t is the explanation of the
intimate and friendly relations which so often existed in slavery
between master and servant. It is for this reason that we hear it said
today that the Negro is all right in his place. In his place he is a
convenience and not a competitor. Each race being in its place, no
obstacle to racial co-operation exists.

The fact that race prejudice is due to, or is in some sense dependent
upon, race competition is further manifest by a fact that Mr. Steiner
has emphasized, namely, that prejudice against the Japanese is nowhere
uniform throughout the United States. It is only where the Japanese are
present in sufficient numbers to actually disturb the economic status of
the white population that prejudice has manifested itself to such a
degree as to demand serious consideration. It is an interesting fact
also that prejudice against the Japanese is now more intense than it is
against any other oriental people. The reason for this, as Mr. Steiner
has pointed out, is that the Japanese are more aggressive, more disposed
to test the sincerity of that statement of the Declaration of
Independence which declares that all men are equally entitled to "life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"--a statement, by the way, which
was merely a forensic assertion of the laissez faire doctrine of free
and unrestricted competition as applied to the relations of individual
men.

The Japanese, the Chinese, they too would be all right in their place,
no doubt. That place, if they find it, will be one in which they do not
greatly intensify and so embitter the struggle for existence of the
white man. The difficulty is that the Japanese is still less disposed
than the Negro or the Chinese to submit to the regulations of a caste
system and to stay in his place. The Japanese are an organized and
morally efficient nation. They have the national pride and the national
egotism which rests on the consciousness of this efficiency. In fact, it
is not too much to say that national egotism, if one pleases to call it
such, is essential to national efficiency, just as a certain
irascibility of temper seems to be essential to a good fighter.

Another difficulty is that caste and the limitation of free competition
is economically unsound, even though it be politically desirable. A
national policy of national efficiency demands that every individual
have not merely the opportunity but the preparation necessary to perform
that particula