Читать книгу The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe онлайн

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While every race and every nation must solve its own problems in its own way, and for that reason it is not possible to make any very extended comparison between the race problems of Europe and of America, there is, at least, a certain advantage in knowing that other nations and other peoples have problems within their national life which are quite as difficult and perplexing as our own.

We sometimes think and speak of the conditions existing in our own country as if they were wholly exceptional and without parallel in other parts of the world. My stay in Europe has convinced me that we are not worse off in America in this respect than other peoples. Even if they had the choice, I do not believe, for instance, that the Southern people, black or white, would be willing to exchange their own troubles, such as they are, for those of any other nation or group of people in Europe or elsewhere.

There was another thing that made the trip I had outlined peculiarly attractive to me: I believed that I would find in some parts of Europe peoples who in respect to education, opportunity, and civilization generally were much nearer the level of the masses of the Negro people in the South than I was likely to find anywhere in America. I believed, also, that if I went far enough and deep enough I should find even in Europe great numbers of people who, in their homes, in their labour, and in their manner of living, were little, if any, in advance of the Negroes in the Southern States, and I wanted to study at first hand, as far as I was able, the methods which European nations were using to uplift the masses of the people who were at the bottom in the scale of civilization.