From "Superman" to Man. J. A. Rogers
for words, sat down. He later proved to be one of the finest passengers I have ever served.”
The subject of the book came up again, “I remember the great stir it created when it appeared,” said the passenger. “Finot has rendered a great service to humanity. He well deserves the honor conferred on him—Officer of the Legion of Honor.” “Yes. He has been rightly called one of the makers of modern France,” said Dixon. “Is it true that he is Polish, sir?”
“Yes. He was born in Poland.”
Outside were the twinkling lights of a town. “Ah, here we are coming into Boone now,” said Dixon.
“Good-by,” said the passenger, genuine regret in his voice, “I’m sorry our acquaintance is so short. I’m stopping here only for the night and will go on to Los Angeles tomorrow. I’d like to have had you all the way.”
“I’m sure you’ll have a pleasant porter tomorrow,” said Dixon, cheerily, grasping the other’s proffered hand.
Dixon turned to receive the new-coming passengers. He helped them inside, saw them to bed, and returned to the smoker to read his book. But too tired to concentrate his thoughts on the scientific matter, he closed the volume, placed it behind him in the hollow formed by his back and the angle of the seat and began to reflect on the last passage he had read:—
“The doctrine of inequality is emphatically a science of white peoples. It is they who have invented it.”
The Germans of 1854, he reflected, built up a theory of the inferiority of the other peoples of the white race. Some of these so-called inferior whites have, in turn, built up a similar theory about the darker peoples. This recalled to him some of the many falsities current about his own people. He thought of how in nearly all the large libraries of the United States, which he had been permitted to enter, he had found books advancing all sorts of theories to prove that they were inferior. He thought of the discussions he had heard on the cars and other places from time to time, and of what he called “the heirloom ideas” that many persons had concerning the different varieties of the human race. These discussions, he recalled, had done him good. They had been the means of his acquiring a fund of knowledge on the subject of race, as they had caused him to look up those opinions he had thought incorrect in the works of the standard scientists. Moved by these thoughts he took a morocco-bound notebook from his vest pocket and wrote:—“This doctrine of racial superiority apparently incited the other white peoples, most of whom were enemies to one another, to unite against the Germans in 1914. Will the doctrine of white superiority over the darker races produce a similar result to white empire?”
Suddenly the curtains parted and someone entered the room. Dixon looked up. It was a man in pajamas, slippered feet, and overcoat.
At sight of him Dixon had an unpleasant sensation. During the afternoon, this man, who, from what Dixon could gather, was a United States senator from Oklahoma, was discussing the race question with another in the smoker. Dixon had heard him say, vehemently. “The ‘nigger’ is a menace to our civilization and should be kept down. I am opposed to educating him, for the educated ‘nigger’ is a misfit in the white man’s civilization. He is a caricature and no good can result from his ‘butting in’ on our affairs. Would to God that none of the breed had ever set foot on the shores of our country. That’s the proper place for a ‘nigger’,” he had said quite loud, on seeing Dixon engaged in wiping out the wash bowls.
At another time he had said, “You may say what you please, but I would never eat with a ‘nigger.’ I couldn’t stomach it God has placed an insuperable barrier between black and white that will ever prevent them from living on the same social plane, at least so far as the Anglo-Saxon is concerned. I have no hatred for the black man—in fact, I could have none, but he must stay in his place.”
“That’s nothing else but racial antipathy,” his opponent had objected.
“You don’t have to take my word for it,” said the other, snappily. “Didn’t Abraham Lincoln say: ‘There is a physical difference between the white and black races which, I believe, will forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality?” Call it what you will, but there is an indefinable something within me that tells me that I am infinitely better than the best ‘nigger’ that ever lived. The feeling is instinctive and I am not going to violate nature.”
On hearing this, Dixon had said to himself, “My good man, how easily I could define that ‘indefinable feeling’ of which you speak. I notice from your positive manner, and impatience of contradiction that you experience that indefinable feeling of superiority not only towards Negroes, but toward your white associates as well and that feeling you, yourself, would call in any one else conceit.’ ”
Dixon had happened to be present at the close of the discussion, which had been brought to an end by the announcement of dinner. The anti-Negro passenger had had the last word. He had said:
“You, too, had slavery in the North, but it didn’t pay and you gave it up. Wasn’t your pedantic and self-righteous Massachusetts the first to legalize slavery? You, Northerners, forced slavery on us, and when you couldn’t make any more money on it, because England had stopped the slave trade, you made war on us to make us give it up. A matter of climate, that’s all. Climes reversed, it would have been the South that wanted abolition. It was a matter of business with you, not sentiment. You Northerners, who had an interest in slavery, were bitterly opposed to abolition. It is all very well for you to talk, but if you Yankees had the same percentage of niggers’ that we have, you would sing a different tune. The bitterest people against the ‘nigger’ are you Northerners who have come South. You, too, have race riots, lynching and segregation. The only difference between South and North is, that one is frank and the other hypocritical,” and he added with vehement sincerity, “I hate hypocrisy.”
In spite of this avowed enmity toward his people, Dixon had felt no animosity toward the man. Here, he had thought, was a conscience, honest but uneducated.
Shortly afterwards another man who had been in the smoker had met Dixon in the aisle. With a laugh and a few terrible but good-natured oaths, he had said “That fellow is obsessed by the race problem. I met him yesterday at the hotel, and he has talked of hardly anything else since. This morning we were in the elevator, when a well-dressed Negro, who looked like a professional man, came in, and at once he began to tell me so that all could hear him something about ‘nigger’ doctors in Oklahoma. If he could only see how ridiculous he is he’d shut up.”
“I feel myself as good as he,” he went on, “and I have associated with colored people. We have a colored porter in our office—Joe—and we think the world of him. He doesn’t like niggers,’ eh?” With a knowing wink, and nudging Dixon in the ribs, he added, “I wager his instinctive dislike, as he calls it, doesn’t include both sexes of your race. I know his kind well.”
Dixon had felt like saying, “We must be patient with the self-deluded,” but he didn’t. He had simply thanked the other for his sentiments.
All of this ran through Dixon’s mind when he saw the pajama-clad passenger appear in the doorway. The latter walked up to the mirror, looked at himself quizzically a moment, then selected a chair and adjusting it to his fancy made himself comfortable in it. Then he took a plain and well-worn gold cigarette case from his pocket, selected a cigarette, and began rummaging his pockets for a match, all in apparent oblivion of Dixon at the far end of the long seat. But Dixon, who had been quietly observing him, deftly presented a lighted match, saying at the time in a respectful and solicitous tone:
“Can’t sleep, sir?”
“No, George,” was the reply, amiable but condescending. “I was awakened at the last stop and can’t go back to sleep. I never do very well the first night out, anyway. He went on to speak about Oklahoma, and was soon talking freely. Presently he began to tell about the Negroes in his state, using words as “darkies,” “niggers,” and “coons.”
Then he grew entertaining and began telling jokes about chicken-stealing, razor-fights, and watermelon feasts among Negroes. Of such jokes he evidently had an