“The problem of the twentieth century,” says Mr. W. B. Du Bois, “is the problem of the colour line.” That, no doubt, is the view of a man born “within the veil”; but, whatever our point of view, we cannot but admit that racial adjustment is one of the two or three most urgent problems of the near future.

Ought the colour-lines drawn by Nature to be enforced by human ordinance, and even by geographical segregation? Or ought they to be gradually obliterated by free intermingling and intermarriage? Or, while intermarriage is forbidden (whether by law or public sentiment), is it possible for people of different colours to dwell together in approximately equal numbers and on terms of democratic equality? Or is it for the benefit of both races that one race should always maintain, by social and political discriminations, its superiority over the other? Or is this opinion a mere hypocritical disguise of the instinct which begot, and maintained throughout the ages, the “institution” of slavery?

These are questions which the coming century will have to answer, not only in America, but in Africa. It is in the Southern United States, however, that the problem presents itself in its acutest and most fully developed form. In South Africa it is looming ahead, in America it is present and hourly insistent. Though the conditions in the two countries can never be precisely similar, yet the experience of the one ought certainly to be of the utmost value in shaping the counsels of the other. My interest, then, in the colour-question in the South was not a mere abstract interest in an alien problem; nor was it due solely to the special sympathy for America and all things American which (I am happy to say) has been strong in me from my youth upward. It was a personal interest which ought, I think, to be shared by every Englishman who is so far an Imperialist as to feel that he cannot simply wash his hands of the problems of Empire.

It was heightened, moreover, by the feeling that a great deal of what passes in England as advanced thought on the subject of race-relations is very superficial and remote from the realities of the case. This suspicion had for some time beset me, and was perhaps the main factor in inducing me to utilize a rare interval of leisure in getting into touch with the facts of the problem as it presents itself in Afro-America.

Some thinkers display an almost furious antipathy to the very idea of race. They hold it a mere superstition or illusion, and look forward, not only with equanimity, but with eagerness, to an obliteration of all race-boundaries in a universal “pan-mixture.” I cannot believe that this is a true ideal of progress; nor does it seem to me that the world at large is verging in that direction. No considerable fusion is taking place between the European and the Asiatic races. No one dreams of seeking on that line the solution of our difficulties in India. No practical politician dreams of encouraging yellow immigration into America or Australia on the same terms of permanent citizenship and free intermixture that obtain in the case of white settlers. If the myriads of China and Japan are to “expand” in the same sense in which the European races have expanded, it must be by conquest and something like extermination. That is, in fact, the “yellow peril” which haunts so many dreams.

The truth is, it seems to me, that no race problem, properly so called, arises until two races are found occupying the same territory in such an approach to equal numbers as to make it a serious question which colour shall ultimately predominate. A handful of white administrators, as in India, or of white traders, as in China and Japan, may give rise, no doubt, to important and difficult questions, but they are not specifically questions of race. No one doubts that India belongs to the Indians; that is the theory of the British “raj” no less than of the most fervid Nationalist; the dispute is as to whether the Indian people do or do not benefit by the British administration. So, too, in China and Japan: it may be doubtful whether the privileges accorded to foreigners are judicious, but neither the racial integrity nor the political autonomy of the yellow races is for a moment in question. The race problem means (in its only convenient definition) the problem of adjustment between two very dissimilar populations, locally intermingled in such proportions that the one feels its racial identity potentially threatened, while the other knows itself in constant danger of economic exploitation. Now these conditions, as a matter of experience, arise only where a race of very high development is brought into contact with a race of very low development, and only where the race of low development is at the same time tenacious of life and capable of resisting the poisons of civilization. In other words, the race problem, as here defined, is a purely Afro-European or Afro-American problem.

Where civilization has met civilization, as in India, China, Japan, there has never been any question of local intermixture in such proportions as to give rise to the conditions indicated. Where civilization has met savagery, elsewhere than in Africa, the savage race has generally dwindled to a degraded and negligible remnant. The African races alone have shown considerable tenacity of life and considerable power of putting on at any rate a veneer of civilization. This is as much as to say that only between Europeans and Africans has the active competition arisen which is the essence of the race problem. In some parts of Spanish America it has resulted in the practical fusion of the races; a solution which, as above noted, commends itself to some thinkers. But where fusion is resisted, the problem must one day become acute; and that day has arrived in the Southern States. There the two races are more nearly than anywhere else on a footing of numerical equality; there, more than anywhere else, is the ambition of the African race stimulated by political theory and seconded by education, organization, and considerable material resources. The Southern States, then, are, so to speak, the great crucible in which this experiment in inter-racial chemistry is working itself out. There you can watch the elements simmering. To some hopeful eyes they may even seem to be clarifying and settling down. The following pages will show that I, personally, am not confident of any desirable solution, unless a new element of far-sighted statesmanship can be thrown into the brew.

Mr. Ray Stannard Baker, author of that admirable series of studies, “Following the Colour-Line,” was good enough to map out for me a zig-zag tour through the States east of the Mississippi, which enabled me to employ my time to the best advantage. I was also much indebted to Mr. Baker, as well as to Mr. Walter H. Page and Dr. Booker Washington, for many valuable introductions. Wherever I went, my first preoccupation was with the colour question; but I also welcomed the opportunity to see something of the great agricultural, industrial, and educational revival which is rapidly transmuting the South from a ghost-haunted region of depression and impoverishment into one of the most eagerly progressive, and probably one of the wealthiest, of modern communities. This book, then, is mainly to be regarded as a series of rapid impressions of travel, intermingled with conversations, in which I try to present the colour-problem from various points of view, and to suggest the temper in which it is approached by men of both races. In the middle of my travel-sketches, however, at the point where I leave the American Continent, I have inserted an essay of some length which embodies my reflections on the preceding “choses vues” with such tentative conclusions as I felt justified in drawing. This essay, which appeared in McClure’s Magazine for July, 1909, has elicited a good deal of criticism in the South, which has led me to modify one or two passages. I am happy to say, however, that none of the criticism which has reached me, either privately or through the Press, has been in any sense hostile. Many critics have declared impossible the only solution of the problem which at all commends itself to me; but only one out of a hundred or thereabouts has accused me of seriously misrepresenting the conditions.

From Florida, I proceeded by way of Cuba and Jamaica to a detached but very important section of the United States, the Canal Zone at Panama. I make no apology for including in this book a few notes of that journey. For one thing, I was still in Afro-America, still studying certain aspects of the colour-problem. But another motive prompts the inclusion of these sketches—the hope that some readers may be moved to follow in my footsteps, and enjoy a very delightful and interesting tour. Anything is worth doing, in my judgment, that tends to encourage Englishmen to cross the Atlantic. If any considerable proportion of the English travelling public could be induced to set their faces westward, we should soon get rid of many of the little prejudices and ignorances which still interpose themselves between the two branches of the Anglo-Saxon stem. The route which I followed—roughly, New York, Washington, Memphis, New Orleans, Charleston, Florida, Cuba, Jamaica, Panama, Cartagena, Trinidad, Southampton—is as easy and comfortable as it is interesting and instructive. No doubt the completion of the Canal will carry a rush of travel in this direction. But even before the gates of the Pacific are opened, I see no reason why the fascinating ferment of the Southern States, in conjunction with the glorious beauty of the West Indies, should not attract the travelling Briton.

The chapters in the First Part of this book appeared, with two exceptions, in the Westminster Gazette; those in the Third Part, with one exception, appeared either in the Morning Leader or the Pall Mall Magazine. The chapters on Hampton and on Jamaica are here printed for the first time.