pioneer aerialists are no longer regarded as impious challengers in celestial realms, but they are generally thought to be visionaries, impractical fellows, wasting time that might better be spent in cultivating the two realms already conquered. But the trouble with men of imagination is, that they are not content with doing what anybody can do. They covet new sensations. The result of it will be that in 1950, say, your grand-son will go to the wireless telephone and ring up the office of the Consolidated Aerial Transportation Company when he wants a cab. You don't believe it? Well, just wait and see it for yourself.

Most men now engaged in experimenting with aerial machines agree that the successful flying machine of the future will not embody the balloon, or lighterthan-air principle. They believe it will consist of a structure of inclined planes, driven by powerful motors, and rising by resistance of the air in which it moves. Santos-Dumont and the other ballonists cling to the gas-bag, but it seems to be pretty thoroughly demonstrated that the gas-bag will collapse under pressure when driven against any thing like a stiff wind. One misadventure of this kind all but cost SantosDumont his life. And speaking of Santos-Dumont, it is interesting to read (in The Conquest of the Air, John Alexander's excellent treatise, published by the A. Wessels Company of New York) that, as early as 1709, another Brazilian, a monk named Bartholomeo Lourenco de Gusmao, invented a flying machine, and got himself put to death as a sorcerer because of it. This was nearly three-quarters of a century before the day of the French brothers Montgolfier, from whose experiments, in 1773, the beginning of modern sky-riding is usually dated.

I said that Santos-Dumont clings to the gas-bag: but even he regards it

"I expect that a way will be found of dispensing with the balloon and of relying upon the motors altogether before very long, but until we get that we must make the best use of what we have."

Graham Bell and Sir Hiram Maxim are the most famous exponents of the heavier-than-air mechanical air-ships. Sir Hiram says: "A kite held up against the wind has very great lifting power with a wind of forty miles an hour, so an aero-plane having a velocity through the air of forty miles an hour has very great lifting effect. With a balloon high speed (except with the wind) is impossible. With an aeroplane speed is a necessity, otherwise insufficient lifting effect will be produced. I am therefore strongly of the opinion that we must look to machines heavier than the air, which, in reality, fly after the manner of birds. Nature has innumerable flying machines, which are all heavier than air, but nature has no balloons. Therefore, if we wish to succeed, we shall have to follow in the footsteps of nature, as we have already done in many branches of science."

The belief upon which the balloonists base their hopes is that they shall discover regular and dependable 'roundthe-world currents in the upper air, of which they can take advantage at will, merely by raising and lowering their balloons.

The managers of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the world's fair to be held in St. Louis next year, have made air-ships the principal feature of their program of entertainment. It is not impossible that the flying machine contests there to be held may develop at least the first rough draft of the practicable air-ship of the future.

Meantime, with Mr. Marconi making the viewless ether carry messages across the Atlantic, and Mr. Edison completing his cheap, compact and powerful motor

holder, has written a book, entitled, The Negro in Africa and America, and the book appears as Vol. III, No. 2, of the third series of the publications of the American Economic Association. This book is a careful collation and a temperate statement of facts not hitherto unknown, but not before brought into their present relations in any publication of general circulation. Mr. Tillinghast shows us the fathers and mothers of the American negroes dwelling for thousands of years in West Africa, all of that time quite stationary in a condition of savage degradation. He shows us how that portion of the black race stolen and impressed into slavery in America has been a far greater gainer by the process than were the white men who did the stealing, and their descendants. This is, perhaps, to be regarded as a case of poetic justice, for certainly the slavestealers, whether they sailed from New England or from the Southern ports, were not greatly burdened with philanthropic motives toward their human cargoes.

These nine millions of descendants of the stolen negroes now, in the words of Mr. Tillinghast, "constitute an ethnic group, so distinct from the dominant race, that we are threatened with inability to assimilate them;"-and this fact constitutes one of the impressive problems now confronting American states

men.

Mr. Tillinghast acknowledges the progress made by the American negro toward the standards of living of the American white man: manifestly he wishes he might make an even more favorable showing in this regard than is warranted by the facts in the case. His disposition is to be fair, even generous. Yet he reaches the conclusion,—and it is one of the deepest significance,—that as a body, the nine millions of American negroes are reverting to the savagery of their West Africa ancestors. "The

negro," he says, "finds it surpassingly difficult to suppress the hereditary instincts that do not harmonize with American social organization. He is finding that two or three centuries are all too

brief a period in which to compass almost the entire range of human development. "There is nothing in this conclusion," he adds, "to surprise the student of evolutionary phenomena. But no rightminded citizen can help deploring it, and hoping that some means may be found of preventing reversion with the inevitable consequence - elimination. Many believe firmly that the magic of education affords the requisite means. Experience has amply demonstrated that mere literary culture will not transform a savage into an efficient member of civilized society. But experience has equally shown that a thorough education of heart and hand, as well as of intellect, will with selected material give valuable results. * * Meantime, however, only a few thousands are to-day receiving the kind of education critically needed by all the negroes, and almost a half of their number have never received any education at all. In this case a vast educational system is necessary, and under human limitations this cannot be brought into existence and perfected within a brief period. It is not to be forgotten that there are millions of untaught whites to be provided for. Whatever else happens, hereditary forces, for a time suppressed, will steadily continue to reassert themselves. Obviously, heroic means are required to reach the millions of negroes.

"Surveyed broadly, the outlook for the American negro is not bright. From the native of Guinea to the modern Afro-American is certainly a long step, but from the Guinea negro to the Caucasian builders of our republic is a yet longer step. It is the hard fate of the transplanted negro to compete, not with a people of about his own degree of de

velopment, but with a race that leads the world in efficiency. This efficiency was reached only through the struggle and sacrifice prescribed by evolutionary law. There are many who believe that a shorter path to greatness exists, since the science of education has been developed. But so long as the powerful conservatism of heredity persists, scarcely admitting of change save through selections of variations, it is to be doubted whether education has the efficiency claimed for it. Time, struggle and sacrifice have always hitherto been required to create a great race. If these are to be exacted of the negro, he must traverse a long road, not in safe isolation in a country all his own, but in a land filling fast with able, strenuous and rapidly progressing competitors. Under such circumstances, his position can with. difficulty be regarded as other than precarious to the last degree."

If I understand Mr. Tillinghast, he believes the negro had his chance to grow in his native Africa, and lost it, or was not capable of rising equal to it. And that that small portion of the race transplanted forcibly to our alien soil must, in the working out of natural forces, be eliminated as a distinct and recognizable social factor. As a general proposition, two chances are open to all the savage races-war, or bleaching. Those which have chosen the sword have died by the sword. No people could be expected deliberately to choose to be assimilated with another its superior by the second process suggested; yet it has occurred from time to time that fragments of conquered races have so yielded to their conquerors, and, disappearing as distinct factors, have perpetuated their traits in the children of their masters. The marriage of white and black is forbiden by law in most of the states, and frowned upon by the sentiment of the vast majority in all. If, therefore, the inferior race is to perpetuate any of its

traits through amalgamation with the superior race, it must be done outside the law. And it is being done that way --to an extent that would surprise the average uniformed commentator upon this general subject.

Enters here another significant element of the situation. It is found that mixed bloods possess less physical vigor, less strength to perpetuate their kind, than either whites or blacks. If this weakness increases with the continued intermingling of bloods, as I understand Mr. Tillinghast and other observers to assert that it does, then this may be the central fact pointing to the way negro, as a distinct factor, is to leave the stage of affairs in this continent; and later, probably, in his own continent, now rapidly to be seized and developed. by white men of Europe and America.

the

Meantime, Booker T. Washington and others of his type-heroic men if there ever were such--are doing all that in their power lies to arrest the natural tendency toward reversion, and to bring the race along the forward way. They are fighting a forlorn hope, and they are fighting it magnificently. They deserve. all the aid and encouragement that can be given them. Insofar as one who has little may presume to advise those who have much, I urge the duty of our millionaires of the North to help the South with open purses in its titanic task of educating our 9,000,000 colored fellow citizens. Hampton Institute and Tuskegee have shown what can be done. There should be scores of such schools in each of the southern states. It is scarcely possible to conceive a nobler field for the exercise of American philanthropy, nor one which more vitally affects the nation's health. I expect to see, as the years pass, a mighty and increasing tide of northern wealth turned into this channel. Let northern critics of southern methods prove their sincerity by helping with money and sympathy.