In Austrian Poland, on the contrary, where the Austrian Government, in order, perhaps, to hold the political aspirations of the Ruthenians in check, has given them a free hand in the government of the province, they have vastly greater freedom and they have made less progress. I am stating this fact baldly, as it was given to me, and without any attempt at an explanation. Many different factors have no doubt combined to produce this seeming paradox. I will merely add this further observation: Where the Poles are advancing, progress has begun at the bottom, among the peasants; where they have remained stationary the Polish nobility still rules and the masses of the people have not yet been forced to any great extent into the struggle for national existence. The nobles are content with opportunity to play at politics, in something like the old traditional way, and have not learned the necessity of developing the resources that exist in the masses of the people. On the other hand, oppression has not yet aroused the peasants as it has, particularly in Germany, to a united effort to help themselves. I mention this fact not merely because it is interesting, but because I am convinced that any one who studies the movements and progress of the Negroes in America will find much that is interesting by way of comparison in the present situation of the Polish people and that of the American Negroes. My own observation has convinced me, for example, that in those states where the leaders of the Negro have been encouraged to turn their attention to politics the masses of the people have not made the same progress that they have in those states where the leaders, because of racial prejudice or for other reasons, have been compelled to seek their own salvation in educating and building up, in moral and material directions, the more lowly members of their own people. I do not wish to make comparisons, but I think I can safely say, by way of illustration, that in no other part of the United States have the masses of the Negroes been more completely deprived of political privileges than in the state of Mississippi, and yet there is, at the same time, scarcely any part of the country in which the masses of the people have built more schools and churches, or where they have gained a more solid foothold on the soil and in the industries of the state.