The economic necessities of a system of vicarious production led to the creation of a racial labor-caste; the social adjustment consequent upon this and upon its development created a social sentiment inimical to this class, and its continuance requires a continuance of this sentiment in our society; this is the pivotal fact. And the unavoidable conclusion is, that when this system of vicarious production disappears, the problem which is its consequence will disappear also—and not till then, in spite of all the culture, individual or collective, which that class may achieve. ON A CERTAIN CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES It would be a difficult task to name one line of intellectual endeavor among white men in America, in which the American Negro has not taken his part. Yet it is a striking fact that the racial attitude has been dominantly conservative. Radicalism does not yet register to any noticeable extent the contributions of our race in this country. In theological criticism, religious dissent, social and political heresies such as Single Tax, Socialism, Anarchism—in most of the movements arising from the reconstruction made necessary by the great body of that new knowledge which the last two centuries gave us—the Negro in America has taken no part. And today our sociologists and economists still restrict themselves to the compilation of tables of statistics in proof of Negro progress. Our scholars are still expressing the intellectual viewpoints of the eighteenth century. The glimmer of a change is perceptible only in some of the younger men like Locke of Howard University and James C. Waters. It is easy to account for this. Christian America created the color line; and all the great currents of critical opinion, from the eighteenth century to our time, have found the great barrier impassible and well-nigh impervious. Behind the color line one has to think perpetually of the color line, and most of those who grow up behind it can think of nothing else. Even when one essays to think of other things, that thinking is tinged with the shades of the surrounding atmosphere. Besides, when we consider what Negro education is to-day when we remember that in certain southern counties the munificent sum of 58 cents is spent for the annual education of a Negro child; that the "great leader" of his race decries "higher" education for them; that Negro boys who get as far as "college" must first surmount tremendous special obstacles—we will cease to wonder at the dearth of thinkers who are radical on other than racial matters.