There is no sudden or cut-and-dried solution of the Negro problem, or of any other problem. Men are forever demanding formulæ which will enable them to progress without effort. They seek to do quickly by medication what can only be accomplished by deliberate hygiene. A problem that has been growing for two hundred and fifty years in America, and for thousands of years before that in Africa, warping the very lives of the people concerned, changing their currents of thought as well as their conduct, cannot be solved in forty years. Why expect it? And yet there are definite things that can be done which, while working no immediate miracles, will set our faces to the light and keep us trudging toward the true goal. Down at the bottom--it will seem trite, but it is eternally true--the cause of the race "problem" and most other social problems is simply lack of understanding and sympathy between man and man. And the remedy is equally simple--a gradual substitution of understanding and sympathy for blind repulsion and hatred. Consider, for example, the Atlanta riot. Increasing misunderstanding and hatred caused a dreadful explosion and bloodshed. What happened? Instantly the wisest white men in Atlanta invited the wisest coloured men to meet them. They got together: general explanations followed. They found that there had been error on both sides; they found that there were reasonable human beings on both sides. One of the leading white men said: "I did not know there were any such broad-minded Negroes in the South." In other words, they tried to understand and sympathise with one another. Over and over again men will be found hating Negroes, or Chinamen, or "dagoes," and yet liking some individual Negro, or Chinaman, or "dago." When they get acquainted they see that the Negro or Chinaman is a human being like themselves, full of faults, but not devoid of good qualities. As a fundamental proposition, then, it will be found that the solution of the Negro problem lies in treating the Negro more and more as a human being like ourselves. Treating the Negro as a human being, we must judge him, not by his colour, or by any other outward symbol, but upon his worth as a man. Nothing that fails of that full honesty and fairness of judgment in the smallest particular will suffice. We disgrace and injure ourselves more than we do the Negro when we are not willing to admit virtue or learning or power in another human being because his face happens to be yellow or black. Of the soundness of this fundamental standard of judgment there can be no doubt; the difficulty lies in applying it practically to society as it is to-day. In the suggestions which I offer here I am trying to do two things: to outline the present programme, and to keep open a clear view to the future goal. _Shall the Negro Vote?_ Let us approach, then, without fear the first of the three groups of problems--political, industrial, and social--which confront us. Shall the Negro vote?