But even the voteless proletarian can in a measure help toward the final abolition of the capitalist system. For they too have labor power—which they can be taught to withhold. They can do this by organizing themselves at the point of production. By means of such organization they can work to shorten the hours of labor, to raise wages, to secure an ever-increasing share of the product of their toil. They can enact and enforce laws for the protection of labor and they can do this at the point of production, as was done by the Western Federation of Miners in the matter of the eight-hour law, which they established without the aid of the legislatures or the courts. All this involves a progressive control of the tools of production and a progressive expropriation of the capitalist class. And in all this the Negro can help. So far, they are unorganized on the industrial field, but industrial unionism beckons to them as to others, and the consequent program of the Socialist party for the Negro in the south can be based upon this fact. THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM The African slave-trade was born of the desire of certain Europeans to acquire wealth without working. It was to fill the need for a cheap labor supply in developing new territory that Negro slaves were first brought to the western world by the Spanish, Dutch, and English during the 16th and 17th centuries. Contact of white with black was thus established on the basis of the economic subjection of the one to the other. This subjection extended to every sphere of life, physical, mental and social. Out of this contact there arose certain definite relations and consequent problems of adjustment. It is the sum of these relations which we (rightly or wrongly) describe as the Negro Problem. Unfortunately, the spell of mere words is still very strong, and when people speak of the Negro Problem they carry over into the discussion a certain mental attitude derived from the original meaning of the word, Problem. In arithmetic, a sum to be worked out; in chemistry, to find by experiment a certain re-agent; in geography, to chart a puzzling current—all these are problems in the primary sense, and all these involve the idea of solution by him who approaches them. That is to say, they can be solved =by thinking=. And those who think loosely call up this idea of solution by thinking whenever they see the word "problem". So we have been pestered with this, that, and the other "solution" of the Negro problem. Therefore, it is well to bear in mind that a race problem is always the sum of the relations between two or more races in a state of friction.