they further involved a problem in the presence of which I confess
to-day I stand appalled.

It is said,--whether truthfully or not,--that when some years ago John
Morley, the English writer and thinker, was in this country, on
returning to England he remarked that the African race question, as now
existing in the United States, presented a problem as nearly, to his
mind, insoluble as any human problem well could be. I do not care
whether Lord Morley made this statement or did not make it. I am
prepared, however, to say that, individually, so far as my present
judgment goes, it is a correct presentation. To us in the North, the
African is a comparatively negligible factor. So far as Massachusetts,
for instance, or the city of Boston more especially, are concerned, as
a problem it is solving itself. Proportionately, the African infusion is
becoming less--never large, it is incomparably less now than it was in
the days of my own youth. Thus manifestly a negligible factor, it is
also one tending to extinction. Indeed, it would be fairly open to
question whether a single Afro-American of unmixed Ethiopian descent
could now be found in Boston. That the problem presents itself with a
wholly different aspect here in Carolina is manifest. The difference too
is radical; it goes to the heart of the mystery.

As I have already said, the universal "melting-pot" theory in vogue in
my youth was that but seven, or at the most fourteen, years were
required to convert the alien immigrant--no matter from what region or
of what descent--into an American citizen. The educational influences
and social environment were assumed to be not only subtle, but
all-pervasive and powerful. That this theory was to a large and even
dangerous extent erroneous the observation of the last fifty years has
proved, and our Massachusetts experience is sadly demonstrating to-day.