as other persons, should the Government inhibit the assignment of contracts made with railroad companies, while allowing full liberty for the assignment of other contracts? Why should railroad companies be enabled to invoke the strong arm of the penal law as a defense against the performance of their contracts, while every other citizen is left to the remedies of the civil law? If a certain act affecting two individuals is innocent, and a similar act where a railroad is concerned is to be made a crime, it were better far to plod along in an ox-cart and be free than to ride in a palace car to the penitentiary.

This article was not written in defense of the business of "ticket scalping." Doubtless there are many dishonest "scalpers"; but the fine scorn and deep denunciation of them by some railroad men unconsciously suggests the old saw concerning the dispute between the pot and the kettle. It is really amusing to see, as I have seen in the newspapers, the general passenger agent of a great railroad corporation denounce the "scalpers" as a set of thieves who defy all the laws of morality and fair dealing and insolently declare their intention to disregard any law inimical to their business that Congress may enact, while, within a few days of this phillipic, the erstwhile president of that corporation, commenting on the effect of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Joint Traffic Association case, declares that the railway companies, though ostensibly submitting to that decision, would really maintain an association for the same purpose as the one just declared illegal, in effect reiterating the sentiment concerning the public said to have been expressed by the great originator of the corporation referred to.

But it has been said that "ticket scalping" has grown to such proportions as to impair the legitimate sale of tickets by the companies themselves; that the "scalper" defrauds the railway by negotiating the sale of tickets which their owners cannot use, thereby supplying intending passengers who otherwise would be compelled to buy new tickets from the railway companies. To stigmatize a business as criminal because its effect is to compel one to perform contracts already made and to earn money already obtained on the promise that it would be earned is a strange argument indeed. If this be the last argument of the railroads, then it might be dismissed with the simple statement that the Government ought not to be called in to settle a mere business dispute, by enacting a special penal law whose purpose and effect shall be to wipe out one of the disputants and safeguard the other, merely because the latter would thereby be

enabled to make more money. And especially ought not the Government to do this when, by doing it, the freedom of every citizen is invaded and curtailed. If what is to be inhibited were malum in se it might be different, but it is not.

But let us see if the "scalper" is really engaged in a nefarious business. What does he do? Does he sell tickets for which the railroads have not received their money? No. If he does he must have stolen or forged them; and, like any other criminal, the laws pronounce a penalty against him for that. He simply sells tickets he has bought at a low price from others who have paid the railroads what they asked for them. For the railroads to cry "Thief” at him for this, when, but for it, they would be called upon to carry out contracts they have made and already enjoy the benefit of, smacks of dishonesty to say the least.

But the railroads insist that the "scalper" is an accomplice of the "dishonest" ticket purchaser, who, having gotten a mileage book, for instance, on condition that he will not assign it, goes straightway and does assign it, so that any one desiring to travel a short distance can do so at a lower rate than he otherwise could. This is an ingenious argument, because it appeals to the average American's innate sense of justice. But it is specious-specious because predicated on false premises; for it is based on the right of the railroad companies to discriminate, and carry A at a lower rate than B. Absolute equality is the ultimate rule whereby the legality of a railroad company's treatment of the public should be tested. And if the railroad companies desire to sell a large quantity, as it were, of transportation at a lower rate than a small quantity, they may do so, of course; but they should justify the sale on its true grounds, namely, the wholesale quantity purchased, not on the ground that the purchaser's personality is any part of the consideration.

But is this action of the railroads in seeking to obtain the passage of the Anti-Scalping Bill wise or far-seeing? Doubtless, the immediate effect of the passage of the bill would be to increase receipts by enforcing a forfeiture of contracts. It is, practically, nothing but a scheme to enable the railroad companies to maintain full legal tariff rates under all circumstances. This act, operating on the public instead of the railroad companies, would be far more effective to the same end than a law permitting pooling by railroad companies, which, because it absolutely eliminates competition, has been long desired by them. With this act a law, the pooling ques

tion, so far as passenger traffic is concerned, will be settled in favor of the railroad companies, and settled far more emphatically than the most ardent supporters of the pooling privilege ever hoped for.

While the act would operate to the immediate financial benefit of railroad companies, enabling them to benefit by "forfeitures," and also enabling them to exact full legal rates, upon pain of fine or imprisonment, yet the fact that railroad companies are thus further privileged, that their privileges so far exceed those of other businesses, and that this Anti-Scalping Bill invades the freedom of every person, will certainly be obnoxious to the American sense of equality and justice. It will arouse the deep resentment of the people; and the railroads will, beyond question, find that they have courted an attack on their interests that will be costly to them and certainly effective. This will be based not alone on a desire for cheaper transportation. That desire might not reach fruition in the face of a proper showing. But it will be also based on a sense of injury- from rights invaded by special legislation to subserve the private ends of a favorite which will demand reprisal. And the reprisal will certainly come in the shape of a reduction of fares, and, perhaps, of rates also. While this might not immediately follow, it would be sure to come; and, in staving it off, the railroads would find that they had lost more than the gain would be by reason of the success of the Anti-Scalping Bill," and the last state of that man is worse than the first." HUGH T. MATHERS.

THE NEGRO AND EDUCATION.

At a time when the universal craze for expansion is rendering long-established beliefs uncouth and inadequate, it becomes necessary to reexamine the foundations of our faith in the light of the new gospel. The national opinion concerning the negro is formed and re-formed with such startling rapidity that only the process of instantaneous photography can preserve its shifting phases. We have seen innumerable remedies prescribed for the ills of this race with the cock-sureness of a patent nostrum. The frequency with which the remedy is changed, however, justifies the suspicion that the physician is ignorant of the nature of the malady which he under takes to treat. There has been a blind and fanatical reliance upon the potency of education as a universal solvent. The Bible, the spelling book, the college curriculum, and the industrial workshop have been prescribed, each in rapid succession, as the panacea of all ills. And yet the progress of the disease is in no wise checked, nor has its malignity been one whit abated.

The race problem should be viewed under a twofold aspect: 1. The development of a backward race.

2. The adjustment of two races of widely divergent ethnic types. In this case these factors are antagonistic to each other. The more backward and undeveloped the negro, the easier becomes his adjustment to the white race. The good old negro servant, loyal and faithful, is ever acceptable to his white lord and master; but his more ambitious son, with a Harvard diploma in his knapsack, is a persona non grata. The bond of adjustment which slavery established between the races was quickly burst asunder when the negro was made a free man and clothed with full civil and political privileges. The frictional aspect of the race problem grows out of the technical abolition of the negro's inferior status.

Can these two races be adjusted on terms of equality? This is but a fragment of the larger ethnological problem whose solution devolves upon the twentieth century. The harmonization of such

diverse ethnic elements as Russ and Turk, Slav and Saxon, Celt and Teuton, Caucasian and Mongolian, Aryan and African must be relegated to the sphere of statesmanship, philanthropy, and religious sanction. This can be effected, if at all, only through farsighted public policy. Herein consists the chief mistake that has been made concerning the race problem. We have relied upon education to accomplish results which lie outside of the circle of its aims. The function of education is to develop the latent faculties of the individual; it reacts upon social problems only in so far as the individual is a constituent factor. The social purpose controls and dominates individual activities. The drift of recent tendencies of civilization lends force and effect to the words, "The individual withers, and the world is more and more." If the education of the negro has not worked out the fulfilment which its propounders prophesied, it simply proves them to have been poor prophets, but should not discredit the value of education within its legitimate sphere and scope.

In discussing, then, the effect of education upon the negro, our consideration should be limited to the developmental phase of the question, to which alone it is applicable. In the last few years the higher education of the negro has been so far overshadowed by the clamor for industrial training that we have ceased to discuss it, except in a half-hearted, apologetic way, as if in quest of a gradual and graceful recession from a discredited policy. There are still, however, some few remaining who persist in the belief that the importance of this form of training will become more and more apparent as we gain a clearer insight into the true nature and probable outcome of the African element of our cosmopolitan population. Two facts stand out bold and pronounced, which must be the determining factors in any scheme for the betterment of the negro's status.

1. The negro belongs to an undeveloped race, and is, therefore, many centuries behind his Aryan competitor in the cultivation of those qualities which make for progress. He possesses only such promiscuous experiences as he has picked up during the past two or three hundred years while confined to the backyard of civilization.

2. For all time with which we may wisely concern ourselves, his religious, social, and cultural life will be relegated to a separate sphere. The African and the Anglo-Saxon will come together for purposes of business and philanthropy; but for pleasurable intercourse and social satisfaction each will return to his own company. The social isolation of the negro makes imperative an educational scheme