Corporate Financial Accounting 14th Edition Warren Test Bank 1

Chapter 5 - Accounting for Merchandising Businesses
Corporate Financial Accounting 14th Edition by

Warren ISBN 130565353X 9781305653535
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1. The most important differences between a service business and a retail business are reflected in their operating cycles
and financial statements.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
DIFFICULTY: Easy
Bloom's: Remembering
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: FNMN.WARD.17.05-01 - LO: 05-01
ACCREDITING STANDARDS: ACCT.ACBSP.APC.03 - Business Forms
ACCT.ACBSP.APC.17 - Inventories Reporting
ACCT.AICPA.BB.01 - Industry
ACCT.AICPA.FN.03 - Measurement
BUSPROG: Analytic
2. In a merchandising business, sales minus operating expenses equals net income.

a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
DIFFICULTY: Moderate
ACCREDITING STANDARDS: ACCT.ACBSP.APC.09 - Financial Statements
BUSPROG: Analytic
3. Cost of goods sold is the amount that the merchandising company pays for the merchandise it intends to sell.
a. True
© 2017 Cengage Learning®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
b. False
ANSWER: False
ACCREDITING STANDARDS: ACCT.ACBSP.APC.06 - Recording Transactions
BUSPROG: Analytic
4. Service businesses provide services for income, while a merchandising business sells merchandise.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
DIFFICULTY: Easy

ACCREDITING STANDARDS: ACCT.ACBSP.APC.03 - Business Forms
BUSPROG: Analytic
5. In retail businesses, inventory is reported as a current asset.

a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
DIFFICULTY: Easy
ACCREDITING STANDARDS: ACCT.ACBSP.APC.17 - Inventories Reporting
BUSPROG: Analytic
6. Under a periodic inventory system, the cost of inventory on hand at the end of the accounting period is determined by a
physical count of the inventory.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
BUSPROG: Analytic
7. Buyers and sellers do not normally record the list prices of merchandise and the trade discounts in accounts.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
BUSPROG: Analytic
8. In a perpetual inventory system, the Inventory account is only used to reflect the beginning inventory.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
BUSPROG: Analytic
9. Freight-in is the amount paid by the company to deliver merchandise sold to a customer.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
DIFFICULTY: Easy
BUSPROG: Analytic
10. Freight-in is considered a cost of purchasing inventory.

a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
DIFFICULTY: Easy
BUSPROG: Analytic
11. The cost of inventory is limited to the purchase price less any purchase discounts.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
DIFFICULTY: Easy
BUSPROG: Analytic
12. Under the perpetual inventory system, when a sale is made, both the sale and cost of goods sold are recorded.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True

BUSPROG: Analytic
13. If payment is due by the end of the month in which the sale is made, the invoice terms are expressed as n/30.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
BUSPROG: Analytic
14. When merchandise that was sold is returned, a credit to Customer Refunds Payable is made.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
BUSPROG: Analytic
15. In a perpetual inventory system, when merchandise is returned to the supplier, Cost of Goods Sold is debited as part of
the transaction.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
DIFFICULTY: Easy
BUSPROG: Analytic
16. Customer Refunds Payable is an account used to record merchandise returns from customers.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
DIFFICULTY: Easy
BUSPROG: Analytic
17. Estimated Returns Inventory is an account used when adjusting for expected merchandise sales in the next period.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
DIFFICULTY: Easy
BUSPROG: Analytic
18. Sales to customers who use bank credit cards, such as MasterCard and VISA, are generally treated as credit sales.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
BUSPROG: Analytic
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spasmodically flapping her arms, yells to all and sundry that there is
“Bolshevism among Negroes.”
Recently this stupid old thing and its congeners have discovered
evidences of a Bolshevist R–r–r–revolution in Trinidad, and,
presumptively, all over the British West Indies. Now the specter which
these fools fear is nothing but the shadow cast by the dark body of their
own system of stiff-necked pride, stark stupidity and stubborn injustice
whenever the sun of civic righteousness rises above the horizon of sloth
and ignorance. But, like fools afraid of their own shadows, they point at
the thing for which they alone are responsible and shriek for salvation.
We shouldn’t care to suggest to them that to lie down and die would
be one good way to avoid these fearful shadows, because we see the
possibility of another way. Let them resolve that they will cease making
a lie of every promise of liberty, democracy and self-determination that
they frantically made from 1914 to 1919. Let the white Englishman learn
that justice exists not only for white Englishmen, but for all men. Let
him get off the black man’s back, stand out of the black man’s light, play
the game as it should be played, and he will find very little need for
wasting tons of print paper and thousands of pounds in a crusade against
the specter of Bolshevism.
A New International
In the eyes of our overlords internationalism is a thing of varying

value. When Mr. Morgan wants to float a French or British loan in the
United States; when Messrs. Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and
Orlando want to stabilize their joint credit and commerce; when areas
like the Belgian Congo are to be handed over to certain rulers without
the consent of their inhabitants—then the pæans of praise go up to the
god of “internationalism” in the temple of “civilization.” But when any
portion of the world’s disinherited (whether white or black) seeks to join
hands with other groups in the same condition, then the lords of misrule
denounce the idea of internationalism as anarchy, sedition, Bolshevism
and disruptive propaganda.
Why the difference? It is because the international linking up of
peoples is a source of strength to those who are linked up. Naturally, the
overlords want to strengthen themselves. And, quite as naturally, they
wish to keep their subject masses from strengthening themselves in the
same way. Today the great world-majority, made up of black, brown and
yellow peoples, are stretching out their hands to each other and
developing a “consciousness of kind”—as Professor Giddings would call
it. They are seeking to establish their own centers of diffusion for their
own internationalism, and this fact is giving nightmares to Downing
street, the Quai d’Orsay and other centers of white capitalist
internationalism.
The object of the capitalist international is to unify and standardize the
exploitation of black, brown and yellow peoples in such a way that the
danger to the exploiting groups of cutting each other’s throats over the
spoils may be reduced to a minimum. Hence the various agreements,
mandates and spheres of influence. Hence the League of Nations, which
is notoriously not a league of the white masses, but of their gold-braided
governors. Faced by such a tendency on the part of those who bear the
white man’s burden for what they can get out of it, the darker peoples of
the world have begun to realize that their first duty is to themselves. A
similarity of suffering is producing in them a similarity of sentiment, and
the temper of that sentiment is not to be mistaken.
To the white statesmen “civilization” is identical with their own
overlordship, with their right and power to dictate to the darker millions
what their way of life and of allegiance shall be. To this the aroused
sentiment of the world’s darker majority demurs. They want to be as free
as England, America or France. They do not wish to be “wards of the
nations” of Europe any longer. And the problem for the white statesmen
of the future will be to square democracy with the subjection of this dark
majority. Can they achieve either horn of this dilemma? Can they effect a
junction of the two?
Frankly, we doubt it. Continued suppression may be fraught with
consequences disastrous to white overlordship. In any case the tendency
toward an international of the darker races cannot be set back. Increasing
enlightenment, the spread of technical science, and the recently acquired
knowledge of the weak points of white “civilization” gained by the
darker peoples during the recent World War, are enough to negative such
a supposition. The darker peoples will strive increasingly for their share
of sunlight, and if this is what white “civilization” opposes, then white
“civilization” is likely to have a hard time of it.
The Rising Tide of Color
Mr. William Randolph Hearst, the ablest white publicist in America,

has broken loose, and, in a recent editorial in the New York American,
has absolutely endorsed every word of the warning recently issued by
Lothrop Stoddard in his book, “The Rising Tide of Color.” In justice to
Mr. Hearst, it must be pointed out (as we ourselves did in 1916) that he
saw this handwriting on the wall long ago. Mr. Hearst is not particularly
famous as a friend of the darker races; but one must give him credit for
having seen what was involved in the war between the white nations of
Europe and America. As far back as 1915, the present writer was
engaged in pointing out to white people that the racial aspect of the war
in Europe was easily the most important, despite the fact that no
American paper, not even Mr. Hearst’s, would present that side of the
matter for the consideration of its readers. Now, however, they are
beginning to wake up—as people generally do when disaster is upon
them—frantically with much screaming and flapping of arms. But, in
such cases, the doom approaching is but the ripened result of deeds that
have been done, and is, therefore, absolutely inescapable.
The white race has lied and strutted its way to greatness and
prominence over the corpses of other peoples. It has capitalized,
christianized, and made respectable, “scientific,” and “natural,” the fact
of its dominion. It has read back into history the race relations of today,
striving to make the point that previous to its advent on the stage of
human history, there was no civilization or culture worthy of the name.
And with minatory finger it admonishes us that if it were to pass off the
stage as the controlling factor in the World’s destiny, there would be no
civilization or culture remaining. Naturally, we take exception to both
these views, because, for the past, we know better and, for the future, we
think better of the many peoples who make up the cycle of civilization.
But these conditions are not the gravest at present. The fact of most
tremendous import is that the white race in trying to settle its own
quarrels has called in black, brown and yellow to do its fighting for it,
with the result that black, brown and yellow will learn thereby how to
fight for themselves, even against those whom they were called in to
assist. The white race cannot escape from its dilemma, however. If it
were to decree hereafter that wars between whites should be restricted to
whites alone, then we should be given the poignant spectacle of the
white race continuing to cut its own throat while the increasing masses of
black, brown and yellow remained unaffected by that process, “It is to
laugh,” as the cynical gods would say. Or, to use a trite Americanism, it
is, “heads I win, tails you lose.” It is thumbs down for the white race in
the world’s arena, and they are to be the dealers of their own death blow.
Such are the consequences of conquest!
The analogies between the present situation of the white race and the
situation of the Roman Empire in the fourth century of the Christian era
are too many and striking to be easily ignored. Now, as then, we have
“barbarians” and “super-men.” Now, as then, the super-men are such in
their own estimation. Now, as then, they have, as they fondly think, a
monopoly of the money power, brain power and political power of the
world. Now, as then, the necessities of their own selfishness and greed,
constrain and compel them to share their education and their culture with
the races whom they exploit. Now, as then, in the crisis of their fortunes,
they must utilize the knowledge and abilities of these barbarian folk, and
now, as then, this exercising of abilities on behalf of the overlord
develops abilities and ambition at an equal rate; and, having given the
barbarian tiger its first taste of blood, the unleashed results can not now
be restrained.
In the Roman days, as in the days of Charlemagne’s successors, those
who hold the balances generally also wield the sword; and if their blood
and sand determine which among the rulers shall get the prizes of
victory, then these same qualities must needs urge them to take from
such victors-by-proxy so much of the fruits of victory as their own needs
may suggest or their own power maintain. Truly “they that take the
sword shall perish by the sword.”
The White War and the Colored Races
[The following article was written in 1918 when the Great War still
raged. It was written for a certain well known radical magazine; but was
found to be “too radical” for publication at that time. It is given now to
the Negro public partly because the underlying explanation which it
offers of the root-cause of the war has not yet received treatment (even
among socialistic radicals) and partly because recent events in China,
India, Africa and the United States have proved the accuracy of its
forecasts.]
The Nineteenth Christian Century saw the international expansion of

capitalism—the economic system of the white peoples of Western
Europe and America-and its establishment by force and fraud over the
lands of the colored races, black and brown and yellow. The opening
years of the Twentieth Century present us with the sorry spectacle of
these same white nations cutting each other’s throats to determine which
of them shall enjoy the property which has been acquired. For this is the
real sum and substance of the original “war aims” of the belligerents;
although in conformity with Christian cunning, this is one which is never
frankly avowed. Instead, we are fed with the information that they are
fighting for “Kultur” and “on behalf of small nationalities.” Let us look
carefully at this camouflage.
The Sham of “Democracy”
In the first place, we in America need not leave our own land to seek
reasons for suspecting the sincerity of democratic professions. While we
are waging war to establish democracy three thousand miles away,
millions of Negroes are disfranchised in our own land by the “cracker”
democracies of the Southern States which are more intent upon making
slaves of their black fellow-citizens than upon rescuing the French and
Belgians from the similar brutalities of the German Junkers. The horrible
holocaust of East St. Louis was possible only in three modern States—
Russia of the Romanoffs, Turkey and the United States—and it ill
becomes any one of them to point a critical finger at the others.
But East St. Louis was simply the climax of a long series of butcheries
perpetrated on defenseless Negroes which has made the murder rate of
Christian America higher than that of heathen Africa and of every other
civilized land. And, although our government can order the execution of
thirteen Negro soldiers for resenting the wholesale insults to the uniform
of the United States and defending their lives from civilian aggressors,
not one of the murderers of black men, women and children has been
executed or even ferreted out. Nor has our war Congress seen fit as yet to
make lynching a Federal crime. What wonder that the Negro masses are
insisting that before they can be expected to enthuse over the vague
formula of making the world “safe for democracy” they must receive
some assurance that their corner of the world—the South—shall first be
made “safe for democracy!” Who knows but that perhaps the situation
and treatment of the American Negro by our own government and
people may have kept the Central Powers from believing that we meant
to fight for democracy in Europe, and caused them to persist in a course
which has driven us into this war in which we must spend billions of
treasure and rivers of blood.
It should seem, then, that “democracy,” like “Kultur,” is more valuable
as a battle-cry than as a real belief to be practised by those who profess
it. And the plea of “small nationalities” is estopped by three facts:
Ireland, Greece and Egypt, whose Khedive, Abbas Hilmi, was tumbled
off his throne for failing to enthuse over the claims of “civilization” as
expounded by Lord Grey.
Sir Harry Johnston Speaks
But this is merely disproof. The average American citizen needs some
positive proof of the assertion that this war is being waged to determine
who shall dictate the destinies of the darker peoples and enjoy the
usufruct of their labor and their lands. For the average American citizen
is blandly ignorant of the major facts of history and has to be told. For
his benefit I present the following statement from Sir Harry Johnston, in
“The Sphere” of London. Sir Harry Johnston is the foremost English
authority on Africa and is in a position to know something of imperial
aims.
“Rightly governed, I venture to predict that Africa will, if we are

victorious, repay us and all our allies the cost of our struggle with
Germany and Austria. The war, deny it who may, was really fought
over African questions. The Germans wished, as the chief gain of
victory, to wrest rich Morocco from French control, to take the
French Congo from France, and the Portuguese Congo from
Portugal, to secure from Belgium the richest and most extensive
tract of alluvial goldfield as yet discovered. This is an auriferous
region which, properly developed, will, when war is over, repay the
hardest hit of our allies (France) all that she has lost from the
German devastation of her home lands. The mineral wealth of trans-
Zambezian Africa—freed forever, we will hope, from the German
menacemis gigantic; only slightly exploited so far. Wealth is hidden
amid the seemingly unprofitable deserts of the Sahara, Nubia,
Somaliland and Namaqua. Africa, I predict, will eventually show
itself to be the most richly endowed of all the continents in valuable
vegetable and mineral substances.”
There is the sum and substance of what Schopenhauer would have

called “the sufficient reason” for this war. No word of “democracy”
there, but instead the easy assumption that, as a matter of course, the
lands of black Africa belong to white Europe and must be apportioned on
the good old principle:—
“… the simple plan,

That he shall take who has the power,
And he must keep who can.”
The Economics of War
It is the same economic motive that has been back of every modern
war since the merchant and trading classes secured control of the powers
of the modern state from the battle of Plassy to the present world war.
This is the natural and inevitable effect of the capitalist system, of what
(for want of a worse name) we call “Christendom.” For that system is
based upon the wage relationship between those who own and those who
operate the gigantic forces of land and machinery. Under this system no
capitalist employs a worker for two dollars a day unless that worker
creates more than two dollars’ worth of wealth for him. Only out of this
surplus can profits come. If ten million workers should thus create one
hundred million dollars’ worth of wealth each day and get twenty or fifty
millions in wages, it is obvious that they can expend only what they have
received, and that, therefore, every nation whose industrial system is
organized on a capitalist basis must produce a mass of surplus products
over and above, not the need, but the purchasing power of the nation’s
producers. Before these products can return to their owners as profits
they must be sold somewhere. Hence the need for foreign markets, for
fields of exploitation and “spheres of influence” in “undeveloped”
countries whose virgin resources are exploited in their turn after the
capitalist fashion. But, since every industrial nation is seeking the same
outlet for its products, clashes are inevitable and in these clashes beaks
and claws—armies and navies—must come into play. Hence beaks and
claws must be provided beforehand against the day of conflict, and hence
the exploitation of white men in Europe and America becomes the
reason for the exploitation of black and brown and yellow men in Africa
and Asia. And, therefore, it is hypocritical and absurd to pretend that the
capitalist nations can ever intend to abolish wars. For, as long as black
men are exploited by white men in Africa, so long must white men cut
each other’s throats over that exploitation. And thus, the selfish and
ignorant white worker’s destiny is determined by the hundreds of
millions of those whom he calls “niggers.” “The strong too often think
that they have a mortgage upon the weak; but in the domain of morals it
is the other way.”
The Color Line
But economic motives have always their social side; and this
exploitation of the lands and labor of colored folk expresses itself in the
social theory of white domination; the theory that the worst human
stocks of Montmartre, Seven Dials and the Bowery are superior to the
best human stocks of Rajputana or Khartoum. And when these colored
folk who make up the overwhelming majority of this world demand
decent treatment for themselves, the proponents of this theory accuse
them of seeking social equality. For white folk to insist upon the right to
manage their own ancestral lands, free from the domination of tyrants,
domestic and foreign, is variously described as “democracy” and “self-
determination.” For Negroes, Egyptians and Hindus to seek the same
thing is impudence. What wonder, then, that the white man’s rule is felt
by them to rest upon a seething volcano whose slumbering fires are made
up of the hundreds of millions of Chinese, Japanese, Hindus and
Africans! Truly has it been said that “the problem of the 20th Century is
the problem of the Color Line.” And wars are not likely to end; in fact,
they are likely to be wider and more terrible—so long as this theory of
white domination seeks to hold down the majority of the world’s people
under the iron heel of racial repression.
Of course, no sane person will deny that the white race is, at present,
the superior race of the world. I use the word “superior” in no cloudy,
metaphysical sense, but simply to mean that they are on top and their
will goes—at present. Consider this fact as the pivotal fact of the war.
Then, in the light of it, consider what is happening in Europe today. The
white race is superior—its will goes—because it has invented and
amassed greater means for the subjugation of nature and of man than any
other race. It is the top dog by virtue of its soldiers, guns, ships, money,
resources and brains. Yet there in Europe it is deliberately burning up,
consuming and destroying these very soldiers, guns, ships, money,
resources and brains, the very things upon which its supremacy rests.
When this war is over, it will be less able to enforce its sovereign will
upon the darker races of the world. Does any one believe that it will be
as easy to hold down Egypt and India and Persia after the war as it was
before? Hardly.
The Racial Results of the War
Not only will the white race be depleted in numbers, but its quality,
physical and mental, will be considerably lowered for a time. War
destroys first the strongest and bravest, the best stocks, the young men
who were to father the next generation, The next generation must,
consequently, be fathered by the weaker stocks of the race. And thus, in
physical stamina and in brain-power, they will be less equal to the task of
holding down the darker millions of the world than their fathers were.
This was the thought back of Mr. Hearst’s objection to our entering the
war.
He wanted the United States to stand as the white race’s reserve of
man-power when Europe had been bled white. But what will be the
effect of all this upon that colored majority whose preponderant
existence our newspapers ignore? In the first place, it will feel the lifting
of the pressure as the iron hand of “discipline” is relaxed. And it will
expand, when that pressure is removed, to the point where it will first
ask, then demand, and finally secure, the right of self-determination. It
will insist that, not only the white world, but the whole world, be made
“safe for democracy.” This will mean a self-governing Egypt, a self-
governing India, and independent African states as large as Germany and
France—and larger. And, as a result, there will come a shifting of the
basis of international politics and business and of international control.
This is the living thought that comes to me from the newspapers and
books that have been written and published by colored men in Africa and
Asia during the past three years. It is what I have heard from their own
lips as I have talked with them. And, yet, of this thought which is
inflaming the international underworld, not a word appears in the
parochial press of America, which seems to think that if it can keep its
own Negroes down to servile lip-service, it need not face the world-wide
problem of the “Conflict of Color,” as Mr. Putnam-Weale calls it.
But that the more intelligent portions of the white world are becoming
distressingly conscious of it, is evident from the first great manifesto of
the Russian Bolsheviki last year when they asked about Britain’s subject
peoples.
And the British workingmen have evidently done some thinking in
their turn. In their latest declarations they seem to see the ultimate
necessity of compelling their own aristocrats to forego such imperial
aspirations as that of Sir Harry Johnston, and of extending the principle
of self-determination even to the black people of Africa. But eyes which
have for centuries been behind the blinkers of race prejudice cannot but
blink and water when compelled to face the full sunlight. And Britain’s
workers insist that “No one will maintain that the Africans are fit for
self-government.” And on the same principle (of excluding the opinion
of those who are most vitally concerned) Britain’s ruling class may tell
them that “No one maintains that the laboring classes of Britain are fit
for self-government.” But their half-hearted demand that an international
committee shall take over the British, German, French and Portuguese
possessions in Africa and manage them as independent nationalities(?)
until they can “go it alone,” would suggest that their eyesight is
improving.
To sum it all up, the war in Europe is the result of the desire of the
white governments of Europe to exploit for their own benefit the lands
and labor of the darker races, and, as the war continues, it must decrease
the white man’s stock of ability to do this successfully against the wishes
of the inhabitants of those lands. This will result in their freedom from
thralldom and the extension of political, social, and industrial democracy
to the twelve hundred million black and brown and yellow peoples of the
world. This, I take it, is what President Wilson had in mind when he
wished to make the world “safe for democracy.” But, whether I am
mistaken or not, it is the idea which dominates today the thought of those
darker millions.
CHAPTER VIII.
EDUCATION AND THE RACE.
[With most of the present sources of power controlled by the white race
it behooves my race as well as the other subject races to learn the
wisdom of the weak and to develop to the fullest that organ whereby
weakness has been able to overcome strength; namely, the intellect. It is
not with our teeth that we will tear the white man out of our ancestral
land. It isn’t with our jaws that we can ring from his hard hands
consideration and respect. It must be done by the upper and not by the
lower parts of our heads. Therefore, I have insisted ever since my entry
into the arena of racial discussion that we Negroes must take to reading,
study and the development of intelligence as we have never done before.
In this respect we must pattern ourselves after the Japanese who have
gone to school to Europe but have never used Europe’s education to
make them the apes of Europe’s culture. They have absorbed, adopted,
transformed and utilized, and we Negroes must do the same. The three
editorials in this chapter and the article which follows them were written
to indicate from time to time the duty of the transplanted African in this
respect.]
Reading for Knowledge
Some time ago we wrote an editorial entitled “Read, Read, Read!” We

touch upon the same subject again, because in our recent trip to
Washington we found thousands of people who are eager to get in touch
with the stored-up knowledge which the books contain, but do not know
just where to turn for it. In New York the same situation obtains, and no
help is afforded by the papers of our race.
The reason is that some of our newspaper editors don’t read and don’t
know beans themselves. James W. Johnson is one of the notable
exceptions. We were cheered up a good deal by noting his recent
editorial advice to our “leaders” to read Arthur Henderson’s “The Aims
of Labor.” But that was six months after the editor of The Voice had been
telling thousands of the “led” all about it and about the British Labor
Party and the Russian Bolsheviki in his outdoor talks in Harlem.
But there is no doubt that the New Negro is producing a New
Leadership and that this new leadership will be based not upon the
ignorance of the masses, but upon their intelligence. The old leadership
was possible partly because the masses were ignorant. Today the masses
include educated laymen who have studied science, theology, history and
economics, not, perhaps in college but, nevertheless, deeply and down to
date. These young men and women are not going to follow fools and,
indeed, are not going to follow any one, blindly. They want a reason for
the things that they are asked to do and to respect. The others, the so-
called Common People, are beginning to read and understand. As we sat
in the great John Wesley A.M.E. Zion Church in Washington one Sunday
night, and heard the cultured black minister speak to his people on
literature, science, history and sociology, and yet so simply that even the
dullest could catch the meat and inspiration of his great ideas, we could
not help saying as we went out of the church: “Depend upon it, these
people will demand as much from their next minister.” In fact our race
will demand as much from all its leaders. And they will demand no less
for themselves.
So, with a glad heart, we reprint the following paragraphs from our
earlier editorial trusting that our readers everywhere may find them
helpful:
As a people our bent for books is not encouraging. We mostly read
trash. And this is true not only of our rank and file but even of our
leaders. When we heard Kelly Miller address the Sunrise Club of New
York at a Broadway hotel two or three years ago, we were shocked at the
ignorance of modern science and modern thought which his remarks
displayed. His biology was of the brand of Pliny who lived about
eighteen hundred years ago. For him Darwin and Spencer and Jacques
Loeb had never existed nor written. His ignorance of the A.B.C.’s of
astronomy and geology was pitiful. If this is true of the leaders to whom
our reading masses look, what can we expect from those reading masses?
The masses must be taught to love good books. But to love them they
must first know them. The handicaps placed on us in America are too
great to allow us to ignore the help which we can get from that education
which we get out of school for ourselves—the only one that is really
worth while.
Without the New Knowledge the New Negro is no better than the old.
And this new knowledge will be found in the books. Therefore, it would
be well if every Negro of the new model were to make up his (or her)
mind to get the essentials of modern science and modern thought as they
are set down in the books which may be easily had. Don’t talk about
Darwin and Spencer: read them!
To help the good work along we append the following list of books
that are essential. When you master these you will have a better
“education” than is found in nine-tenths of the graduates of the average
American college.
“Modern Science and Modern Thought,” by Samuel Laing; “The
Origin of Species” and “The Descent of Man,” by Charles Darwin; “The
Principles of Sociology” and “First Principles,” by Herbert Spencer;
“The Childhood of the World” and “The Childhood of Religion,” by
Edward Clodd; “Anthropology,” by E. B. Tylor (very easy to read and a
work of standard information on Races, Culture and the origins of
Religion, Art and Science); Buckle’s “History of Civilization”; Gibbon’s
“Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”; “The Martyrdom of Man,” by
Winwood Reade; the books on Africa by Livingstone and Mungo Park,
and “The Mind of Primitive Man,” by Franz Boas. —Sept., 1918.
Education and the Race
In the dark days of Russia, when the iron heel of Czarist despotism
was heaviest on the necks of the people, those who wished to rule
decreed that the people should remain ignorant. Loyalty to interests that
were opposed to theirs was the prevailing public sentiment of the masses.
In vain did the pioneers of freedom for the masses perish under the knout
and the rigors of Siberia. They sacrificed to move the masses, but the
masses, strong in their love of liberty, lacked the head to guide the
moving feet to any successful issue. It was then that Leo Tolstoi and the
other intelligentsia began to carry knowledge to the masses. Not only in
the province of Tula, but in every large city, young men of university
experience would assemble in secret classes of instruction, teaching them
to read, to write, to know, to think and to love knowledge. Most of this
work was underground at first. But it took. Thousands of educated
persons gave themselves to this work-without pay: their only hope of
reward lay in the future effectiveness of an instructed mass movement.
What were the results? As knowledge spread, enthusiasm was backed
by brains. The Russian revolution began to be sure of itself. The
workingmen of the cities studied the thing that they were “up against,”
gauged their own weakness and strength as well as their opponents’. The
despotism of the Czar could not provoke them to a mass movement
before they were ready and had the means; and when at last they moved,
they swept not only the Czar’s regime but the whole exploiting system
upon which it stood into utter oblivion.
What does this mean to the Negro of the Western world? It may mean
much, or little: that depends on him. If other men’s experiences have
value for the New Negro Manhood Movement it will seek now to profit
by them and to bottom the new fervor of faith in itself with the solid
support of knowledge. The chains snap from the limbs of the young giant
as he rises, stretches himself, and sits up to take notice. But let him, for
his future’s sake, insist on taking notice. To drop the figure of speech, we
Negroes who have shown our manhood must back it by our mind. This
world, at present, is a white man’s world—even in Africa. We, being
what we are, want to shake loose the chains of his control from our
corner of it. We must either accept his domination and our inferiority, or
we must contend against it. But we go up to win; and whether we carry
on that contest with ballots, bullets or business, we can not win from the
white man unless we know at least as much as the white man knows.
For, after all, knowledge is power.
But that isn’t all. What kind of knowledge is it that enables white men
to rule black men’s lands? Is it the knowledge of Hebrew and Greek,
philosophy or literature? It isn’t. It is the knowledge of explosives and
deadly compounds: that is chemistry. It is the knowledge which can build
ships, bridges, railroads and factories: that is engineering. It is the
knowledge which harnesses the visible and invisible forces of the earth
and air and water: that is science, modern science. And that is what the
New Negro must enlist upon his side. Let us, like the Japanese, become a
race of knowledge-getters, preserving our racial soul, but digesting into it
all that we can glean or grasp, so that when Israel goes up out of bondage
he will be “skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians” and competent to
control his destiny.
Those who have knowledge must come down from their Sinais and
give it to the common people. Theirs is the great duty to simplify and
make clear, to light the lamps of knowledge that the eyes of their race
may see; that the feet of their people may not stumble. This is the task of
the Talented Tenth.
To the masses of our people we say: Read! Get the reading habit;
spend your spare time not so much in training the feet to dance, as in
training the head to think. And, at the very outset, draw the line between
books of opinion and books of information. Saturate your minds with the
latter and you will be forming your own opinions, which will be worth
ten times more to you than the opinions of the greatest minds on earth.
Go to school whenever you can. If you can’t go in the day, go at night.
But remember always that the best college is that on your bookshelf: the
best education is that on the inside of your own head. For in this work-a-
day world people ask first, not “Where were you educated?” but “What
do you know?” and next, “What can you do with it?” And if we of the
Negro race can master modern knowledge—the kind that counts—we
will be able to win for ourselves the priceless gifts of freedom and
power, and we will be able to hold them against the world.
The Racial Roots of Culture
Education is the name which we give to that process by which the

ripened generation brings to bear upon the rising generation the stored-
up knowledge and experience of the past and present generations to fit it
for the business of life. If we are not to waste money and energy, our
educational systems should shape our youth for what we intend them to
become.
We Negroes, in a world in which we are the under dog, must shape our
youth for living in such a world. Shall we shape them mentally to accept
the status of under-dog as their predestined lot? Or shall we shape them
into men and women fit for a free world? To do the former needs nothing
more than continuing as we are. To do the latter is to shape their souls for
continued conflict with a theory and practice in which most of the white
world that surrounds them are at one.
The educational system in the United States and the West Indies was
shaped by white people for white youth, and from their point of view, it
fits their purpose well. Into this system came the children of Negro
parents when chattel slavery was ended—and their relation to the
problems of life was obviously different. The white boy and girl draw
exclusively from the stored-up knowledge and experience of the past and
present generations of white people to fit them for the business of being
dominant whites in a world full of colored folk. The examples of valor
and virtue on which their minds are fed are exclusively white examples.
What wonder, then, that each generation comes to maturity with the idea
imbedded in its mind that only white men are valorous and fit to rule and
only white women are virtuous and entitled to chivalry, respect and
protection? What wonder that they think, almost instinctively, that the
Negro’s proper place, nationally and internationally, is that of an
inferior? It is only what we should naturally expect.
But what seems to escape attention is the fact that the Negro boy and
girl, getting the same (though worse) instruction, also get from it the
same notion of the Negro’s place and part in life which the white
children get. Is it any wonder, then, that they so readily accept the status
of inferiors; that they tend to disparage themselves, and think themselves
worth while only to the extent to which they look and act and think like
the whites? They know nothing of the stored-up knowledge and
experience of the past and present generations of Negroes in their
ancestral lands, and conclude there is no such store of knowledge and
experience. They readily accept the assumption that Negroes have never
been anything but slaves and that they never had a glorious past as other
fallen peoples like the Greeks and Persians have. And this despite the
mass of collected testimony in the works of Barth, Schweinfurth, Mary
Kingsley, Lady Lugard, Morel, Ludolphus, Blyden, Ellis, Ratzel, Kidd,
Es-Saadi, Casely Hayford and a host of others, Negro and white.
A large part of the blame for this deplorable condition must be put
upon the Negro colleges like Howard, Fisk, Livingstone and Lincoln in
the United States, and Codrington, Harrison and the Mico in the West
Indies. These are the institutions in which our cultural ideals and
educational systems are fashioned for the shaping of the minds of the
future generations of Negroes. It cannot be expected that it shall begin
with the common schools; for, in spite of logic, educational ideas and
ideals spread from above downwards. If we are ever to enter into the
confraternity of colored peoples it should seem the duty of our Negro
colleges to drop their silly smatterings of “little Latin and less Greek”
and establish modern courses in Hausa and Arabic, for these are the
living languages of millions of our brethern in modern Africa. Courses in
Negro history and the culture of West African peoples, at least, should be
given in every college that claims to be an institution of learning for
Negroes. Surely an institution of learning for Negroes should not fail to
be also an institution of Negro learning. —The New Negro, Sept. 1919.
The New Knowledge for the New Negro
Quite a good deal of unnecessary dispute has been going on these days
among the guardians of the inner temple as to just which form of
worship is necessary at the shrine of the Goddess Knowledge. In plain
English, the pundits seem to be at odds in regard to the kind of education
which the Negro should have. Of course, it has long been known that the
educational experts of white America were at odds with ours on the same
subject; now, however, ours seem to be at odds among themselves.
The essence of the present conflict is not the easy distinction between
“lower” and “higher” education, which really has no meaning in terms of
educational principles, but it is rather “the knowledge of things” versus
“the knowledge of words.” The same conflict has been waged in England
from the days of Huxley’s youth to the later nineties when the London
Board Schools were recognized and set the present standard of efficiency
for the rest of England. The present form of the question is, “Shall
education consist of Latin and Greek, literature and metaphysics, r of
modern science, modern languages and modern thought?” The real
essence of the question is whether we shall train our children to grapple
effectively with the problem of life that lies before them, or to look
longingly back upon the past standards of life and thought and consider
themselves a special class because of this.
If education be, as we assert, a training for life, it must of course have
its roots in the past. But so has the art of the blacksmith, the tailor, the
carpenter, the bookbinder or the priest. What the classicists really seek is
the domination of the form, method and aim of that training by the form,
methods and aims of an earlier age.
Classics, Clerics and Class Culture
Perhaps an explanation of that earlier training may serve to give the

real innerness of the classicists’ position so that ordinary people may
understand it better than the classicists themselves seem to do. In the
Middle Ages, the schools of Western Europe and the subject matter of
the education given in them were based upon the Latin “disciplines.”
Western Europe had no literature, no learning, no science of its own. It
was the church—particularly the monasteries—to which men had to go
to get such training as was obtainable in a barbarous age. This training
was, of course, given in the tongue of the church which was Latin, the
clerical language. The contact of medieval Europeans with the dark-
skinned Arabs added Greek and the knowledge of Greek literature and
philosophy to the earlier medieval discipline. Imbedded in this was the
substance of science nurtured by the Arabs and added to by them.
The ruling classes kept their children within the treadmill of these two
literatures and languages and it came to be thought that this was the
indispensable training for a gentleman. But:—
“Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.”
**
We are in a different age, an age in which the nation, not the church,
gives training to all children, and not merely to the children of aristocrats
who will grow up to do nothing. The children of the people must become
the doers of all that is done in the world of tomorrow, and they must be
trained for this doing. Today in England, not Oxford, the home of lost
ideals, but such institutions as the University of London, are the sources
of that training which gives England its physicians, surgeons, inventors,
business men and artists.
Classicists Ignorant of Latin and Greek
But the noise of the classicists may be rudely stopped by merely

pointing out the hollowness of their watch words. These persons would
have us believe that Latin and Greek are, in their eyes, the backbone of
any education that is worth while. Very well then, let us take them at
their word. I make the broad assertion that not one in one thousand of
them can read a page of Greek or Latin that may be set before them. I
offer to put under their noses a page of Athenaeus or Horace (to say
nothing of more important classical authors) and if they should be able to
read and translate it at sight I shall be genuinely surprised. Let the
common reader who is a man of today make the test with this little bit of
Latin verse:
“Exegi momentum acre perennius

Regalique situ pyramidum altius.”
Let him ask some classicist to translate off-hand this common school
boy’s tag from a most popular author and note whether they can place
the author or translate the lines. Here is another:
Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum,

Tendimus in Latium.
To speak in plain United States, when it comes to the showdown it

will be found that those of us who argue in favor of the modern
discipline (in so far as we have any knowledge of classical literature)
know more about them than those whose sole defence they are.
It is said by the classicists that a knowledge of Latin and Greek is
necessary to an adequate comprehension of the English language. But so
is the knowledge of Sanscrit, Arabic, French and Italian. And when it
comes to facility and clearness of expression, it will be found that
Huxley’s prose is superior to that of Matthew Arnold, and Brisbane’s
superior to that of any professor of the Latin language in Harvard or
Yale. So much for the ghost fighters. Requiescant in pace!
The Knowledge We Need
Now, what is the knowledge which the New Negro needs most? He
needs above all else a knowledge of the wider world and of the long past.
But that is history, modern and ancient: History as written by Herodotus
and John Bach McMaster; sociology not as conceived by Giddings, but
as presented by Spencer and Ward, and anthropology as worked out by
Boas and Thomas. The Negro needs also the knowledge of the best
thought; but that is literature as conceived, not as a collection of flowers
from the tree of life, but as its garnered fruit. And, finally, the Negro
needs a knowledge of his own kind, concerning which we shall have
something to say later, And the purposes of this knowledge? They are, to
know our place in the human processus, to strengthen our minds by
contact with the best and most useful thought-products evolved during
the long rise of man from anthropoid to scientist; to inspire our souls and
to lift our race industrially, commercially, intellectually to the level of the
best that there is in the world about us. For never until the Negro’s
knowledge of nitrates and engineering, of chemistry and agriculture, of
history, science and business is on a level, at least, with that of the
whites, will the Negro be able to measure arms successfully with them.
CHAPTER IX.
A FEW BOOKS.
The Negro in History and Civilization
(From Superman to Man, by J. A. Rogers.)

This volume by Mr. Rogers is the greatest little book on the Negro that
we remember to have read. It makes no great parade of being
“scientific,” as so many of our young writers do who seem to think that
science consists solely in logical analysis. If science consists
fundamentally of facts, of information and of principles derived from
those facts, then the volume before us is one of the most scientific that
has been produced by a Negro writer. It sweeps the circle of all the social
sciences. History, sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics and
politics—even theology—are laid under contribution and yield a store of
information which is worked up into a presentation so plain and clear
that the simplest can read and understand it, and yet so fortified by
proofs from the greatest standard authorities of the past and present that
there is no joint in its armor in which the keenest spear of a white
scientist may enter.
Unlike an older type of scholar (now almost extinct) the author does
not go to vapid verbal philosophers or devotional dreamers for the facts
of history and ethnology. He goes to historians and ethnologists for them
and to anthropologists for his anthropology. The result is information
which stands the searching tests of any inquirer who chooses to doubt
and investigate before accepting what is set before him.
From this book the unlearned reader of the African race can gather
proof that his race has not always been a subject or inferior race. He has
the authority of Professor Reisner, of Harvard; of Felix Dubois, Volney,
Herodotus, Finot, Sergi, the modern Egyptologists and the scholars of
the white world who assembled at the Universal Races Congress in
London in 1911, for the belief that his race has founded great
civilizations, has ruled over areas as large as all Europe, and was prolific
in statesmen, scientists, poets, conquerors, religious and political leaders,
arts and crafts, industry and commerce when the white race was
wallowing in barbarism or sunk in savagery. Here he can learn on good
authority, from St. Jerome and Cicero, Herodotus and Homer down to
the modern students of race history, that cannibalism has been a practise
among white populations like the Scythians, Scots and Britons; that the
white races have been slaves; that here in America the slavery of white
men was a fact as late as the 19th century, and “according to Professor
Cigrand, Grover Cleveland’s grandfather, Richard Falley, was an Irish
slave in Connecticut.” In short, he will learn here, not that newspaper
science which keeps even “educated” Americans so complacently
ignorant, but the science of the scientists themselves. He will learn all
that this kind of science has to tell of the relative capacity and standing
of the black and white races—and much of it will surprise him. But all of
it will please and instruct.
The book also deals with the facts of the present position of the Negro
in America and the West Indies; with questions of religion, education,
politics and political parties, war work, lynching, miscegenation on both
sides, the beauty of Negro women and race prejudice. And on everyone
of these topics it gives a minimum of opinion and a maximum of
information. This information flows forth during the course of a series of
discussions between an educated Negro Pullman porter and a Southern
white statesman on a train running between Chicago and San Francisco.
The superior urbanity of the Negro, coupled with his wider information
and higher intelligence, eventually wins over the Caucasian to admit that
the whole mental attitude of himself and his race in regard to the Negro
was wrong and based on nothing better than prejudice.
This conversational device gives the author an opportunity to present
all the conflicting views on both sides of the Color Line, and the result is
a wealth of information which makes this book a necessity on the
bookshelf of everyone, Negro or Caucasian, who has some use for
knowledge on the subject of the Negro. The book is published by the
author at 4700 State Street, Chicago.
“Darkwater”
By W. E. B. Du Bois.
An unwritten law has existed for a long time to the effect that the
critical estimates which fix the status of a book by a Negro author shall
be written by white men. Praise or blame—. the elementary criticism
which expresses only the reviewer’s feelings in reference to the book—
has generally been the sole function of the Negro critic. And the results
have not been good. For, in the first place, white critics (except in music)
have been too prone to judge the product of a Negro author as
Dr. Johnson judged the dancing dog: “It isn’t at all like dancing; but
then, one shouldn’t expect more from a dog.” That is why many Negro
poets of fifth grade merit are able to marshal ecomiums by the bushel
from friendly white critics who ought to know better. On the other hand,
there is the danger of disparagement arising solely from racial prejudice
and the Caucasian refusal to take Negro literary products seriously.
In either case the work fails to secure consideration solely on its
merits. Wherefore, it is high time that competent appraisal of Negro
books should come from “our side of the street.” But, then, the Negro
reading public should be taught what to expect, viz., that criticism is
neither “knocking” nor “boosting”; but an attempt, in the first place, to
furnish a correct and adequate idea of the scope and literary method of
the book under review, of the author’s success in realizing his objects,
and of the spirit in which he does his work. In the second place, the critic
should be expected to bring his own understanding of the subject matter
of the book to bear upon the problem of enlightening the readers’
understanding, that at the end the reader may decide whether the work is
worth his particular while.
This book of Dr. Du Bois’ is one which challenges the swing of
seasoned judgment and appraisal. It challenges also free thinking and
plain speaking. For, at the very outset, find ourselves forced to demur to
the publishers’ assumptions as to its author’s status. “Even more than the
late Booker Washington, Mr. Du Bois is now chief spokesman of the two
hundred million men and women of African blood.” So say the
publishers—or the author. But this is outrageously untrue. Once upon a
time Dr. Du Bois held a sort of spiritual primacy among The Talented
Tenth, not at all comparable to that of Booker Washington in scope, but
vital and compelling for all that. The power of that leadership, however,
instead of increasing since Mr. Washington’s death, has decreased, and is
now openly flouted by the most active and outspoken members of The
Talented Tenth in Negro America. And, outside of the twelve or fifteen
millions “of African blood” in the United States, the mass of that race in
South and West Africa, Egypt and the Philippines know, unfortunately,
very little of Dr. Du Bois. It may be, however, that this is merely a
publishers’ rhodomontade.
And it is the publishers themselves who challenge for this volume a
comparison with “The Souls of Black Folk,” which was published by
McClurg in 1903. It is regrettable that they should force the issue, for
“The Souls of Black Folk” is a greater book than “Darkwater” in many
ways. In the first place, its high standard of craftsmanship is maintained
through every chapter and page. There are no fag-ends, as in the chapter
“Of Beauty and Death” in the present volume, where the rhetoric bogs
down, the author loses the thread of his purpose and goes spieling off
into space, spinning a series of incongruous purple patches whose tawdry
glitter shows the same reversion to crude barbarism in taste which leads
a Florida fieldhand to don opal-colored trousers, a pink tie, pari-colored
shirt and yellow shoes. Artistically, that chapter is an awful thing, and I
trust that the author is artist enough to be ashamed of it.
And, though it may savor of anti-climax, “The Souls of Black Folk”
was more artistically “gotten” up—to use the grammar of its author.
“Darkwater” is cheaply bound and cheaply printed on paper which is
almost down to the level of the Seaside Library. Neither in mechanical
nor mental quality does the book of 1920 come up to the level of that of
1903.
Yet, in spite of some defects, “Darkwater” (with the exception of
chapters six, seven, eight and nine) is a book well worth reading. It is a
collection of papers written at different times, between 1908 and 1920,
and strung loosely on the string of race. One wishes that the author could
have included his earlier essay on The Talented Tenth and his address on
the aims and ideals of modern education, delivered some twelve years
ago to the colored school children of Washington, D. C.
Each paper makes a separate chapter, and each chapter is followed by
a rhetorical sprig of symbolism in prose or verse in which the tone-color
of the preceding piece is made manifest to the reader. Of these tone-
poems in prose and verse, the best are the Credo; A Litany at Atlanta;
The Riddle of the Sphinx, and Jesus Christ in Texas. In these the lyrical
quality of the author’s prose is lifted to high levels. In these elegance
does not slop over into turgid declamation and rhetorical claptrap—
which has become a common fault of the author’s recent prose as shown
in The Crisis. In this, the first part of the book, the work is genuine and
its rhetoric rings true. Nevertheless, the sustained artistic swing of “The
Souls of Black Folk,” which placed that work (as a matter of form and
style) on the level of Edgar Saltus’ Imperial Purple—this is not attained
in “Darkwater.”
The book may be said to deal largely with the broad international
aspects of the problem of the color line and its reactions on statecraft,
welt-politik, international peace and international trade, industry,
education and the brotherhood of man. Each chapter, or paper, is devoted
to one of these reactions. Then there is a charming autobiographical
paper, “The Shadow of Years,” which first appeared in The Crisis about
three years ago, in which we have the study of a soul by itself. The
growth of the author’s mind under the bewildering shadow cast by the
color line is tragically set forth. I say tragically with deliberation; for
what we see here, despite its fine disguise, is the smoldering resentment
of a mulatto who finds the beckoning white doors of the world barred on
his approach. One senses the thought that, if they had remained open, the
gifted spirit would have entered and made his home within them. Mais,
chacun a son gout, and no one has the right to quarrel with the author on
that doubtful score.
In the chapter on “The Souls of White Folk” we have a fine piece, not
so much of analysis, as of exposition. The author puts his best into it.
And yet that best seems to have failed to bite with acid brutality into the
essential iron of the white man’s soul. For the basic elements of that soul
are Hypocrisy, Greed and Cruelty. True, the author brings this out; but he
doesn’t burn it in. The indictment is presented in terms of an appeal to
shocked sensibilities and a moral sense which exists, for the white man,
only in print; whereas it might have been made in other terms which
come nearer to his self-love. Nevertheless it is unanswerable in its logic.
In “The Hands of Ethiopia,” as in “The Souls of White Folk,” we
catch the stern note of that threat which (disguise it as our journals will),
the colored races are making, of an ultimate appeal in terms of color and
race to the white man’s only God—the God of Armed Force. But the
author never reaches the height of that newer thought—an international
alliance of Black, Brown and Yellow against the arrogance of White.
In “Work and Wealth” and “The Servant in the House” the problems
of work and its reward, and the tragedy of that reward, are grippingly set
forth in relation to the Negro in America and in the civilized world. “The
Ruling of Men” is followed by three papers of very inferior merit and the
book ends with a fantastic short story, “The Comet” which, like “The
Coming of John” in “The Souls of Black Folk,” suggests that Dr. Du
Bois could be a compelling writer of this shorter form of fiction. The
touch in this story of incident is light, but arresting.
Dr. Du Bois, in the looseness of phrase current in our time in America,
is called a scholar—on what grounds we are not informed. But Dr. Du
Bois is not a scholar; his claim to consideration rests upon a different
basis, but one no less high. And when the Negro culture of the next
century shall assay the products of our own it will seem remarkable that
this supreme wizard of words, this splendid literary artist, should have
left his own demesne to claim the crown of scholarship. Surely, there is
honest credit enough in being what he is, our foremost man of culture.
And this “Darkwater,” despite its lapses from artistic grace, helps to rivet
his claim to that consideration. It is a book which will well repay
reading.
The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy
By Lothrop Stoddard
About ten years ago Mr. B. L. Putnam Weale in “The Conflict of
Color” tried to open the eyes of the white men of the world to the fact
that they were acting as their own grave diggers. About the same time
Mr. Melville E. Stone, president of the Associated Press, in an address
before the Quill Club on “Race Prejudice in the Far East” reinforced the
same grisly truth. Five years later “T. Shirby Hodge” wrote “The White
Man’s Burden: A Satirical Forecast,” and ended it with these pregnant
words: “The white man’s burden is—himself.” His publishers practically
suppressed his book, which, by the way, should have been in the library
of every intelligent Negro. The white world was indisposed then to listen
to its voices of warning. But today the physical, economic and racial
ravages of the World War have so changed the white world’s mind that
within four weeks of its appearance “The Rising Tide of Color Against
White World Supremacy,” by Lothrop Stoddard, has struck the bull’s-eye
of attention and has already become the most widely talked-of book of
the year. White men of power are discussing its facts and its conclusions
with bated breath and considerable disquietude.
Here is a book written by a white man which causes white men to
shiver. For it calls their attention to the writing on the wall. It proves that
the white race in its mad struggle for dominion over others has been
exhausting its vital resources and is exhausting them further. It proves to
the hilt the thesis advanced in 1917 in my brief essay on “The White War
and the Colored Races” that, whereas the white race was on top by virtue
of its guns, ships, money, intellect and massed man-power, in the World
War it was busy burning up, depleting and destroying these very
resources on which its primacy depended. But even though the white
capitalists knew all this their mad greed was still their master. This great
race is still so low spiritually that it sells even its racial integrity for
dollars and cents. Mr. Stoddard’s book may disturb its sense of security
for a brief space, but it cannot keep white “civilization” from its mad
dance of death. “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world
and lose his own soul?” And the white race will finally find that this is
even more true racially than individually.
We have noticed for many years that whereas domestic journalism was
merely journalism—the passing register of parochial sensations—the
journalism of the international publicists like Lord Bryce, Meredith
Townsend, Archibald Colquhoon, Putnam Weale and Hyndman was
something more solid than journalism. In the writings of these men hard
fact and stark reality are wedded to wide reading and deep thinking.
They are the real social scientists rather than the stay-at-home, cloistered
sociologists who, presuming to know everything, have seen nothing. The
present volume is one of the best of the former and is full of the qualities
of its class. But at the very outset it suffers from the unwelcome
assistance of Dr. Madison Grant, “chairman of the New York Zoological
Society and trustee of the American Museum of Natural History.”
Dr. Grant has accumulated a large stock of musty ethnological ideas of
which he unburdens himself in what he evidently intends as a “learned”
introduction, without which freightage the book would be much better.
The difference in value and accuracy between Mr. Stoddard’s text and
the pseudo-scientific introduction of Dr. Grant would furnish fair
material for philosophic satire. Unfortunately we cannot indulge the
inclination in the columns of a weekly newspaper.
Dr. Grant, in owlish innocence, splutters out the usual futile folly
which (in other domains) has brought the white race to the frontiers of
the present crisis. He reads back into history the racial values of today
and trails the Anglo-Saxon’s crass conceit and arrogance across the
pages of its record, finding “contrast of mental and spiritual endowments
… elusive of definition,” and other racial clap-trap whose falsity has
been demonstrated again and again by warm-hearted enthusiasts like
Jean Finot and coldly critical and scientific scholars like Dr. Taylor
(“Origin of the Aryans”), Sergi (“The Mediterranean Race”) and J. M.
Robertson (“The Evolution of States”). But one can forgive Dr. Grant; he
is a good American, and good Americans (especially “scientists” on
race) are usually fifty years behind the English, who, in turn, are usually
twenty years behind the Germans. Dr. Grant’s annexation of the past
history of human culture to the swollen record of the whites sounds good
—even if it smells bad. And he is in good Anglo-Saxon company. Sir
Harry Johnston does the same thing and gets titles (scientific and other)
by so doing. The Englishman takes the very Egyptians, Hindus and tribal
Liberians, whom he would call “niggers” in New York and London, and
as soon as he finds that they have done anything worth while he tags
them with a “white” tag. Thus, to the professional “scientist” like
Dr. Grant, living in the parochial atmosphere of the United States,
science is something arcane, recondite and off the earth; while to the
American like Mr. Stoddard, who has been broadened by travel and
contact with the wider world, science, is, as it should be, organized daily
knowledge and common sense. Thus journalists, good and bad, are the
ones who form opinion in America, because “scientists” are so
distressingly stupid.
Mr. Stoddard’s thesis starts from the proposition that of the seventeen
hundred million people on our earth today the great majority is made up
of black, brown, red and yellow people. The white race, being in the
minority, still dominates over the lands of black, brown, red and (in the
case of China) has assumed a right of dictatorship and disposal even in
the yellow man’s lands. In the course of this dictatorship and domination
the white race has erected the barrier of the color line to keep the other
races in their place. But this barrier is cracking and giving way at many
points and the flood of racial self-assertion, hitherto dammed up,
threatens to overflow the outer and inner dikes and sweep away the
domination of the whites.
The author approaches his theme with a curiously graduated respect
for other races. This respect, while it is a novelty in the attitude of the
blond overlords, is always in direct proportion to the present power and
discernible potentialities of the races discussed. For the yellow man of
Japan and China he shows the greatest deference. The browns (of India,
Persia, Afghanistan, Egypt and the Mohammedan world in general) are,
of course, inferior, but must be respected for their militancy. The reds
(the original American stock which is the backbone of the population of
Mexico, Central and South America) are a source of contamination for
white blood and an infernal nuisance, capable of uniting with Japan and
China in an onslaught on the land areas reserved for white exploitation in
the western world; while the blacks, at the foot of the ladder, have never
amounted to anything, don’t amount to anything now, and can never
seriously menace the superiority of the whites.
The gradation is full of meaning, especially to those fervid theorists
who affect to believe that religion, morality, loyalty and good citizenship
constitute a good claim to the white man’s respect. For it is Japan’s
actual military might and China’s impending military might which have
put them in Grade A, while the brown man’s show of resistance in
Egypt, India and elsewhere under Islam, and his general physical unrest
and active discontent have secured for him a classification in Grade B.
The American in Mexico and South America keeps his window open
toward the east; but the black man still seems, in our author’s eyes, to be
the same loyal, gentle, stupid beast of burden that the white man’s
history has known—except in those parts of Africa in which he has
accepted the Mohammedan religion and thus become a part of the
potential terror of the Moslem world. In this we think our author
mistaken; but, after all, it is neither arguments nor logic that will
determine these matters, but deeds and accomplishments.
But, however his racial respect may be apportioned, Mr. Stoddard
holds that his race is doomed. “If the present drift be not changed we
whites are all ultimately doomed. Unless we set our house in order the
doom will sooner or later overtake us all.” The present reviewer stakes
his money on “the doom,” for the white race’s disease is an ingrowing
one whose development inheres in their very nature. They are so
singularly constituted that they would rather tear themselves to pieces
parading as the lords of creation than see any other people achieve an
equal favor of fortune.
In the pages of this book the author presents many chastening truths
and wide vistas of international politics which are enlightening when
carefully studied. But it is not our intent to cover the entire field of his
work, and we think that we have said enough to indicate the high value
and suggestiveness of the work. But we may be allowed to point out that
all the way through the author, though clear and enlightened, remains an
unreconstructed Anglo-Saxon, desirous of opening the eyes of his race to
the dangers which beset them through their racial injustice and
arrogance; but sternly, resolutely, intent that they shall not share their
overlordship with any other of the sons of earth. His book is written in a
clear and commendable style; he shows but few defects of temper and a
shrewd mastery of his materials. The book should be widely read by
intelligent men of color from Tokio to Tallahassee. It is published by
Charles Scribner’s Sons at $3, and is well worth the price.

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Chapter 5 - Accounting for Merchandising Businesses

Corporate Financial Accounting 14th Edition by

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2. In a merchandising business, sales minus operating expenses equals net income.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES: FNMN.WARD.17.05-01 - LO: 05-01

5. In retail businesses, inventory is reported as a current asset.

10. Freight-in is considered a cost of purchasing inventory.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES: FNMN.WARD.17.05-02 - LO: 05-02

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