William Benjamin Smith, for years a teacher at Tulane University. This book is in no sense better than many others. At the same time it was written by a man who had broadened his scholarship in Europe, being the holder of a doctor's degree from a German university, and who in his own studies had emphasized such subjects as mathematics and philosophy. From such a source one would at least expect some degree of consideration for logic; and yet "The Color Line" but shows the lengths to which some persons will go when they discuss the Negro. The central thesis seems to be the following (p. 174): "Drawing the color line, firm and fast, between the races, first of all in social relations, and then by degrees in occupations also, is a natural process and a rational procedure, which makes equally for the welfare of both." Professor Smith remarks several Negroes of distinction, shows that in fact most of them were not pure Negroes at all, but persons [76]with an infusion of white blood, and concludes (p. 44): "It seems vain to deny that the mixed blood is notably more intelligent than the pure black; the necessary inference is that the white blood with which it was mixed is far more intelligent still." The same line of argument is used by Mr. Alfred Holt Stone in his Atlantic paper on "The Mulatto Factor in the Race Problem," included in "Studies in the American Race Problem," as well as by Mr. E.B. Reuter in his recent study in the American Journal of Sociology, "The Superiority of the Mulatto." "Have equal opportunities," we are asked, "raised the Negroes in Pennsylvania to the white level?" Education has been a complete failure. Professor Smith visited a Negro school (p. 166): "An olive-colored young man was at the board trying to explain to a mulatto woman, the only member of the class, the mysterious nature of the perpendicular. He appeared very earnest in his exposition, but unable to awaken any answering intelligence." "The higher culture at 'colored universities' merely spoils a plough-hand or house-maid." Finally (p. 259), "nearly forty years of devoted and enthusiastic effort to elevate and educate the Southern Negro lie stretched out behind us in a dead level of failure."

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[77]This whole argument is guilty of the vicious fallacy of begging the question by arguing in a circle. First we degrade human beings by the curse of slavery for two hundred and fifty years, and then because they are not advanced we argue that they have not the capacity to rise. Far from being an advantage to both races the color line is the curse of both. Obsessed by the Negro problem, the white South has always been held 

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