possibilities of a people should be judged not by the average of them but by the best of them. "As it is true that a nation must to some extent be measured by its slums, it is also true that it can only be understood and finally judged by its upper class." In the upper class of the city negroes Dr. Du Bois finds much encouragement. He acknowledges that they should do more for the less fortunate of their race, but reminds us that "the uncertain economic status even of this picked class makes it difficult for them to spare much time and energy in social reform." The crucial point to him of the present position of the person with only a little African blood, in the "City of Brotherly Love"—the stronghold in the past of abolition and of the Republican party to-day—is the impossibility of rising out of the status or group of the negroes. Irish and Germans may rise from the group of immigrants, but the colored men of ability cannot rise beyond a certain place, while the influx of ignorant and cheap colored laborers lowers the standards of wages and of living, pauperism and crime are increased, and the leaders of the race are dissatisfied and discouraged. For the shiftless and the bad there are charities and institutions, "but for the educated and industrious young colored man who wants work and not platitudes, wages and not alms, just rewards and not sermons,—for such colored men Philadelphia apparently has no use." We understand the warmth of these words when we read the examples given of young colored persons able to perform the duties, but unable on account of color to secure the positions of clerks, typewriters, etc. This state of things is due chiefly, in Dr. Du Bois's judgment, to a color prejudice, and this he believes can be done away with in time, just as the class prejudices of earlier centuries in Europe are being wiped out gradually. The negro problems are not more hopelessly complex than many others have been; and he looks for a wider and deeper idea of our common humanity. To it, the blacks and the whites have each much to contribute.
Such a study as this should be made in many cities and country districts for comparisons. And more than this we need, what Dr. Du Bois does not give, more knowledge of the effects of the mixing of blood of very different races, and of the possibilities of absorption of inferior into superior groups of mankind. He speaks of the "natural repugnance to close intermingling with unfortunate ex-slaves," but we believe that the separation is due to differences of race more than of status.
In the appendix is a carefully made and instructive study of negro domestic service in the seventh ward of Philadelphia (the same ward in which Dr. Du Bois made his house-to-house visitation) by Miss Isabel Eaton. Colored wage-earners are chiefly domestics. Miss Eaton lived for nine months, while making this study, in the Philadelphia College Settlement in this ward.
The Clarendon Press has published Part XXVI. of the Historical Atlas of Modern Europe. It contains, first, an ingenious, if somewhat complicated, map of England and Wales in 1086, by Mr. James Tait, who
