Such as they are civilization must, naturally, raise them, but soberly and in limited ways.  They are not simply dark white men.  They are not “men” in the sense that Europeans are men.  To the very limited extent of their shallow capacities lift them to be useful to whites, to raise cotton, gather rubber, fetch ivory, dig diamonds,—­and let them be paid what men think they are worth—­white men who know them to be well-nigh worthless.

Such degrading of men by men is as old as mankind and the invention of no one race or people.  Ever have men striven to conceive of their victims as different from the victors, endlessly different, in soul and blood, strength and cunning, race and lineage.  It has been left, however, to Europe and to modern days to discover the eternal world-wide mark of meanness,—­color!

Such is the silent revolution that has gripped modern European culture in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  Its zenith came in Boxer times:  White supremacy was all but world-wide, Africa was dead, India conquered, Japan isolated, and China prostrate, while white America whetted her sword for mongrel Mexico and mulatto South America, lynching her own Negroes the while.  Temporary halt in this program was made by little Japan and the white world immediately sensed the peril of such “yellow” presumption!  What sort of a world would this be if yellow men must be treated “white”?  Immediately the eventual overthrow of Japan became a subject of deep thought and intrigue, from St. Petersburg to San Francisco, from the Key of Heaven to the Little Brother of the Poor.

The using of men for the benefit of masters is no new invention of modern Europe.  It is quite as old as the world.  But Europe proposed to apply it on a scale and with an elaborateness of detail of which no former world ever dreamed.  The imperial width of the thing,—­the heaven-defying audacity—­makes its modern newness.

The scheme of Europe was no sudden invention, but a way out of long-pressing difficulties.  It is plain to modern white civilization that the subjection of the white working classes cannot much longer be maintained.  Education, political power, and increased knowledge of the technique and meaning of the industrial process are destined to make a more and more equitable distribution of wealth in the near future.  The day of the very rich is drawing to a close, so far as individual white nations are concerned.  But there is a loophole.  There is a chance for exploitation on an immense scale for inordinate profit, not simply to the very rich, but to the middle class and to the laborers.  This chance lies in the exploitation of darker peoples.  It is here that the golden hand beckons.  Here are no labor unions or votes or questioning onlookers or inconvenient consciences.  These men may be used down to the very bone, and shot and maimed in “punitive” expeditions when they revolt.  In these dark lands “industrial development” may repeat in exaggerated form every horror of the industrial history of Europe, from slavery and rape to disease and maiming, with only one test of success,—­dividends!