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.

[29]

[30]

 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 [31] 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.

[31]

Because when we understand this we are in a fair way to find that these relations are not to be explained on the basis of the thinking or feeling of either party. They must be interpreted in terms of human relations and in the order in which human relations are established: (1) economic, (2) social, (3) political and (4) civic. So understood, a knowledge of the historical conditions under which these relations developed is seen to be of the greatest value in understanding the problem. For this is all 

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