At this point our forecast has become so sombre that the optimistic reader may grow impatient with such pessimism, and may at least demand some confirmation of our vaticinations. The fact is that we have long hesitated to make public our convictions, since the rôle of Cassandra has few attractions, and it is only an after-thought to print them in this volume, though they were indicated, many months ago, in _The Nation_ of March 5, 1903. However, to enhearten us, within the last week we have lighted upon the corroborative testimony of perhaps the highest authority in the United States--a scholar whose opportunities for forming a judgement are certainly unsurpassed, if indeed equaled--whose abilities are not questioned, and whose freedom from prejudice is absolute. In a notable address delivered May 10, 1900, at the First Annual Conference held at Montgomery, Ala., under the auspices of the Southern Society for the promotion of the study of race conditions and problems in the South, Professor W. F. Willcox, of Cornell University, Chief Statistician of the United States Census Office at Washington, a "New Englander by birth and ancestry," declared that he could "not read the evidence as Dr. Curry apparently does," "Races, like nations, exist to serve humanity, and come and go in the long run according as they meet or fail to meet this test." "These diverse races of men may be roughly graded according to their value to humanity and their ability to improve. In any effort so to arrange them, the least serviceable and least progressive people are found to be those whose habitat secured the greatest isolation, freedom from competition and lack of incentive to improvement. Such peoples were found especially in the islands of the ocean, in the continent of Australia, in America, and in Africa." Nevertheless, Africa seems to have been the scene of most extraordinary mingling of bloods--a battle ground of widely diverse tribes;[35] in spite of this the African still belongs to "the least serviceable and least progressive people." "Those two backward races, viz., the Negro and the Malay." "When higher and lower races meet and interpenetrate, only two permanent solutions have thus far been recorded in history. Either the lower race has disappeared, or the two have fused, and in the case of especial moment to us all, and to the future of this country, I cannot believe that looking down through the centuries any other permanent solution than one of these two can be found. During the period of slavery the Negro race in the United States was protected from competition with the Whites, somewhat as it would have been by local isolation, or somewhat as domesticated animals are protected from the dangers nature throws about them. Only since emancipation has genuine competition between the races in this country existed, and during the early years after the Civil War the conditions were such as to favor the Negro race and to