which any kind of a solid political superstructure is impossible. The real negro question now is: "Can the race demonstrate that capacity for sustained economic activity and permanent organization which has lifted the white masses from serfdom?" FOOTNOTES: [1] In 1894 the Democrats during Cleveland's administration completed the demolition of the system by repealing the remaining provisions. [2] Disfranchising provisions were adopted in other southern states as follows: North Carolina, in 1900; Alabama and Virginia, in 1901; Georgia, in 1908. See Lobingier, _The People's Law_, pp. 301 ff.; W. F. Dodd, _Revision and Amendment of State Constitutions_. [3] _The Political Science Review_, November, 1906, p. 20. [4] Giles _v._ Harris, 189 U. S., 474. [5] See a Massachusetts case decided before the Civil War upholding similar discriminations against negroes. Thayer, _Cases on Constitutional Law_, Vol. I, p. 576. [6] This is partly due to the absence of compulsory attendance laws. CHAPTER II THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION