eption of original
ethnic groups in terms of whose interaction the history of humanity
might be written. Novicow and Ratzenhofer maintain similar, though not
so extreme, theories of social origins and historical developments.

With the tremendous extension of communication and growth of commerce,
the world is today a great community in a sense that could not have been
understood a century ago. But the world, if it is now one community, is
not yet one society. Commerce has created an economic interdependence,
but contact and communication have not resulted in either a political or
a cultural solidarity. Indeed, the first evidences of the effects of
social contacts appear to be disruptive rather than unifying. In every
part of the world in which the white and colored races have come into
intimate contact, race problems have presented the most intractable of
all social problems.

Interest in this problem manifests itself in the enormous literature on
the subject. Most of all that has been written, however, is superficial.
Much is merely sentimental, interesting for the attitudes it exhibits,
but otherwise adding nothing to our knowledge of the facts. The best
account of the American situation is undoubtedly Ray Stannard Baker's
_Following the Color Line_. The South African situation is interestingly
and objectively described by Maurice Evans in _Black and White in South
East Africa_. Steiner's book, _The Japanese Invasion_, is, perhaps, the
best account of the Japanese-American situation.

The race problem merges into the problem of the nationalities and the
so-called subject races. The struggles of the minor nationalities for
self-determination is a phase of racial conflict; a phase, however, in
which language rather than color is the basis of division and conflict.

5. Conflict Groups

In chapter i conflict groups were divided into gangs, labor
organizations, sects, parties, and nationalities.[219] Common to these
groups is an organization and orientation with reference to conflict
with other groups of the same kind or with a more or less hostile social
environment, as in the case of religious sects.

The spontaneous organizations of boys and youths called gangs attracted
public attention in American communities because of the relation of
these gangs to juvenile delinquency and adolescent crime. An interesting
but superficial literature upon the gang has developed in recent years,
represented typically by J. Adam