"That was in the antebellum days, before men realized they couldn't oppress their fellows with impunity."
"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Gano, turning sharply on her son.
"I mean that if our forefathers had realized what an awful inheritance they were laying up for their children in the negro problem, they would have gone without their valets and left the negro in his native wilds."
"Oh, if you only mean that the initial mistake was in having the shiftless creatures here at all, I agree. The negro enslaved was a care and a drag on the South; the negro free is a menace to all America."
She opened the door of the long room and rang for Venus to take off her shoes.
"Yes, the Color Question," said John Gano, sitting down heavily on one of the fleur-de-lis chairs—"the Color Question is just one of the forms of ferociously usurious interest one generation has to pay on the debts incurred by another. The world learns its lessons with infinite pains. The same thing happens over and over again, and no one raises a finger."
He sat gazing at some impending peril with prophetic gloom.
"What is happening over again?" asked Ethan, divesting himself of his outer coat.
"The importation of ignorant debased foreigners to do the work that the American born not only won't do himself, but won't, in his haste to get rich, allow to remain undone. Why do the offscourings of the earth flock to America? Not because it's any longer the New World. They don't go to Australia or South Africa in the same numbers. They come here because the American born is more of an arrant fool and snob than any creature God permits to breathe. Hardly any one so poor but he will pay the highest wages for the worst alien service."
"Father!" Val, half-way up-stairs, came running back to her country's rescue. "Cousin Ethan won't understand you are just arguing. Father doesn't really think Americans are snobs."