graphs and reprints, contains very few of the expensive volumes. One must seek these, and if they be in English or German, very likely in vain, in the Bibliothèque Nationale. The Public Library of the city of Boston has apparently tried an experiment in this direction, and is certainly to be congratulated upon the result. To a very rich collection of standard works has been added, by co-operation with a special investigator, a large part of the flotsam and jetsam which is of such extreme value to the student of original sources. The library has set a worthy example of encouragement to research; it has offered definite proof of the ability of our American institutions to rival their European contemporaries. And a peculiarly appropriate rounding-out to the successful career in the distinctively popular phases of administration of the institution of the late librarian, Mr. Herbert Putnam, is afforded in this work, the last at Boston officially, perhaps, to bear his signature and the stamp of his approval.
OUR RACE TROUBLES.
The article which we publish in the present number of the Monthly, under the title of The Race Problem in the United States, is a sequel to one which appeared in the May number entitled The Negro Question. Both writers have a special acquaintance with the subject, and are widely known as active workers for the elevation of the negro race—Mr. Booker T. Washington, the writer of the second article, being himself one of its most distinguished representatives. While both manifest abundant sympathy with the negro, and a deep sense of the pressing nature of the problems to which the presence of a large negro element in the population of certain of our States gives rise, they virtually acknowledge that it is extremely difficult in discussing the subject to do more than present a few broad general views. That there is a very bad condition of things in some of our Southern States no one will dispute. The crimes which have been committed by white men, in avenging real or supposed crimes committed by black men, stamp a character of utter savagery on the communities in which they have occurred, and in which they have remained unpunished. At the same time there is no doubt that the existence of so large a negro element in the South constitutes a serious obstacle to the moral and intellectual as well as to the economic development of that part of the country, and tends to keep alive a dangerous condition of public feeling. Our contributor, Dr. Curry, states significantly that he could give very impressive details on this point, were it not that it would furnish altogether too unpleasant reading.
What are we going to do about it? No doubt we have before us an illustration of the old adage, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." The South had its "peculiar institution" for some generations, and held to it with extraordinary tenacity—went to war rather than give it up. Now, by the simple force of events, the old patriarchal and slaveholding system is broken up, and there the former slaves and their descendants are—emancipated citizens who have their rights under the Constitution, and who therefore have to be reckoned with. They can not be deported against their will; they have the same right to live in the country that any white man has.
Manifestly there is but one honorable way of dealing with the blacks, and that is to treat them with absolute justice. Upon this point we are in entire agreement with Mr. Booker T. Washington. If a black man is excluded from the suffrage on account of his ignorance,
