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The Negro Church. A Social Study. Made under the direction of Atlanta University by the Atlanta Conference. Edited by W. E. BURGHARDT Du Bois. Atlanta University Press, 1903.212 pp. In this compilation of forty sections are comprehended short accounts of primitive negro religion and the negro church, a summary statement of missionary work among the negroes in slavery, sketches of noted preachers, church statistics and details regarding the various denominations, studies of local churches, and criticisms of the character of negro preachers and negro religion of the present. The reports and statistics are from various sources; the historical sketches are by the editor. The local studies, by different persons, are of great value and throw much light upon the condition of the negro church at present. Inquiries made by the conference among negro laymen and Southern whites make it clear that a large proportion of the negro ministers are unfit to be moral leaders — debts, women and drink being the chief stumbling blocks. In many localities the lay pillars of the church are of lax morals. Young men in the church are few. Divisions in churches and secessions are frequent, especially in the Baptist church. The statistics are drawn principally from the census of 1890, but in some cases have been brought down to date.

The historical sketches by the editor are interesting but a little onesided; the census of 1890 has a fuller and more impartial history of each denomination. The conversion of the negroes to Christianity seems of less importance to the editor than the restrictions upon halfsavage negro congregations. The sketch of early efforts at conversion is principally a summary of the restrictive colonial legislation designed by the whites to crush the pagan practices of the Africans and to regulate the negro preacher, who was then usually the leader in all race troubles. Negro conversion really became general about the end of the eighteenth century, when "the Rights of Man" were believed in, and after the rigid discipline of slavery had partially crushed out heathenism, thus preparing the negro for conversion to Christianity by the enthusiastic Methodists and Baptists, who were then beginning their marvellous expansion. But Mr. Du Bois does not think that the negro needed to be prepared to receive Christianity. His theories and opinions are interesting, especially since they are the exact opposite of those held by the Southern whites. His thesis is that the negro was better off in Africa than in American slavery and that the blacks cannot remain in the same churches with the whites. He maintains: (1) that the negro church is the sole surviving social institution from Africa, that it was heathen but is now Christian, that the African priest, with

his vast power, survived in the Christian negro preacher; (2) that slavery destroyed the African family and definite and long-formed political, social and religious habits, that the African polygamous family was a powerful insititution, greatly superior to the slave family; (3) that the blacks must have churches separate from the whites because the latter do not, and have never, admitted the negro to a proper participation in church government. The historian of slavery will, on the other hand, assert (1) that slavery forcibly destroyed African superstition and voodoo worship and substituted the Christian religion, that the negro church is a borrowed institution; (2) that there was no family life worthy of the name in Africa and that the negro family, such as it is, was forcibly created in slavery; (3) that the blacks in the white. churches served a period of necessary probation, being on exactly the same footing that white children were.

In some way, by 1865 there had come to be hundreds of thousands of negro Christians. Most of these were in Southern white churches, whose work receives scant notice. The fact is overlooked that the most fruitful missionary work among the negroes was done by the Southern churches after 1845 when the Methodist and Baptist denominations in the South drew away from the Northern churches. They were then free to work among the slaves without fear of being suspected as abolitionist agents. Of the separation of the negroes from the white churches Mr. DuBois says little except to bear out his theory that the races cannot get along together in the same church. Of the methods employed by religious carpetbaggers from 1865 to 1870 to force all negroes to leave the Southern white churches, he makes no mention. In reality it was equivalent to martyrdom for a negro to remain faithful to his master's church. The persecution of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, consisting of the negroes who tried to remain with the whites, but who yet for their safety had to be organized separately, shows the kind of pressure brought to bear by aliens and by blacks under their control in order to draw the race line in the churches.

Mr. Du Bois's theories and opinions may be correct; they are certainly worthy of attention; but they are not well supported by any known facts, nor by the mass of valuable material here collected by himself and his fellow workers. Indeed the effect of the intermingling of facts and theories in this monograph is somewhat confusing and contradictory.

WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY.

WALTER L. FLEMING.

The Return to Protection. By WILLIAM SMART. London, Macmillan and Company, Ltd., 1904. 284 pp.

Fifty Years of Progress and the New Fiscal Policy. By LORD BRASSEY. London, New York and Bombay, Longmans, Green & Company, 1904. — 111 pp.

Protection in Germany. By W. HARBUTT DAWSON. London, P. S. King & Company, 1904. - 259 PP.

By C. H. CHOMLEY.

Protection in Canada and Australasia.
London, P. S. King & Son, 1904. 195 PP.

Protection in the United States. By A. MAURICE Low. London, P. S. King & Son, 1904. - 167 pp.

Die Eisenbahntarife in ihren Beziehungen zur Handelspolitik. Von DR. ERNST SEIDLER und Alexander FREUD. Leipzig, Duncker und Humblot, 1904. — 189 pp.

The books called into being by Mr. Chamberlain's proposed change in the fiscal policy of Great Britain already make a respectable library; and there is as yet no sign of a lessening output. Of the works on this subject published in the current year, perhaps the most important, and certainly the most readable, is Professor Smart's Return to Protection. It is designed to meet the needs of readers of inteiligence and common sense who are not familiar with the technical terms of economics or with even the better known principles of trade and industry. Accordingly the work is practically an elementary treatise on international trade, with special reference to the fiscal problem. As such it has scarcely an equal; and it is to be hoped that it may find a wide circulation in this country as well as in Great Britain.

Professor Smart is uncompromising in his advocacy of free trade as the only satisfactory policy for the United Kingdom of to-day. He emphasizes the fact that for a free-trade country to go over to a protectionistic basis involves no less of painful readjustment than is involved in a change from protection to free trade. But quite apart from the difficulties of readjustment, he is inclined to deny the validity of the familiar arguments for protection. A scientific system of protection involves endless theoretical difficulties. Political exigencies would make impossible the adoption of such a system, if an omniscient theorist should arise to construct it. Retaliatory tariffs he considers more dangerous to the country which employs them than to the coun

tries against which they are directed. Finally, the author inquires into the alleged decline of Great Britain and demonstrates it to be a myth, and examines the advantages of an imperial customs union, which prove to be insignificant, if not quite illusory.

Lord Brassey's Fifty Years of Progress covers much the same ground and takes the same point of view. But while Smart is persuasive, Lord Brassey is dogmatic. Smart's style is lively and entertaining; Brassey's is meagre, disjointed, at times tedious. As an expression of the views of a man of affairs and a scholar, Lord Brassey's little book will be read with interest.

Protection in Germany, Protection in Canada and Australasia, and Protection in the United States are three of a series of popular works upon protection in various countries, published with a view to throwing light upon the British fiscal problem. Mr. Dawson's narrative of the events that led to the inauguration of an imperial protective policy in Germany is very instructive. A policy which began with the wholly reasonable purpose of providing the Empire with independent revenues has gradually and irresistibly degenerated into a mere vulgar protection of selfish interests because these interests happen to hold a strategic position which makes it possible for them to enforce their demands. At present they demand virtually a guarantee of interest on capital and rent of land. In order to preserve the great landowner from ruin, which would often be but the just due of his incompetence, every laborer of the kingdom is compelled to eat dear bread and meat - if not to dispense altogether with the latter. In a comparison of the relative conditions of the British and the German laborers, the author attempts to show how far protection has injured the latter. It is somewhat amusing to find this fallacious comparison of incomparables, which in our own country has done such good service for protection, marshalled among the arguments for free trade.

It may not be amiss to call attention to a few errors that escaped the author's revision. On page 4 he speaks as though discrimination in favor of importation of raw materials were an innovation upon mercantilistic policy. On page 19 he represents the Customs Union, consisting of eighteen states, among them Prussia, as comprising an area of only 7,719 square miles. The statement on page 97 that cost of living has increased does not seem to be in harmony with the description in the same chapter of a universal fall in prices. On page 150 it is stated that the cotton spinners wanted low duties on yarn while the weavers wanted high duties an example of altruism, if the statement is correct, without parallel in the annals of protection.

Mr. Chomley's brief study of protection in Canada will be of interest to both American and English readers, since influential political parties in each country seek to enter upon closer commercial relations with Canada. In spite of his free-trade bias, Mr. Chomley admits that Canada is now committed to the policy of protection to infant industries, and will hardly be induced to enter upon policies of preferential treatment or reciprocity which would reduce substantially the duties on manufactures. In his discussion of protection in Australasia Mr. Chomley comes to similar conclusions. Australasia does not choose to let England do her manufacturing. Whether the protective policy of the Australasian colonies has been to their advantage or not it would be impossible to say. The author questions the advantages of protection in these colonies, and ascribes the continuance of the policy, in some of them at least, to the accidental fact that the advocates of free trade have been largely conservatives and hence have failed to secure the support of the powerful laboring class.

Mr. Low's Protection in the United States consists of a brief historical sketch of the evolution of the American system, and a somewhat elaborate statement of the theoretical basis of protection, as the author views it. The first part may be dismissed with a few words. Students of protection are gradually coming to doubt the possibility of any historical proof of the expediency or inexpediency of a protective system. In American economic history, at any rate, so many powerful influences have been operating simultaneously that to isolate one and measure its effect is impossible. Of this Mr. Low is aware, yet he continually implies that depression or prosperity in a given period is directly traceable to fiscal policy - except when prosperity attended the low tariff of 1842. For this prosperity Mr. Low seeks other causes, since he is an avowed protectionist.

There is need for a clear and simple restatement of the case for protection; but one who seeks to find it in Mr. Low's book will be disappointed. The author has collected all the arguments he can find for protection, whether in Republican campaign literature or in the works of List or Patten, and he adopts them all uncritically. Accordingly it is not surprising that some of his arguments are incompatible with others. Thus, for example, he holds that permanent protection alone can enable the American manufacturer to meet the cost of high wages; yet he lays down the "axiom" that high wages always represent low labor-cost- that American labor at $1.50 a day is cheaper than Indian labor at 12 cents. He admits that the tariff raises prices, yet he apparently believes that the foreigner "pays the tax." He is,

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