all of the industrial
privileges.

The black man of business not only wished to enter into business
competition with members of the Caucasian race under the same conditions
as customarily pertain to such arrangements, but he was eagerly hoping
to insure adjustment of this situation. The black social outcast wished
"jim-crow" railway accommodations and signs proclaiming inequality of
race to disappear. He wished sufficient education to enable him to
develop his own society. He, too, was willing for a world war, for he
had come to the point where he desired immediate and explosive change.
Looked down upon because of his despised blood, the black American
wished to elevate the status of his womankind, too long disproved and
betrayed, to the level of free and brave womanhood of all the civilized
world. Concerning this situation he was grim. It required but a spark
applied here to explode with terrific outburst the sinister silence of
the volcano.

But in India, in South Africa, in Nigeria, and in all countries where
English rule held sway, England was committed to the policy of the white
overseer or foreman for the black exponent of industry. Nor could she,
save through war, adopt a policy of employing either Indians or Africans
at the same job and for the same wage as that received by members of the
British Labor Party. On the other hand, France, whose political life was
convulsed from 1894 to 1899 by principles of racial prejudice exhibited
in the Dreyfus case, offered every form of equality to the darker races
under her dominion. However, such equality offered by France was not
equal in the sum total of advantage to the partial equality which the
Negro received in America. The French workman gave more hours of toil
for less monetary reward. The Negro wanted to bring the French principle
of equality to apply in American industry. But the British in 1914 could
not agree to industrial equality for black men. Such agreement would
upset the nicely calculated economic adjustments of the English system.
America would take no step until forced to do so.

It was the problem of the Negro, alone and single-handed, to grasp the
opportunity afforded by world war to bring America to this point of
recognition and democratic equality. The Negro, hitherto regarded as the
monkey-man, the baby race, the black brute, trained by such ruthless
propaganda to disrespect himself, hesitated.

There was no leadership. No ringleader arrayed the