strictly speaking, no native question of importance; the genuine natives form a vanishing element of the population and are of about the same importance as are the natives of the temperate zone now held in durance by the irresistible power of the invading peoples. And if miscegenation takes place in any degree much short of universality, the resulting social form is merely an exaggeration of the case first described: there are three or more, instead of two, bodies of aspirants for political power, and the mongrel portion of the population is always likely to become troublesome, ostracized as it so often is by both the parent stocks. Racial barriers that prevent a thorough and wholesome amalgamation make themselves felt both directly and indirectly, and in an endless and unanticipated variety of forms. The fact is that miscegenation is never complete, implying as that would the total disappearance of both original stocks, and so the states formed in the tropics (by the Latin nations) are generally of an unstable and contentious character, even though the original "native" race has all but disappeared.

The higher and the lower racial elements, however finally stratified, engage at once in a struggle for political predominance. This is not always apparent, but it is the form in which ultimately the unassimilated racial differences assert themselves, unless one party is utterly crushed. These differences are as many as the points of dissimilarity, important or significant, actual or fancied, between the two contiguous societies. Ideal sympathy means ideal similarity, and is, of course, never realized in the life of individuals or of societies. But essential similarity does away with all vital disagreements and prepares the ground for toleration, coöperation and final amalgamation between the two races. These results may be indefinitely retarded by a policy of accentuation of racial differences, viz., color, language, religion, and essential manners, customs, and habits of thought. The peoples of a higher civilization may or may not desire amalgamation of diverse racial elements through intermarriage; but they always aim at the maintenance of peace and the upbuilding of coöperation, these being consistent with the continuance of their own political power, and the furthering of their own economic ends. Too few of them have been able, nevertheless, to practice

with tact the prime virtue of toleration. The so-called "lower" races, strange as it may seem, may often be taken as models in this respect by their lords and masters.

Toleration has been through all history that which has eased the shocks of contact of two peoples. The Phoenicians, who directed the stream of Western civilization from its springs, were tolerant of others' customs and ideas to the extent of sacrificing their own national individuality, and subsequent history has no parallel to offer to their success in the dissemination of culture. The Romans, caring for realities rather than appearances, tolerated alien customs and practices among the provincials, so long as their existence menaced in no way the integrity of the government; and beneath their rule, severe as it often was, the provinces were through centuries prosperous and loyal to a high degree. Both of these ancient peoples brought their efforts at transformation to bear in the only logical and effective field, that of the industrial organization, where transformation and "progress" are not resisted, but welcomed; and let the secondary social forms, which are based upon the local character of the struggle for existence, as far as practicable, alone. It may be said that religion, marriage-customs, morals, etc., were, at that date, much alike all over the world, a state of things which would naturally result in a less marked accentuation of differences; but the fact remains that both Phoenicians and Romans went out of their way to placate their customers or subjects by conforming to local ideas in all these matters.

Modern nations have generally, on the other hand, adopted the course of interference. They have started, with proselytizing zeal, from the standpoint of ignorant national egotism, or ethnocentrism, and have utterly lost sight of the fact that all institutions, customs, etc., are logical and justifiable in the setting of their time or they would have ceased to exist.1 Lack of tolera

'A single illustrative case may be cited. In Hawaii, before the dominance of Europeans, tribal rights of property ownership fell to the chief; his subjects cultivated the land for him, and even turned over to him one-quarter of all wages earned. They were virtually serfs bound to the soil. "A proof that this dependence was patriarchal, and not felt as oppressive, is furnished by the fact that the sudden abolition of it through Christianity has been indicated as one cause of the decrease of the population."-Ratzel, History of Mankind, I. 284.

tion and tact has been the result of this attitude and to this lack is chargeable much of the trouble and many of the calamities experienced in contact with "natives." If this had not been the case, it would seem foolish to insist at this length upon the value of tact and tolerance. The natives are grown-up children and must be so treated. Tolerance is certainly a prime virtue in the formation of wholesome and enduring bonds between parent and child, or between the experienced and the immature; and because the savage happens to have the body of a man, he should not be censured and despised if the ages have denied him intelligence beyond the measure of a child.

The absolute need of tolerance would seem to be the only general principle which could be laid down regarding the contact with natives. It represents merely a common-sense recognition of the traits of human nature. It really covers all cases to be mentioned below; where tolerance has been absent, friction has occurred whether this has been quelled by force or not, does not alter the case. It should be said too, that tact and toleration cannot be successful, except by favoring chance, if they represent an attitude merely. The subtlest tact is based upon the soundest specific knowledge and no general formula can apply to all cases. Intentions count for little in the play of social forces; local information which will enable one to take advantage of these forces is all-essential. This again seems a truism; yet the peoples and governments are few which have taken pains to inform themselves before action concerning the elements of native life—beliefs, superstitions and so on-which, later, are often found to thwart action and to rouse enmity.

The genuine "native question" is found, then, in connection with tropical colonies where there is a sharp distinction between the invading whites and other elements of the population; and as a question of European state-policy it is present, of course, only where the former component is politically dominant. Native states, where foreigners are relatively few and weak, have, of course, a policy or an attitude in regard to these which, as a new view of an old picture, should receive all the attention from the sociologist that the meagre and ephemeral data will allow; but for the present purpose, the viewpoint of the more civilized race is the essential one.

What the civilized nation wanted of the native at the outset was his trade. The Phoenicians in the Mediterranean, the Portuguese in India and Brazil, the British, Dutch, Danes, Germans, Italians, and Americans-all were actuated by trade-motives to approach the tropical lands. The Spaniards, despite their religious pretensions, were at bottom traders for spice and gold; indeed if the motives of Columbus, to get gold to aid in the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, were candid, this very object was none the less one about whose origin lingered "nard and cassia's balmy smells," a certain lively curiosity concerning Arabia Felix and the fabulously wealthy East. It is agreeable and plausible, even now, to switch the trade-motive into the religious or humanitarian channel, for the unsubstantial and frothy substance will float at the top and disguise until a convenient time the current that flows beneath; and it will so insensibly evaporate away that the emerging under-currents will by and by come to be believed the same as those surface-waters to which the earlier stretches of the stream owed their glamor and sparkle.

The only difficulty was that the native would not trade. Tropical life is not strenuous; needs are few and foresight rudimentary. Nothing satisfactory was to be attained in the way of a demand or supply region through the working of economic forces, pure and simple. The native lacked direction and seemed not only not to feel its lack, but to resist its offer. The settlements of Europeans, confined originally to very limited areas, were in the beginning more or less at the mercy of local native authorities; their policy toward the latter, conformably with the object of their appearance on the scene, which was to take advantage of the widely diverse conjunctures of the frontier trade, was a purely commercial one. Conciliation was varied with violence only on propitious occasions. But in the course of time, as augmenting European interests, actual or potential, demanded safe-guarding, as the country was seen to need "development," violence alternated with trickery in the establishment of a "colonial empire." Political predominance of the aliens was assured except in such native states as, for example, Abyssinia, where by exception a firmly knit organization was able to resist a relatively weak European power.

When the tropical country was finally reduced, the "native question" at once arose. The district must be made to yield the expected returns. But the Europeans were unable, even if they had been present in sufficient numbers, to perform the labor demanded by agriculture or mining on the large scale demanded by commerce. The native question was here presented, in vital form, in the shape of the problem of the labor supply,1 and the first rough-and-ready solution was that of slavery. Until the nineteenth century slavery was found sufficient, and in so far this aspect of the native question was solved. The only difficulties that remained centered about the acquisition and transportation of an adequate supply of the human commodity. There is no need here to recount the story of the revolt against slavery, in the temperate zone, and how, against their will, the tropical lands were stripped of their instruments of production. After the abolition of the system, however, the field lay open for future experiments, and the tropical colonies, with ruin staring them in the face, labored desperately for a new solution.

It had been found, notably in districts whose native population was of a low order of civilization, that no inducements to free labor had any attraction except those which the Europeans were, for various reasons, unwilling to give.2 Lack of wants and of foresight speedily engendered wholesale vagabondage, and the wage-system was given no chance. Even alcohol and the more destructive weapons of the higher race exercised, as rewards of service, no more than an ephemeral enticement. Excluding cases of evasion of the prohibition of actual slavery,3 the labor-question,

1 It might be said, of course, that the first thing the European had to do subsequently to pacification, was to govern the natives; but the continuance of warmeasures in the slave system was so conspicuous, that they certainly merit a special and antecedent treatment. Connected as it is with the original purpose (exploitation) of the colony, the labor-system detaches itself in a sense from the measures of a more technically administrative character.

2 This statement would seem to run counter to the experience of the British with Kaffir labor in South Africa. The Kaffirs are not exactly a "low" race; and it is certain that they will, in many cases, work for wages. But their labor has not been of a continuous and persistent type; it has been found advisable in a number of cases, despite the alleged value of the local supply, to import a better labor force from Asiatic regions.

3 Anyone at all familiar with the history of the Congo Free State will recall the difficulties there encountered in the attempt to do away with veiled forms of slavery.