What is, in retrospect, a document of immense importance for the history of the U.S. left: the first full, and for decades most substantial, Marxist work on race in the United States. Written by Russian-born Jewish immigrant, the economist I.M. Rubinow, it was an attempt to break the Socialist Party from their view of the Black struggle as simply one of economics, to be solved by the future Co-operative Commonwealth. Instead, Socialists must militantly champion Black rights now to break the racial impasse. Rubinow was a correspondent with W.E.B. Du Bois, who he asked to join the Socialist Party in 1904, despite the Party’s anti-racist inadequacies, and while this is mainly addressed to white members of the S.P., it was also written with Du Bois as an audience. His monumental ‘Black Reconstruction’ three decades later will echo a number of Rubinow’s themes. In addition, Rubinow spends a great deal of time in a cogent critique of the debate between Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Rubinow remained focused on race while active in the S.P. and was instrumental in the Party hiring Hubert H. Harrison as an organizer in 1911 and funding the ‘Harlem Colored Socialist Club.’ Spanning fifteen articles published in ISR over two years, this book-length treatise remained unheeded and largely forgotten until the 1980s when a new generation of scholars recognized its importance. With chapters on The Negro Slave in Colonial Times, Slavery in a Republic, Civil War and Reconstruction, The Period of Negro Supremacy, The Reestablishment of White Supremacy, Lynch Law, The White Man’s Point of View, From the Negro’s Point of View, The Negro’s Progress During a Half Century, The Solution—A Prophecy and a Remedy, it is transcribed for the first time in its entirety below. Given its length, I have also attached a PDF. While obviously dated, Rubinow’s work should be known to all students of U.S. racial, class, and Socialist history.

‘The Economic Aspects of the Negro Problem’ by I.M. Robbins (Isaac Max Rubinow) from The International Socialist Review. February, 1908-June, 1910.

I. The Negro Slave in Colonial Times. (February, 1908.)

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line, the relation of the darker to the lighter races, says Professor Du Bois, a prominent member of the colored race. While his descent must naturally influence the writer quoted to somewhat exaggerate the importance of the problem, and while we socialists will never be disposed to admit that any problem may overshadow in importance the problem of labor, yet the fact that some ten millions, or one eighth of our population, are at least likely to take the point of view of Professor Du Bois, and that these ten millions are mostly proletarians, and that to them this would be a true statement of fact, no matter what we think of it, must force us socialists to admit that there is at least a great deal of truth in this assertion. Curiously enough, this general recognition of the acuteness of the negro problem dates from the beginning of the current century. Since the now famous luncheon of President Roosevelt with Mr. Booker Washington, in the latter part of 1901, — an incident trivial enough in itself, but characteristic for the unanimous cry of protest throughout the entire South, from Maryland to Florida, and from the shores of the Atlantic to the farthest Texas,—animated discussions were started not only in the North, but even in Europe, as to the future of the Negro Race in America. It is no less curious, that while it is generally understood that the vast majority of the negroes in this country belong to the proletarian class, nevertheless the party which claims to represent the interest of this class has troubled itself very little about the negro problem. A few articles in the pages of the International Socialist Review, and other Socialist publications, some quite sensible and some otherwise, was all that the socialists have contributed to the discussion of this grave problem, as if their assertion, often heard, that the negro problem was only one aspect of the labor problem, relieved them of the necessity of studying it, instead of making it their especial duty. It is not at all surprising therefore, to find a universal lack of understanding of the complicated aspects of this problem among the working socialists. coupled with a wide spread lack of interest anywhere outside of the southern socialist organizations. Instead of a painstaking study, and some well formed convictions and policies, we find only antiquated prejudices among some, and a purely platonic sympathy to the poor negroes among others. Do the Socialists of this country really expect to attract the ten million negro proletarians into their ranks with such a policy of indifference? Or do they really think they can succeed in this country with these ten millions of proletarians left on the outside? Or do they simply sit and wait, until the International Socialist congress will take up this momentous question, just as they were willing to leave the entire question of immigration alone to be discussed by the comrades from the countries of Europe?

The series of studies, of which this is the first installment, is not offered with the conceited notion, that it will entirely fill the existing gap. There is no pretense, that an absolutely correct answer will be given to the negro problem, which will be adopted as our plank by the time the next national convention meets for the selection of its candidates, and the formulation of its platform. Our purpose will be realized, if we shall succeed in showing some of the historical and economic aspects of this problem, and shall make the average socialist worker somewhat better acquainted with the nature of the problem, so as to give some solid foundation upon which to construct his theories and remedial proposals. Books there have been written many about the negro problem, but not only are the socialist writers conspicuous by their absence in this literature, but very few efforts have ever been made, at least in this country, to apply the methods of economic interpretation to the past and the present of the negro’s position in this country. For it is true, though scarcely flattering to our national conceit, that the few really scientific studies of the history of the negro race in this country have been contributed by German students, and I hope to do a useful service to the cause, if I do no more than acquaint the American socialists with the interesting results of these investigations.

I have stated above that the beginning of the twentieth century has brought with it a marked aggravation of the negro problem. Still, it was evident to any painstaking observer of American life, that no sudden change in the relation of the races has taken place and that the seeming aggravation of the conditions was but a manifestation of effects which were gathering for a very long time. For no matter what the future may have in store for us, in the past the negro question, like the poor, we had with us always. And any serious discussion of the negro question is absolutely useless which does not take the historical conditions into thorough consideration.

What is the negro problem? In other words, what facts of American life justify us in speaking of its existence? In brief, it is this: That ten millions of men and women of negro, or. semi-negro origin are forced, against their will, and much to their dissatisfaction, to live in exceptional legal as well as social conditions, that they are forced to suffer restrictions in their political and civil rights, as well as economic opportunities because of their racial origin. This is not intended as a criticism of the situation, but as a simple statement of facts, for at this stage we are only stating the problem which we intend to study. With the exception of one short period, where the legal, but not the actual standing of the negro was equalized with the rest of the population, the negro problem as defined above, has never ceased to exist since that fateful day when the first fourteen African negroes were brought to Virginia in a small Dutch vessel, in the year of our Lord 1619.

Not only has the negro problem existed in this country since that day, but the presence of the negro has made a deep impression upon the economic, political and social development of this country, and the history of the Negro Problem is no more and no less than the History of the United States, of its politic, economic and social institutions.

No effort will be made to embody the history of this great country in this short series of essays. Nevertheless, it cannot be stated too often, that without some historical study of the negro problem, its nature at the present cannot at all be understood.

The proclamation of emancipation divides this history into two well defined epochs, that of slavery and that of negro freedom. The present negro problem is the problem of the free negro; but an understanding of the free negro, and his problem may only be found in the conditions of slavery, and any discussion of the negro problem, which presumes to begin after the emancipation, is worse than useless, it is misleading.

It seems even strange that it should be necessary to emphasize this fact; but our young and energetic country lives fast, makes its history in a great hurry and therefore forgets as easily. It must always be remembered, therefore, that scarcely more than 40 years have passed since the liberation of the slaves. It follows that almost all the living negroes over forty years of age were born of parents who had been slaves. On the other hand, the white population of the South is no further removed from the institution of slave owning, than the negro is from conditions of previous servitude. The system of slavery is vivid in memories, as an awful nightmare for some, and as a vision of the paradise lost for others. Social relations are even more enduring than personal memories. Much will be cleared up in this tremendous and com-plicated problem, if the present influences of the only too recent past be constantly kept in mind.

“Vice,” says Horace Greeley, “is ever conceived in darkness and cradled in obscurity.” This relieves me from the painful necessity of making an effort to contribute to the discussion of the exact date of the origin of negro slavery in the American colonies. In 1619, or 1620, it really makes very little difference which, there arrived in Jamestown, of the colony of Virginia, the Dutch vessel with its human cargo of 14 or 20 negroes, who were sold into slavery to some of the colonies simply followed the tradition of all colonies of the negro problem in this country. But it neither was the beginning of slavery in the American colonies, nor even of negro slavery on the new continent.

For on the one hand, there had existed by that time negro slavery for over one hundred years in the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch colonies of the American continent, directly transplanted from the African colonies of the same European powers, and on the other hand, the British colonies have also made use of enforced slave labor from the very first days of their existence. How much truth there is in the frequent assertions, that the development of the British colonies in North America would have been impossible without slave labor, it is not necessary to decide here. Nor it is necessary to presume the existence in the British colonies of any special psychological qualities, which have caused this introduction of slavery.

For in accepting the system of involuntary labor: these colonies simply followed the tradition of all colonies of the European powers. The economic conditions of the American colonies were extremely favorable to the introduction of slavery or some other system of enforced labor. The enormous supply of free land made the pursuit of agriculture open to every one, as well as exceedingly profitable. Given a practically unlimited supply of free virgin land, the profits of farming was limited only by the scarcity of hired labor, for the new immigrant did not lose much time in turning into an independent farmer. The supply of free hired labor could therefore be but small. and wages of agricultural labor exceedingly high. Side by side with free labor there existed therefore the indentured labor of debtors, often as a means of paying for the cost of transportation to the promised land, and gradually slave labor of the American aborigines and finally of African negroes. Other colonies followed the example of Virginia, and in the early days the northern colonies did not lag much behind the southern settlements. In 1628 negro slavery was introduced in New York and New Jersey, about 1631 in Connecticut, in 1634 in Maryland, 1636 in Delaware, in 1637 in Massachusetts, in 1647 in the Rhode Island colony. In New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and in both Carolinas the exact date of introduction of slavery has not been determined, but it undoubtedly took place during the same period, 1621-1645. These dates leave no doubt, that there was no material difference between the attitude of the northern and southern colonies upon the problem of negro slavery in the beginning of XVII century.

How far the early liberty loving colonists were from any objections against chattel slavery, is well shown by their attitude towards slavery of the American Indians. For many years the number of available negro slaves remained a very limited one; while continuous warfare with the redskins caused a constant stream of war prisoners to flow into the colonial settlements. Since the Anglo-Saxon common law did not recognize the institution of permanent slavery, the helpful colonists, in an early effort at constructive legislation, made use of the Mosaic law, justifying the slavery of war prisoners: and thus early was the bible utilized in justification of this institution.

The system was found to be profitable, and soon systematic stealing of Indians increased the supply of slaves when the number of bona-fide war prisoners was not sufficient to meet the demand. In the beginning of the Eighteenth Century the legal position of the Negro and Indian slaves was identically the same.

But there were many reasons why the slavery of Indians did not reach any considerable dimensions. The wild and liberty loving nature of these prisoners made them little fit for work in the fields, as well as a constant source of danger to the life of the slave owner and his family. The escape of an Indian slave was much easier than the escape of a negro slave, because he was unrecognizable from the many redskinned friends and allies of the colonists, because of his knowledge of the local geography, and the willingness of the surrounding Indians to assist him in the escape. This made the purchase of an Indian slave a matter of great risk to the pocket of the colonists. And last, but not least, as an institution, Indian slavery greatly disturbed the friendly relations of the colonists with the surrounding Indian tribes. We therefore find, that the importation of new slaves of red skin was -prohibited by the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania in 1700, and ‘all the New England colonies during 1712-1715; but traces of Indian slavery persisted in New England until the end of the Eighteenth Century, and still later in the South, though it never was of great importance economically, except that there was a considerable admixture of Indian blood in the Negro race.

Thus, historic causes have prepared the soil for an exclusively negro slavery, but this process was working out gradually, taking more than a century, probably because of the existence of other sources of involuntary labor. Thus, in Virginia in 1671, there were to be found about 2000 negro slaves, and about 6,000 indentured servants. According to the estimate of the economist Carey, there were imported up into the British colonies from 1619 up to 1714 about 30,000 negroes, and the total number of negro slaves amounted approximately to 58,850, in a white population of 375,750.

In the very beginning of the history of negro slavery in the United States, the natural fitness of the negro for a warmer climate made itself felt. Of the estimated population of 58,850 negroes, 23,000 were in Virginia 3,700 in North Carolina, and 10,500 in South Carolina. Constituting only about 14 per cent. of the total population of the colonies, the negroes of Virginia, were 24 per cent., in North Carolina 33 per cent., and in South Carolina even as much as 62 I/2 per cent., i.e. much more than one-half of the population. It would hardly show a great insight into philosophy of history to look for the causes of the comparatively insignificant number of slaves in New England or the middle colonies in the greater humanitarianism of the population of these colonies, or any theoretical objections to slavery as an institution. For one thing, exceptional and cruel laws against negroes, the slaves: as well as the few freedmen, were in the beginning of the eighteenth century no less frequent in the North than in the South. All colonies had passed specially severe penalties for crimes performed by negroes. In New Maryland, according to the law of 1723, a negro who would strike a white man, was subject to penalty of having his ears cut off. In 1741, a white man’s house was robbed by negroes; this led to a suspicion of a negro conspiracy, and within 4 months 154 negroes were arrested, of whom 12 negroes were burned and 18 hanged. The most cruel negro code existed in South Carolina, where the negro had to suffer capital punishment for the pettiest larceny, or have his face branded, and his nose pierced. Conditions were not much better in North Carolina.

As was stated above, during the eighteenth century the centre of gravity of the institution of slavery gradually shifted itself towards the negro race, and negro slavery was shifting towards the South. The involuntary labor of the white indentured servants was not a permanent state, sooner or later the indentured servants became free citizens of the colony. The negro slave was not fit to work in the New England farm, and gradually the negro slaves of the North were concentrated in the cities as the domestic servants. There was hardly a house in Boston without one or two negro servants, and many had as many as five or six. As late as 1719 the Boston papers contained advertisements of sale of negro men, women, and even small negro children.

Thus slavery in the North was rapidly becoming a luxury, and therefore could sooner call forth ethical protests than in the South, where slavery was rapidly becoming an important economic factor. The climate of the Southern field, while more fit for the negro, was at the same time less fit for the white man. The same cause, which stimulated the growth of negro slavery in the South, directed the stream of white immigration towards the North. Later, the very growth of the negro population in the South began to limit the immigration of white colonists into the southern colonies. The supply of free labor therefore grew in the North, and fell in the South, so that through the action of these forces, slavery was becoming less profitable in the North, and more necessary in the South. As long as tobacco was the main crop of the South white labor could still compare with negro labor. But with the development of rice and indigo culture in the low lands, the white population of the South began to avoid farm work more and more.

Gradually the conviction grew, that field work in the southern farms was not at all a fit occupation for the white man. In consequence the importation of African negroes in the middle of the eighteenth century grew to enormous dimensions. From 1715 to 1754 the number of negro slaves increased from 58,900 to 260,000 and in 1776 their number equaled about 500,000, of which 430,000 were located in Virginia, Maryland and the two Carolinas. Rapidly, the negro question was becoming a southern question.

But is there, at this stage of the story, any justification for the use of this word “problem?” In view of the growing dependence of the white population of the South upon the institution of slavery, it did not call forth any: questions in the South.

How the white population of the South viewed the institution of slavery, how it justified it, and brought it in harmony with its political theories and ideals (at this period of radical political fermentation, and preparation for the revolution) with its religious beliefs and with all those humanitarian tendencies, so characteristic of the middle of the eighteenth century, — those are all very interesting historical and philosophical questions which have been much less studied, than the economic or the political aspect of slavery. This is especially true in regard to the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries. For the necessity to defend the institution of slavery from the attacks of the Northerners arose a great many years later, and then this necessity created a vast literature.

But those opinions and views of the South and even of the North upon the slavery question during the 17th and the 18th centuries are very important, for these opinions have undoubtedly contributed a great deal towards shaping the future course of the negro problem for many years to come.

I have before me a very large volume, of modern literary make, bearing the sensational title, “The Negro a beast.”

The author of this volume is a fanatic of modern days, hailing from St. Louis, far from the centers of the Black belt; and with the assistance of many quotations from the Bible, and other scriptures, biological and other scientific authorities, he endeavors to prove that the Negro is not a human being at all, but a beast created according to the image of man, with power of speech and human hands.

From these facts the natural deduction is made that the Negro was created by the Almighty for the very explicit purpose of serving the white man. The work often reads like the delirious talk of a very ill man, but as a matter of fact the book was taken quite seriously even in our day by the civilized American public. This is shown by the startling fact that it was dignified by numerous replies from the pens of many noted clergymen, and publicists, who take great pains, to demonstrate, again with the assistance of the Holy scriptures, that the Negro is a human being, though one of a special, lower order, truly created to be a servant of the white man.

It is true that we are dealing here with opinions expressed in the beginning of the twentieth century, but in reality these are but manifestations of atavistic repetition of the opinions universally held in the 17th and the 18th centuries.

Many reasons explain, if they do not justify, the origin of such views upon the nature of the Negro during the early history of slavery in this country. The absence of even a rudimentary anthropological science, especially among the colonists who were people of a very limited educational standard, and the scanty supply of ethnological information, must have necessarily led the early colonists towards making an estimate of the strange race entirely upon the basis of external phenomena of the stage of culture in which they lived; for that matter, many supposedly educated people may be found to-day, who do not suspect the presence of any other criteria of the anthropological worth of other races than their own.

The Negroes, who arrived in America, were half naked, wild from fear and danger, chained, could not be understood, and did not understand the language spoken to them; they did therefore resemble beasts more than man in the eyes of the uneducated colonists. “Whether the Creator originally formed these black people a little lower than other men, or that they have left their intellectual power through disuse, I will not assume the province of determining but certain it is, that a new Negro (as those lately imported from Africa are called) is a complete definition of indolent stupidity…Their stupidity does not however allow us to consider them as beasts for our use…”

If those were the opinions of an English Missionary, it is not difficult to guess what the prevailing views among the American colonists were.

Here undoubtedly “The wish was father to the thought.” And soon the South was taking measures to keep the Negroes in that condition of ignorance and heathenism which served as evidence of their racial inferiority. In many colonies the teaching of Negroes and their conversion to Christianity was strictly prohibited. The multiplicity of laws aiming at the prevention of the awakening of Negro revolts and insurrections in the middle of the 18th century shows that the Southern slave owners were beginning to fear the possibility of the development of human feelings and desires in the Negro beast’s breasts. And finally the rapid increase in the number of Mulattoes notwithstanding the many prohibitions of marriages between the White and the Black, seemed to be a living refutation of the theory of the beastly origin of the Negro. When the system of slavery has accomplished the changes in the common law, according to which the place of the child in the society was determined by the position of his father, and the children of slave women were recognized as slaves, the production of Mulattoes became a very profitable undertaking. A Mulatto slave represented a much greater value than a plain Negro. Since the female slaves were at the disposal of the slave owners without any restrictions, the owning of one’s own children as slaves became a matter of common every day occurrence in the Southern colonies.

I. The Negro Slave in Colonial Times, Continued. (March, 1908)

A FEW FACTS mentioned show what an influence slavery began to exercise upon the Southern white society. Another evident result was the loss of habit for intensive effort and work, so necessary and essential in the life of a colonist. A traveler through the Southern states in 1778 has noticed, that “the influence of slavery upon Southern habits is peculiarly exhibited in the prevailing indolence of the people. It would seem as if the poor white man would almost rather starve than work, because the Negro works.”

But while slavery was having such harmful, demoralizing effects upon the white population of the South, it proved to be a school of civilization for the savage Negro. The Negro, who had lived many years on American soil, or the Negro who was born on American soil, and still more the Negro with a greater or lesser admixture of white blood, was even: in the beginning of the 18th century vastly different from the newly imported African Negro. The difference was noticed in 1767 by the English missionary whom we have quoted above. The Negro who remained in the household of the master, doing domestic service, felt this civilizing influence more than the Negro slave in the field. That was one reason, among many others, why the Negro in the North felt it more than the Negro in the South.

The importation of new Negroes from Africa therefore called forth different feelings in the South and the North. New, wild Negroes everywhere presented a dangerous, threatening element, but in the South they were necessary, while in the North they were useless, since a new Negro remained for many years unfit for domestic labor. The opposition to the importation of new slaves, which existed in all the colonies, was therefore much stronger in the North than in the South.

Beginning with 1681 dozens of laws were passed by the various colonies limiting or altogether prohibiting by means of high import duties, the importation of new slaves. The reason given for these measures in the North was usually the desire to restrict the growth of the anti-christian institution but the South was more frank in admitting the possible danger of an excessive increase in the number of slaves to` the peace of society. Judging from this legislation, the struggle against slavery as an institution in the North began as early as the 17th century, but in reality the moral antagonism to slavery in those days seems to have been a very weak factor, since the laws of Massachusetts prohibited or taxed heavily the importation of Negroes into that commonwealth, but permitted the enterprising Yankees to continue their slave trade with the Southern colonies. Thus Massachusetts having established a very high duty on importation of Negroes in the beginning of the 18th century, nevertheless thought it necessary to return this duty at re-exportation, which made this state the main slave market. This materially affects the rights of the Northern colonies to the claim of a more humane attitude towards the slavery question.

Nevertheless, in view of the many economic and social causes indicated above, the first protests against slavery as such. had to arise in the North. Only a small minority could possibly be directly interested in the slave trade. The results of civilization and progress could more easily manifest themselves there, where the economic advantages of slavery were not so great as to suffocate all manifestations of protest. In any case, it is hardly necessary to say that towards the end of the 18th century these moral objections against the system of slavery had almost no practical effect upon the distribution of slavery. Nevertheless, the fragmentary information of such objections have a very great historical interest.

The first serious and sincere agitation in favor of suppression of slavery came from the Pennsylvania Quakers, that remarkable body of people of high moral principles.

John Woolman, (1720-1784), and still more Anthony Beneset were ardent preachers of the immorality of slavery as it existed in the South. Woolman protested mainly against the excessive work of the slaves, against the denial to them of a Christian education, while Beneset compared the condition of the slaves with that of the mode of life of the Negro tribes in Africa, which he pictured in rather sympathetic colors, and insisted upon the Human rights of the Negroes. But all these efforts, as far as they were directed towards a practical aim, and did not satisfy themselves with moral teachings, aimed only a reduction of the slave trade and of the importation of new slaves.

It is true, that Beneset, like the famous John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, went as far as to suggest the advisability of liberating the slaves, but they scarcely expected anyone to follow this advice, and they did not therefore expect the appearance of the Negro problem, that is, the problem of the free Negro. They did not therefore try to solve that problem. Their preaching was purely religious and ethical, but not political.

In the North where the number of slaves by that time was small, where free Negroes side by side with the few slaves performed domestic service, the solution of the slavery problem did not present such difficulties as in the South, and there the preachings of Besenet and others had a much stronger influence. All through the seventies of the 18th century the slaves of Massachusetts began to fight for their liberty through the courts, insisting that the English common law did not permit of the institution of slavery. Frequently the juries took the same attitude. The revolutionary epoch brought the abolition of slavery by law in all the Northern colonies or states. The influence of these new thoughts began to be felt in the South as well; opposition to slavery became a sign of progressive thought during the revolutionary era.

The burning speeches and writings of Thomas Paine about the rights of man, the great formula, “All men are born free and equal,” the whole theory of natural rights could not but have a strong influence upon contemporary thought. Not only Franklin, Hamilton, Jay, and Adams in the North, but also Washington Jefferson, Madison, and Henry in the South, were convinced opponents of slavery in principle.

It is true, that they continued to own their slaves, for without them life in the South would have been very uncomfortable indeed; besides, the liberation of slaves needed, not only principles, but also heroism and self-sacrifice. In his famous Declaration of Independence Jefferson had originally included a few sentences, accusing England of the shame of introducing slavery in the colonies for its personal advantage. But Adams, the Northerner opponent of slavery, influenced Jefferson to strike out this paragraph, so as not to call forth the displeasure of the South.

But even among these “best citizens of the South” the radical tendencies were not caused by any greater respect for the Negro as a human being. It is no exaggeration to say, that the opinion of these men about the Negro was, if anything, a less favorable one than those entertained by the convinced slave holders. If Jefferson protested against the institution of slavery he did it more in the interest of the white population than of the colored one. The strongest argument against slavery was the consideration that it led to an increase of the black population. Slavery develops in the slaveowner a crude and cruel disposition and immorality.

“The children of the white folks are brought up in association ‘with the Negro slaves with results detrimental to the development of the children.” All this was mentioned by Jefferson, while the Southern slave owners did not all see any harm in such association. That the Negroes represented a hopelessly inferior race was not at all doubted by Jefferson, who saw the solution of the Negro problem in the liberation of the slaves, with their subsequent return to Africa.

Such was the attitude of the various elements of the Southern population towards the Negro, slavery, and the Negro problem. There remains the interesting question, of the actual treatment of the slaves by their owners. To a great extent it was a personal matter, and depended a great deal upon the personality of the individual slave owners: Nevertheless, it may be reasonably assumed that disregarding individual peculiarities some average conditions asserted themselves. In general, the treatment of the slaves was kinder in the North than in the South, perhaps mainly because in the North the slaves were domestic servants. A great many Negroes were employed in the homes of their owners in the South as well, and these also received more favorable treatment. Bonds of friendship often arose between these slaves and their owners, the slave owner’s children grew in the society of the slave, and often developed almost filial or fraternal feelings for their nurses or the comrades of their youth. From this class of Negroes the majority of the freedmen in the North as well as in the South were recruited. Into this class the majority of the Mulattoes and Quadroons were drafted; for in general, the most intelligent and civilized were chosen for domestic labor. These Negroes had exceptional advantages; their kindhearted mistresses took pains to convert them to Christianity, when towards the end of the eighteenth century the prohibition of such missionary work was removed.

But these patriarchal relations were limited to domestic servants as early as the end of the 18th century. Even then the great majority of the slaves were utilized for work in the field. These Negroes could not enjoy the advantages of personal relations with their masters; in their treatment the business principles predominated; and the object was to extract as much labor of them as possible, while making their support as cheap as possible. Here the point of view which considered the Negro a beast was the most convenient one, and undoubtedly influenced the treatment of the Negro, while the conditions of life which were the result of this treatment served to corroborate the beast theory. Into this group the newly imported African Negroes were admitted, and this continuous admixture of perfectly savage Negroes to the semi- civilized one could not, of course, serve to elevate the general level of civilization of the mass of the field Negroes.

The efforts of the white man to elevate this level of civilization were not many; on the contrary there was a strong opposition to all efforts in that direction, especially as far as the field Negro was concerned. In the beginning, even Christianity was a forbidden fruit, and this was defended by the curious argument that the ownership of Christian slaves would be against the spirit of the English law. But the clergy in its zeal for missionary work and the salvation of black souls, convinced the slave owners that there was no antagonism between Christianity and slavery. In the defense of this theory the dogma of a lower race, destined to serve the higher white race, proved a useful argument; thus Christianity became a strong force in support of the institution of slavery and a force of little civilizing value for the slaves. The English clergyman quoted, who wrote in 1768, points out that there are two kinds of Christianity and education, one kind which might inculcate dangerous ideas in the head of the Negro, and the other kind which will convince him of the essential justice of his position. Educated clergymen were a luxury which was granted only to the Negroes about the house; for the Negroes of the fields black preachers were considered sufficient, and those were naturally preferred who were ready to preach them the gospel, that religion demanded slavery, patience, obedience and industry. Notwithstanding all these precautions the majority of the slaves in the end of the 18th century was still unbaptized.

Even when the Negroes were baptized, their marital relations were but seldom solemnized by any religious ceremony, and even in those cases where such a ceremony was performed, its commands were absolutely disregarded by the slave owners. Incidents similar to that which serves as a plot for the famous novel of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, were undoubtedly more common in the eighteenth century than at the time, which the novel purports to describe, but in those earlier days they did not call forth any serious objection, and did not cause such deep anguish in view of the rather weak attachment of the primitive Negro to his wife and children. This weakness of the family bonds in the opinion of Southern society, was sufficient excuse of the infringements of family ties. But in reality the moral effect of these acts was much more harmful in the middle of the 18th century, than one hundred years ago. In the latter cases they were only isolated cases of cruelty which caused considerable suffering to individual families, but in the earlier days they undermined the family morality of an entire race, instead of inculcating moral ideas.

In Africa the Negro lived in the normal stage of polygamy, which probably was no worse than the polygamy of the Mohammedans. If the morality of the men did not reach the height of European ideals, nevertheless polygamy in all probability proved an effective safety valve. When wives were personal property the coveting of another man’s wife like the coveting of another man’s property called forth severe punishment. With the exception of the custom of offering one’s wives to one’s guest, the Negro women like the women of all polygamous races probably were more moderate in their sexual life than their white sisters. The total and sudden destruction of the polygamous family without its substitution by a protected monogamous family could but lead to one result: irregular and promiscuous sexual relations. The African Negro was not familiar with prostitution. The Negro woman, who began as the possession of the slave owner or the overseer, and then changed hands from one owner to another, and changed husbands each time she changed her boss, and was often forced into separation from her children, even if it happened without any serious protest from her side, gradually fell to the level of a prostitute. And having caused this sexual demoralization the Southern slave owner pointed to this lack of moral principle as an example of racial inferiority.

What wonder, that under the influence of these factors there grew the contempt for the Negro slave, which was later transferred upon the Negro freedman? Side by side with special legislation aimed at the Negro slave, the codes of the American colonies contained provisions intended for the free Negro. In the early days the freeing of the slave depended only upon the good will of the owners; and this remained the law in the Northern colonies up to the very liberation of all the slaves; but in the South an excessive number of freed slaves soon began to be considered a menace to the principle of slavery, and so the manumission of slave was made dependent upon administrative permission, to be issued by the governor. A wandering Negro had to prove that he was a free man; failing to do this he was to be sold at public auction. This is the final step in an interesting evolution of opinions. Towards the end of the 18th century the principle was established that “only Negroes could be slaves”; from this the next conclusion was drawn, that “Negroes could be slaves only”; and that each exception to that rule had to be judged on its own merits; besides the economic and social conditions of the Negro freedman in the South were scarcely better than those of the Negro slave. He was not permitted to travel from one colony into another; he was not permitted to own land, nor to practice professions and most trades, so that about the only trade open to him was that of a hired agricultural laborer, for wages which hardly provided him with a better living than what he had as a slave. Free Negroes could not appear as witnesses against white men, could not enter military service, had no political rights, but had to pay all the taxes on an equal basis with the white neighbors.

II. Slavery in a Republic. (April, 1908).

TOWARDS the end of the eighteenth century the development of negro slavery reached its most critical stage. This was mainly because of two moments, which influenced both the political and the economic status of the South: First, the formal union of the American colonies into a nation, and, secondly, the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney. In their effect upon slavery these two events were diametrically opposed to each other, and it was the collision of the two opposed forces which not only created the negro question, but centered the entire subsequent history of the United States until the Civil War and for a good many years after that, around the black man.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century strong symptoms of the decay of slavery could be noticed. It had already vanished in the North, and was becoming less profitable in the South. The union of all colonies, which had taken place, in the face of a strong opposition, under pressure of unrelenting forces of economic necessity, made slavery an inevitable subject of issue between the North and the South; for the first time the Northern antagonism to slavery became a perceptible force in the South. Even the constitution bears the traces of such conflicts in the clause which prohibited the importation of new slaves after 1808. That was a compromise which must be considered as a material victory for the anti-slavery sentiment of the North. To these factors must be added the effect of the Haitian catastrophe of 1791. where the mutiny of the negroes, who greatly exceeded the white population in numbers, led to the extermination of the whites. Besides, during the period of economic stagnation which followed the revolutionary period, the profits of the exploitation of slaves could not be very high.

Rapidly even these states which fought against the suppression of the negro slave trade in the constitutional deliberations, one after the other passed laws, immediately and absolutely suppressing the importation of slaves: it actually seemed as if the young republic was on the verge of a peaceful solution of the slavery problem, as even George Washington had hoped. 

But Eli Whitney’s invention at once destroyed the hopes for an early solution. This invention has solved the very difficult problem of separation of the fibre from the kernel of the cotton plant at small cost, which problem arose at the very beginning of cotton growing in the South. By means of this invention cotton growing soon became the main business of the South, rapidly increased the value of land property, and created a demand for a great quantity of very hard and very unhealthy labor, for which the negro was much more fit than the white man.

The temptation is great to devote many pages to an investigation of the economic development of the South, and the political events of the following sixty years. But for obvious reasons we must limit ourselves to those facts only which have a direct bearing upon the problem of the development of the relations between the white and the black man.

The growth of cotton culture in the South stimulated the development of the cotton industry in the entire world. The demand for cotton grew even more rapidly than the supply. The importation of slaves, which had been falling off towards the end of the eighteenth century, soon began to increase rapidly. The acquisition of Louisiana met the demand for additional territory, and slavery began to grow rapidly westward. When the nation was formed, the North had reasons to think that, being limited to a few states, the institution of slavery would die a slow but natural and inevitable death; and the conditions of the times justified such a view. But the beginning of the nineteenth century brought with it a complete reversal of the attitude of the South towards slavery.

During the sixty years that followed, the South never once ceased to make all possible efforts to establish its right to extend the system of slavery into the new regions of the acquired territories; while the North was forced to fight against these efforts, though with indifferent success for many years. The aim of the Southern planters was to re-establish the principle of legality of slavery throughout the union, and these efforts finally led to the historical struggle of the Civil War. Who knows but that if the South had not shown such a militant spirit, slavery might have survived until now in some of the more backward states? But this militant spirit was not willful or malicious, it was inevitable because slavery could only be made profitable in conjunction with extensive agriculture.

Notwithstanding the constitutional prohibition, the importation of the negroes continued throughout the entire period. Southern men who remember ante-war times admit that newly imported slaves could be found as late as 1861; and I have a statement of a very patriotic Southerner that his father had bought new, wild negroes less than one month before open hostilities had broken out, when the entire question of slavery was so hotly discussed throughout the land. It may now seem difficult to understand the speculative spirit which justified such investments on the eve of the great struggle. But new slaves were absolutely indispensable to the South. And under the influence of this necessity the ethical objections to the slave trade rapidly vanished. At the time of the formation of the republic all the Southern colonies, with the exception of Georgia and South Carolina, admitted that the forced importation of slaves from Africa was a very immoral and undesirable thing. Forty or fifty years later entirely different views were held in the South. Time went on and again conventions of Southern citizens during the thirties, forties and fifties expressed their conviction not only that slavery was just, but that even the slave trade and the capture of negroes in Africa for purposes of selling them into slavery could not be unjust or immoral. It was pointed out that the prohibition of such importation led to a creation of a monopoly in the negro trade in the hands of the states of Maryland and Virginia, and that it was therefore necessary to recall the provision in the constitution which prohibits the free importation of negroes. Among the reasons which have finally led to the war of secession this demand for the re-establishment of the importation of negroes was not the least important one.

But notwithstanding the smuggling in of considerable numbers of negroes the demand for labor could not be satisfied thereby, and the interstate trade in chattel slaves had rapidly grown. The border states, which did not need so many slaves, could dispose of their surplus and sell it down South. Gradually these states became veritable negro farms and the cases of forced family separations became much more frequent. This fate befell most frequently the children of the field negroes, who were so used to it that they took it quite philosophically. How profitable a business was this raising of negroes may be seen from the statement that about 1850 “a new-born picanniny was worth about $200 at his first cry.”

One can easily see what an attitude towards negroes such a situation was: forced to create. The negro woman, like a cow, was valued primarily for her capacity for child-bearing. On the other hand, the negro woman who worked in the field found it to her advantage to become pregnant as often as possible, for this freed her for some time from labor, and besides guaranteed her some kind of care and comfort. A high development or slave owner to lend his “buck-n***r” to his neighbor. Often the slave owners themselves undertook this duty of improving the race, and the famous Southern chivalry towards women in general and their wives in particular did not at all interfere with these practices. The price of a mulatto was so much higher than that of an ordinary negro, that out of financial considerations the slave owners systematically encouraged the production of mulattoes and delegated it to their children, or friends, or to the white overseers of the slaves. There were few plantations on which blood relatives of the slave owners, brothers, children and grandchildren, did not work as slaves.

In the treatment of the negroes in the first half of the nineteenth century a noticeable step was taken backwards. as compared with the end of the preceding century. The distinction between house servants and field hands, which was noticeable in the colonial days, was strengthened and a greater part of the negroes belonged to the latter class. These became material of pure business enterprise, even up to the process of child-bearing in the interests of the employer exclusively. With the increase of the price of the slave from $700—$800 to $1,500 or more, the cases of inhuman treatment were more or less exceptional. But on the other hand the general treatment grew more severe and impersonal. The Northern abolitionists may have somewhat exaggerated the conditions, for obvious reasons, in describing the cruelty of the slave owners, but on the other hand, the apologists of slavery always liked to and even now frequently do draw pictures of conditions before the war that are entirely too mellow and mild. For even the Southerner, E. Ingle, who writes on slavery in a very apologetic tone, admits that chastisement by means of straps was a matter of common occurrence. And he quotes the opinion of a New Orleans physician of that period, who argued “that if any slaves were inclined to raise their heads to a level with their master or overseer, humanity and their own good require that they should be punished until they fall into that submissive state which it was intended for them to occupy.”

The great number of freed slaves in the South, and the Northern propaganda in favor of abolition, news of which gradually reached the Southern negro, influenced the slave owners to keep the negro on a low level of intellectual development. The prohibition against teaching the negro again became stricter, and included even free negroes. It is true that under pressure of public opinion the slave owners were making efforts to convert their slaves into Christianity, and that towards the end of the Civil War there were almost no heathens among the slaves; but this work of Christianizing the slave proceeded under many precautions and restrictions, in order that religion might not raise any revolutionary tendencies among the slaves. The Southern clergy fulfilled its duty towards the slave owners so well that it succeeded in depriving Christianity of almost all its civilizing effects. Of the whole field of applied religion, or ethics, the only doctrine taught the negro was the doctrine of obedience. Even the doctrine of marital fidelity could not be taught; and to be frank, how would that doctrine have combined with the practices of the “buck-n***r”? In performing the ceremony of marriage the Christian clergyman administered the oath to remain faithful to their spouses “until death or uncontrollable circumstances (i.e., the will of the owner) shall divide them.” Even in teaching the doctrine of the future life extraordinary precautions were necessary, for the promise of freedom in heaven could awake the thought of the desirability of freedom in this world. Therefore, teachers of the Lord’s gospel would not go any further than the promise of a white skin in the other world to every good and obedient negro.

Such was the religion which the slave owners helped to spread, since they soon discovered that the negroes who most ardently visited the church usually made the very meekest and hardest working slaves.

Thus consciously, willfully, cunningly, the Southern slave owner endeavored to stupify and demoralize the negro population of this country, and many years later the results of this demoralization were pointed out as great argument against the biological potentialities of the race.

All these efforts were caused by the natural desire to preserve the economic advantages of the slavery system. It is not necessary to go here into an extensive discussion of the question, how far the slave system was profitable to the entire South. It is certain that, as Olmsted and other observers had pointed out in their own time, negro labor was not cheap labor by any means; that the working capacity of the negro, inert as he was, and absolutely disinterested in the result of his labor, was scarcely equal to one-half of the productivity of the white laborer. The high price of the negro made his labor dearer than the labor of the free wage worker in the North, and the fact that the negro slave represented an outlay of capital made his sustenance more expensive, as it forced upon the slave owner the cost of the care of the slave’s health. Thus one finds a Southern economist in the early forties claiming that the natural progress of the South, by increasing the population and lowering the wages of free labor, would make the hiring of such free labor more profitable than owning slaves, and would thus create the natural conditions for the abolition of slavery. The well-known Northern economist Carey also thought that high prices of the slaves would lead to the abolition of slavery.

This rise in the price of slaves was most noticeable during the fifties, and by that time the financial position of the slave owners, with the possible exception of a few thousand magnates, was anything but enviable. The profits of their industry was constantly falling. Why, then, did they hold on so tenaciously to the profitless system?

In one of his interesting books of travel through the Southern states Olmsted relates that many slave owners would rent their slaves into the mines for $120 to $140 a year, which was considerably more than the corresponding wages in the North, when the additional cost of feeding the slave is considered. An income of $120 to $150 per annum was considerable, even at the price of $1,500. A freed negro usually received about $150 to $20c a year in addition to his food and lodgings, and a freed man could more easily save a competence in the South than a white laborer in the North.

In other words, because of the system of slavery prevailing, the South suffered from an insufficiency and high cost of labor, and slavery labor was necessary no matter whether dear or cheap. It is interesting to point out in this connection the obvious fact that at the present time the general rate of wages is much lower in the South than in the North. Individually each planter in the South felt the utter impossibility of getting along without the slaves, and a full emancipation of the slaves was feared as a crisis, the results of which could not be foretold. Finally there was the general hope of escaping the results of the rising prices of slaves by the acquisition of virgin and cheap land in the West.

While thus a number of potent economic causes forced the white South to hold on to the system of slavery, the psychology of the Southern gentleman, —in its turn the result of preceding economic conditions, —played a by no means insignificant part. The cumulative effects of two centuries of slavery, which Jefferson had feared so much, did not fail to manifest themselves. “The man must be a prodigy,” wrote Jefferson, “who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. With the morals of the people their industry also is destroyed.” The evidence of many travelers through the South in the middle of the last century fully corroborate the truth of these predictions of Jefferson. The rich white people of the South clearly demonstrated the evil effects of this system. The superficial polish and manners, the classical education, were often found side by side with the wildest debauchery and a complete incapacity for productive thinking or hard work. The Southern gentlemen were much better prepared to enjoy the fruits of civilization than to create them. The poor white trash lived by hanging on to the rich planters, and looked with contempt upon manual labor. The South “classed the trading and manufacturing spirit as essentially servile” in the words of a Southern journalist in 1852, who wrote in the famous De Bow’s Review. Certain forms of work were considered especially undignified, and the poor white man met the offer to perform such work with the contemptuous remark that “he was no n***r.” This led to the idea that hired white labor was altogether unsatisfactory, and that the negro slave was indispensable to Southern industry and agriculture.

It was thought necessary to dwell so long on the psychology of the white population of the South, because this psychology played a very important part in the subsequent events. With such a psychology and such a national character, the philosophy of the necessity and inevitableness of slavery found general approval not only among the wealthy slave owners, but also among the poor white trash, which found considerable satisfaction and consolation from its poverty in the consciousness that no matter how low its own social scale, there was still left a very large class of people below them.

The greatest effort to support this view upon slavery and the negro was undoubtedly made by the clergy. The part taken by the Christian church in the defense of the institutions of slavery presents one of the most interesting pages in the social history of the United States. “The American Churches, the Bulwark of American Slavery,” thus runs the title of an exceedingly interesting pamphlet anonymously published in 1842. The war was not yet over when a doctor of divinity and professor of a Southern theological seminary devoted a bulky volume of 562 pages to prove the thesis that the clergy of the South was mainly responsible for the secession. This may well be an exaggeration: nevertheless the facts presented by these two authors are of the greatest interest and importance not only for the understanding of that epoch, but also because the Southern church is still a great factor of reaction in the relegated “negro question.”

It is interesting to follow the development of the attitude of the church to the question of slavery. To take for example the Methodist Episcopal church. In 1780 it expressed its firm belief that “slavery was contrary to the divine, human, and natural law, and harmful to society.” Jn 1784, membership in the church was denied to whomsoever did not promise to free his slaves. In 1801, the church was more than ever “convinced of the awfulness of slavery.” But the invention of Eli Whitney: made its impression upon the clerical mind, for in 1836 we find the assembly of the clergymen of this church protesting against the action of two of its members, who dared to speak against slavery, and hastening to announce that it denies any desire to interfere in the relations of master and slave. Even in New York the representatives of this church fought against any manifestations of the spirit of abolition among its members. For preachers as well as other men owned slaves and therefore had direct interest in defending the institution. But more important undoubtedly was the consideration that the church felt the necessity of being on the side of the stronger.

Still more striking is the testimony gathered by Professor Stanton, whose work was referred to above. He inclusively shows that not only the Southern clergy, but even many of the Northern preachers, energetically preached the necessity of the Southern rebellion, and defended the South, after the secession had taken place. What Professor Stanton mainly objected to was the fact that the Southern clergy, in coming out in defense. of the rebellion, had broken the pledge of obedience to the legal authorities. But in reality this was only caused by the natural anxiety of the clergy then, as now, to serve that legal authority which was recognized de facto by the majority of the population; and that was the authority of the Southern states and of the confederacy. Thus until the very last day of the emancipation of the slaves the entire clergy of the South continued to preach that slavery was morally in harmony with God’s will, that it was eternal and necessary, because the negro was a lower being created by the Almighty for the special purpose of working for the white man, in exchange for the care which the white man was to take of his physical, moral and mental well-being. One may well recognize in this doctrine the forerunnings of the latter day theory of the relations of the wealthy men to the working class, which Comrade Ghent has so characteristically christened as the coming “benevolent feudalism,” and which finds its expression in the writings and speeches of Lyman Abbott, Andrew Carnegie, and President Baer of the Reading Railway.

A touching agreement and understanding may be found between these clergymen and the Southern professors, economists, politicians and statesmen. That the clergy exerted a direct influence upon the scientific fraternity of the ante-bellum South, is shown by the importance which the religious argument played in the reasoning of the latter. This unanimity may partly be explained by the peculiar character of education in the slave owning South, where a superficial polish and some knowledge of classics stood for real education and learning. The universities and colleges were mainly interested in oratory and partisan politics. The Southern periodical literature, the most important representatives of which were the De Bow’s Review and the Southern Literary Messenger, defended slavery and savagely attacked everyone who dared to express the slightest doubt of the usefulness and justice and permanency of the peculiar Southern institution.

II. Slavery in a Republic, Continued. (May, 1908).

T HE NEW SCHOOL of writers, thinkers and statesmen which arose under these conditions, vastly differed from the school of Jefferson and Henry. It did not try to excuse slavery by considerations of economic necessity. It would not even permit the expression of the faint hope, that sometimes in the dim future the institution of slavery might be abolished.

“Let me not be understood”, says the famous Calhoun, “as admitting even by implication that the existing relation between the two races in the slaveholding states is an evil; far otherwise, I hold it to be a good, as it has thus far proved itself to both, and will continue to prove so if not disturbed by the spirit of abolition. I appeal to facts: Never has the black race of the Central Africa…attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually. It came among us in a low, degraded and savage condition, and in the course of a few generations it has grown under the fostering care of our institutions.” Here the slaveowners are made to appear in the strange role of what the Germans have called “Kulturtraeger”, carrying the white man’s burden. That slavery could have a harmful effect upon the slaveowner, which was almost universally admitted by the foremost statesmen of the end of the Eighteenth Century, Calhoun violently denied. “I appeal to all sides whether the South is not equal in virtue, in intelligence, patriotism, courage, disinterestedness, and all the high qualities which adorn our nature. I ask whether we have not contributed our full share of talents and political wisdom in framing and sustaining this political fabric.”

No less interesting is Calhoun’s opinion in regard to the problem of proximity of the races and its effects, interesting mainly because of the very different opinions which are held in the South at present.

“I hold”, says Calhoun, “that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relations now existing in the slaveholding south between the two is, instead of an evil, a good, a positive good.”

Further on Calhoun becomes quite radical: “I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not in point of fact, live on the labor of the other…I may say with truth that in few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer and so little is exacted from him, or where there is more kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age. Compare his condition with the tenants of the poorhouses in the more civilized portions of Europe, —look at the sick, and the old and infirm slave on one hand, in the midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintending care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poorhouse…The existing relations between the two races in the South form a most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions…There is and always has been in an advanced stage of wealth and civilization a conflict between capital and labor. The conditions of society in the South exempts us from the disorders and dangers resulting from the conflict; and which explains why it is that the political conditions of the slaveholding states has been so much more stable and quiet than that of the North.”

But Calhoun knew that the fathers thought and spoke differently, and therefore he boldly proceeded to destroy the old gods: “Many in the South once believed, that it was a moral and political evil. That folly and delusion are gone.” And again pointing at the struggle of capital and labor, he continued: “The southern states are an aggregate in fact of communities, not of individuals. Every plantation is a little community, with the master at his head, who concentrates in himself, the united interests of capital and labor, of which he is the common representative. These small communities aggregated make the South, in all whose actions labor and capital is equally represented and perfectly harmonized. Hence the harmony, the unity, the stability of that section the blessings of this state of things extends beyond the limits of the south.”

From the preceding pages some conception might have been formed of the southern society on the eve of the emancipation of the slaves. But the first seventy years of the existence of the republic did not fail to leave a great impression upon the negro race as well. Notwithstanding the efforts to suppress all intellectual growth of the negro, such growth was taking place nevertheless. It is true, that it was very unequally distributed, being mainly limited to the domestic slaves. Unconsciously the civilization of the masters, such as it was, permeated the surrounding negroes. Notwithstanding all the restrictions, some negroes learned to read. The intense religious feeling, which was brought over from Africa, helped the development of high moral virtues in some individuals, and the cases of deep affection towards the owner were not exceptional. But on the other hand, neither were the cases of deep hatred, and the consciousness of the injustices of the slavery system. The preachings of the christian ministers about the justice of slavery, about the lower race and so forth, undoubtedly had a deep effect upon the crude mass of the field negro, and a great many of the negroes probably did not even dream of freedom. But it would be a mistake to suppose that that was the attitude of the entire negro population. Mr. Booker Washington tells us in his autobiography, that even the most ignorant of the negroes watched with deep concern the fortunes of the war and dreamed of freedom. Annually thousands of negroes escaped from the plantation, and the cases were especially frequent among the slaves of the cruel masters. This longing for freedom in the fifties was stronger among the younger generation, than among the old men, was stronger among the educated than among the illiterate. and it was the general observation, that it was stronger with the increased admixture of white blood. For one thing, that admixture decreased the physical difference between master and slaves. And to convince a pretty octoroon, perhaps favored by the caresses of her master, that she was a lower creature intended for a life of slavery, was not an easy task even for a clergyman.

Small wonder, then, that a “literate n***r” became the equivalent of a “bad n***r”, a point of view that has survived until the present day in a considerable part of the southern population. The “free n***r” was another disturbing factor in the idyllic relations of the plantation. In the treatment of the latter may be discovered the first traces of the modern phase of the negro problem in distinction to the slavery problem of earlier days.

For many reasons, the number of freed negroes rapidly grew in face of the opposition of the law and public opinion. For notwithstanding all the talk of the natural condition of slavery for the black man, as well as the advantages derived by him from the system, the good southern slaveowner, whether at death, or at other solemn occasions, knew no better reward for the good and faithful negro than to grant him his liberty. In 1790 there were 37,357 free negroes in the south, and in 1860 261,918, while in the north the number grew from 22,109 to 226,152. This increase may be explained partly by the natural increase, as well as by the liberation of new slaves. Thus the free negroes in the south included in 1860 about 10 per cent of the total negro population and in some states a much greater share.

This freedman was always a sore in the eyes of the slaveowner. He stood there as a living contradiction of all formulas in regard to the natural state of slavery, was a living and dangerous example for each and every intelligent and thoughtful negro who was trying to solve the riddle of his peculiar position. The slaveowner hated the free negro, and he treated him, if possible, worse than he treated his slave. In these relations there was no room for the personal affections, which often softened the severity of the legal position of the negro slave.

“Laws are necessary…to protect society from even the benevolence of slave owners, in throwing upon the community a great number of stupid, ignorant, and vicious persons, to disturb its peace and endanger its permanency”, was the opinion of a prominent southern jurist. Nevertheless, the effort to do away with this ignorance, stupidity and viciousness by means of education was strictly prohibited in some states and narrowly restricted in others. The social intercourse of slaves and free negroes could prove a source of temptation, and was greatly objected to by the slaveowners. And since a free negro was a harmful, dangerous or at least a suspicious man, it was natural for each southern state to make efforts to restrict the number of such negroes in its territory. With this purpose in view, most southern states prohibited the entrance of free negroes from other states under penalty of being sold into slavery again. Furthermore, in many states the right to set a slave free, was conditioned by the removal of a freedman into another state, so that many negroes were thus forced into the northern states. With the approaching crisis, when the relations between the races were becoming somewhat strained, several southern states passed laws requiring all free negroes to leave the state, under the penalty of being sold into slavery for disobedience.

Under the circumstances there could be no suggestion at actual equality of the freedman and the white man before the law. In most southern states they were, equally with the slaves, subject to the special black code until the very epoch of emancipation. A great many professions and occupations were closed to them, the right of free assembly and speech was denied to them. E.F.L. Olmstead, in his Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, tells a very interesting story of the arrest of 24 negroes in Washington in 1855, (i.e., almost on the eve of the civil war), charged with having held a secret meeting. At the time of the arrest were found: a Bible, Seneca’s Morals, and the constitution of the secret society, showing that the object of the society was assistance to the sick, and burial of the dead. For this awful crime, a slave member of the society was publicly whipped, four free negroes were committed to the workhouse, and the remaining offenders fined.

It is hardly necessary to add, that the free negroes did not enjoy the most important civil right, the right of voting. Now. the basic law of the English colonies which conferred the franchise upon the entire population, did not include any race discriminations. Therefore the colonies began to pass special laws restricting the voting rights of the negroes as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century. During the fundamental constitutional changes, which were caused by the upheaval of the revolutionary era, some southern states as South Carolina, Tennessee, granted the right to vote to the free negroes. But in the twenties and the thirties of the past century there arose a violent opposition to any participation of the negroes in the political life. By the end of the thirties, this right of the free negro had been abolished throughout the south.

Still less could any social equality be expected for the freed negro. Whether a slave or free. he remained a pariah all the same. As Von Halle very appropriately remarks, the southern planter was bent upon convincing the slaves, that by regaining their personal liberty they could not in any way improve their actual condition. Therefore they took all measures to make the existence of the free negro a very unenviable one. And as a natural consequence thereto, the free negro seldom had those kind feelings towards his employer which often lived in the breast of the slave, no matter how unreasonable they seemed to a foreign observer.

On the other hand the southern planters loved to picture the condition of the free negroes in the north in very dark colors, so as to impeach the sincerity of the northern abolition sentiment. It must be admitted that notwithstanding all the agitation in favor of the black brother, the conditions of existence of the free negro even in the north was far from an enviable one.

One of the greatest American jurists of that period, Kent, has stated that only in the state of Maine where the number of the negroes was very small, were there a few of them, who de facto enjoyed the franchise and civil rights, although as far as the written law was concerned, all the New England states, with the exception of Connecticut, did not recognize any race distinction in the political rights. At various times between 1810 and 1838 the middle Atlantic states deprived the negroes of the rights to vote; and perhaps most significant is the fact that of eighteen western states and central states, which took the part of the north during the war of the rebellion there was not even one which had granted political rights to the negroes before 1861, while two states were even absolutely closed to negroes. Foreign travelers in United States could notice that even in the north the attitude towards the negro was one of mixed contempt and dislike, which did not interfere with the perfectly sincere feeling of pity. Thus Olmstead tells of a negro he had met in Louisiana, who had previously lived in the north, and preferred the South, since in the south he came into closer contact with the white man, since in the north the enforced distance between the races was greater, and insults because of his race more frequent.

What the law aimed at in the South, uncompromising public opinion accomplished just as successfully in the north, and many professions and occupations remained closed to the negroes. All this does not at all contradict the general impression of the sincerity of the Northerners in their demand for the abolition of slavery. But it must be clearly understood, that this demand was caused rather by the economic fear of the extension of the system of slavery, than by any consideration for the humane and civil rights of the negroes.

No doubt, there were many individuals in the north who sincerely treated the negroes as their equals. More than that, as a natural reaction against the unjust treatment of the negroes, the northern abolitionists showed a tendency towards idealizing the negro, and exaggerating his moral virtues. John Brown, Lovejoy, William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley, Wendell Phillips, Lucretia Mott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and dozens of other earnest men and women who stood at the head of the small abolitionist party, with its few thousands of votes,—these were surely moved by the pure feelings of humanity, and learned to look upon the negro as a human being.

“To scorn, insult, brutalize and enslave human beings solely on account of the hue of the skin which it has pleased God to bestow on them; to pronounce them accursed, for no crime on their part, to treat them substantially alike, whether they are virtuous or vicious, refined or vulgar, rich or poor, aspiring or groveling; to be inflamed with madness against them in proportion as they rise in self respect,—this is an act so unnatural that it throws into the shade all other distinctions known among mankind”, wrote W.L. Garrison. In the declaration of the sentiments of the “American Antislavery Convention,” which he had written, he demanded not only the abolition of slavery, but also the full civic emancipation of the negro. “We further believe and affirm, that all persons of color, who possess the qualifications which are demanded of others, ought to be admitted forthwith to the enjoyment of the same privileges and the exercise of the same prerogatives, as others, and that the paths of preferment, of wealth, and of intelligence should be opened as widely to them as to persons of a white complexion.”

But then it must not be forgotten that Garrison began his violent struggle against slavery when he was scarcely twenty years old, and even his friends and supporters protested against his over-heated tirades. Senator Charles Sumner, who took Daniel Webster’s place in the United States Senate, when the latter tired the state of Massachusetts with his vacillating attitude on the problem of slavery, was much more of a politician than most of his associates in the cause of abolition. His brilliant discourses were directed mainly against the institution of slavery, and he but seldom touched upon the broader problem of the relation between the two races. And he was not at all ready to preach, or even to admit, the legal and general equality of the races. The brilliant Wendell Phillips was a great deal more explicit on the subject. Thus in his lecture devoted to the great founder of the Republic of St. Domingo, the full blood negro Toussaint L’Ouverture, Phillips spoke as follows: “I am engaged to-night in what you will think the absurd effort to convince you that the negro race, instead of being the object of pity or contempt with which we usually consider it, is entitled, judged by the facts of history, to a place close by the side of the Saxon. Now, races love to be judged in two ways, by the great men they produce, and by the average merit of the mass of the race…In the hour you lend me to-night, I attempt the Quixotic effort to convince you that the negro blood, instead of standing at the bottom of the list, is entitled, if judged either by its great men or its masses, either by its courage, its purpose or its endurance, to a place as near ours, as any other blood known in history”.

Horace Greeley, whose enthusiasm for the cause of abolition moved him to write a very big history of the Civil war, nevertheless admitted his hope, “that a day will ultimately dawn, wherein the rudely transplanted children of Africa might either be restored to her soil, or established, under a government and flag of their own, in some tropical region of our own continent,” in other words, he admitted, unconsciously perhaps, that after a life of two centuries in the boundaries of the United States, the negroes had no essential right to remain in the new country. But the majority of the famous circle of writers, poets, philosophers of the forties, (the golden era of American literature,) men like Henry Ward Beecher, William Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier, and many, many others stood for the equality of races.

All these manifestations of youthful enthusiasm and brotherly love are very interesting, and significant as far as they go. Yet too much importance should not be ascribed to the words and deeds of this small body of men. Their services to civilization and humanity should not be minimized; but they were the exceptional, not the typical representatives of their times and conditions. They were powerfully and eloquently expressing the ethical side of that demand for abolition of slavery, which undoubtedly had a material basis as well. Even in that demand for abolition the North did not too readily follow these leaders and even in the north the abolitionists did not receive too kind a treatment.

Garrison of Boston was subjected to the severest persecutions, Lovejoy was brutally killed by a mob in Illinois, for no greater crime than that he dared to express himself in favor of abolition. And when the historical meeting was taking place in Faneuil Hall for the purpose of protesting against the killing of Lovejoy, the majority of the speakers actually defended the mob for its deed, and it took the brilliant oratory of a Wendell Phillips to sway the audience in the opposite direction. This happened in 1837; but as late as 1853, Phillips stated, that whenever the question of slavery was touched on “The Press says ‘It is all right,’ and the pulpit cries “Amen.”

It is evident, that when such was the attitude towards slavery, it would be useless to look for any tendency for recognition of the equality of the negro’s position in social life.

It is necessary to emphasize this attitude of the north towards the negro, for these historical facts are of great assistance in the effort to understand many conditions of the present time which would seem truly monstrous, were we to imagine,—as do many even of those who write on the negro problem,—that only thirty or forty years ago the negro did enjoy the full civil and political rights on a basis of equality with the white man.

With all that, the legal position of the free negro was unmeasurably better in the north than in the south, the main difference being that in the north the negro was given a chance to get an education. The schools were open to the negro no less than to the white child, and though during the period we are dealing with at present, the majority of the northern states insisted upon a separation of the races in schools, nevertheless that was much better, than the general illiteracy, in which even the free negroes of the south were anxiously kept by their masters.

Southern writers then as now, were anxious to prove not only that the free negroes were worse off in the North than in the south, but that they were also worse negroes. Even the German investigator Von Halle yielded to this view, in stating that the successes of the negro in liberty did not give much hope that they might improve much with the abolition of slavery. Nevertheless, if one was to judge of the capacities of the negroes, a few examples were as strong evidence, as many. And the facts were that in the north, many negroes were working in various trades, owned farms, stores and so forth, that there were negroes with property to the amount of $500, $1000 and even $10,000, and what was much more important, the negroes of the north, began to produce great men, such as Phyllis Bentley, and the famous Frederick Douglas. It is very essential to remember, that on the eve of the Civil war the negroes were not any more the uniform mass, as they seemed to the fanatical defenders of the slavery system.

Out of that uniform mass, there began to develop the usual distinctions, between the rich and the poor, the industrious and the lazy, the virtuous and the vicious, educated and ignorant, talented and stupid individuals.

Until now, I have spoken mainly of the external changes in the conditions of the negro population of the States. In conclusion of this brief study of the psychology of slavery of America, it will be useful to indicate those more far reaching changes which the two and a half centuries of life in America have brought about in the psychology of the negro. For this purpose the recent work of a young southern scientist, J. A. Tillinghast, is of much use and of great interest. The work has been conceived in quite a novel way: for an effort is made in it to compare the psychology of the Negro as he is in Africa, as he was in slavery, and as he is now in America. The author is not only a southerner, but a son of an ex-slave owner, and therefore he is not to be suspected of idealizing the negro. Being a southerner and, in addition a faithful follower of the modern American school of sociology, he considers heredity to be a much stronger factor than the social milieu. But notwithstanding this point of view, and notwithstanding the certain fact that until the very eve of the civil war a fresh stream of African immigration greatly interfered with the action of American conditions upon the development of the negro in the new world, this investigator was forced to acknowledge a tremendous process of development and progress of the race during the 250 years. It is not necessary to enter here into an extensive criticism of his theory of the selection of the strongest and best during the capture of slaves in the African deserts. The fact is admitted that the interbreeding of the various African races in America, as well as the infusion of considerable quantities of white blood, produced a type of an American negro, who may be physically weaker but is mentally much stronger than the negro of Africa. In the United States the negroes were forced to lead a much more regular life, observe elementary rules of cleanliness, were getting used to services of medicine. The slaves were acquiring the habit of regular work, learned many forms of skilled labor, were instructed in the use of many tools, previously unfamiliar to them. A growing number of them was entering various branches of industrial labor. and often entire plantations, households and shops were entrusted to individual slaves. All this required a greater amount of intelligence than the south collectively was willing to concede to the Negro. While the influence of christianity was not as great as it might have been, nevertheless a material change took place in the religious views and customs of the negroes; many of the heathenish practices and superstitions had vanished and in their place there appeared simple but sincere ‘ethical principles. In addition, many new social sentiments began to develop. In short, the negro was showing a strong capacity in moral, intellectual and social growth; all of which the south solemnly declared to be impossible, for this impossibility of spiritual growth was the stock argument in the defense of the justice of slavery as a permanent institution.

III. Civil War and Reconstruction. (June, 1908).

THE complexity of the race relations became especially manifest during the civil war. Notwithstanding all the protestations that only the preservation of the Union, and not the question of slavery was the purpose of the war, the South knew but too well, that the negro was destined to be the central figure of the problem. This being the situation, one might have expected the most strained relations between the races in the south; while in the north the white and the black man should have been marching side by side in the cause of the great fight for the emancipation of five million slaves. But reality both in the North and in the South was very far from this ideal picture.

The northern negro knew quite well, that his race was the central problem of the struggle. The educated negro felt the importance of the situation and was very anxious to help along the work of the emancipation of his race. At the first call for volunteers negroes began to apply in great numbers for admission to the northern army. But invariably their requests met with a stern refusal. The denial of the right of military service at this most critical time was the best evidence of the attitude of the North to the negroes.

Even after the beginning of the rebellion, many of the western States continued in force all the special “Black laws”, i.e., laws prohibiting the negroes from entering the state, and since with the progress of the war the number of the fugitive slaves looking for protection was rapidly growing, the objection against them in the North was becoming stronger. While the youth of Indiana and Illinois was shedding its blood for the liberation of the slaves, fugitive slaves were being sold at public auction into temporary servitude for no other crime that they were fugitive slaves.

The first successes of the South in the beginning of the war still more strained the relations between the white and the black in the North. When that part of the population which rushed into the battle, whether out of its devotion to the cause, or out of love of adventure, proved insufficient, and obligatory military service became necessary, a series of severe draft riots against the innocent negroes was an interesting commentary upon the northern love of the negro. The riots in New York which led to the killing of tens of negroes and the burning of a negro orphan asylum, have earned a place even in the schoolbooks. In brief, the civil war has not served to improve the relations of the races in the North.

Meanwhile the army in the South performed its work. Wherever it appeared, crowds of negroes flocked to it. And this led to the looming up of the negro question. What shall be done with these negroes? General Butler in Virginia considered them as contraband of war, and forced them to perform labor for the army. General Fremont in Missouri declared them free, for which he was severely criticized by the federal Government. Others went so far into the other direction, as to take pains to return them to their legal owners.

But with the progress of the war, the attitude was gradually changing under pressure of the exigencies of the moment. As the shortage in available fighting men was becoming more noticeable, and since the negroes were fully fit for military service, the return of the negroes was given up as a very unwise military measure. For while the South was fighting to prove the inferiority of the negro race, it nevertheless saw no contradiction in impressing the slaves into the southern army to fight side by side with the white men. Finally the admission of negro volunteers in the northern army was ordered in 1863.

One detail of this order went far to prove how remote the North was from ever admitting the equality of the negro. While the white soldiers were paid $13 per month, besides their clothes, the negroes were given only $10, out of which $3 were retained for their clothes, so that the negroes were paid about one half of the rate their white comrades were receiving. Among the colored regiments, (for the colored soldiers, even when admitted, were formed into separate regiments), there were two from Massachusetts, to whom the full pay was promised at the time of enlistment, and the strong protest of these regiments against this unjust discrimination showed that they had a strong feeling of human dignity, for they refused to accept the lower wages, and preferred to go an entire without any payment at all. Even the offer of the State of Massachusetts to pay the difference from its treasury was declined. It was this obstinacy that forced the Congress finally to equalize the pay of the negro soldiers with that given to the white. The admission of the negro soldiers into the northern army began after the issue of the proclamation of emancipation, and followed the drafting into the army of the fugitive slaves. Thus the very issue of this proclamation seems to have been an act of military necessity and the result of the effort to break down the military resources of the enemy, and to excite the negro population of the South against the white. It was often pointed out how bloody a struggle the war of secession had been. Perhaps the negro owes his rapid emancipation to this very circumstance. That slavery would have remained in force were the South victorious, is certain. But it is also doubtful whether the emancipation of the slaves would have taken place so soon, if the North could have accomplished the suppression of the rebellion in a short time and without any great difficulties. For the avowed object of Lincoln was only a rapid return to the status quo. And the emancipation of the slaves was announced only as a necessary military measure, and was to be enforced only in those localities which persisted in the rebellion. For a time slavery persisted in those slave owning states which had not joined the rebels.

All these facts are well known to every American school boy. But they are reviewed here in order to show how little idealism and love for the colored brother there was to be found even in the northern states. For stern necessity, and not sentiments led the North on the way which it followed.

Let us now turn to the South for a similar rapid review of the race relations during the civil war. The utilization of the negroes in the northern army and Lincoln’s proclamation called forth a feeling of bitter resentment in the South. Under pressure from the military authorities of the confederacy, the confederate congress passed a Jaw establishing capital punishment for any negro or mulatto caught fighting against the confederate army. Furthermore, even white officers in command of colored troops were to be tried not as enemies and prisoners, but as criminals.

Judging from these facts, one might easily come to the conclusion that the relation between the slave owners and the slaves were strained to the utmost. But such a conclusion would only go to show how little one understood the complexity of the race relations in the South.

It is true, that thousands of negroes had escaped from their masters in those days, and had joined the northern armies. But this represented only one side of the problem. On the other hand, the same southern newspapers, while resenting the willingness of the northern army to employ colored soldiers, pointed with triumph to the fact, that negroes volunteered to serve in the southern army. Thousands of slaves were forced to do engineering work for the confederate regiments, while free negroes were received as soldiers; thus the southerner finally showed his willingness to recognize some difference between the slave and the free negro. The state of Tennessee officially announced that free negroes between the ages of 15 and 20 would be accepted into the army, and it was further enacted “that in event that a sufficient number of free persons of color to meet the want of the State shall not tender their services, the Governor is empowered to press such persons until the requisite number is obtained.” And a Virginia newspaper, in announcing that 70 free negroes had volunteered to serve the army, exclaimed: “Three cheers for the patriotic free negroes of Lynchburg.”

Thus quite suddenly souls were found in the black bodies, and even such souls as were capable of the high feeling of patriotism. Many negroes served quite faithfully the southern cause, for no other reason than that they remembered the kind treatment of their masters. And even now one meets many an old negro who is quite proud of his services in the southern army.

Cordial relations between master and slave were still more noticeable at home on the plantation, as Mr. Booker Washington, that famous negro apostle of peace, delights in pointing out. Says he in his autobiography: “One may get the idea that there was bitter feeling toward the white people on the part of my race. This was not true of any large portion of the slave population in the South where the negroes were treated with anything like decency…In order to defend and protect the women and children who were left on the plantation when the white males went to war, the slaves would have laid down their lives…Any one attempting to harm young Mistress or old Mistress during the night would have had to cross the dead body of the slaves.”

Thus the patriarchal relations of the slavery not only created the peculiar mixture of confidence and friendship with contempt in the white men, but also the equally strange mixture of devotion and love with distrust and protest in the heart of the black man.

The conclusion of peace and the final legal abolition of slavery followed in rapid succession. The effect of the proclamation of January 1863 was automatically extended, as the victorious regiments of the northern army reached further into southern territory. The passing of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution soon after the conclusion of the war abolished slavery in those states to which the proclamation did not apply. But unfortunately the abolition of slavery did not bring about the abolition of the negro problem.

The decade which followed after the civil war is one that is least understood by the average northerner. Most of these ten years were years of unlimited negro power in the South, which came in quite suddenly after about three centuries of slavery. At the same time they were years of most rampant political corruption, which the southerners quite naturally have altogether ascribed to the participation of the negro in political life. The mildest protest against the abrogation of the essential political and civil rights of the negroes in the South is immediately met with a reference to the reconstruction. Within the recent years this view upon that period has gradually extended to the north, under the general influence which the South is exercising upon northern thought. Some years ago, Root, then Secretary of War, and staunch Republican that he was, publicly announced that the granting of the franchises to the freed negro was a serious mistake. The historian Burgess makes the stronger assertion that it was “one of the blunder crimes of the century and unnatural, ruinous, destructive, and utterly demoralizing to both races.” It is evident therefore, how very important is the study of the causes and results of the political emancipation of the negroes for a proper understanding of the present day negro problem.

At the bottom of the whole situation was undoubtedly the entire complicated political organization of the American union with its constitutional limitations of the legislative functions of the federal government. Since the permanent administration of the conquered territory from Washington was not to be thought of, (at least not in those days of adherence to the old republican principles), the question arose as to how and when the original status quo could be reestablished. It is not necessary to enter here into the details of the legal distinction as to whether the states as such or only their population had joined the rebellion against the federal government. But under the cover of these legal intricacies there were hidden material interests of utmost importance.

In many respects the American proclamation of emancipation was a most remarkable act. In announcing on January 1, 1863, the liberation of the slaves, Lincoln accompanied it with very well meant advice: “I recommend to them that in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.” Thus at one stroke of a pen, a rural proletariat of over three million persons was created, and the whole material basis of the emancipation proclamation was limited to that very useful advice. During the last years of the war, when thousands of fugitive slaves were actually starving to death, some more direct help was granted through the newly organized “Freedman’s Bureau,” but its activity was limited, and the entire negro population was left in a very critical condition. One can easily understand therefore, why the first outburst of joy at the proclamation of independence was soon followed by a feeling of anxiety for the future, of which very interesting evidence and discussion may be found in Booker Washington’s autobiography.

Nothing was left to the free negroes, outside of the small work of the Freedmen’s Bureau, but to look for paying wage work at-the plantations of their old masters or their immediate neighbors. On the other hand, the owners of the plantations were left in close dependence upon their ex-slaves. When the young planters returned from the war, they found themselves in a very critical economic position. The half destroyed buildings, neglected plantations, and absence of capital (since the paper money of the southern confederacy had lost its value) such was the situation of the South. The enormous amount of capital outlay, which the millions of slaves represented, had turned into nothing. The negro was at the bottom of this complete ruin, and a deep resentment and hatred arose within the hearts of the white planters of the South.

This situation was certainly striking, in that the entire hatred and ill feeling was on the side of the slave-owners. In its first proclamation of emancipation Lincoln announced that the Federal government would not take any measure to pacify slaves when they should make an effort to gain their freedom. This was an open invitation to the slaves to rebel against their masters. But the slaves did not rebel, they continued to work faithfully for their old masters until the very day of the formal announcement of their freedom. “It is probable” says Carl Schurtz, who has studied the situation in the South after the war, by order of President Johnson, “that some of them had suffered cruel punishment , or other harsh treatment while in the condition of slavery; but not one act of vengeance on the part of the negro after emancipation is on record. On the contrary, there were many instances of singularly faithful and self-sacrificing attachment.”

No, the revenge came all from the other direction. The white southerner was full of revenge because for 250 years he had been exploiting his black neighbor. General Schurtz tells us in his report to President Johnson, “that not only the white slave-owners but the whites who owned no slaves began to hate the negro with special bitterness. “Since the money value of the negro vanished, the murder of or the injury to the negro is not only condoned but encouraged. Since the negro helped to preserve the union, he was hated by those who fought for secession.” The feeling was so strong, that notwithstanding the presence of northern troops in all southern states, the negroes were brutally terrorized. As General Schurtz had indicated then, and as all the southerners readily, and almost boastfully admit now, the murder, the mutilations and all the other brutalities were committed not only by the mob and rabble, but by the very proudest southern gentlemen, respected members of southern society. The famous, or infamous Ku Klux Klan, the secret organization, whose investigation embraced a congressional report of thirteen large volumes, systematized this state of terror. The activities of the Ku Klux Klan rapidly grew to 1860 when the negroes had been given the right to vote.

Now, what was the real force behind this feeling of revenge and these acts of violence? That was the desire to reestablish slavery.

This is no exaggeration. There can be no doubt after a careful study of the contemporary literature of the South, as well as of the North, that a considerable part of the southern planters hoped and dreamed of the reestablishment of the “Southern institution” in substance if not in form. The investigation of General Schurtz was largely instrumental in demonstrating this state of affairs and it certainly helped to influence the subsequent course of events.

For the psychological effects of slavery upon the southern mind could not be easily obliterated. Obstinately they continued to cry: The negro is only fit for enforced labor. And still stronger was the conviction, still more deeply ingrained in the mind of the slave-owner of yesterday, that the negro was there only for the purpose of producing cotton, rice, and sugar for the white man and had no rights to the pursuit of happiness, guaranteed to white men only.

Such was the mental attitude, with which the slaveowner of yesterday was entering the era of free labor; and naturally he did not expect anything good to come from it. He sincerely thought that the emancipation of the slaves was not only harmful, but illegal. Slavery was properly a question of local self-government and as soon as the autonomy of the southern states would be reestablished the South would know how to help itself. Following Lincoln’s plans, President Johnson promised the South the early reestablishment of the state rights, and the constitutional status quo. Here is what a southern gentleman in Mississippi wrote to his constituents in 1866, on being nominated for a local office for the elections which were taking place under the supervision of the northern army: After an indignant denial of the charge that he was an unconditional emancipationist and abolitionist, the gentleman says: “But fellow citizens, what I, in common with you, may have to submit to, is an entirely different thing. Slavery has been taken away from us; the power that has already practically abolished it, threatens totally and forever to abolish it’ But does it follow that I am in favor of this thing? By no means. My honest conviction is, we must accept the situation as it is, until we can get control once more of our own state affairs. We cannot do otherwise to get our place back in the Union that will protect us against greater evils, which threaten us. I must submit for a time (!) to evils I cannot remedy.”

A plainer admission of the plans which were brewing in the South could not be made. Such was the tone of the vanquished foe only three months after the conclusion of the war! Nor was the South satisfied with words alone. Encouraged by the pacifying attitude of President Johnson, it soon passed from words to actions. Many a planter simply decided that he would not grant the promised freedom to his negroes, and having armed a few white men would shoot down like so many dogs all the negroes who would dare to demand that long desired and promised liberty. This brutal use of force soon reached such dimensions that the army of occupation threatened to confiscate the entire property of the planters who would resist the presidential orders. On the other hand the municipalities, which immediately were granted almost full right of self-government, soon began to pass local ordinances, by means of which the actual freedom of the freedmen was materially reduced, and moreover, these ordinances now applied to all the negroes, whether they had been slaves before the war or not, so that as a matter of fact, the old free negroes soon found themselves in a worse position legally than they had been before. Each negro was required by these ordinances to be in employ of some white man, preferably his old master, and the employer was made responsible for the conduct of the negro. This employer could give the free negro a written permission to work for another employer, but such written permit was only good for seven days. Every infringement of these regulations was punishable by a fine of $5, and in the absence of this sum, (as was inevitable in the majority of cases,) by five days of enforced labor, and corporal punishment. The free negro had no right to enter the town without the written permit of his employer, under the penalty of imprisonment, a fine, or the whipping post. Meetings and conventions of negroes after the sundown were strictly prohibited. A negro could not speak at a meeting or even preach a sermon, without a previous permit from the authorities. A negro could not engage in commerce, without the written permission of his “employer”, under penalty, of the whipping post, a fine, and the confiscation of his stock.

Such was the attitude of the municipalities, but the state governments did not lag behind.

After the taking of the oath, the state of Mississippi was the first to convoke a session of the legislature, and having agreed to the two demands of the president, i.e., the recognition of the abolition of slavery, and the invalidity of the southern war loans, it received back its old right for self-government. Within the first three days the legislature passed three bills in regard to the negroes, and as soon as the congress became acquainted with these three bills, it was forced immediately to change its policy towards the South, in direct opposition to President Johnson. An analysis of these three bills is therefore necessary for the purpose of understanding the racial relations at that period of turmoil and confusion.

The first bill was intended to regulate the relations between the employers and the minor negroes. According to this bill, minor negroes of either sex, when their parents were unable to support them, were required to register as apprentices to white men, and to remain in their places until they were of age. The employer was given the right of administering corporal punishment upon the slaves, and escape of the apprentice was punishable by imprisonment and the whipping post.

The second bill was aimed at the negro vagrants, and the white vagrants when found in association with the negro vagrants. Each negro who had not paid his poll tax was defined as vagrant; also the negroes found gathered in mobs, whether by day or night, and also white men, associating with negroes or mulatoes, or having sexual intercourse with the negro women. Such crimes of the negro were punishable by a fine of $50, and in the case of the white men, $200, and in absence of the sum necessary to pay the fine, the negroes were to be sold at public auction into, what really amounted to temporary slavery, to the bidder who was willing to take the guilty one for the shortest time in compensation for the full amount of fine. It was very evident that that measure alone amounted to the reestablishment of temporary slavery, and that with judges and officers all white men, the negro could be recaptured and resentenced as soon as he was through serving his sentence.

The civil rights of the freedmen were defined by the third act. They were graciously given the right to own property and entertain action in courts, which rights the free negroes had even before the war, but they could lease landed property in cities only. Could their be found any better evidence of the class nature of this economic legislation, than this effort to prevent at the very beginning the possibility of the growth of negro land ownership? Mixed marriages were strictly prohibited, and the presence of one eighth of negro blood was sufficient to classify a person a member of the negro race. Negroes could be admitted as witnesses only when one of the parties belonged to the negro race. Each negro was required to have a definite place of residence and an occupation, and to prove such by a written labor contract or a license from the authorities for performance of temporary work. The negro who broke his labor contract was to lose the right to claim his pay, was liable to arrest and forcible return to his employer; and the latter was to pay to the sheriff who accomplished his capture a considerable reward, to be deducted from the wages of. the negro. Influencing a negro to escape or assisting him in his escape by furnishing food, was prohibited and punishable. The negro was not permitted to wear arms. In short, the old black code was reestablished for the freed negroes, though after it has been made somewhat more stringent. But the acme of class legislation was reached in the following provision: “that any freedman, free negro, or mulatto committing riots, affrays, trespasses, malicious mischief, and cruel treatment to animals, seditious speeches, insulting gestures, language or acts, or assaults on any person, disturbance of the peace, or exercising the functions of a minister of the gospel without a license from some regularly organized church, or selling spirituous or intoxicating liquors, or committing any other misdemeanor,” should be fined or imprisoned, and upon failure to pay the fine in five days’ time after conviction, should be publicly hired out to the person who would pay the fine, and costs for the shortest term of labor from the convict.

Thus, each and every action of the “free” negro when unpleasant to the local authorities, could easily be termed a crime, and could serve as a ready excuse for arresting him and selling him into temporary slavery, as is admitted even by such a sympathizer with the South as Professor Burgess.

This well defined policy of the State of Mississippi, which other southern states seemed only too anxious to follow, could not but call forth severe criticism in the North. It would be difficult to state exactly how muck of this protest was called forth by purely altruistic considerations; and how much by selfish calculations; but there is no doubt that the North was sincere in its criticism since it had no reason to desire the reestablishment of slavery which had cost so much to the country. The tendencies of the State of Mississippi and the report of General Schurtz, who had investigated the condition of affairs in that state and several other southern states, largely influenced the congress in its decision to break away from the pacifying policy of President Johnson, and to begin the new era of reconstruction.

Without going into the details of the political events, which followed in rapid succession, it may be useful to mention the main features of the congressional plan which was carried through. The southern delegates to the House and the Senate were refused admission. The radicals insisted that the granting of self-government to the rebel states would leave the rights of the negroes unprotected. Three roads to reconstruction were left open to the country. The North could continue the military occupation of the South and the government of the conquered states from Washington, or the internal government could be so centralized that local discrimination against the negro would be impossible, and their rights would be thus protected, or finally the negroes could be given the means for self-protection; namely, the right of participation in the state government. In the final plans, the military occupation was looked upon only as a temporary measure, any extensive changes in the methods of self-government, in the nature of centralization, were not thought of, and therefore the third plan was accepted, granting the negroes the right to vote. The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the constitution were passed in 1866. These amendments naturally called forth the violent opposition of the South and only passed because their acceptance was made a condition to the readmission of the southern delegates to the House and the Senate.

The thirteenth amendment formally prohibited slavery within the entire territory of the United States. Even this amendment was violently fought against by the south, and this only strengthened the decision of the North not to let the South have its own way. The fourteenth amendment deprived ` those who had participated in the rebellion of the right to vote before 1870, and established the rule, which has caused so much discussion recently, that the representation of a state in the congress should be decreased whenever the voting right was taken away from a considerable part of the population; the measure could have been easily excused in view of the fact that the emancipation further increased the representation of the South in the national legislature. The original constitution, while providing for representation in the lower house proportionately to population, was forced to introduce a compromise by which only three fifths of the slave population of the southern states was counted, and even that gave the white a representation which was considerably out of proportion to its numbers; were the negroes to remain without any influence on the elections though free, this would further increase the overrepresentation of the white men of the South, and to grant such a privilege to the vanquished would have been magnanimity, bordering on insanity.

The fourteenth amendment touched only upon the position of the South in national politics, but for the protection of the negroes and their rights in the South, the fifteenth amendment was passed in the same way, prohibiting discrimination at the polls on account of race, or color, or previous condition of servitude. This was the first measure that granted all the negroes throughout the country the right to vote; though the negroes of the South had already participated in the elections of 1866 and 1868, in virtue of various military regulations, yet the southerners had confidently hoped to be able to put a stop to that after they had returned to power. This hope of the white man of the South seemed at that time to have been destroyed by the fifteenth amendment. In addition, this amendment had for the first time granted the right of vote to the negroes of the entire North.

Even such a level headed man as Carl Schurtz came out unequivocally in favor of granting the franchise to the negroes. “As the most difficult of the pending questions are ultimately connected with the status of the negro in southern society, it is obvious that a correct solution can be more easily obtained if he has a voice in the matter,” wrote Carl Schurtz in his report. “The rights of a man of some political power are far less exposed to violation…A voter is a man of influence, such an individual is an object of interest to the political partes that desire to have the benefits of his ballot. It is true, that bringing face to face at the ballot-box of the white and the black races may here and there lead to an outbreak of feeling, and the first trials ought certainly to be made while the national power is still there to prevent or repress disturbances, but the practice once successfully inaugurated under the protection of this power, it would probably be more apt than anything else to obliterate old antagonisms, especially if the colored people divide their votes between the different political parties.”

Nor did Schurtz think that the ignorance of the negroes was a serious argument against granting them that franchise. The granting of the franchise could not be postponed until the accomplishment of the education of the negro, because, he argued, the franchise was very necessary to accomplish the education of the black race. Just as lightly did he meet the plea, that the negro would become a blind tool in the hands of politicians, as for instance his masters.

“The beneficial effect of an extension of suffrage does not „always depend upon the intelligence with which the newly admitted voters exercise their rights, but sometimes by the circumstances in which they are placed,” says the old radical of 1848, “and when they vote for their own liberty and rights, they vote for the rights of free labor, for the prosperity of the country, for the general interests of mankind.” Further, Schurtz insisted that the South could not be expected to grant the right to vote to the negroes without the interference ‘of the North, that the white South is very much opposed to such a measure, and that this must therefore be made a condition of the return of the southern states into the union.

One need not doubt, however, that side by side with such idealistic constructions, the more vulgar motives of party advantage were exercising their powerful interests. The calculation was brutally plain and simple. Grateful for their emancipation, the negroes will necessarily join the republican party in a body. Even as honest a man as Charles Sumner was swayed by such an argument, though for purely public consideration. But many politicians of a much lower plane saw in this plan the possibility of gaining purely personal advantages. Only by a combination of all these considerations can the granting of the franchise to the freed slaves be explained. As at the same time the vote was taken away, for a time, from all the white southerners who had been active participants in the historical struggle, this granting of the franchise to the negroes was equivalent to the deliverance of the political future of the South into the hands of the slaves of yesterday.

IV. The Period of Negro Supremacy. (July, 1908.)

All arguments in favor of granting the negro any degree of participation in the political life of the nation are met by the typical southerner, Socialist not excluded, by pointing at the period of reconstruction; that is claimed to be the dreadful example, which has for all times settled the problem of negro franchise in the negative. And it must at ounce be admitted, that the period of reconstruction represents quite a dark page in the history of American self-government. To be frank, the instantaneous grant of that supreme power of political life, without the slightest preparatory stage, to several millions of slaves of but yesterday, was a very daring undertaking. As one northern writer remarked as early as 1865, “to say, that men just emerged from slavery are qualified for the exercise of political power, is to make the strongest pro-slavery argument I ever heard. It is to pay the highest compliment to the institution of slavery.”

There were two additional factors which served to aggravate the situation. On one hand the great majority of the white southerners were for the time being deprived of’ their right to vote. On the other, the stream of adventurers from the north, who felt a chance for a good catch in the dirty waters of the southern political situation, introduced an entirely new element which even Schurtz did not calculate on. Of course, these new comers were all republicans: politicians, office holders, ex-army men, and disreputable characters in general. all those carpetbaggers, who have attached their name to this interesting though distressing period of American history.

The degree of negro domination varied in different states. The length of the period varied as well. though in general it began with the granting of the franchise to the negroes and ended with the recall of the northern troops from the south in 1876.

Formally, it was a period of negro domination. Not only did the negroes refrain from electing their old masters, as Carl Schurtz feared they might do, but they systematically voted for negro candidates for offices. Thus in 1873, for instance, there were in the State legislature of South Carolina 94 negroes as against 30 white men. In the State of Mississippi there were in the same year 55 negroes and 60 white men, of whom a great many were carpet baggers and in alliance with the negroes.

The same condition of affairs prevailed in almost all southern states. It was natural for these legislatures to nominate negro officials for all positions open to them. The selection of negroes was not limited to the local legislative assemblies. Very soon there appeared negro judges, negro lieutenant governors, (though there was no case of a selection of a negro governor) members of congress, and even United States Senators.

Most of these negro statesmen had been slaves up to two or three years before their political career began, and were not overburdened with education. “A goodly number were unable”, says Garner, the author of a very painstaking investigation of reconstruction in Mississippi, “to write and were compelled to attach their signatures to the legislative pay-rolls in the form of a mark”, There were illiterate sheriffs, judges, even state senators.

The appearance of a southern legislative assembly during that period was not very attractive from the point of view of any white man, and of a southern white man in particular. “Yesterday,” writes a contemporaneous southern investigator of the problem, “the assembled wisdom of the state…issued forth from the State House. About three quarters of the crowd belonged to the African race. They were of every hue, from the light octoroon to the deep black. They were such a looking body of men as might pour out of a market house or a court house at random in any southern state. Every negro type and physiognomy was here to be seen, from the genteel serving man to the rough hewn customer from the rice or cotton field. Their dress was as varied as their countenances. There was the second-hand black frock coat, glossy and threadbare. There was the stove pipe hat of many ironings and departed styles. There was also to be seen a total disregard of the proprieties of custom in the coarse and dirty garments of the field, the stub jackets and slouch hats of soiling labor. In some instances rough woolen comforters embraced the neck and hid the absence of linen. Heavy brogans and short torn trousers it was impossible to hide.”

To appreciate fully the nature of the change which had taken place it must be remembered that notwithstanding its adherence to the democratic party, the south before the war was very, much opposed to any democratic principles. The south was an aristocracy, almost an oligarchy, into which every society based upon slavery must eventually develop. The pride of the planter was deeply wounded at the sight of the negro, the slave of yesterday, whom so recently he could severely chastise, and abuse in any way he saw fit,—in the position of the master of the political machine. What have we come to? and What will become of us? Those were the questions which the southern planter asked himself, and to which he could find no answer.

The behaviour of these legislators disgusted the old southern aristocrat no less than their appearance. The ex-slave was anxious to show his independence the best way he knew how. He spat to his right and to his left, chewed tobacco during the sessions, put his large feet on his desk in the official chamber, laughed aloud, cracked jokes as well as peanuts, and enjoyed his newly acquired freedom and political influence as best he could.

All this was very hard to bear. But still more serious were the actual results of the legislative work of these black legislators, which struck at the pockets of the impoverished planter, a more sensitive place even than his pride.

It is not so easy as it might seem to obtain an unprejudiced picture of the results. The majority of the contemporaneous writers, as well as of the subsequent investigators were southerners with great prejudices against the negroes, and the results of mismanagement under negro domination are frequently greatly exaggerated. While some forty years have passed since these events, the animus has by far not yet died out. And even technically, the efforts to follow the details of local government or fifteen states present a great many difficulties. It may be stated with a reasonable degree of accuracy, that the years of negro domination had a decidedly detrimental influence upon the financial condition of the southern states. The negro legislators and administrators, who had almost no property of their own, had no moral scruples against increasing the taxes upon the land property of their old masters. The rapidity with which the negroes have learned all tricks of the white man’s corrupt politics should go a long way to prove the racial equality of the negro as far as mental qualities are concerned. They voted themselves extravagant salaries, they increased the salaries of all the officials, who were mostly negroes. Negro sheriffs frequently earned as much as 15-20 thousand dollars a year. On the other hand the childlike character of the new legislators often showed itself in ridiculous extravagances in appropriating money for decoration of the assembly or committee rooms. On the desk of every member of the Mississippi legislature there appeared each morning five daily papers, though the majority of the legislators were unable to read or write, and the bill for newspapers for one year loomed up to $3,670. In the same state the colored lieutenant governor paid the expenses of his household by draft upon the state funds. In the state of South Carolina the printing bill for one year reached the enormous sum of $600,000: and about half a million dollars were expended for the refurnishing of the assembly. Perhaps the record for curious forms of extravagance is held by the same State, whose negro legislators ordered the purchase of 200 french China spittoons at $8 a piece for the use of the 124 members of the legislative assembly.

Where was the money, forthcoming for such extravagance ? Though direct taxation upon property was increased in all the southern states, in some of them as much as ten or fifteen times, nevertheless the South was too much impoverished by the destructive war to be able to raise all this necessary and unnecessary money by taxation alone. The sum of state, county and municipal taxes often reached as much as five per cent of the valuation of the property, yet the income from taxation did not cover even one half of the total expenses of the carpet baggers government. Loans soon became necessary, and in the realization of these even greater corruption was practised. The financial ventures were of so complicated a nature that the ignorant negroes, or the majority of them, were utterly unable to understand them, and so they were acting entirely under orders of the white men.

The indebtedness of South Carolina in 1861 was $5,400,000; by 1872, it had increased to $29,000,000. This gigantic sum, for a poverty-stricken state, was not all spent upon furniture or salaries. The white leaders. of the ignorant black folks soon evolved various schemes much more ambitious. They started with various schemes for construction, which always were the mainstay of the big boodler, while the small fry may be satisfied — with signing for a petty sum on a fraudulent pay roll. The impoverished southern state governments liberally subsidized railroads, guaranteed the bonds of private railroad companies, and for such consideration towards the railroads the legislators received handsome compensation, the greater portion of which surely, reached the white man’s pocket; to say nothing of the white railroad man and the white New York banker, to whom went the lion’s share of the spoils. In this process of grafting the interests of the black man were as brutally sacrificed as those of the white man. Thus the legislature of South Carolina had appropriated $700,000 for purchase of land for distribution among the negroes. Under this law land was bought which was absolutely unfit for agricultural purposes, and frequently paid for at ten or twenty times its market value.

South Carolina was no exception among the southern states. In Alabama the state debt increased from eight to 25 million dollars. In North Carolina the valuation of taxable property decreased from $292,000,000 in 1860 to $130,000,0000. in 1870: nevertheless the sum of taxes levied increased from $540,000 to $1,160,000. In addition $14,000,000 worth of railroads bonds were issued, and an issue of $11,000,000 was authorized, but not a mile of railroads was built with that money. Georgia owned a railroad which it cost less than a million dollars to run, and which brought a net income of about $400,000 per annum. With the establishment of the carpet bag regime the operating expenses of the road jumped to over two million dollars, while the income turned into a deficit. In a very interesting work on the carpet bag regime in Georgia, written by a negro state senator of that period, the author admits the facts of extreme corruption, though giving them quite a different interpretation.

Such a policy spelled ruin for the south. Moreover the evils were not only financial. The entire government of each state was soon in the hands of a political machine which was not at all adverse to a systematic falsification of election returns, and so felt itself securely entrenched in power, and perfectly safe from the influences of public opinion.

Such, says the southerner, were the results of giving the negro the right to participate in the political life of the country. On the face of it, this deduction permits of no criticism or contradiction. Post hoc, ergo utque hoc. And the negro legislator was the most conspicuous and most irritating factor in the situation.

How far then may this period of reconstruction serve as an argument against the enfranchisement in the present or even in the future? How far do the facts quoted prove or disprove the inherent unfitness of the negro for political life? That is a grave problem which will be considered presently. But viewing the situation from a purely impersonal and scientific point of view, one must agree, that besides the incapacity of the negro, whether organic and eternal or acquired and temporary, there were many other important factors in the situation.

To begin with, an actual majority in the hands of the negroes was to be found only in the states of Mississippi, South Carolina, perhaps Louisiana, while the sad facts of reconstruction and corruption were universal throughout the south.

Secondly, of all fruits of corruption, only the smaller crumbs such as high per diem salaries, or expensive spittoons, fell into the hands of the negro legislators. The plums that were really worth anything, such as profits on bond issues, subsidies, loans, franchises, and so forth, remained in the hands of the few white politicians. These were the representatives of the nobler race who came down south right after the conclusion of peace, in order to work for their own pocket all the time. At the same time the majority. of the white men of the south were deprived of their right to vote. The new arrivals from the north became republicans, as a matter of course, because the republican party had the protection of the federal troops which had remained in the south. The presence of these troops was necessary for the protection of the negro population, the commanders of these regiments were not loath to exploiting the situation to their personal advantage in collusion with the civil carpet baggers. The least scrupulous part of the local white population, the so-called white trash, whom the southern aristocrat despised before the war almost as much as he did the negro, often joined the republican ranks not only for the sake of the small advantages but also out of feeling of revenge towards the aristocratic slave owner. Altogether it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the white man was at the bottom of the entire system of corruption which was devouring the southern treasuries and debauching the entire political life of the south.

Nevertheless; the fact remains true that it was the negro vote which gave the republican that perfect control of the south, and that an ignorant mass of electors was a great stimulus towards fostering of all the political and social vices. This was the only fact which the south was able to see. Yet the greatest vice of the negro voter was his allegiance to the Republican party, a vice which he evidently shared with a great many members of the white race at that time, and which is quite common with white folks even at present. The shade of Lincoln might object, however, to classifying this allegiance to the Republican party as evidence of the eternal racial unfitness to make good use of the franchise.

After all is said, the reconstruction period in the south was only a new variation of the very old principle. “Vac Victis.” But the south felt so bitterly against the negroes for joining the enemies, that it put the entire blame for the reconstruction evils upon the negro.

Quite naturally, the racial relations were very much aggravated by these political conditions. In the preceding chapter I have shown how the civil war and the emancipation of the negroes was rapidly destroying the patriarchal relations of cordial attachment mixed with contempt. But it was the period of reconstruction that created in the heart of the southerner the feeling of intense hatred towards the negro, and particularly towards the educated negro who held a seat in the legislative assembly, or held any other important civil position. And the higher the negro raised his head the greater grew the hatred of the white man for him.

Meanwhile the negroes, or at least a great many of them, did begin to raise their heads. Their feeling of inferiority to the white man, which the ante-bellum southerner used to make so much of, gave way with remarkable rapidity under the influence of the very first years of freedom. The negro politician, so quick in aping the very worst features of his white prototype, had good reasons to think himself as good as his white colleague at least. The negro began to speak in an entirely different voice. Perhaps the strongest and most interesting statement in this relation was made by a very old and very full-blooded negro, an ex-slave and member of the state legislature of South Carolina, and a man with a great deal of influence in his day, namely, Beverly Nash:

“The reformers complain of taxes being too high. I tell you that they are not high enough. I want them taxed until they put their lands where they belong, into the hands of those who worked them. You worked for them; you labored for — and were sold to pay for them; and you ought to have them.”

Thus the new times brought new songs; and these songs sounded maddening to the old-time southerner. But to the unprejudiced investigator they serve as a very interesting evidence that the negro was undergoing a very important transformation from a chattel into a human being, even though in the process of transformation he had learned from his white teacher all the dirty tricks of political corruption. The southerner professes to see in the history of the reconstruction era only a strong chain of corroborative evidence of the racial inferiority of the negro. But others with equal justice claim to see there proofs of a directly opposite conclusion. The mistakes of the negro legislators can very easily be explained by their lack of culture and education; but the few favorable exceptions that may be found are strong evidence of the possibilities which were hidden in the race. Striking cases of ability, at least in the political line, were not denied even by the contemporaneous southern writers ; cases of political honesty, though somewhat less frequent, were also to be found. Says a modern southern student of that epoch: “There were some very intelligent negroes in the legislature, this being particularly true of the ministers of the gospel.” Says a contemporaneous southern writer: “The leading topics of discussion are all well understood by the members. When an appropriation bill is up to raise money to catch and punish the Ku Klux, they know exactly what it means. So, too, with educational measures, the free school comes right home to them. Sambo can talk on these topics and those of a kindred character and their endless ramifications, day in and day out…Shall we, then, be too critical over the spectacle? Perhaps we might more wisely wonder that they can do so well in so short a time.”

But the white south was not at all disposed to go into scientific study of the characteristics of the negro race, nor could it in all justice be expected to. Its opinion of the negro race had been formed long ago, as was shown in the preceding chapters of this study. The period of reconstruction only succeeded in making this opinion very much worse. If up till then the white man was denying the intellectual capacities of the black man, and if this charge was becoming very much more difficult to prove, he now began to deny the existence of moral feeling, carrying his argument of racial inferiority into an entirely different plane. He would not stop to consider how to establish some tolerably acceptable modus vivendi; for he was only thinking of one great problem, how to put a stop to this domination of the negro in politics, and when he said negro domination, he very often perhaps unconsciously was thinking of the domination of the Republican party.

It must be admitted that in his efforts to get rid of that Republican domination, or negro domination, the white used methods which were hardly calculated to strengthen the plea of the inherent moral superiority of the white man. The events of the following years are sufficiently familiar to the American of to-day, and a very brief recital of them will be all that is necessary here. As long as the south was full of the northern troops, who naturally defended the interests of the negroes and the Republicans, the south could only fight as a conspirator. Thus the famous Ku Klux Klan was organized to do its awful work. Immediately after the war this organization seemed to be simply a tool of revenge and aimless cruelty to the negro, but towards the beginning of the seventies the organization began to work more systematically with a definite purpose of frightening the negroes away from the polls. The assaults extended also towards the white Republicans, who were hated and despised no less than the negroes. The business methods of the Ku Klux were few, but definite and usually effective; they were threats, assaults and murders when the lighter ones did not prove effective. The special commission and investigations of the federal government did not succeed in their efforts to suppress these outrages, for the entire south lent its sympathy and support.

By means of such methods, and by the gradual extension of the amnesty to the white population, the political powers in the southern states were gradually returning into the hands of the white men, and of the Democratic party. The decrease in the Republican vote was caused primarily by the decrease in the negro vote. The suppression of the negro franchise began, as a matter of fact. as early as 1873. In South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas, where the negro population was greatest, more radical methods were resorted to. A series of revolutions followed. By armed force the white population kept the negroes from participating in the elections. In a few localities the negroes showed some fight, but the white men had all the advantage of a better organization. Besides, at the first smell of powder the carpet baggers hastened to escape and left the negroes without any leaders.

There still remained the federal troops; but the federal government was rapidly losing the desire to interfere in the southern race war. Southern Republicans often appealed to the federal government for assistance, but it was forthcoming less rapidly than before. In 1876, the newly elected President Hayes, after some conferences with southern committees who promised the preservation of law and order, ordered the removal of troops from the south. This was the beginning of the end of the negro domination.

What was the cause of this sudden change of heart of the federal government? First, the crisis of 1873 had turned the congress into the hands of the Democrats. Furthermore, the lawlessness which continued in the south was very undesirable from the point of view of northern capital, for the south remained unavailable for investments as long as this lawlessness continued. And last, but not least, an enormous quantity of southern bonds and other state securities filled the New York Exchange to overflowing, and made the money interests of the north very much concerned in the task of saving the south from bankruptcy.

Notwithstanding the dark picture drawn here, our judgment of the entire period of reconstruction must not be one of unqualified condemnation. It is natural for the southerner to take that extreme point of view. Twenty years later a southern writer summed up the situation in the following terse sentences: “It required,” said Mr. J.L. Curry, “the combination of all the strength, prestige, patriotism, patience, intelligence to save the country from becoming a second San Domingo. But for the successful resistance to ignorance, superstition, fanaticism, knavery, the grossest executive judicial and legislative outrages, there would to-day be no schools in the south, no protection to property.” After having lived through the period of reconstruction, the south was firmer than ever in the belief that the negro has demonstrated his racial inferiority, and furnished further proof, if such were necessary, of the necessity of white domination over the black man. And since in the south the opposition to the negro became identified with the opposition to the Republican party, therefore the southern view of the inferiority of the negro and his absolute unfitness for exercising his franchise gained many adherents in the Democratic ranks of the north.

Did the years of the reconstruction justify such a dark outlook? There is a great deal of truth in what Mr. Carl Schurtz had to sav in regard to this problem shortly before his death: “So tremendous a social revolution as a sudden transformation of almost the whole laboring force of a large country from slaves into free men could never have been effected quite smoothly without producing hot conflict of antagonistic interests and feelings and without giving birth to problems seeming at times almost impossible of solution.”

The introduction of negro suffrage in the south took place under peculiarly unfavorable circumstances. For in the painful events of the years 1868-1874 there were blended together the effects of at least three important forces, and the denial of franchise to a large body of white southerners, with the introduction of a large body of strangers, adventurers, was much more harmful in its effects than the granting of the franchise to the negroes.

Then, again, the very results of reconstruction were greatly exaggerated, so say the least. It is true that the period had a very depressing effect upon the finances of the south. But such revolting examples of graft are not confined to the south or to the period of reconstruction. The brass chandeliers of the Pennsylvania capitol may well be matched against the fine porcelain spittoons of South Carolina. Surely the negroes cannot be blamed if during the entire history of self-government in the United States graft and wild finance claimed such prominence. Bribery in the acquisition of offices, corrupt distribution of franchises, extravagant use of public funds, all this was very well known in this country long before the period of reconstruction, and this was not eliminated even after the negroes were by brute force deprived of their legal right to vote. And it is quite certain that even in the south to-day the municipal governments of the larger southern cities do not represent examples of civic purity of a higher standard than the large cities of the east or the middle west.

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the years of reconstruction had some very valuable salutary effects. Even an opponent was forced to admit that “the ballot indeed has won for the newly enfranchised every legal and civil right,” but he adds, “fearful has been the price which the country has paid for it, and direful the consequences.” After all, the evils of reconstruction become quite petty and unimportant when compared with the cost of the civil war itself and yet that price had to be paid to rid the country of the curse of chattel slavery. I have shown that after the war the south continued to strive for the re-establishment of slavery in reality if not in law. Surrounded by negro policemen, judges and legislators, the southern gentleman in the days of reconstruction took his revenge by refusing to address the negro as “Mister.” But during these days he also learned to fear the negro. And while successful revolutions which followed the days of reconstruction caused many restrictions of the rights of the negroes, nevertheless there was no more talk of a special black code or of limitations in the way of the negro who might want to acquire property.

Moreover the reconstruction days had awakened in the negro some political consciousness; it straightened his back that had been bent for two hundred and fifty years; it planted in his heart the desire for political emancipation. Reconstruction has left an ideal in the memory of the negro, which will eventually prove a real social force in the solution of the negro problem. Each and every nation is better off for having tried the enjoyment of human and civil rights than if it had never tasted of them at all.

V. The Reestablishment of White Supremacy. (September, 1908.)

WHEN THE PROMISE was given by the South that the rights of the negroes would be safeguarded, the federal troops were recalled. It is difficult to say how sincere the southerners were in giving that promise, but it is undoubtedly true, that the north expected tolerable relations to establish themselves between the white and the black after the elimination of the disturbing elements. “As soon as the negroes will begin to show confidence in the local white people, what reason will the latter have to deprive the black folks of their right to vote?’ reasoned a northern journalist. “Many different candidates will appear; what will interfere with their contending for their election before the mass of the black citizens?” No less sure was this journalist that the civil rights of the negroes would be safeguarded. For the south needs labor. Negro labor is the only existing labor. Even if there were a supply of white labor, the south nevertheless would need its negro labor. What reason then has the south to drive out its labor supply by means of unjust legislation? But before three years have passed, the political status of the negro has already become a matter of public discussion. The revolution of 1876 has given to the United States the Solid south, which has since voted for the democratic party. “The south has united not for democracy, but against the negroes,” says a southern writer. This however is only half the truth. For with equal truth it was asserted, by Henry Watterson in 1879, that the south united not against the negroes but against the republican party. Be this as it may, in 1879 it could already truly be said, that “the present political supremacy of the white race in at least five of the Southern States is the result of the violent exclusion or fraudulent suppression of the colored vote.” Nevertheless, at that time both northerners and southerners agreed that the negro franchise could not altogether be destroyed, in view of the existence of the 14th and 15th amendments to the constitution. But the South has succeeded in accomplishing the impossible, and the story of the gradual abolition of the negro’s right to vote is very instructive indeed.

In this process two methods must be distinguished. Firstly, the method of direct force and deception, and secondly, the method of special legislation. A combination of both factors was often used. As was shown in a preceding chapter, the very liberation of the South from negro domination or negro influence was accomplished by means of the first method, when “armed committees” interfered with the negro getting to the voter’s booth. To guarantee its victory, the white south continued to make use of these methods for many years after that, and even now this method is extensively used, and in some states, as for instance in Texas, almost exclusively relied upon. The uninitiated might ask: How can the system of government in a civilized country be built upon the foundation of brute force and fraud? But the only answer to this query is the fact that the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

But direct physical force and intimidation is an awkward and inconvenient method, which demands a constant expenditure of considerable nervous force. Having acquired the political power, the white men of the south were enabled to achieve the same ends by means of legal enactments. It is true that the inconvenient 15th amendment stood in the way, the amendment which had been passed for this very purpose. And for a long time this amendment did in fact force the white south to make use of various legal subterfuges, more or less unsatisfactory. Thus South Carolina made use of the methods of centralizing the administrative functions, so that the state functions were extended at the expense of the local self-government, and thus the counties which did have a majority of negroes, were governed more from the state capital than from the county seat. More popular was the method of a poll tax, upon which the right to vote was made conditional. Thus poll taxes exist in Arkansas, Virginia, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and other states. This measure was based upon the simple consideration that the poor negro would not be able to pay the poll tax, and so would lose the vote. This method still exists, and not only for the sake of the ` negro vote, but the vote of the poor man and the workingman in general. Nevertheless, by itself this method was found unsatisfactory, since it could be and really was counteracted by a very simple method, the republican party readily undertaking the payment of the poll tax, so that it soon became a tax upon the party treasuries. In the eighties the methods of complicating the election technicalities became very popular. This method has also survived in some states. It is rather a combination of a great many methods, all aiming at one purpose to so embarrass the ignorant negro voter, that he should commit some technical mistake which would permit his disfranchisement. Or it may be the method of registration and the demand of the registry certificate, which may often be lost by the ignorant, negro. To make this method more effective, the registration is taking place very early in September or even in July, so that the negro is forced to save his little ticket for many months. The strangest tricks were used in connection with this method. Thus the story runs, that in one district in South Carolina, the negroes had entrusted their tickets to their preacher, and a few days before the day of election the preacher for a respectable remuneration from the democrats vanished from his parish and took his box full of registry tickets with him. In another county a circus was traveling some weeks before the elections but after the registration day, and by agreement with the democrats it was accepting voting tickets in lieu of tickets of admission! The law of 1891 of the state of Arkansas, is interesting as an illustration of the shrewd schemes which the southern democrats made use of in order to accomplish their purpose. The names of all candidates for all positions and of all parties were printed upon the long ballot without any distinctions as to the party. If the ignorant negro was in doubt as to which names he should vote for, and which names he should cross out, he was permitted to apply to the voting inspectors or judges, who were invariably white persons. These honorable gentlemen then direct the ignorant negro to vote to their entire satisfaction. Moreover only one voter at a time was permitted in the booth, and the law permitted him to stay there about five minutes. Thus in a negro district only 132 men could vote during the 11 hours while the polls remained open, and by five o’clock in the afternoon a large crowd of negroes remained outside the doors who did not get a chance to deposit their vote. “The law works smoothly, quietly, satisfactorily, beautifully, and I pray God every Southern state may soon have one like it,” says a southern official of this arrangement.

But all these laws made the suppression of the negro vote a matter of considerable difficulty. The legal talent of the South continued to seek a better method, which would be legal, and therefore work in automatic manner with a lesser expenditure of energy. Poverty and illiteracy were the prominent characteristics of the negroes; nevertheless, the South for a long time did not dare to base its voting qualifications upon poverty and illiteracy alone, for there were large numbers of poor and among the representatives of the superior race as well.

The first experiment in establishing the educational qualification was made by the state of Mississippi, in 1890, when the demand was made that the voter should be able to read a paragraph of the constitution and understand and explain it. And as the examiners were without exception white officers. they could and did ask the queerest questions, which the negro could not satisfactorily answer. But, then again, there were many white people as well who could not understand the difficult legal language of the constitution. At that time there were in the state of Mississippi 544,851 white persons, and 744,749 colored persons; or 109,000 white men and 149,000 ‘negroes of the voting age. The law of 1890 should have derived about two thirds of the negroes and about 1-11th of the white men of their vote; as a matter of fact, the arbitrary rulings could exclude practically all the negroes and include all the white men.

With a certain increase of the educational standing and the economic position of the white men, the educational and property qualifications became more popular as a method of getting rid of the negro voter. Nevertheless, impartially executed, these laws would undoubtedly exclude a considerable number of the white voters. But the legal talents of the southern profession soon found a way to get around this difficulty.

At present the negro disfranchisement is practically complete in the following states: Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama. North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, which states contain about six million negroes.

Of these six states four have established a property qualification, to the amount of $300, (Alabama, Louisiana. Virginia, and South Carolina) and three have an educational qualification. The main feature of these new legislative measures consists in the methods used for achieving the results aimed at, i.e., to exclude the white men from the action of these restrictive qualifications. As neither race nor color could be a decisive factor in determining the franchise, it became the duty of the legislator to find a characteristic in the white man, which should be especially his, and yet not based upon his race. Such distinguishing feature was found in the fact that the father or grandfather of the white man of to-day had the right to vote before 1865. Thus the grandfather clause was passed in Virginia and Alabama and Louisiana, which includes the ignorant white man, but excludes the equally ignorant black man.

If any doubt could exist as to real intention of these restrictive legislative measures, the frank statements of their authors leave absolutely no room for such doubt. The stenographic reports of the proceedings of the constitutional assemblies which have framed these new constitutional provisions in Alabama and Virginia, in 1901, contain any number of such frank admissions. Thus in advocating not only the reading test, but the interpretation test, one of the delegates in the Virginia assembly openly admitted, “We think that it will be efficient because we do not believe that the Negro can stand the examination…But it would not be frank in me, Mr. Chairman, if I did not say that I do not expect an understanding clause to be administered with any degree of friendship by the white man to the franchise of the black man. I expect the examination with which the black man will be confronted to be inspired by the same spirit that inspires every man upon this floor and in this convention…The people of Virginia do not stand impartially between the suffrage of the white man and the suffrage of the black man…If they did, this convention would not be assembled upon this floor. I expect this clause to be efficient because it will act to terrorize the negro race. They believe that they will have a hostile examination put upon them by the white man, and ‘they believe that that will be a preventative to their exercising the suffrage and they will not apply for registration.”

The examination and grandfather clause were recognized throughout as great discoveries which the entire south would not fail to follow. And whether the means used be the grandfather clause, or the examination, or the property qualification, or a combination of all these methods together, the disfranchisement of the negroes will not only be completed but legalized as well. Even now, what some states have succeeded in legalizing other states realize by means of the older methods of deception and brutal force. And not the least characteristic part of the situation is the fact that the south is very proud of its results and not ashamed of its means. “The only fraud I have ever permitted myself to believe is righteous, and to teach my sons in righteous, is that fraud which makes it possible for the white man to rule the South,” frankly admits a southern man. Moreover the southerner points with pride at this desire to legalize this deception and this brutal exercise of force, as an evidence of his moral sense, which revolted at the long practice of the questionable practices. “We are tired of frauds, we are tired of ballot box stuffing, we are tired of buying negro votes; but the fraud will never cease until the Negro vote is eliminated.”

But these truth loving southern gentlemen seem to have quite forgotten, that the very legalization of these measures was accomplished on a fraudulent basis, since the new constitutions were formed by conventions to which no negro was admitted, and this was achieved by means of the old methods.

The opposition of these measures to the spirit of the constitutional amendments was to evident that the negroes have been making many efforts to have these measures declared unconstitutional, and such efforts are still being contemplated; but the U.S. Supreme court has invariably refused to raise a finger in defense of the political rights of 10 million American citizens.

We shall be forced to return more than once to the grave problem of the inequality of the negro before the law, which after all is the central feature of the entire negro problem. Here our effort is simply to present the facts in the case. And the facts in brief are these: After the short period of negro supremacy followed the much longer period of white supremacy, which is becoming more and more absolute from day to day. If the use of brute force and deception were justified in the end of the seventies by the urgent necessity of freeing the south from negro domination, and the revolutions in Mississippi, South Carolina, and several other states were explained as measures of war, the newer legal measures as well as the illegal ones aim at a different purpose, the total elimination of the negro from the political life of the country. The justification of these restrictions on the plea of the undesirability of the franchise of the ignorant and the propertyless class, often made, and frequently taken in good faith by many mild northerners. is altogether insincere, since active measures are taken to deprive of the vote the very educated and the best negroes, and brute force and intimidation is used even there where the negroes are in such hopeless minority: that there could be no reasonable fear of their supremacy. These actions are now frequently justified in a different way. Now, it is no more the danger of negro supremacy, but the objection to negro equality; and the necessity of destroying the negro’s right to vote is defended solely from the point of view that such right is one of the important elements of race equality. To put the matter in plain English, it is no more the avowed danger of negro supremacy, but the necessity or at least the desire to guarantee and preserve the white supremacy, that is the moving force behind those crimes against the law and the rights of the negro.

Now then, still remaining at the simple statement of conditions as they exist, without endeavoring at this stage of our study to critically analyze and estimate them, we will try to ‘answer the question: what were the results of these thirty years of the white supremacy, which is becoming more and more absolute? What has it contributed to the relations between the races? One cannot help drawing some comparisons between the periods of negro and that of white supremacy, though in view of the widely different educational and cultural levels of the whites and the negroes, such comparisons could not be very fair to the negro. Yet on the other hand such comparisons are made by almost all the writers on the negro question, by journalists and public speakers, who by means of a comparison of the awful days of reconstruction and the present benevolent system of government, try to establish the entire theory of the supremacy of the white race.

Now, the main indictment of the negro legislator consisted in the statements that he was not slow to graft upon public funds, or oftener permitted his white allies to do the grafting.

On the other hand it must be admitted, that he was not moved by considerations of race hatred, that he did not try to pass any laws which would indicate any desire to suppress and lower the white race as such, no matter what the negro majority was. When the white southerner claims that the period after reconstruction has seen the introduction of many important improvements, the white man has in view only the improvements of the condition of the white man. He either naively enough leaves out of consideration the aggravation of the condition of the negro, or more frequently considers that. change in the opposite direction as one of the most important features of the improved condition of affairs.

I should very much like to give a concise and yet complete picture of the legal condition of the negro at the present time, but I am decidedly at a difficulty to know just where to begin. For by this time there is scarcely any manifestation of life, public or private, politic, physical, mental, moral or social, in which the negro is not put into peculiar, restrictive conditions because of his race. Not a single day passes in the life of the negro, that he should not be reminded in a more or less cruel way that he cannot enjoy all the civil rights of an American citizen. Nevertheless all these restrictions, al] the insults and injuries may be. divided into two great groups: those which are legalized by the special laws, and those which represent the free actions of the majority of the white citizens. The classification offered here may not have any scientific significance, since the legalized restrictions are no more than an expression of the sentiments of the same white citizens of the south. Nevertheless, it is these legislative restrictions which mostly incense the negro of the south, as well as the outside observer, who has been accustomed to the basic idea of the equality of all American citizens before the law.

It is necessary to point out the important fact, that while the fifteenth amendment forbids the making of race or color distinctions the basis of electoral qualification, it does not forbid all other legislation restrictive of the negro’s rights It is true, that as early as 1875 the U.S. Congress had passed ` the bill of civil rights, which aimed to guarantee to all the American citizens, independently of their race or color, certain rights in public places, as hotels. restaurants, theatres, railroad cars, etc. But the supreme court has found that this bill was an infringement of the independence of the state, and therefore unconstitutional as far as the states are concerned.

Most important among the mass of restrictive legislative measures are the laws for the “separation of the races.” If the white man of the south does not admit a negro into his house, except on business and then through the back door, this is a condition which the law has no concern for. Nor can it interfere with the white man’s decision never to enter the cabin of the negro, except under the pressure of necessity. But the many public places remain where the negroes might meet the white men, unless the legislative power interfered. To prevent such accidental and involuntary association; many restrictive laws have been passed by the southern legislatures. A characteristic example are the Jim Crow car laws, to prevent the negro brushing against the white man in the railroad or street cars. This peculiar southern institution has served more than any other measure to aggravate the relations between the races. The worst, oldest, dirtiest cars are usually put at the disposal of the negroes, though they pay the same fare for which the white men obtain far better accommodations. In defense of this measure the white southerner usually insists that the negro smells, and that it is impossible for a white man to travel comfortably when sitting next to a negro. Now, whether the accusation, if such it be, is true or not, we will not dare to say. If the smell be as claimed, a strong, characteristic and peculiar one, an unexperienced northerner should be expected to perceive it much sooner than the southerner who has lived all his life among the colored people. Yet the southerner persists that he is much more able to discover the obnoxious smell. So be it. Yet the question remains, why the southerner before the war did not object to the closest relations between the black wet nurse and the white nursling; moreover, neither in the past nor in the present has the peculiar and obnoxious smell interfered with the still closer relations to which the enormous number of mulattoes and quadroons is due. And while the southerner cheerfully agrees that the peculiar smell is strongest in the case of the dirty and poor negro, while he is always glad to point out that in part at least the smell is due to the dirty habits of the negro, nevertheless, he admits the negro servant or nurse into his car, on the Pullman sleeper, but draws the line at the cultured negro professor, who is at least as cleanly as the average southerner. Nor does he seriously object to the negro barber.

Thus the objection to the negro smell, or perhaps the very smell itself, vanish altogether as soon as the negro is willing to admit his lower social position, as soon as he performs a menial duty. For the same ostensible reason, the negro smell, but in reality the same desire to “keep the negro in his place,” dozens of laws have been passed, and hundreds of regulations, though not all legal, but all no less binding and peremptory, are enforced in the south and are spreading even over the north. A negro, no matter how small his share of the negro blood in him is not admitted to any decent hotel, cannot get sleeping accommodations during traveling. Of course the negro Pullman porter has no difficulty in sleeping in the Pullman car, but this courtesy is not extended to Professor DuBois, or Bruce, or Booker Washington, gentlemen as cultured as any in the United States. And it is not the least peculiar part of this Railway car question, that the man who was instrumental in extending this regulation over the Pullman service of the entire country, the present manager of the Pullman car service, is a son of Abraham Lincoln.

Another method by means of which the South hopes to bring about the desired separation of the races, is the prohibition of mixed marriages. Not only have most of the southern states passed laws prohibiting such marriages, but they refuse to recognize such marriages no matter where performed, and severe punishment is provided both for the parties to the marriage contract and the clergyman. The state of Florida is even more explicit, and specifically forbids persons of different sexes and races to sleep under one roof. It would be difficult. to say how successful this legislation is, for there is no available statistics in regard to the increase of the number of persons of the mixed race, but the mixture never took place under legitimate wedlock, and biologically, the southern man never did, and does not now feel any aversion to the negro or mulatto woman, since concubinage, if not marriage, is quite popular even in the best classes of some of the southern cities.

This tendency to keep the races apart, or rather to constantly point out to the negro his social inferiority expresses itself in many other ways. In many cities the negro is forbidden from entering the reading rooms of public libraries, and he surely cannot obtain accommodations in any respectable hotel, or a meal in a decent restaurant. Separate schools for the children of the two races have become the usual thing even in the north, and even so fair-minded a man as Charles Elliott, the president of Harvard University. has advocated separate institutions of learning. Theatres either do not admit negroes at all, or in a few cases, or on the fringe of the south admit them only to the peanut gallery. This in a way gives us a clue to the entire question of race separation: the negro is not good enough to sit next to a rich white man in the orchestra, but there is no objection against his sitting next to the poor man in the gallery!

Thus the law in its majesty frequently throws insults after insults into the face of the great mass of the negro citizens. When it does not do so directly, it does not take great care to protect the negro in his human and civil rights. And how could it? Or rather, why should it? The judges are all white, the officers of the law also white men. The court and the district attorney’s office are agreed that the negro should not be drawn on a jury. The negro is therefore always tried by a white man’s jury, and in view of the mental attitude of the southern white man towards the negro, one can readily understand what sort of justice the black man gets, especially when the other litigant is a white man, or when the negro is accused of a crime against a white man.

Now this southern legislation, of which fair examples have been given above. only expresses the wishes and thoughts of the white south: and one can easily see therefore, that in every day life these limitations and restrictions of the negro’s rights and liberty are much more severe. If in the legislature the southerner demands separation of the races, and adds with a considerably dose of hypocrisy, “we do not intend to harm the black man. We think that both races will be happier when they do not intermingle. We have our separate car, and he has his separate car. I must not ride in his car, and he must not ride in my car.” If that serves as the official justification of the restrictions imposed, he is perfectly willing to acknowledge in private life, that the principle of separation of the races, does not cover the entire case of the negro, that to this must be added the other more important principle of the superiority of the white race, or what reduces itself to the same thing, the inherent inferiority of the black race. In the white southern man’s opinion, this superiority of the white man gives the latter a long list of specific rights and privileges. He need not address the negro as “Mister”, but has the right to whip the negro who does not call him “Sir”, He demands that the negro should yield him the right of way everywhere, and should get off the sidewalk when meeting a white woman. The negro must be polite and considerate, but must tolerate all acts of rudeness from the white man, for he belongs to the lower race. In other words, the general point of view is, that there is a moral obligation upon the black man, to act like a gentleman, while no such obligation rests upon representative of the higher race.

V. The Reestablishment of White Supremacy, Continued. (October, 1908.)

Such are a few of the results of the epoch of the white man supremacy upon the fate of the 10 millions of negroes living in the south. Such oppression of the conquered and beaten foe the negroes never practiced in the worst days of the black man’s supremacy. Every day in his life the colored man, or even the man who by the faintest symptoms discloses his partial relationship with the African race, is reminded that he is not a full citizen of the country in which he was born, but only a tolerated pariah, a despised and a hated intruder; and this relation is justified by the plea, that he is a member of a lower, i.e., a less cultured, a less intellectually developed race; but the peculiar paradox is that the more cultured, the more intellectual, the more like the superior race the colored man or woman is, the more is he hated and despised. This relation between the races undoubtedly represents a noticeable aggravation of conditions as compared with those before the war; and this is frequently pointed out by the southerners» who, nevertheless, entirely misunderstand the real nature of the changes that have taken place.

The facts themselves are undisputable. Says a very intelligent southern observer: “To-day there is practically no social intercourse between the two races, excepting such as exists between the negroes and the most degraded white. It was far different in slavery. Then the two races mingled freely together, not in terms of social equality but in very extended and constant social intercourse. In almost every household the children of the two races played and frolicked together, or hunted, fished or swam together in the fields, streams and forests…Social intercourse between white and black during slavery was not confined to children. Visits to the slave cabin were made regularly, often daily, by the white woman of the household, who went not merely to visit the sick and inspect the children, to advise and direct about work and household matters, but to show her personal interest and regard for the negroes themselves, not as slaves nor workers, but as individuals, as human beings and sometimes as dear friends. In short a social visit was made; not upon terms of social equality but still a social visit during which the news of the plantation or neighborhood was exchanged and discussed…The mistress sewed or cut garments in the same room with the slave seamstresses. The lady’s maid slept upon a couch or pallet in the lady’s chamber or the one adjoining…But the social intercourse between the races in the south which was so helpful to the blacks, has now practically ceased. The children of this generation no longer play and frolic together, while ladies no longer visit negro cabins.”

Nevertheless, the new relations have naturally developed from the soil of the old patriarchal relations of the slavery times. For the foundation of the new relations must be sought in the slavery that had existed so recently and in the natural results of the destruction of that patriarchal atmosphere which had in those earlier days somewhat softened, and in the eyes of the southerners, even justified slavery. The preceding pages of this study have, it is hoped, shown conclusively enough, that these conceptions of the lower race, and the impossibility of the equality of rages, have had their foundations laid some three centuries ago. And the memories of the civil war, and the days of reconstruction, have only added some venom and bitterness to these views.

It must be conceded that the majority of the restrictions indicated above materially affect only the higher circles of the negro race. At the bottom of the social ladder, where intellectual life is very much limited, and the entire existence is reduced to one elemental struggle for its own preservation, the insults to one’s self-respect or vanity are much less felt, and even seldom noticed at all. The proletarian negro does not make any efforts to be admitted to the theatre, or to the fashionable hotel, and when travelling on the railroad, pays a great deal less attention to the surroundings and the comforts of the car. Nevertheless, it would be quite wrong to conclude therefrom that the negro problem is only a problem of the owning classes, or of the educated few. The negro laborer or skilled worker feels the damnation of his race almost as acutely. One must not forget, that negro-hating has entered into its worst stage,—the stage of fashion. The lowest classes of the superior white race imitate the higher classes except that they express their hatred of the negro in a much rougher, cruder manner. The white workingman refuses to work next to the black workingman, and in the industrial development of the south, the black race gets only the roughest sort of work. The negro will not be permitted to work like the white man and women behind one of the looms of a cotton factory, though he may be employed at the subsidiary occupation of cleaning up the factory. Thus the poor and underpaid white factory slaves of the south still preserve, or think that they preserve, their right to look down upon the black man. Even disregarding the mental effects of such discrimination, the material interests of the colored workingman are very visibly affected thereby.

But, to be frank, how could one for a moment imagine that with the total destruction of the participation of the negroes in the framing of the laws, and in the administration, and in view of the natural enmity which the events of the preceding decades have created, that in view of such conditions the essential rights will remain unmolested, their interests not injured? It is true that the regenerated capitalistic southerner does not any more openly dream of the reestablishment of slavery, though he still sighs after the convenient custom of slavery. It is true that the south has had time and opportunity to learn the blessings of free labor. Nevertheless the southerner’s conception of what constitutes free labor, is a peculiar one, and the southerner has always approved of methods of “reasonable” compulsion of that free labor.

In speaking of the period immediately following the civil war, I have indicated the many special laws against vagrancy, which were passed for the special benefit of the negroes, and made possible the instantaneous arrest and public sale of many negroes into temporary slavery or what amounted to such, for the slightest infringement of the laws, or without any such infringement at all.

Since then, the special black code. i.e., the special criminal code for the black race. was abolished, but the exceptional position of the negro before the law has remained in fact, if not in theory. For the south, impoverished as it was by the war and the subsequent years of reconstruction, the system of renting out their criminals and making them a source of revenue instead of expense, had its signal advantages, and the ignorant mass of negroes, among whom petty infringements of laws were naturally very frequent furnished excellent material for increase of state revenues. The white judges acted as if they were trying to collect from the negro vagrants the damages which the white south had suffered during the short days of the negro domination. In the eighties when the southern writer Cable was investigating this problem, the practice of renting out the negro criminals had reached enormous dimensions. The practice embraced tens of thousands of negroes annually. The negro criminal’s labor was not only sold in the prison building, but was even permitted to leave the prison for the farm of the purchaser, and when these criminals were taken out in chains to work on private plantations, very little difference could be found between this and slavery labor. As the very interesting investigations of Cable have shown, the southern criminal records included ten times as many negroes as ‘whites, and the average sentence of the negro was at least twice as long as that of the white man; the heavy sentences often reached the limits of absurdity, as when, in 1879 a Georgia negro was sentenced to twenty years’ hard labor for stealing a pig.

But enforced “free” labor in the south was not at all limited to the real criminals. This form of enforced labor has somewhat abated in the south within the recent years, but a new form of such enforced labor has sprung up in several southern states, of a much more contemptible form. That the question of peonage could become acute in the beginning of the twentieth century, serves as the best proof imaginable how the suppression of the political rights has influenced the material condition of the negro in the south, and how far material advantage was behind this effort of political oppression.

Within the last few years cases of peonage have been discovered in the states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi. Not only the pettiest crimes, or even the failure to pay debts, have been used as a pretext for the state authorities to come to the assistance of the southern planter in establishing the system of peonage, but often nothing but plain brute force could be cited in defense of the practice. Either criminals who have served their term were not permitted to leave their camps, or other negroes were hunted down and brought into the camp. It is almost incredible, yet true nevertheless, and thoroughly established by documentary evidence, before various investigation committees, and before the juries of various states.

It was established by these committees and before these juries, that the system of peonage has been quite extensive in _these two states and several others, and that it existed under direct support of local legislatures, administration, and judiciary. The criminal prosecution of the planters guilty of practicing this system of peonage was only possible because of the federal statutes. The investigation disclosed not only the wide spread nature of these practices, since in Alabama alone 99 cases of peonage came to the knowledge of the courts, but also the extremely cruel treatment of the peons.

These disclosures have called out many expressions of condemnation in the American press. But that these facts could exist for many years without the northern press knowing anything about it, and without the southern press, which could not help knowing them, saying anything about it, may serve as a characteristic symptom of the present status of the negro question. No less significant is the fact, that in the first case which came up for trial in Alabama, it was impossible to get a conviction. There could be seen one of the practical results of the ineligibility of negroes for jury service.

It is true, that the jurymen, who insisted upon the acquittal were severely censured by the federal judge. It is true that verdicts of guilty were brought out in other cases; that the northern press loudly proclaimed its deep satisfaction, and that even some southern newspapers insisted that these verdicts denoted a signal improvement in the condition of the negroes in the south.

But it is no less significant, that the South was very far from unanimous in its condemnation of peonage, and that even a northern paper, the famous New York Herald,—which in its long career has defended every vicious political condition in this country as well as in many foreign countries,— that the New. York Herald thought it proper to come out in defense of the southern planter, with the argument that cotton culture could not get along without contract labor, and without the use of corporal punishment and arm force in the effort “to enforce the contract. Said the southern planter, as reported by the New York Herald: “Whether Judge Jones has declared this law constitutional or not, the planters in the black belt will have to maintain their right to reclaim their contract labor, or else they will have to go out of business. Under any other system you would find it impossible to get in your cotton, because the negroes at the critical time would simply sit down and refuse to work. When they are well, we compel our laborers to go to field by force.” When asked by the reporter whether he had ever whipped a negro himself, the planter answered: “Yes, I have, we have to do it once in a while. A negro ran away, from me, and hid in the next plantation, eleven miles away. I went after him with my negro foreman. I took him out of the cabin with a revolver in my hand and drove him home. There I took it out of him with a buggy whip, while the negro foreman held him.” These arguments of the southern planters need not ‘be dignified with any serious economic refutation. But what is extremely significant and noteworthy, is the defense of enforced, practically slave, labor forty years after the emancipation of the slaves. It is perhaps worth while to point out, that by far not all this peonage labor is the result of a free contract, as the southern planter would have us believe. Thus in the very trial, which ended in the disagreement of the jury, the case was of a young negro boy, who was forced to work in payment of a fine for no greater a crime than vagrancy–vagrancy in a country which has no passport system.

The preceding dry enumeration of specific cases of suppression of the rights of the negroes, does not give any vivid picture of the real situation. To do that, it is not enough to be a painstaking observer of facts; only a great artist could give a true picture, which should convey the proper impression to one who has never lived in the south. Barring such direct experiences and observations, it would be necessary to quote hundreds of concrete illustrations so as to build up synthetically the true story of that suffocating atmosphere in which must spend all his life the negro of even limited culture, intelligence and sensitiveness. To the northerner, and even more the man who has come to learn the ways and habits of this country from abroad, these facts are often horrible. blood-boiling. Often his sense of justice is wounded most by those little incidents which may not have any serious import in themselves, but serve as an illustration of the general attitude towards the entire race. Such an incident, which remained perfectly beyond the comprehension of European society was the celebrated White House breakfast with Booker Washington, at the President’s table. It was only a few months before that incident occurred, that the attitude of the south in regard to such matters, was succinctly stated by that fanatical negro hater, John Temple Graves:

“Take Booker Washington. He is the type and embodiment of all worth and all achievement in his race. His linen is as clear as yours. His fame is broader than the repute of any statesman in this hall. His character stainless and unimpeachable, defies criticism. His patriotism is clear, his courtesy unfailing. And yet I challenge this conference with a proposition: What man of you, gentlemen, philosophers, statesmen, metaphysicians, problem solvers that you are, what man of you would install this great and blameless negro in your guest chamber tonight?

Would you do this now? Would you do it tomorrow? Would you do it in ten years? When would you do it? And why would you refuse to do it?”

Evidently, Graves was sure of his answer.

How relentless is the southerner in his pursuit of the negro, and how strong his desire to destroy all vestiges of civil rights, the following case may serve to illustrate. It was mentioned above, that the courts of the southern states systematically exclude the negroes from the jury box. Not only the democratic judges of the State courts, but even the republican judges of the federal courts are equally relentless in this practice. In 1898 in the state of Louisiana, a very light mulatto was accidentally selected to serve on a jury, because even the southern gentlemen did not recognize in him a member of the negro race. During the very first recess the fact leaked out, that a “negro” was among the twelve men good and true, and the remaining eleven jurymen immediately signed a protest against the inclusion of the mulatto, and by agreement of the counsel and the state attorney with the judge the negro was “excused.” The incident caused a great deal of commotion among the negro population of the town and a protest against the action of the federal judge was sent to the U.S. Senate, where a resolution was immediately passed commanding the Attorney General to investigate the incident. In reply to this inquiry, the Attorney General presented letters from the judge as well as from the prosecuting attorney in the case, stating that they had the perfect, right to remove the juryman, that this did not constitute any infringement of the man’s rights, that in fact they were forced to act in the way they did, for otherwise they would have never have been able to get a jury together, as the other jurymen absolutely refused to serve in conjunction with that man; that the case was going to be a long one, and would necessitate the jury sleeping and eating together. These explanations were considered satisfactory by the senate, and the case was dropped.

It was stated above, that mixed marriages are prohibited and are not recognized by law. Some five years ago the following case occurred in Alabama. A white woman, who had been married to a “white negro” for about fifteen years, after his death demanded her part of the estate. The court of the first instance refused her petition on the plea that, her marriage was illegal, notwithstanding the fact that, she had stated that at the time of her marriage she did not know that her husband belonged to the negro race. The supreme court of her state affirmed the decision of the lower court.

It is well known, that all state officers are absolutely beyond the reach of the negroes in the south. But a great many public offices and positions in the South are filled from Washington, and when the federal government is in the hand of the Republican party, petty positions are frequently given to negroes in payment of the negro’s support of the republican party. This is now recognized as a historical institution, but the southern protests against this practice are becoming stronger and stronger every day, no matter how petty the position given to the negro. The case in the little town of Indianola is still vivid in the memories of all, when the appointment of a negro as postmaster has called out such disorders that the Post Office Department was forced to close the post office of that town. It is true that the federal service has a long and complicated civil service act, which on the whole works quite well. But this excepts the negroes. Ifa negro who has passed the best civil service examination 1s appointed to the petty position of a letter carrier, the most southern towns force the resignation of such a letter carrier by threats, intimidation, and even do not stop at direct violence.

These few characteristic cases are sufficient for our purpose, for they illustrate the tendency, which has grown up upon the basis of material interests, but, is now extending to all possible forms of social life. The relations are not improved either by the education of the black men. For if the French author Dumas or the great Russian poet Pushkin, both of whom had a strong vein of negro blood in them, were to live in the south to-day, they would be treated no better than any other ordinary “n***r”. A Virginia physician, residing in Washington, stated to me without any feeling of shame, that negroes were making life intolerable in Washington, for there he dare not knock down a negro, who does not leave a sidewalk when meeting him. Medical societies refuse to admit negro physicians into their membership, no matter what their personal achievements. One cannot help indorsing the words of Judge Powell of Mississippi, in reference to the efforts of several towns in that state to expel all their negroes from their limits: “I confess, gentlemen, I cannot understand this foolish hostility to the negro. He is here without his consent, and here undoubtedly he must remain in large numbers. He has been eliminated by our constitution and laws from all political control. He asks not for social recognition. He only asks the poor privilege of working for his daily bread in peace, and to indulge in hope that, the coming years may bring something better to his posterity. We of white race have all the offices of power, from Governor to constable, and the negro is simply the creature of our mercy. It strikes me that for us to oppress where we should protect, to debase where we might lift up, is unmanly and unworthy of the proud race to which we belong.”

The sympathetic judge did not even suspect that in the very deliverance of one part of the population into the tender mercy of the other part lay the real secret of this persecution and injustice.

So much for the negro in the South, and his place, the place the southerner gives him. What of the negro in the North. There he has no place at all. Says the Northerner: “We have no place for the negro. We don’t like him. Take him away.”

Thus a Southern lady writing in an English magazine an apology for the Southern treatment of the negro.

In these words is seen the characteristic desire of the southerner to show that the negro is worse off in the North than in the south and that the North therefore has nothing to reproach the South with. It is scarcely necessary to say that this point of view represents an extreme exaggeration. That the negro is better off in the north than he is in the south, is shown by the fact that the immigration of the negroes northward is growing, notwithstanding the unfavorable climate of the north. Thus in the North Atlantic states the total number of negroes during the decade 1890-1900 increased from 269,906 to 385,020 or by 42.6 per cent, while the increase of the negroes in the country at large was only 18.1 per cent. But it is certainly true that the conditions in the north are far from ideal for the negro, especially the intelligent, cultured negro. It is true that there are no legislative restrictions of the civil or political rights of the negro, and that the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the constitution have been of some permanent value to the negro of the north. The political rights of the negro once granted remained inviolable. The social intolerance towards the negro, has somewhat decreased, though it has not yet vanished altogether. Sporadic instances of the revival of the old feelings occur now and then. While the president, has not hesitated to put Mr. Booker Washington at his table and treat him as his equal, nevertheless, the aristocratic white servants of the rich still eat at a separate table from the negro servant. While the theatres admit the negroes, yet every now and then the demands of a southerner in regard to the ejection of a negro patron are complied with. First class hotels still persist in declining to serve negroes, but the majority of the second class hotels are getting rid of this race pride. The majority of the Northern Universities, (though by no means all) admit negro male students on terms of absolute equality with the white students, and among the male students there occasionally may be found absolute freedom from the racial prejudice. But the condition of affairs is different in the female colleges, most of which firmly decline to accept any students with ever so slight an admixture of negro blood. In those few colleges, where female negro students are admitted, the white students refuse to have anything at all to do with them. The terrible scandal which was caused by the discovery that one of the students in the aristocratic Vassar was found to be a negress, i.e., a white girl with such a small mixture of negro blood that there was no trace of it in her appearance, is still remembered by many. On the other hand many state and municipal institutions receive negro students of both sexes without any restrictions whatsoever. Here the state appears to .be a progressive force in comparison with some social strata. In the majority of the northern cities the common schools are the same for both races, though in some cities the local feeling has forced separation. New York City has even seen a few negro school teachers in classes of white children, though their position was not enviable and they often wandered from one school to another.

In general, it may be said, that the north is more ready to recognize the rights of the prominent exceptional negro; the capitalist, the artist, scientist, poet, writer, etc., while the south is emphatically opposed to any such favorable distinctions; “once a n***r always a n***r,” and that is all there is to it; that is the southerner’s absolute decree. Northern papers and magazines frequently invite the collaboration of negro writers and public men; the south does not think that the best negro is capable of saying anything that is worth listening to. The northerner is less fanatical to the presence of a drop of negro blood; and if the drop is slight, and not noticeable, is willing to disregard it.

Nevertheless, those rude incidents which with relentless cruelty remind the negro of his belonging to a lower race, and which are so frequent in the south, are sometimes met with in the north as well. Here a negro will be forced out of his honest employment, there a neighborhood will rise in revolt at a perfectly respectable negro buying a house on the exclusive street.

In the northern cities those cases excite some attention, so as to be recorded in the daily press, while in the south the situation is so well agreed upon, that no paper would consider it worth while mentioning it, and so a search through the files of northern papers might, disclose a great number of these cases. Yet one cannot tell that these cases represent a well formed plan or attitude towards the negro. The average northerner of some education and intelligence will not permit himself to express any prejudice towards the negroes, but when it is a question of personal relations in private life, one can find side by side with many cases of absolute tolerance, also numerous cases of a feeling of disgust, which the persons affected do not all try to analyze. On one hand it is an unconscious survival of the old, on the other it shows the effect of the moral contamination of the south, the effect of fashion, and imitation.

And this effect of fashion is remarkably well displayed by the northerners who come down to live in the south. For the average American is nothing but a faithful slave of fashion, and is dreadfully afraid of any effort to overcome and resist it. Before the average northerner has lived a week in the south, he stops calling the negro “mister”, and loudly proclaims the doctrine of the inferiority of the negro race. In this the southerner finds the strongest corroboration of the justice of his own attitude on the question, disregarding the fact that the northerner does not change his opinion out of any serious considerations or study of conditions, but simply out of the desire to fall in line, which makes his future business and personal relations with local society so much easier and pleasanter. Thus because of the increasing intercourse between the north and the south, the contamination of race hatred is enabled to find its victims far beyond the geographical limits within which it is historically logical.

VI. Lynch Law. (January, 1909.)

Lynchings may be said to represent the most sensitive aspects of the entire negro problem. In the opinion of the North, as well as of Europe, they are the substance of the negro problem, for it is during these sudden outbreaks of race hatred and riot, that the outside world wakes up to the existence of the negro problem in the south, as it takes a pogrom in Kishenev or Odesso for us to realize the existence of the Jewish problem in Russia.

If the preceding installments of this study have been of any use at all, they must have sufficiently established the existence of a very real problem without any lynchings or race riots at all, which were intentionally left out of consideration, for it was the purpose to study first the normal aspects of the situation, leaving the sensational symptoms for special consideration. Nevertheless it remains true that the race conflict and the outlawed condition of the negro receive their most forcible expression in these dramatic occurrences. And the practice of lynchings is of such utmost importance in the understanding of the entire problem that a separate chapter will not be out of proportion to the subject as a whole.

That the history of the lynch law has waited until 1905 for the first systematic study (Lynch Law, An investigation into the History of lynching in the United States, by Professor J.E. Cutler, New York, 1905), is a sad but eloquent commentary upon the primitive condition of the study of social and institutional history of this country.

Neither the origin of the institution nor that of the name has ever been satisfactorily established. There is a common belief that this form of administration of justice has arisen in the far West during the forties. Such historical inquiries would be out of place here. But it is clear that the usurpation of that term by the south, as well as the throwing together of these two classes of phenomena is of very little help, since it obscures the many differences for the sake of a few superficial similarities. It is true that both are (or pretend to be) forms of spontaneous administration of justice; but this does not bring us anywhere, for efforts at spontaneous administration of justice or vengeance are just as old as human society. In fact they are admitted to have been the forerunners of the more formal judicial procedure. Much more important is the fact that historically the lynchings of the South have very little to do with the administration of the lynch law in the primitive pioneer communities of the Wild West. The southern lynchings are an immediate development of the practices of the Ku Klux Klan, which have been described in a preceding chapter.

But in view of the general confusion on the subject it may perhaps be advantageous to underscore briefly the essential difference between the western and the southern administration of this quasi- judicial procedure. When in the middle of the XlXth century the rapid growth of the republic had created a rapidly shifting frontier, the fringe of civilization, and the weakness of the central authority, left these new places without a satisfactory system of protection for life and property. Thus the organization of citizens’ vigilance committees was a matter of absolute necessity. This voluntary police organization at times of necessity brought forth its own judges, jurymen, and prosecuting attorneys. It is easy to find there an element of justice, openly administered, though without any knowledge of law, or of court procedure. Though the trial was quick and without appeal, the accused person had the right to present witnesses; the jury followed their conscience and judgment much more than any formal .rules of evidence, but perhaps the results were just as satisfactory to society, and there was no delay in execution of the sentence.

At the present state of civilization there is no need for such primitive forms of justice and this form of lynch law has properly vanished. The southern lynchings belong to an entirely different form of phenomena.

Courts for a proper administration of justice exist in the South no less than in any other part of the country. In the days of reconstruction the Ku Klux Klan organizations found their justification in the fact that the entire governmental power, the legislative as well as the judiciary, was in the hands of the negroes, acting under the orders and the protection of the northern army officers, and government and courts could reasonably be supposed to be prejudiced against the traitors of yesterday. But the situation is very much different to day. The court in the South as in the North is a free elective court. With the absolute elimination of the negro or his representatives from the police, the administration, the legislation or the courts, or even the jury box, the white man should have no difficulty in obtaining justice against the negro. Under such conditions it is difficult to apply to the lynchings of the South the same justifications which excuse the lynch law of the primitive West.

In the analysis of the lynchings some study of the statistics will be indispensable. Since 1885 the Chicago Tribune has been collecting such statistics, which are generally admitted to be fairly accurate. The number of lynchings for the last 23 years are shown in the following table:

These figures eloquently prove that the lynchings are not a local or temporary affair but a permanent feature of southern life. It is to be very much regretted that similar data are not available for the entire period after the war, since lynchings, which have occurred sporadically even in the eighteenth century, began to develop rapidly immediately after the civil war. But as they stand these data are eloquent enough. Nearly 3.200 lynchings during a quarter of a century present quite a vivid picture of southern life, for it must be remembered that these 3,200 lynchings represent so many crowds and mobs, each many hundreds and even thousands of people strong. But there are other interesting conclusions to be derived from these figures. The sudden aggravation of the lynching evil of which so much is said during the recent years is found to be only a result of greater attention to these occurrences, since no such increase in the number of lynchings is to be found. In fact, the contrary is true, if the data are reliable: for during the first five years period, 1885-1889, the average annual number of lynchings was 152, during the second five years period, the annual average was 189; during the third five years period, 1895-1899, the annual average was 140, during the five years period, 1900-1904, the average was only 107, and during the latest years less than 70.

On the other hand, the optimistic conclusion to be derived from these computations is somewhat exaggerated. For we are told by the compiler of the Chicago Tribune, that in 1906, for example, the 12 victims of the Atlanta slaughter, and an equal number of negroes killed a few months later in Mississippi was not included. It is explained that “they had not committed any offense, and were not arrested charged with crime. They were killed by infuriated mobs, because of the crime of some unknown negroes. They were clearly race riots, rather than lynchings.” But while this is all true of the Atlanta affair, it is no less true of a great many less sensational lynchings, and it will be the object of these lines to show that almost every southern lynching at the present time is no more or less than a race riot, an expression of the race relations–between the two races.

The tables above include all the lynchings recorded in the United States. In the following table the distribution of the lynchings by race and territory is given since 1900 (data for 1904 and 1905 unfortunately not being available at this writing):

This shows lynchings to be a southern institution and one primarily directed against the negro. The most frequent lynchings are found to occur in the least civilized states of Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Louisiana. This truth is not obscured by the few lynchings in the border states, or even in the southern counties of the northern states.

Now, then, since the problem of lynch law in the United States reduces itself mainly to the problem of lynching negroes in the South, the question inevitably arises: What peculiar conditions of a southern life are responsible for this peculiar condition? The thousands of men and women who have participated in such lynchings, and the millions of southerners who sympathize with such lynchings, have a ready stereotyped answer to this inquiry: “The lynchings are explained by very obvious causes, said that famous fanatic of negrophobia, John Temple Graves, in his celebrated speech before the Chautauqua Assembly in 1903 : “The crime which causes the lynchings is the unspeakable crime against the southern women, a crime more terrible than arson, more killing than murder, the crime whose name we dare not mention here.”

This opinion of the cause of lynchings in the South is very common, almost universally held in the South. It is not new, for twenty years ago the celebrated Frederick Douglass was forced to protest against this contention, as Booker Washington is forced to do now.

A certain share of truth in this accusation cannot be denied. Cases of criminal assault of white women by negroes sometimes do take place, and sometimes they do lead to lynchings. Unfortunately there are no statistical data concerning the extent of this crime, but the southerners insist that it is growing in frequency and is becoming a public menace. According to these statements it has reached such dimensions that a white farmer cannot leave his family in the house without a mortal fear as to their security. The white women of the South live in a state of constant fear of a possible attack by a black beast. This state of mind is very probable, and is easily explained by the effects of a continuous discussion of the so-called crime. The effect of each case, thanks to the great American publicity, is carried far beyond its geographical limits. It cannot be denied that some of these cases are perfectly awful in their details. Such is the case quoted by Mr. Nelson Page in a magazine article a few years ago. A negro was burned alive in a very quiet and progressive town of Texas. On the previous day he had picked up a little girl about five or six years old, carried her off, soothing her cries with candy, which he had bought for the purpose. When the child was found she was unrecognizable. With her little body broken and mangled he had cut her throat and thrown her into a ditch.

One case like this is sometimes sufficient to fill the heart of an unreasoning person with hatred for the entire negro race. But we do not intend to discuss the question, whether criminal assault upon little girls is justifiable. It would seem to be hardly in accord with twentieth century civilization to discuss a problem like that. Surely all taking of human lives is equally undesirable. Must a murderer, therefore, be lynched? And if not, must the beast who commits criminal assault, be lynched? How many cases of criminal assault are committed by white persons in the great city of New York alone? And are most of the lynchings in the South really caused by criminal assault?

The following table will supply some information on this question. (Again we must express our regret that data for 1904 and 1905 are not available at the present writing; but the data for the six years shown are really sufficient for all practical purposes.)

One must remember that the Chicago paper does not investigate the causes of lynchings, but simply classifies them according to the cause given by the local newspapers. It is evident that criminal assault figures only in a small proportion of cases, in some years in only one-sixth or one-eighth of them. In case of murder committed by a negro, some darkey must be lynched, very frequently with a very unsatisfactory identification. But even outside the serious crime of murder there are hundred of minor offenses for which lynchings are necessary from the southern point of view. It is scarcely necessary to enter here into a very detailed statistical discussion of such causes; but it will be sufficient to quote here at length the list of causes as given by Professor Cutler, who is the recognized living authority on the subject of lynchings: According to him, colored persons have been lynched within the last decades for the following reasons:

Grave robbery, threatened political exposures, slander, self-defense, wife beating, cutting levees, kidnaping, voodooism, poisoning horses, writing insulting letters, incendiary language, swindling, jilting a girl, colonizing negroes, turning state’s evidence, political troubles, gambling, quarreling, poisoning wells, throwing stones, unpopularity, making threats, circulating scandals, being troublesome, bad reputation, drunkenness, rioting, insults, supposed offense, insulting women, fraud, criminal abortion, alleged stock poisoning, enticing servant away (sic!), writing letter to white woman, asking white woman in marriage, conspiracy, introducing smallpox, giving information, conjuring to prevent evidence, being disreputable, informing, concealing a criminal, slapping a child, shooting at officer, passing counterfeit money, felony, elopement with white girl, refusing to give evidence, giving evidence, disobeying ferry regulations, running quarantine, violation of contract, paying attention to white girl, resisting assault, inflammatory language, resisting arrest, testifying for one of his own race, keeping gambling house, quarrel over profit sharing, forcing white boy to commit crime, lawlessness. It would evidently be quite difficult to find a crime or any act of misconduct so petty, but that the southerners would not sometimes think the lynching of a negro a proper punishment for it. In some cases it would be hard to define just where the crime or the act of misconduct had occurred, as, for instance, in the case of a negro lynched on account of his unpopularity or for being quarrelsome. Finally, it is worth while pointing out that the so-called typical negro crime, that of criminal assault of little girls of very tender age, is extremely rare, since during all these six years there were only five or six criminal assaults with fatal result.

Assuming the figures of the Chicago Tribune to be correct, we find that these six years there have been just about 175 criminal assaults, in- eluding all the cases of attempted assault, which are, as often as not, simple cases of attempted robbery. With a negro population of over ten millions, this gives one assault or attempt at assault for each 60,000 or over of negro population for the entire six years, or one such case for each 300,000 to 400,000 persons of negro race annually. This proportion may be a high one. Nevertheless the peculiar negro crime remains after all a very exceptional one, perhaps no more frequent than it is among the white population of our cities.

The very large number of lynchings for all sorts and conditions of crimes, offenses and no crime or offense at all, should be sufficient evidence that the cause of lynchings must not be looked for in the nature of the negro criminality. Still better evidence is given by the many race riots, which have become quite common within recent times, and when the grievance against one negro, accused of some offence, immediately becomes a grievance against all the negroes and leads to the murder or abuse of admittedly innocent persons of the negro race. Thus one is often forced to look for the cause of lynchings in the white rather than the colored population of the place, as the lynchings of the West could be explained only by the condition of the entire western society rather than the depravity of the lynched criminal. Now, it is very easy to point at several peculiarities of southern white society which would explain the frequency of lynchings in the southern states. Thus there is the generally low level of culture and civilization which makes it enjoy the exercise of cruelty as such, and find an interesting entertainment in the sight of a burning negro. Perhaps the following little story might help to illustrate this point.

The burning of a negro at the stake in Wilmington, Delaware, some years ago will probably be remembered by many. A few days after this affair had taken place, a young southern gentleman with his fond papa were passing through that town. The train stopped in Wilmington, and looking out of the car-window, this young gentleman noticed a negro porter on the platform. The gentleman beckoned to him to come nearer, and then cried: “Hey, porter, bring me some roast n***r on toast!” The best part of this story is that the fond papa of the bright youngster told this story to me and was quite proud about it.

Thus, with a reduction of the number of cases of criminal assault, by means of education of the negro, and perhaps by the elimination of the bad whiskey that is being sold to him by white manufacturers, and on the other hand by the rise in the general level of culture and civilization of the white population of the South, a gradual reduction in the number of lynchings may be expected. Yet this solution is evidently as unsatisfactory, as was the explanation given of the causes of lynchings, for the greatest factors have not yet been mentioned.

There are two of these factors: first there is the white man’s hatred of the negro, and secondly the legal condition of the negro. This may appear to be the same factor, stated in two different ways, yet there is a decided difference between the two. Surely their separate existence may be imagined no matter how closely they are connected in actual life. To draw again some parallels between the negro and the Jew, though our Jewish comrades may be displeased by such juxtaposition: There is in Germany and France a great deal of the anti Jewish feeling, though there are no legal restrictions upon his rights; and on the other hand we are told that in Russia, where every step of the Jew is restricted by special legislation, the masses of the people have no inborn dislike against the Jew. Yet anti Jewish riots take place in Russia, and not in Germany or France, and we may here get a hint as to real and final cause of lynchings in the southern states. Perhaps it is not necessary to go so far for an illustration; for in Washington, where the feeling against the negro is about as strong as anywhere else in the South, no lynchings have taken place or are expected. In other words, though we do not intend to throw any suspicions upon the valor of the southern gentlemen, lynchings are encouraged by the general consciousness that the negro is a defenseless being before the law, that he is legally and socially an outcast, that the white judge and white jury will not convict, that the white governor will not make any effort to repress the lynchers; for the entire South, with comparatively few exceptions, when not speaking for publication, approves of the lynchings.

Very few southerners will admit this explanation, preferring to put the entire blame upon the negro race. Inevitably the remedies they suggest are as far from the mark as the explanations of the causes. There is for instance, the Hon. John Temple Graves, a southern celebrity, who has suddenly achieved national prominence as Mr. Hearst’s personal candidate for the Vice-Presidency, supposedly a man of progressive and radical ideas. “Lynchings are crimes,” says John Temple Graves. “No sane man will deny it. It is a disgrace to our constitution. It is breaking the law. It is sad, terrible, disgusting. But it is here. And it is here to stay. The lynch law is not what should be, but what is, was, and will be.” And immediately Graves proceeds to show why it should be. The premises are familiar. The cause of lynchings is the unspeakable crime. More than that, the unspeakable crime is the choice crime of the negro. If a more moderate southern publicist like Page, or Clarence Poe, be satisfied to point to the “facts,” the fanatical Graves proceeds to build a whole sociological and even anthropological theory upon these facts. All southern writers upon the subject like to insist that there were no lynchings nor criminal assaults by negroes before the war. From which the conclusion is inevitable that liberty is a thing the negro is not fit to make use of. The reasoning may be right, but the facts in the case are unfortunately wrong; for both assaults and lynchings have taken place in the South long before the war. They were not so frequent, for one thing, because the negro represented a considerable outlay of capital, while now it costs very little to hang or burn a ‘n***r,’ who does not belong to anybody.

Even Thomas Nelson Page expresses himself much more clearly on the subject. “The intelligent negro may (sic!) understand what social equality really means but to the ignorant and brutal negro it signifies but one thing; the opportunity to enjoy equally with white men the privilege of cohabiting with white women.” Of course, John Temple Graves makes it much stronger. Thousands of negroes have decided, he says, that they are willing to die if they could but once possess a white woman.

When such is the explanation given to lynchings by the white southerner, what shall be expected of the remedial measures proposed? The most fair-minded ones advise that education of the negro will destroy his tendency to commit the unspeakable crime; though the “educated” white southerner has been committing the same crime towards the negro for centuries. Others suggest a system of rural police with the same object in view, or stricter vagrancy laws, so as to get rid of the bad negro. Even so careful and sober a writer as the editor of the Review of Reviews has seen fit to ask of the educated negro: Why are you so much concerned about the lynchings, and pass by in silence the unspeakable crime of assault?

Now in justice to the majority of the southerners, it must be said that they are very sceptical as to the efficacy of all such measures. Education! they sneer. Education only increases criminality among the negro. Mr. Wardaman, the governor of Mississippi, has obtained a national notoriety, if not reputation, by asserting this point of view with all the weight his official position lends to his views. More radical measures for the suppression of negro crime are demanded. And perhaps, nothing better illustrates the awful harm done to a republic by slavery and race hatred than these proposals for the suppression of negro crime. In order to satisfy the mob’s desire for blood and violence, greater severity of law is demanded. In a country which has about ten times as many executions annually as has entire western Europe, suggestions come from all sides for the extension of capital punishment. It is asked now, not only for criminal assault, but even attempt to kill and attempt at criminal assault. But the introduction of such measures does not altogether satisfy the mob, for it frequently storms the prison to rob justice of its victims and lynch a negro sentenced to death. Then, the southern publicist begins to analyze the cause of this mob action. Evidently the mob is not satisfied with the normal process of law. The mob is impatient, it wants to hasten the process of justice. Therefore the demand is made for swifter court procedure. Swift justice was always an ideal of jurisprudence, but in the interest of the accused. Here it is advocated in the interest of the blood-thirsty mob. Judges of the highest court begin to attack the leniency shown to the criminal. Speed is required, says a southern journalist, in commenting upon some recommendations of Justice Brewer of a similar nature, because punishment is sure only when it is speedy. The legal principle of an eye for an eye, and a life for a life can be enforced only when there is a vivid realization of the victim’s loss. In other words blind revenge is advocated instead of rational treatment of the criminal. That is the latest American contribution to scientific criminology.

And when this is the tenor of the remarks in regard to the treatment of criminals in general, suggestions in regard to the treatment of the negro criminal necessarily are more cruel. The negroes are a lower race, argues Graves, they stand approximately upon a seventh century level of civilization. Therefore, it is ridiculous to apply to them the modern conceptions of justice and legal procedure. Here is a new plea for the old institution of a separate criminal code for negroes. Both special punishments and special methods of procedure are necessary. The suggestion has seriously been made more than once, that in cases of criminal assault of white women, the lynch law be legalized, that is, that the South consciously return to mob law. Finally an organization known by the appropriate name of the Universal Peace Union has evolved the idea that the only fit punishment for criminal assault or attempted criminal assault was castration, and it found in Graves an ardent supporter of this idea before the Chautauqua Assemblies of the country.

It is not necessary to agree with Graves in his suggestions as to remedies, but we can well subscribe to his main point of view that lynching is not a specific problem in itself and can only be settled as the negro problem is settled. But starting from this point one can strike many different paths. Graves’ argument runs as follows: As long as the two races live side by side, so long will there be the usual cases of rape. And as long as there will be rape upon the white woman, there also will be lynchings. The only way to prevent rape and lynchings, reasons Graves, is to accomplish a complete separation of the races, by means of a forcible transportation of the black into some separate territory, whether within or without the United States. One may be sceptical as to the possibility of an early solution of the negro problem in this country ; but if the situation were as hopeless as is the probability or even the possibility of accomplishing this plan, then it would be hardly worth while even spending the time >for any serious study; then the only thing left would be to throw up one’s hands, and let things drift in the same old way.

But we are not yet prepared at this stage to discuss any suggestions as to the solution of the negro problem. Having in mind, then, specifically the problem of lynchings, one cannot help finding two great breaks in the logic of Graves’ reasoning. On one hand there does not exist that close relation between the negro race and the crime of rape, nor is the relation firmer between rape and lynchings. All cases of lynchings do not follow the crime of rape; and all crimes of rape need not be followed by lynchings.

It is noteworthy that the educated negroes seem to understand much better the real nature of the lynchings, their causes, and the necessary remedies. They very properly consider them as an act directed not so much against the individual negro, as against the entire negro race. The recent tendency for the “lynching bees” to assume the much graver aspects of race riots, leading to great upheavals, heavier losses of life, and much greater embitterment between the two races, are very convincing evidence of the truth of this point of view.

The details of these conflicts are too recent, too vivid in the minds of the American public to need repetition. But the murder of perfectly innocent negroes, preferably negro tradesmen, is perhaps an indication that the excitement of the feeling against the negro has come to be recognized as a very efficient method of partisan and factional political propaganda.

Of course, it is quite evident to any one who is at all familiar with the peculiar civilization of the South, that the survival of the savage instincts in the white men is partly responsible for the frequency of the lynchings, and that with better schools, with a smaller consumption of alcoholic liquors, the average southerner may lose a great part of the pleasure he now receives when seeing a live man burned to death. But a mob is a mob for all that, and it has its own psychology, which is often very much more savage than that of its individual members. It is true that were greater efforts made to suppress anti-negro riots, many lynchings could have been avoided, and that notwithstanding many solemn promises, the police and higher authorities only too often neglect to do their duty. Nor is it surprising, since expressions of hatred for the negro became the greatest stock in trade of the cheap demagogic politician. But to advocate a bigger and more efficient police force, is to forget that after all the inefficiency of the existing authorities to protect is due to the same causes which make for lynchings in the first place.

And this cause is the helpless legal and social position of the negro, which make a defenseless creature of him. A social group has but little to hope for, when the preservation of its rights depends only upon the charity and good will of those surrounding it and possessing the power. At present the negro has no legal weapon with which to seek redress for the wrongs he suffers. In the courts he has no representation, the political authorities are not afraid of his influence; in everyday life the outlawed position is only too manifest. As long as these conditions persist, the negro will remain the most convenient material for the playing of popular frenzy.

In other words, there is no lynching problem as such, and there can be no special remedies for its solution.

With very little effort it may be broken into its component elements. A little of southern savagery, a little of the universal mob feeling, a little of official inefficiency and connivance, but above all the knowledge of the outlawed position of the negro and a great deal of deliberate excitement of the racial antagonism by persons and parties who derive a personal benefit therefrom. Without dwelling therefore too long upon these more or less exceptional expressions of the racial relations, we will now turn to a more careful analysis of these relations as we find them in the normal everyday life of the South.

VII. The White Man’s Point of View. (March, 1909.)

In many of the preceding chapters I have spoken at length of the material conditions, which went to make for the present negro problem. But it must not be forgotten, that in the present the negro problem is to a great extent a psychological problem, as all race problems (or rather, problems of race relations), necessarily are. I know full well, that to the enthusiastic neophyte of the doctrine of economic interpretation of history, this will appear to be a very reprehensible heresy, doubly reprehensible because it appears on the pages of the most important organ of scientific Marxism in this country. But this rigid, cast-iron conception of the great doctrine of Economic interpretation has done more than anything to get it into disrepute with serious students. The neophyte’s conviction that for every social condition there must necessarily be found a coexisting economic cause, to serve as its only true explanation, stands too often in glaring contradiction to our every day experiences. Economic factors shape human destiny, but only through the medium of man’s activity. That means that the economic forces work through the instrumentality of psychological conditions. The relation is not a simple mechanical one, but organic and extremely complex. It is just the interaction of present economic forces with psychologic ones which are in themselves results of economic forces of the more or less remote past, that make the study of social problems a matter of such difficulty.

Throughout my study of the negro problem I have never missed the opportunity to emphasize the importance of historical conditions in shaping the present negro problem. The preceding two chapters were devoted to a description of the material results of these historic conditions; the pages which follow will endeavor to picture the parallel psychological results.

What is the present attitude of the white man, and particularly the southern white man, towards the negro, and the negro problem? This is certainly an inquiry worth making. That is, moreover, the first question asked by any man who is thrown in contact with the South for the first time, and for the first time meets face to face with the race problem. In the following lines are summarized the results not only of a very careful study of the literature, but of many years of personal investigation and discussion, after which the writer must still proclaim himself as not converted to the southern point of view, a great many prophecies to the contrary notwithstanding.

At the very foundation of the white man’s point of view, lies the deep conviction of the essential inequality of the races, of the biological supremacy of the white race over the African race, or all other races for that matter. We have shown that this faith in the lower biologic worth of the negro race has developed during the days of early slavery, and in the vast majority of the white population of the south, the conviction is just as strong now as it was in the hearts of their ancestors two hundred and fifty years ago, up to the cry of the fanatic that the negro is no human being at all, but a beast with hands and the power of speech.

In various classes and layers of society this conviction finds its manifold expressions and different proofs. The educated man falls back upon the evidence of history and biology and the theory of evolution, while the masses rely upon religion, and one might say, upon their personal ethnographic observations. “What has the negro given to civilization?” asks the college professor, or “Look at his facial angle,” while the less educated briefly argues: “God himself has made him black, and therefore he is a lower creature.”

You might find the latter method of reasoning logically weak. But the scientific man’s argument is not more convincing. Has it been established that the facial angle measures the hierarchy of races? It is one of those scientific superstitions which have been as completely wiped out by modern anthropology as the naive faith in the value of cranial capacity as an index of individual mental ability, or the fetichism of Lombroso’s physical signs of degeneration as symptoms of a criminal disposition. As great an authority of anthropological science as Professor Boaz totally denies the value of these signs for estimating the comparative worth of races.

Even a superficial analysis shows that two entirely different elements are to be discerned in the statement that the negro belongs to a lower race. One is that the level of civilization of the negro race in its natural surroundings in Africa is lower than the level of civilization of the majority of the white race; and that is a fact which can in no wise be denied. The other charge is very much more serious, namely, that biologically, structurally as it were, the negro race is lower than the white race, and that it cannot ever expect to reach the sublime heights of Caucasian civilization.

The practical conclusions to be deducted from these two statements are entirely different, nay directly opposite to each other. It is a well established doctrine of anthropological and historical science that the entire progress of human civilization, at least as far back as we have any records at all, no matter how enormous this progress was, has scarcely at all effected any essential organic changes in the nervous system of the white man. All these thousands of years have not placed us, organically, any higher than the poetical talent of a Homer, or the mathematical abilities of an Archimedes, or even the artistic talent of a Phidias, or the power for abstract reasoning that a Confucius possessed. If a citizen of old Greece could have slept through these twenty-five centuries, he could have entered our life after a very brief period of schooling, and his children would have been in no way distinct from our own children.

The essential question therefore remains: What is the difference between the white and black race? The answer to this question must shape our entire point of view as to the future relations of the white and colored race. In one case the distance between the two races is hardly worth discussing; in the other it is equal to hundreds of centuries, and is practically eternal as far as human history is concerned. But the southern gentleman seldom has the patience for such a careful analysis. The negro race is a lower race, he says, and thinks to have solved the entire problem; while in reality he has scarcely scratched its surface. The more progressive and tolerant southerner somewhat tones down the statement and says: “The negro race is a child race,” seemingly with the faint hope that if some time in the future this child race will grow and mature, and become even as you and I, that will not happen in our time, and therefore we need not worry about it.

To prove his point the southerner makes use of a great diversity of arguments: He points to the statistical and ethnographical investigations of the negro’s racial tendencies and peculiarities by the statistician F.L. Hoffman, or at the level of civilization of the contemporary Negro in Africa, as is done by Tillinghast, or finally he draws his conclusions from the present conditions of the American Negro. “Here,” says the southerner, “is the negro after having lived in a civilized community for two hundred and fifty years; as you see, he has not yet become a civilized being, he is not yet equal to the white man.” To prove his point of view, the southerner asserts that the intellectual powers of the negro are very limited, that he is not fit for scientific study, that even simple reading and writing are acquired by the negro with great difficulty, and that the higher abstract concepts of thought are altogether impossible for him. If in answer to this argument you will point at the number of prominent and able negroes whose intellectual powers cannot be questioned, he will meet this argument by stating that most of these men are not pure negroes but mulattoes, and that in any case the exceptions only prove the rule.

But if you pursue the argument further, then in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the very much irritated southern gentleman will end by making another statement, that in any case the educated negro is worse than the illiterate one, and that to educate the negro is simply to spoil him. It is true that now the southern man frequently qualifies this statement by limiting it to secondary and especially higher education; that is, he considers scientific or literary education unnecessary or even harmful, while admitting the necessity of literacy. It is well therefore to remember that in the days of slavery and immediately after emancipation this negative attitude to education extended even to the most elementary schooling and that there are still a great many men in the south who continue to think likewise — not only among the uncultured white, but even among the highest political and social circles, as for instance the recent governor of Mississippi. It is true that now a large part of the southern white population does not agree with Wardaman’s point of view, and appropriates considerable sums of money for negro schools, and this is the effect of the appreciation of the higher value of educated negro labor over common unskilled- labor, by the growing class of employers in the south. But the south as a whole, preserves its very critical attitude towards negro academies and colleges, usually supported by northern benefactors, and the southern wage earner even now looks askance upon the education of the negro workingman, who is growing into a dangerous competitor.

In regard to the college negro, the white south is almost unanimous; every negro college graduate, from this point of view, is but a spoiled negro; for each college graduate is imbued with personal dignity and pride to a degree quite unseemly in a negro, and he loses faith in the natural superiority of the white race.

Here one meets with one of the main inconsistencies, or rather contradictions, in the white man’s point of view of the negro. On one hand we find the positive assertion that as a lower race, the negroes are organically unfit for higher mental and scientific work ; and on the other hand, a strong opposition to every effort of the negro to disprove this theory of inferiority by doing the very thing which according to southern theory he is incapable of doing. But this contradiction is instantaneously explained away, if we but remember that it is the desire of the white south that the negro remain a lower race.

Perhaps because it was found quite difficult to prove the low mental faculties of the American negro, the South has recently shown an interesting inclination to transfer the arguments of racial inferiority of the negro from the intellectual to the moral plane. But the argument from the morals, customs and habits of the negro in Africa cannot be very conclusive. This the southerner supplements with facts as to the immorality and criminality of the American negro, his lack of respect for the right of property, his inability to make a concentrated effort.

Granted, reasons the white man of the South, that the negro has made considerable progress in the intellectual field in the last two centuries and a half, he has also shown great deterioration on the moral plane. These are the results of the license of the last forty years, the effect of the poisonous idea of the equality of the white and black races. The average northerner has no conception of the low opinion the southerner has of the negro’s moral nature. According to Graves and Page every negro is a potential committer of rape, and only dreams of the opportunity to assault a white woman and die. In the opinion of a southern white lady each or almost each negro woman is a thief and a prostitute.

Thus, the old time darkey is always the good desirable darkey, while the new modern negro is always a bad “n***r.” This is quoted as evidence of the perfect unfitness of the negro for liberty, but in reality it is only an excellent proof that the average southerner is still longing not for the form but for the economic essence of the old ante-bellum relations between the two races.

Forty years have passed since the settlement of the great struggle; and the southerner violently denies the allegation that he longs for the re-establishment of slavery. Nevertheless the South still goes into a fury at the sight of a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and continues to idealize not only the slaveowner, the relations between the slave and the slaveowner and slavery as an institution, but even the slave himself.

Here we have come to the very essence of the problem. Slavery is impossible, of course. Nevertheless, the white man of the South wants to keep the negro in the same place where slavery has put him. It may seem at a superficial examination that only an ex-slaveowner could wish for this, and that to the great mass of white population of the South the economic and social position of the negro was not a matter of economic consequence. On more careful reflection, it will appear perfectly plain, however, that in the normal stratification of society under modern conditions, the entire white south is raised in the social scale by keeping the negro down. The crowding down of the negro into the lower stratum almost automatically raises the lower strata of the white population.

In this fact, in addition to the survival of the psychological effects of past economic relations, may be found the explanation of the sincere conviction of the white man of the south that the negro, whether ordained by the almighty, or by the law of organic evolution, is destined to be a servant, a laborer, and nothing more, that the negro is not fit for anything else, is unworthy of anything else, and that the effort of the negro to expand beyond that function must spell ruin both for him and the white man.

And if it is admitted, that the negro is a lower race, a child race, a race to which even a little self-government is harmful and dangerous, one may well imagine what solution of the negro problem becomes desirable from this point of view. For be it understood, that both the north and the south, the white as well as the colored race, desire some solution of the race problem. Here and there the solitary voice of the idealist is heard insisting that the complete solution of the negro problem is thinkable only as a complete destruction of all legal and other specific restrictions against the negro as such. But the South as a whole holds the diametrically opposite point of view. The South is convinced that the problem will vanish as soon as all agitation is stopped against the existing restrictions, or those which are awaiting the day of their introduction.

What then constitutes the solution of the negro problem in the opinion of the average southerner? A representative and intelligent white man of the South sums it up in the following two requirements: first, the total destruction of any participation of the negro in politics, and second, the increase of productivity of negro labor. Another writer, speaking for a large southern society, adds : The acknowledgment of the futility of the social inequality of the negro.

Some degree of consistency cannot be denied this solution. It is of course to be regretted, from this point of view, that the 14th and 15th amendments to the Federal constitution put certain legal difficulties in the way of an early realization of this solution. But as long as these troublesome amendments exist they must be circumvened. The methods in Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia and other states have proven fairly satisfactory, and some time in the future, when the influence of the democratic party in politics will be come stronger, one may hope for the revocation of the troublesome amendments. While a great many southerners prefer not to open their cards, and do not often express all their plans, expressions of the necessity of revoking these two amendments are heard oftener and oftener. And if it be admitted that the intellectual level of the negroes is not rising while their moral character is deteriorating, the conclusion necessarily follows that they are unfit to govern themselves, let alone participate in the government of a white population.

Once this complete destruction of the faintest hope of the negro for participation in the nation’s political life is accomplished, the negro will naturally stop to “put up his nose.” Then also will vanish his tendency to seek for social equality, and the negro will sooner or later admit that he is a member of a lower race, fit only for hard unskilled manual labor and domestic service. When such patriarchal relations between a superior and inferior race are re-established, then even education will do no harm to the negro, provided of course it is the sort of education suitable for a race of servants, which will improve the quality of his work and make him a more useful negro.

Such is without any exaggeration the solution of the negro problem proposed by the vast majority of the white south. If only the north will not interfere, if only the north will let us solve this question, which is our question, the way we see fit, everything will turn out all right, says the south, without noticing or not caring how dangerously close this comes to the arguments in favor of slavery made fifty years ago. “We shall know how to solve this problem satisfactorily both for the white and the black man of the south.” This assertion that the interests of the negro are also taken into consideration in the offered solution may surprise the stranger. But there is no doubt that the southerner says it quite sincerely. After presenting all the arguments that the negro is a beast, or at least a lower race intellectually and a corrupted race morally, the southern gentleman in one breath proceeds to the amazement of the northerner: “We southerners love the negro. We are the only ones who have kindly human feelings towards him. The north does not know him, and does not care for him, but fights for his rights either for the sake of abstract principles, or out of political considerations. We understand the negro and his needs, and he understands us.” Here again, the southern gentleman unconsciously repeats the pro-slavery arguments of the fifties: “Of course,” proceeds the southern gentlemen, “we do not love those new fangled young negroes, wearing glasses, a silk hat and full dress, but I assure you, sir, that way down in the south we have fewer of those new n***s than you have in the north.”

Surprising as is this line of argument to any one who has not become accustomed to the southern point of view, it is still more surprising that there is a grain of truth in it. The most extreme negro hater will occasionally display a kindly, almost human, feeling for some particular negro, the peaceful, meek, good negro, be it understood. But the slightest provocation is sufficient to transform this kindly feeling into one of bitter hate. One must not expect any ironclad rules in regard to the relation of the white man to the colored man of the south. Yet the vast majority of the white population does look upon the negro problem along the lines described above. Occasionally idealists may be met with in the south, who are ready to believe that some time in the dim future the negro population will rise to a level where it will no more be dangerous to grant him political power. Such idealists, however, are very few and far between. On the other hand, there are very many pessimists who are convinced that never will the two races be able to arrive at any modus vivendi, and that progress of the negro race will only aggravate the situation. Most southerners may dream of the good old slavery days with a sigh of secret regret, but these pessimists are still convinced that only under a system of slavery could the two races live peacefully together, and that since the days of slavery are gone the possibility of a modus vivendi has passed away with them.

The races must be separated! is the dominating cry of the south. But in different mouths the cry has different meanings. The moderate understand by it simply a continuation of the process which has been going on for the last twenty years. According to this scheme, the white man and the negro may continue to live next to each other, in the same economic sphere, and yet remains absolutely strange to each other in everything that concerns private and public life. Perhaps the most eloquent exponent of this conviction is Professor Smith of Tulane University, New Orleans, who was bestirred by the now historic luncheon of President Roosevelt and Mr. Booker Washington, to write a big book in support of the urgent necessity of social separation of the races. Perhaps it may be inaccurate to call Professor Smith a moderate. Certainly his statements are far from being that. But they are interesting enough in their own way to deserve here more than a passing mention, for Professor Smith claims the support of the whole range of biological and social sciences in support of his view. The essential, eternal, organic inferiority of the negro race, in Professor Smith’s opinion, is a fully established fact. And the denial of social equality, no matter how unjust or cruel it may seem to be, is but an unconscious effort of the superior white race to preserve its racial purity against contamination with the inferior blood, which would inevitably drag down the efficiency of the white face and spell degeneration to the entire nation. Of course, you will immediately point at the enormous number of mulattoes, quarteroons, etc., as evidence that there was in the white man neither a conscious nor a subconscious fear against the mixture of races; but— argues Professor Smith, that is an entirely different matter. No matter how many negro women have misbehaved themselves with white men, the effect of it simply was to add a considerable amount of white blood to the negro race, and if anything, it has improved the negro race; but it has not in any way affected the purity of the white stock in the south, as long as the white women have not been defiled by the negro men, and have not given birth to mulatto children.

One would naturally be inclined to ask, what possible relation there was between Booker Washington’s luncheon with the President and the problem of miscegenation. But Professor Smith is convinced that social equality inevitably leads to mixed marriages, and that marriages of negro men and white women would become very common as soon as the social barriers were let down. He therefore argues with a great deal of enthusiasm and conviction, that it is the duty of the white man to stimulate and cultivate this opposition to any vestiges of social equality, be they ever so small.

This program does not satisfy the pessimist. From his point of view, the conditions which have forced the existing close proximity of the two race were a great misfortune; and this must be corrected, or rather undone. The races must be separated, not only in cars, theatres and hotels, but much more thoroughly and permanently. It must be a true separation in a geographic sense. The negro must be forced to emigrate. This plan of the mass emigration of the negro may sound like a huge joke, but it is not offered as such, and therefore must be considered seriously. Where should the negro emigrate? That is another question, to which many different answers are given.

The idea is not quite new. Even Jefferson, a strong antagonist of the institution of slavery, but little believing in the power of the negro to advance in civilization, saw the only possible solution of the problem in the return of the negro to their own country.

And towards Africa naturally turn the eyes of those who pretend to find a complete solution of the negro problem in the emigration of the negroes from the United States. “Let us return the unfortunate negroes to the land whence we have brought them,” runs the argument. “Let us return them to their natural mode of life. That will be just to them as well as to us.” The formula sounds well, but it would have been more applicable in the days when a majority of the negro slaves had still come themselves from the dark continent. The only experiment in that direction, the little republic of Liberia, was founded early in the nineteenth century, and the African Colonization Society, consisting of white benefactors, did all that was in its power, to attract thither a wave of negro emigration from the United States. The failure of this enterprise, although the republic of Liberia still exists, has forced the advocates of the theory of separation to look around for other outlets. For a time the newly acquired islands in the Atlantic as well as in the Pacific seemed to be specially adapted for this purpose. Why should not the American negro migrate to Porto Rico or to the Philippine Islands, where there are so many dark races, that one more will not matter very much? Suggestions are not wanting even of the desirability of granting the negro a definite territory in the far West, where they will possess all the political and civil rights and would have no cause for complaints. From the standpoint of pure logic, these schemes do not sound altogether impossible, and they gradually gain a few adherents among the professional classes of the south, who do not derive any profits from negro, and therefore have no use for him at all.

Yet these schemes are not worth the paper they are printed on. For there is no economic basis at all for any of them. The entire industrial and landowning capital protests against such schemes, for southern capital needs the negro, such as he is. As long as the majority of the rural population of the cotton states consists of negroes, cotton culture is impossible without negro labor, and no matter how successful the experiments of attracting Italian population may be, they cannot solve the economic problem of supplying the world with the necessary cotton. Moreover the Italian, notwithstanding his superior efficiency, is by far not so desirable from the landowner’s point of view, for he is not so easily and so thoroughly exploited.

The brazen egotism of the white race is the most characteristic feature of all the plans for the solution of the negro problem we have mentioned. Among the white population of the North, which has not been poisoned by the prejudice against the negro, at least not to the same degree, more genuine sympathy for the colored brother may be found. From the north has come the conviction that the level of culture of the negro must be raised, from the north has come the first money for the organization of schools for the negro child and colleges for the negro youth, from the north came the first self-sacrificing young girls to devote their lives to the education of the negro children. Nevertheless, many new, decidedly different tendencies may be found in the north now. If Carl Schurz argued, shortly before his death, that the north must interfere in the solution of the negro problem, that the south is no more capable of solving it now than it was in the fifties and the sixties of the past century, we have on the other hand the prominent Lyman Abott claim that the negro problem is a purely local problem, that will and must be solved locally, if at all. If on one hand a man like Schurz considered the deprivation of the negro of his franchise a glaring infringement of his most sacred right, we have also Lyman Abbot proclaiming in harmony with the southerners the negro a child race, that cannot be entrusted with the right to vote. In other words, the superior attitude of the higher race is beginning to be felt in the north as well, though in a much milder degree, of course.

In a democratic country every important social problem must sooner or later find its expression in political life. The negro problem is no exception to the rule. Political, or rather partisan, considerations greatly affect the attitude of the white man towards the negro. For historical reasons, the republican party represents the traditional friend, and the democratic party the traditional enemy of the negro. For equally good historical reasons the south remains the mainstay of the democratic party. Thus we obtain the logically absurd situation that the party of liberalism and radicalism, the party of Bryan and Hearst, remains, as far as the negro problem is concerned, the party of reaction and tyranny. When. Cleveland was elected in 1884, half the negro population expected the immediate restoration of slavery. And though twenty-five years have passed since, yet even now the Great Commoner does not dare to raise his voice in defense of the downtrodden race.

The blind faith of the negro in the republican party, which he knows only as the party to which he owes his liberty, is truly pathetic. Notwithstanding the many grave disappointments, that hope is still strong, and not even the Brownsville affair, and the eloquence of a Foraker, is able to break it down. The republican platform still includes paragraphs as to the rights of the negroes, a republican president still considers it his duty to distribute a few offices among the prominent negroes, but this is done out of consideration to the northern negro vote. As one southern state after another deprived the negro of his vote, the enthusiasm of the republican party has become weaker and weaker. A new tendency has been growing in its stead. The growing complexity of American political and economic life has created many vital problems which very materially affect the pocket of the middle class. In regard to such problem as currency, or protection, or trusts and labor unions, the south cannot be as solid, politically, as a superficial inspection of its democratic vote may seem to indicate. Thus the number of people is growing in the south whom only the negro question keeps from joining the ranks of the republican party. And it did not take the republican leaders long to see that if it were not for the negro problem, the republican party might expect some success in the south. This has created the Lily White movement of some years ago. And quite recently Taft’s attitude has been quite plainly conciliatory to the south.

These observations are trite enough; but the point that I wanted to make is this: it is true, of course, that the attitude towards the negro makes a democrat of the southerner, because the negro is republican; but the reverse is also true: the race relations are in their turn shaped by political partisan considerations, and the desire to gain the growing southern vote acts as a constant source of corruption of the old republican friend of the negro.

For the sake of completeness a few words might here be said of the attitude of the socialist white man to his negro brother and to the negro problem in general; but the subject is too important to permit of such superficial treatment and we postpone the consideration of this problem for the concluding chapter of the series.

The growing coolness of the republican and of the northerner hi general to the negro, whom he finds a too heavy political burden to carry, naturally pleases the southerner immensely; he finds in this a striking support of his contention of the inferiority of the negro race, and a general approval of his policy. He can point to this change as evidence that race antagonism is not a specifically southern institution. And thus the mere fact of the rapid spread of a social wrong is taken to mean a strong justification of it.

Perhaps nowhere is this thought expressed more convincingly than in the very recent work on the American race problems by Mr. Alfred H. Stone, one of the most interesting books yet written on the negro question. The fact that Mr. Stone is a southern cotton planter, who has seen fit to devote nearly fifteen years of his life to the study of the negro problem, and that he treats the negro in his writing as in his private life with an exceptional degree of consideration and fairness, makes the book a valuable human document, and the vast knowledge displayed of the negro problem not only in this country but also in most countries where the white and black race come into contact vouches for the accuracy of the facts presented. In a very crude way Mr. Stone’s argument runs about as follows: It must be admitted that the negro is very unjustly treated in the south, and very often undeservedly so. It may seem wrong, but this is the fact. Moreover it is not due to the moral depravity of the southerner, for the northerner who comes to live in the south soon learns to treat the negro the same way; the northern communities treat the negro better, but only as long as they do not come very much in contact with the negroes; as soon as the negro population grows to any appreciable size, such communities become as rabidly anti-negro as the southern cities. The same attitude towards the negro is seen in the West Indies, in South Africa or anywhere where the two races come into daily contact. And Mr. Stone virtually asks us: “What are you going to do about it?” He asks it not in any spirit of arrogance, or reprehensible pride, but because he really does not know himself.

To him the problem is simply one of unavoidable organic race antagonism, which cannot be criticized, nor need be defended; it simply must be explained. No wonder then that Mr. Stone has no ready made solution of the problem up his sleeve. He should like to see the race relations improved, he is willing to support any movement in that direction which would appeal to him by its methods, but he is decidedly skeptical as to any such optimistic outcome in that direction. He is convinced that two races never lived in close proximity to each other without one race subjugating the other, and at the same time has very slim hopes for the negroes accepting this dictum of history and science. Altogether Stone cannot be very hopeful as to the outcome. But need we follow him in his pessimism? After all, even if all his statements as to the condition of the negro in all other Anglo-Saxon colonies were strictly correct, which they often are not, what would this universality of a similar negro problem prove, except that similar conditions have produced similar effects? One significant fact must be remembered and that is, that everywhere together with the social and political tyranny there were also found economic exploitation of one race by the other, and a constant desire to continue such exploitation. Is a disease universally present for that reason necessarily incurable? Is the wide extent of the anti-negro feeling any different from the universal extent of the anti-semitic feeling, say throughout the middle ages? Mr. Stone’s argument is not conclusive simply because it presumes that the opportunity and desire for exploitation will never vanish from the horizon of our socio-economic life.

But the socialists know better!

VIII. From the Negro’s Point of View. (June, 1909.)

Until now we have discussed the negro problem from the outside, as it were, that is from the point of view of the white man; whether the prejudiced Southerner, or the more liberal minded Northerner, or finally the outside observer, absolutely devoid of any preconceived opinion in regard to the entire situation. No matter how sympathetic and impartial we may try to be we still remain on the outside. For be it noticed for the benefit of the suspicious, that the sympathetic attitude of these studies to the colored race may not be explained by any relationship between the author of these lines and the negro race. For a fuller understanding of the complicated situation it is absolutely necessary to obtain a look at it from the inside, from the point of view of the negro himself.

For many years, nay centuries, the psychology of the negro has remained a closed book for the white man. In her well known novels Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe has idealized this psychology without much concern for the actual facts. She was writing for a definite moral purpose, and not to further anthropological investigation; and from her point of view was entirely justified. But notwithstanding all the literary value and historical influence of her works, as scientific material these books are not very helpful.

Besides, Mrs. Stowe’s types are the complex types produced by two hundred years of slavery. It would have been extremely interesting to enter the inner world of that infuriated negro, whom the negro dealer had caught in the jungle of wildest Africa, and brought him over, chained in the dark and ill-smelling bunker of the ship, to the distant land, where he was sold to work the rest of his life in the marshy rice fields, or the sun-baked cotton plantations. It would have been highly instructive to follow up the evolution of that wild beast into the mellow and faithful Uncle Tom of a century later. But this psychologic problem never had the good fortune to find its scientific investigator.

In the glorious days of slavery, that is during the first third of the last century, the white south was firmly convinced that it was the destiny of the negro both, according to God’s will, and the dictum of science, to be nothing else than a faithful Uncle Tom. That the negro was satisfied with his lot was the strongest article of faith— of the white man.

Such assertions may even be heard to-day, though perhaps not so frequently as forty years ago. The famous South Carolina Senator Tillman, perhaps one of the strongest negro haters in the South, in theory at least, once remarked that the main proof that they deserved the treatment accorded to them was found just in this: that no other race would tolerate such treatment.

Is it then true that the negroes have acquiesced in the treatment which the white men accord them? That they are satisfied with their present legal, social, and economic position? And if they have become so used to it, how far may it be explained by their inherently slavish nature, and how much by two hundred and fifty years of slavery enforced upon them?

All these are questions which do not seem to trouble the average southerner when he proceeds to solve the negro problem. And yet, it is quite evident that upon the answer to this question must depend our entire view as to the future progress of the negro race and the role which it is to play in the future history of the American nation. For surely in the discussion of the fate of ten million people, their own wishes and feelings must at least be considered and consulted. In other words, it is quite a common-place thought to insist that in the solution of the negro problem the negro himself will not remain a disinterested onlooker.

In our effort to penetrate the psychology of the dark man, a brief trip into the past will prove very helpful. It is true that we do not know the psychology of the original African Negro, but it is fair to assume that in a practical way the slave owners and the slave dealers of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century were somewhat familiar with it. And it is quite certain from the evidence available, that the negro, as the white man knew him then, did not at all approve of the system of slavery. For all through the legislation of the colonies and the early history of the republic, one sees the strong tendency to prevent the possibility of a negro rebellion. This explains the strong prohibition of the most peaceful negro assemblages, the special negro codes, the laws against vagrancy, etc. Notwithstanding this special legislation, slave rebellions were frequent, and even the bloodiest retribution that followed in their stead did not succeed in suppressing them altogether.

Slavery gradually civilized the negro, that is, got him used to the position of a slave. For even a carnivorous animal is easiest to be trained when born in captivity. But even when these patriarchal relations of master and slave were established, (which, the south would have us believe, were full of deepest affection and attachment on both sides), these ideal and idyllic relations did not keep hundreds and thousands of slaves from fleeing north, or buying their freedom at a very high price. Nor was this longing for freedom in any way exceptional. The better, more educated class of the negroes, south as well as north, considered it their duty to help each and every negro who was trying to gain his freedom by flight. These systematic and frequent escapes became possible only because of that famous organization (the so-called “Underground Railway”), whose ramifications were to be found in each and every state of the Union.

If all through the period of slavery negroes energetically voiced their protest against slavery not so much by words as by acts, they were no less anxious, immediately after the emancipation, to express their conviction that they were no lower, nor worse, than the white folks. Uncle Tom was not the ideal of those few negroes of that period who had ideals at all. It was rather Toussaint L’Ouverture, that full-blooded negro, who succeeded in creating a negro republic in Haiti. The brilliant mulatto, Frederick Douglass, whose oratorical fervor has earned for him an international reputation, never tired for twenty years repeating his protest against the quasi-scientific contention that the negro was a member of a lower race. With less talent, hundreds and thousands of negro senators, representatives, and local elected and appointed officers labored to prove the same theory. It is quite true that the new institution of freedom and all the new political and social relations that went with it were not clear to the majority of the members of the negro race. But on the other hand it is no less certain that during the early seventies all the cultured negroes, few as they were, sincerely hoped that with emancipation all barriers between the races would fall, and that there could be no discussion of the possible inequality in the political and social position of the negro and the white man.

I have shown in one of the preceding chapters how short a time the period of negro equality had lasted; and now more than thirty years have passed since the white man has regained his power and has again begun to teach the doctrine of his superiority. The ten million negroes who inhabit the United States at present, were brought up under very different conditions, in very different political atmospheres, and could not be expected to have one uniform attitude towards the negro problem. The men and women who have received their first formative ideas in the days of slavery, or in the days of reconstruction, or finally in the days of forcible suppression of negro rights, cannot take the same point of view even if they are on the same level of culture and civilization.

Besides this historical difference of generations, the other lines cf cleavage must be taken into consideration, such as between the educated and the illiterate negro; the city and the rural negro; and last but not least, between the rich and the poor negro.

Therefore the question: What is the attitude of the negro towards the so-called negro problem? is not so easy to answer as it might look. Without any difficulties the white man can find among the negroes some support of his own point of view, no matter what that point of view is. If the white man wants to prove the perfectly satisfactory condition of the status quo, he needs only point at his faithful old colored mammy. And the foreigner may shed bitter tears over the tragic fate of the negro race, as pictured in the pathetic writings of William Du Bois.

Now, some discrimination becomes necessary. The spiritual life of the large illiterate negro mass is important enough in itself, and would make a fascinating study, but this mass is often Unconscious of the general problem except as it affects the direct personal affairs of each individual, and one cannot look to this mass for any coherent theoretical solution of a social problem. The conscious attitude of the small intelligent and educated class of American negroes is therefore much more important for our purposes.

Inevitably the name of Mr. Booker Washington looms heavily into the foreground. Nine out of ten Americans will mention the name of Mr. Washington as that of the greatest living negro. The vast majority of the Americans are convinced that Mr. Washington is the one undisputed leader of his people, the negro Moses destined to lead his race into the holy land. Some years ago a southern white professor actually named Mr. Booker Washington as the greatest man in the South living. Mr. Andrew Carnegie has settled a handsome competence upon Mr. Washington and called him one of the most useful men in the country. This to indicate the role Mr. Washington plays in the political and social life of America.

To understand the policy and platform of this famous man, we must recall a few facts of his very interesting biography, with which many readers are undoubtedly familiar. A mulatto born of a slave woman, and himself a slave until the age of ten, he succeeded in obtaining his primary schooling in a small negro school, the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute of Virginia. In 1881, when only 22 years old, he was entrusted with the care of a similar but very much smaller school in the village of Tuskegee, Alabama, where he remained permanently. It was altogether due to his efforts that the little Tuskegee became the model and greatest school for the education of the negro race in the world.

One is not surprised therefore to find that Mr. Washington became a great enthusiast over technical and trade education for the negroes, until he began to consider it the only and surest solution for the entire negro problem. On the other hand the management of a large and insufficiently endowed educational institution developed in Washington all those qualities which are essential in America for any success in that trying position — a great deal of tact and diplomacy and ability to secure large contributions which are necessary for the existence and further development of his institution. Like many other private educational institutions, Tuskegee cannot exist without such liberal contributions ; and they must come from the white men’s pockets, for these are the only ones containing the necessary wherewithal to stimulate the noble cause of negro education. The slaves of yesterday have not yet succeeded in accumulating “swollen fortunes.” In the beginning, these contributions came exclusively from the North. Later, charitable people were found in the South who felt the necessity for doing something to improve the strained race relations. But only a very tactful man could succeed in obtaining this southern money, and the price of tact is sometimes one’s sincerity and one’s human dignity.

It is not intended to insinuate that Mr. Booker Washington had this heavy price to pay. But there can scarcely be any doubt that the conditions of his work were partly responsible for the growth of his theory of the gradual uplift of the negro race. Mr. Booker Washington has suffered too much from the white man’s contempt and cruelty and injustice to view calmly this aspect of the situation. Being a man of world reputation he can scarcely be expected to admit the truth of the contention that he is a member of a biologically lower race. Nevertheless, you will not find in all his numerous writings one single bold statement: we are as good as you are. On the other hand it is not difficult to find phrases which the southerner, somewhat stretching the point, may interpret as an admission of the inferiority of the negro race. Repeatedly he emphasizes the fact that the negro lives in the midst of another race, which is much superior in education, in property holdings, in experience and in general development

The white southerner is equally pleased by the fact that Mr. Washington does not have any faith in the efficacy of protest and struggle as a way to obtain one’s rights. He insists (in his well known book on the future of the American negro), that the impatient extremists, not familiar with the southern conditions, can only do great harm to their race.

Again, in harmony with the average southerner, he persistently minimizes the existing race conflict in the South. If there are exacerbations of the race feeling in some parts of the South at a time, there is also a great deal of peace, good will and co-operation between the races; but he does not mention the conditions of negro existence, by means of which such peace is bought. Instead of increasing the existing antagonism he prefers to point out every little hopeful symptom of adjustment, every kind or just act or word which may accidentally escape the mouth of a southern gentleman or appear on the pages of a southern newspaper. He points out that those expressions of regard and distinction which fell to the lot of a few prominent negroes recently (evidently including himself), would have been unthinkable some fifty years ago. In his famous autobiography, he is careful to point out each and every little fact of that nature, including the honorary degree of Master of Arts by Harvard University, and the talks he had with President McKinley.

In 1895 Mr. Washington was invited to speak at the opening exercises of the Atlanta Industrial Exposition; later he was elected a member of the jury of awards, and even became its secretary. About one-half the jury were white southerners. “Nevertheless,” proudly says Mr. Washington, “I was treated with full respect.” He does not seem to notice that this exceptional treatment might have been due to his exceptional standing and reputation, and counts that as a great victory for the entire negro race. “Suppose,” he says, “that some months before the opening of the Atlanta exposition there had been a general demand from the press and public platform outside the South that a negro be given a place in the opening programme and that a negro be placed upon the board of jurors of awards. Would any such recognition of the race have taken place? I do not think so. The Atlanta officials went as far as they did because they felt it to be a pleasure as well as a duty, to reward what they considered merit in the negro race. Say what we will, there is something in human nature which we cannot blot out, which makes one man in the end, recognize and reward merit in the other, regardless of color and race.”

This is quite a characteristic point of view. Another incident is no less interesting. Mr. Washington conceived a scheme to gain for Tuskegee the distinction of a visit from the President of the United States, for such a visit was evidently going to increase the reputation of the school. The careful and diplomatic McKinley, before giving his consent consulted dozens of southerners as to whether such a step would not injure their feelings, and finally granted the request. Washington well understood the fears of the President, and carefully refrained from sitting down at the table during the luncheon which followed the public reception, and was afterwards thanked by the President for the modesty displayed during the visit.

But one must not draw the conclusion from the facts related that Mr. Washington is simply a shrewd politician who makes the best of the opportunity to further personal ends. His sincerity and self-sacrificing devotion to his work and the cause of his race are evident to any one who has spoken to him, as the writer of these lines has done. And it is just because we are dealing here with a sincere and honest social policy and not the shrewd schemes of an unscrupulous climber, that Mr. Washington’s experiences are so interesting.

As the man, thus the platform. “The Negro must not expect to improve his condition by a firework of words only,” this is a statement that runs through all the writings and public speeches of Washington. The world, he thinks, will never pay any serious attention to the effort of the negro to conquer the right of participation in the political life of the country, until the negro will show better ability for useful economic work and accumulation of property. “The south,” he said as early as 1899, “will come to assert the necessity of an educational and property qualification for the voters of both races. Thus, three things are necessary for the proper solution of the negro problem. A kinder attitude of the two races to each other, education of the negro and accumulation of property by the negro.” Washington absolutely denies the possibility of expatriating the American negro, and does not even believe that a very large part of them will ever emigrate to the northern or western states. He is convinced that the negroes will remain in the South, and therefore the solution of the negro problem must come in the South and be effected by the South.

To him, furthermore, education and property are not two different factors, but rather different aspects of the same condition. Education must be directed so as to help the negro to work, earn, and save money. During the times of slavery, he points out, the negro was the main productive power of the South, he was familiar with all the trades, all kinds of productive labor. With the emancipation of the slaves all this has radically changed. The’ next generation knew nothing, could do nothing. This condition of affairs must be remedied. The negro must learn not to talk but to work. Ability to do things (efficiency, Washington would say, if he were trained in the vernacular of modern economics), and accumulation of capital, those are the main aims the negro must strive for. And Washington strongly intimates, though he does not say it in so many words (for the feelings of the radical negro elements must be taken into consideration, if he is to preserve his undisputed leadership), that the struggle for political rights were better left alone for the present. He has a firm belief in the efficiency of money. While a guest at a banquet of well-to-do negroes in New York some years ago he said something to that effect: “I noticed that most of you had paid for your tickets with bank checks. What a fine example for the entire negro race to emulate! I hope to see the day when each and every negro will have a bank account.”

There is an entire social philosophy in these few words, a system of what the Germans have so aptly called Weltanschaung. It is certainly broader than the negro problem, and were it possible, might solve all the economic and social questions of the age — except the one: how to get the bank account.

Washington answers that question. Skilled labor must be the way to acquire such universal prosperity. To understand this point of view, it is necessary to keep in mind the fact that large concentrated capitalism is still very young in the south, and that there is still room left — for how long, who can tell? — for the labor of the skilled artisan. The negro must therefore learn to work, and work better, whether in agriculture, the trades, commerce, in the professions or as a domestic servant. And while he makes this problem of work quite broad, Mr. Washington nevertheless insists mainly upon the lower classes of labor, understanding as. he does that the professions, etc., are open only to a small minority of the select negroes. Mr. Washington’s school is therefore to him not only simply a useful institution among many others; it stands as the embodiment of the only true method to solve the entire negro question. For in order to spread among the negroes the knowledge of trades and mechanical pursuits, such trades and mechanical schools are absolutely necessary. But Washington goes even further than that. Not only does he advocate such trade education, but he even attacks the usefulness of a purely intellectual education.

After the civil war, northern charity did a great deal to stimulate college education among the negroes. When it became clear that the southern schools of higher learning are closed to the aspirations of the exceptional negro, and are likely to remain so for a long time, the northern friends began to bring young negroes north, and give them an education in northern colleges. Later many special schools were opened for the negro youths of both sexes under the high sounding name of colleges and universities, but in reality little more than high schools and academies. Most of these schools do not at all please Mr. Washington, and call forth very severe criticism, of a tone that sounds very strange from a man whose language is so mild and reserved when he discusses the white man and his actions. In his book on “The Future of the American Negro,” he very sarcastically tells of meeting a young negro who had received his education in one of the best colleges in the country. The young man was familiar with chemistry, botany, zoology and political economy but he could not tell how many acres of cotton his father was planting a year, and how many in corn. He had met another young negro, a school graduate, who was sitting on the steps of his log cabin with his French grammar in his hands. The poverty, dirt, and disorder of the cabin were appalling notwithstanding that French grammar. The French grammar made such a deep impression upon Washington’s mind that he seldom misses the opportunity to mention this particular incident. The utilitarian conception of education which he emphasizes is sometimes childishly narrow. He is grieved to meet a girl “who knows how to find every country on the globe, but cannot serve dinner properly, or set the table.” He hates to see a colored girl who knows more about theoretical chemistry than how to wash and press a shirt. It is perhaps in such statements, that Washington possibly unconsciously admits the racial inferiority of the negro race; for surely no modern educator would insist that the art of the laundry woman must occupy a higher position in the educational program of all humanity than chemistry, and that serving a dinner was more educational than elementary geography. In any case, one thing does not wholly exclude the other, and education of the brain need not come in competition with education of the hands.

It is true, that in some speeches, especially when speaking to an intelligent negro audience, he admits that contention; it is true that his own son received a thorough education in Harvard; that the majority of the instructors in Tuskegee are college graduates. Nevertheless, the contrasts he draws between the results of the one and the other kind of education show clearly enough that he would be willing to substitute entirely industrial for general and liberal education. For it could scarcely be said that liberal education has been over-done in the case of the negro. The negro is not yet top heavy in his educated classes, and there is not yet any superfluity in the knowledge of French and literature among the colored citizens of the south.

But Mr. Washington’s point of view is evidently a practical one. He is convinced that the money which goes for the support of those colleges and universities would have gone to better advantage if given to Tuskegee or similar institutions.

At this institute Washington closely follows his ideas; and whatever we think of his plans for the solution of the negro problem, the enormous importance of the work he is doing cannot be denied by any one who took the trouble to visit his model industrial school, as the writer of these lines has done. Tuskegee has been described so frequently by its friends in American literature, that it seems unnecessary to go over the familiar field. One might say that no description does the school justice; that it is only necessary to spend a few days within the walls and the atmosphere of the school to lose all one’s prejudices against the negro, unless one has actually been born with them. The school contains more than ninety buildings, and nearly 2,000 students and a better behaved body of students I have never seen in any American University. In the line of general education the program of the school is rather limited, and falls far behind that of the average American college. It is probably lower than that of a good northern high school, and only better than that of a good public school in New England. But in addition to the academic department, about thirty-five different trades, both for the boys and the girls, are taught. The labor principle is strictly carried through the organization of the school. The majority of the students earn their living while in school by doing some kind of work for the school. The girls are taught housekeeping in addition to the other trades.

VIII. From the Negro’s Point of View, Continued. (July, 1909.)

One can easily see why Washington’s program has achieved the approval of so many southern men and women, with the exception of the extreme and unreasoning negro haters. One phrase in his famous Atlanta speech has made peace between him and the white south. “In all social relations,” he said, “we may be as distinct from each other as the fingers of the same hand, but we must work together as one hand in everything that really counts for mutual progress.” As Professor DuBois has remarked, various elements have interpreted this statement in many different ways. The bitter enemies of the negro have accepted this as an admission that the negro race has given up its fight for its political and social rights. Others, and among them a great many negroes, accepted it as a convenient though temporary form of cooperation.

Mr. Washington’s practical activity no less pleases the white South than his theoretical views. They may not see any necessity for teaching the negro how to read and write, but cannot help approving the effort to teach him how to work. The South is passing through a period of feverish industrial activity. There is a good deal of cheap labor in the South, and wages are much lower than anywhere in the United States, but this cheap labor has a very low level of productivity or efficiency. The increase of this efficiency is what capitalism wants, and it is even willing to contribute to the cost of it.

In the final chapter of my study I shall have opportunity to come back to a critical analysis of this solution which Mr. Washington has elaborated for the negro problem. Here I am mainly concerned with an objective and impartial exposition of the various solutions offered by the men looking at the problem from the inside. But it seems difficult to pass over the lengthy resume of Washington’s views without pointing out their value and shortcomings at least briefly.

And the obvious criticism of his standpoint is clearly this: That he concerns himself mainly with the economic elements of the problem, and not its social effects. After all, the accepted term “negro problem” is a misnomer, as Professor DuBois has very properly pointed out, if we are talking, as we are in this series of studies, of the race relations. It would be more accurately described as the great American race problem, or as another colored student has termed it, the Problem of Race Adjustment. Of this problem Washington speaks little except incidentally, and he contributes little to its direct solution. In addition to this race problem, there exists the extensive negro problem in a narrower sense, that is, the problem of the economic distress and the educational needs of the negro population of this country. It is with this problem that Washington is primarily concerned. He often insists that the other, broader problem will be settled automatically, through the economic regeneration of the negro. It is somewhat doubtful whether he himself is altogether sincere about this optimistic forecast. Mr. Washington evidently thinks that of the two the economic problem, — the negro problem in its narrower sense, — is at present the more important; and he is willing to devote his time and energy to the improvement of the economic condition of the negro, and let the problem of his political and social status in American society take care of itself, at least so long as the more acute problem is still awaiting its solution.

Now, if this interpretation of Washington’s activity and philosophy is right, there is a great deal in it that we as socialists have no fault to find with at all. We are willing to admit that the economic problem is at the bottom of the other aspects of the negro problem. We are willing to accept his materialistic point of view that the improvement in the economic status of the negro is of greater importance to him just at present that the questionable privilege of renting a room in Waldorf Astoria, or riding in a Pullman car, since these pleasures are in any case out of reach of the vast majority of the negro population of this country. But does Washington present a satisfactory solution of these economic problems? Does technical education settle the economic ills of modern society?

For there is nothing specifically racial in the economic problem presented by the ten millions of negroes in the South. They suffer from well recognized commonplace ills. There is a large farming population suffering from insufficient land holdings, from dear credit, from a low level of agricultural education. There is also a large propertyless proletariat forced to sell its labor power for a very small remuneration. There is lack of labor legislation, lack of labor organization, and only in addition to this is there the specific negro low efficiency and also the legal and social restraints which cannot help affecting the economic status of the negro.

And how does Washington expect to cure these characteristic ills of modern society, only aggravated in case of the negro by a few specific complications? Technical education is very useful, of course, but technical education has never been claimed even by its most enthusiastic advocates to have the power to transform all the poor farmers and poor workingmen into prosperous capitalists with real property and bank accounts. The economic problems are not so simple as all that. And so one is forced to tell Washington: Your efforts deserve of all praise and encouragement, but what you have undertaken to accomplish is beyond your strength. Surely the farmers and workingmen of the white North, East and West, are not so handicapped as your proletarians of the colored South, but no one has ever suggested to transform them all into middle class property owners by a system of trade schools.

And if the economic basis of Mr. Washington’s solution is shown to have been built on sand, what of his cheerful assurance that this economic elevation of the negro would automatically solve the political and social problems of race relations as well? The middle class negro may be treated a little better, where his economic power is so great as to assert itself. But in the many negro riots it was demonstrated that the negro business man was very often the object of exaggerated hate. For as we have shown, the negro upstart, whether in the intellectual or in the commercial and professional field, is much more irritating to the southerner than the negro proletarian is. And for a very good reason. For the negro who has economically arrived, must appear to be a dangerous competitor to many white men in the same line, whether it be commerce, a profession, or industry.

Popular as Mr. Washington is, he does not represent the entire thinking portion of the negro race. Less known to the general public, Professor DuBois, of Atlanta University, is the ablest representative of a tendency directly opposite not so much to the activity as to the ideas of Mr. Washington. DuBois is the direct antithesis of Washington not only in his views but also in education and personality.

Mr. DuBois is a northern negro, or rather a mulatto, with a much greater admixture of white blood than Washington. He was a total stranger to southern life until after his graduation from Harvard University and several years’ study in European universities. He was born in Connecticut, and received a thorough and broad education in the best American college, where he attracted general attention by his exceptional abilities. There he also received his doctorate for substantial historical investigations, and later he obtained a chair in the best negro institution of learning. By education and general culture DuBois therefore stands very much above Washington. But the differences do not end there.

In addition to his extensive training in history, economics and social science, Professor DuBois is a poet as much as Washington is a man of cold facts. The writings of Washington are full of good horse sense, of sober thought, and practical considerations. They show a thorough knowledge of the life of the American negro, but a very narrow outlook as to the future. The articles of DuBois bristle with emotion, poetry, color, and the literary English of DuBois has earned for him a prominent place among the contemporaneous writers. It is no exaggeration to say that Du Bois is one of the greatest artists of the pen that American literature of today can boast of. It is no wonder at all that these two men cannot understand each other.

Yet the antagonism is not of personalities only, or it would be hardly worth while to analyze it here. Temperamentally the two men represent two different currents of negro creative thought.

An economist by training, DuBois cannot fail to appreciate the vast importance of the increase in the economic efficiency and in the economic well being of the American negro. But a man of DuBois’ education and temperament will be necessarily much more sensitive to the racial discrimination, so openly displayed in the South by the lowest of the white folks to the highest among the colored, and DuBois will never for a pecuniary advantage, either to himself or to the race, accept this condition as an incorrigible fact. He must have social and political equality before anything else.

“The problem of the Twentieth century is the problem of the color line”; thus begins his little book, “The Souls of Black Folks.” And this phrase gives the best brief resume of his views of the negro problem. To him the race problem, the problem of race adjustment, Is the entire negro problem; and the narrower negro problem, the problem of the negro’s struggle for economic amelioration, a secondary matter except in so far as it helps along the solution of the only negro problem that matters. The only solution of the problem which DuBois can conceive of is its entire abolition, that is, the full equalization of the negro with the white man in all political and social rights. This must be the one great aim of each and every intelligent negro.

Even the entire absorption of the entire negro population into the dominant race, foretold by several anthropologists, as within the list of possibilities, does not satisfy him. For the problem of race adjustment, he says, cannot be solved by the absorption of one race into the other. That is dodging the question, instead of answering it. The problem is, how can two distinct races live prosperously and peacefully next each other, without making any efforts to absorb each or to subjugate the other? The race prejudice in the South, admits DuBois, is a sad but undeniable fact. We cannot escape it by ridiculing it nor by legislative acts. But it does not follow from it that it should be ignored and thereby encouraged. The fact must be recognized as a very reprehensible fact. The only force which may destroy it is the force of science and education of the white as well as the black man. DuBois accepts the truth of this contention as an axiom; for to him all spiritual progress of man is but the result of education in the broadest sense of the word.

Here DuBois seems to agree with Washington, but this agreement is only skin deep. According to Professor DuBois, the white man must grant to the black man the three following very important things: The right of vote (political equality), civil rights (equality before the law), and education of the negro youth according to his ability. These three demands may be written in great letters upon the standard of the negro educated classes. And these are just the demands which in Mr. Washington’s opinion should be postponed for an indefinite time. But, claims Dr. DuBois, nearly twenty years have passed since Mr. Washington began to teach and preach his doctrine, and what has he accomplished? The negro has been deprived of his political rights not only de facto but de jure as well. His general civil rights were greatly limited by specific legislative enactments; and finally the current of financial assistance to the leading institutions for the higher education of the negro youth has almost stopped.

We have seen that Mr. Washington did not altogether deny the usefulness of general so-called literary education for the negro. Nor does DuBois deny the necessity of industrial education. But in addition he considers the negro universities as absolutely necessary factors in the process of civilizing the negro. Without these universities he insists, there would be no Tuskegee’s, no men and women to teach in the industrial schools. The negro masses need the negro school teacher, and the negro school teacher needs the college and university. What else can uplift the negro masses intellectually if not the efforts and the examples of its intellectual class? he asks in an article under the characteristic caption “The Talented Tenth.” The negro race, like every other race, will be saved by its exceptional men. All men cannot obtain a university education, but a part of them must. Another argument which Mr. DuBois underscores is the demonstration the colleges must furnish that the negro mind can contribute something to the intellectual storehouse of the world. Such a demonstration must eventually lead to political and social equality. DuBois is therefore not at all disposed to ridicule the famous French grammar. The colleges, he insists, have taught 2,000 men and women Greek and Latin and higher mathematics, and these 2,000 have instructed 50,000 in general knowledge and culture; and these 50,000 in their turn have had a deep influence upon the entire 10,000,000 negroes in the United States. DuBois acknowledges the real and important services rendered by Washington to the negro race in so far as he teaches the negro masses the virtues of economy, patience and the habits of work; but in so far as Washington has defended the white man’s attitude towards the negro, in so far as he has persistently neglected the real significance of human rights, and the great educative value of participation in political life of the country, in so far as he has willfully closed his eyes to all existing race prejudice and laid obstructions in the way of the more ambitious because more gifted individuals of the negro race, in so far the negroes must resist his ideas and his activities.

Within the recent years this antagonism has become much more pronounced, and traces of it may be readily disclosed by the initiated in the public utterances of the respective parties, though often they try to hide their internal dissensions from the eye of the observant stranger. The radicals have become much more aggressive. This can scarcely be said to be due to their feeling of growing strength. But it may be better explained by the peculiarly vicious excrescences of the brutal race antagonism, of which the Atlanta riots present a fair illustration. It may also mean simply a growing self-consciousness of the small circle of intellectual negroes. In April, 1905, a number of colored men, all members of the intellectual class, met at Niagara Falls at the call of DuBois to start a militant movement for the defense of the rights of the negro. From this first meeting place it has derived its designation of “the Niagara Movement.” But if it was intended to emulate the example of the famous falls by its strength and persistency, the Niagara Movement has as yet proved to be a failure. I strongly suspect that among all the readers of these lines scarcely ten men have ever heard of this Niagara Movement, and yet socialists are especially interested in all movements of reform, or at least they ought to be. And the object of the movement was that of propaganda and demonstration to the white world. Even the fiery manifesto which was issued at the second annual convention of the Niagara Movement at Harpers Ferry (a place very fitly chosen for a radical negro assemblage, in view of his historical associations), failed to leave a very lasting impression. Professor Kelly Miller of Howard University (a brilliant negro student and journalist, who is on the whole a supporter of Washington’s program, with some reservations), insists that Professor DuBois has been playing the second fiddle in this Niagara Movement, that its moving spirit is another Harvard graduate, Mr. William M. Trotter, the editor of the Guardian, and a violent antagonist of Washington’s policies teachings. Be it as it may, DuBois is undoubtedly its most eloquent and its best known exponent, and as I have had many opportunities to convince myself, a very ardent and sincere one. Repeatedly I have heard DuBois brilliantly defend the justice of the movement and its demands for the re-establishment of the civic and political rights of the negro race. But when the question of ways and means arises, the Niagara Movement and DuBois himself invariably fails. For he has nothing more to offer than the claim of justice, the method of publicity, and the hope of true Christianity in the heart of the oppressors, In the court of justice DuBois could have eloquently, convincingly, touchingly established his claim. But is politics a court of justice?

In view of DuBois’ teachings, one hardly needs to say that he is sincerely hated by a vast majority of southerners who have heard his name. It is a little more discouraging to find that the northern sociologists and publicists also find his teachings too extreme, too radical and therefore harmful.

From the white man’s point of view Washington and DuBois represent the two opposite pole of negro thought concerning the negro problem. For that reason we thought it necessary to give such a complete analysis of their views, so that the socialist may know what attitude to expect when he begins a discussion of the negro problem with an intelligent negro. The difference is sufficiently strong and well defined to divide the intellectual aristocracy of the negro race into’ two separate if not altogether hostile camps. This separation by no means limits itself to the pedagogical aspects of the program, whether the negro child should be taught a useful trade or Greek and astronomy. The problem is great deal more serious than that. It is the problem how to react to the treatment the white man accords to the negro; whether it should be answered by a mellow sermon of patience and submission, or heated argument and antagonism. In the negro press of this country, which includes about one hundred weekly and several monthly publications, this question serves as a perennial subject of discussion; and so far as an outsider is able to judge, both sides seem to be equally well represented. There are many lawyers and ex-politicians and especially men with a very insignificant admixture of negro blood, who loudly demand the immediate restoration of the negro to all his civil and political rights as the only solution of this problem. These fractions organize conventions, conferences and councils and by all means endeavor to concentrate the remaining vestiges of political influence which the negroes have preserved. On the eve of presidential elections such activity becomes more noticeable. I had many opportunities to visit these conventions and I have listened in astonishment to the flood of political oratory which hides itself behind that deceptive black skin. Here the cruel treatment of the negro calls forth violent criticism, and the speakers do not at all mince matters. The atmosphere is often full of acute hatred towards the white man, or at least very bitter resentment. Only very seldom will an educated negro dare to speak ill of Washington’s work; many of them speak of it with great enthusiasm. But nevertheless a great many are quite ready to express their disapproval of his advice to lay aside the struggle for political rights. Within recent years, as the enthusiasm of republican party for the downtrodden negro brother has been growing weaker, and the republicans have been coquetting with the white South (the colored South having lost all political significance), the political enthusiasm of the negro has been growing dimmer also. Nevertheless, it is quite evident for anybody who has a large acquaintance among cultured negroes, that DuBois and his hopes, if not his policies, have many more adherents in private than in the open. In other words Booker Washington is not the only colored man who has learned the value of discreet silence, even if under restraint.

A certain proportion of the intelligent negroes unconditionally support the entire program of Booker Washington. Among them is for instance Thomas Fortune, one of the ablest men of his race. But no matter what the attitude of the intelligent negro to the various methods suggested for the solution of the negro problem, it is quite evident that they all feel the necessity of great changes. And justly so. The intellectual, educated negro is organically unable to accept the conditions which exist today, and which the white south considers perfectly normal. As we have stated before, we doubt very much whether the tactful attitude of Booker Washington represents his true feelings in the matter. In enumerating the greatest negroes in various fields of human activity the late talented negro poet Dunbar called Washington the greatest negro diplomat, and clearly hinted that in the effort to accomplish his great work of industrial education of the negro, and knowing the absolute impossibility to accomplish it without the white man’s money, Washington was forced to assume the attitude of a turtle dove.

In general it must be admitted that the growing educated and property holding middle class of the negro race protests against the treatment their race receives at the hands of the white man. And here is to be found the true explanation of the hatred of the white south towards an educated negro. Here is the meaning of the common statement that the educated negro does not know his place ; for in the very nature of things the educated negro cannot be satisfied with the place the white south has assigned to him, no matter how comfortable it may seem to the plain, uneducated negro.

But what does the latter think? After all, the educated negro finds many different ways to express his thoughts and aspirations. He airs them in lectures, sermons, speeches, pamphlets, articles and books. He is listened to not only by members of his own race by the white men who have not yet lost their interest in the problem and naturally want to hear the colored man’s side of the story. How much more difficult it is to get at the true attitude of the negro masses to the negro problem! For over forty years the south has insisted that to understand the real negro it is necessary to live very close to him; that for that reason the south knew and understood the negro perfectly, but the north not at all, and that therefore the north was altogether incompetent to form an independent opinion; furthermore that for this reason the south and only the south was fit to solve the negro question, and that the north had better keep its hands off. Gradually the northern public opinion is becoming converted to this point of view. Washington’s platform, outlined in the preceding pages, has earned the unanimous approval of the entire white population both south and north on the ground that Washington knew the common negro, having been one of them, while DuBois knew him not. Thus in reviewing DuBois’ little book, “The Souls of Black Folks” — the most fervid protest against racial prejudice and injustice that was ever written — the Outlook says: “This is excellently put, and is very interesting for the psychology of a very light and very intelligent mulatto, but in the understanding of the negro problem it is of no value at all, because the ordinary negro does not feel that way.”

This raises the two following questions: First, what is the attitude of the common negro towards the negro problem? and second, how important is this attitude of the common ignorant negro?

Says an old eastern proverb: “The fish likes to be fried: it is his habit.” This in a nutshell is the psychology of the common negro as it appears to the southern white man: “The darkey is satisfied with his lot, for he feels the superiority of the white man.” Forty-five years ago the south insisted with equal force and conviction that the darkey enjoyed the condition of slavery. As far as my observation goes, during many years of residence in a city where over thirty-five per cent of the population are negroes, I did not find such complacent acceptance of the frying process. I was present at meetings which brought together some three thousand negroes and I could very plainly see the very active moral support that was given to every expression of protest from the platform. The obstinacy with which your negro servant will speak of the colored washwoman as the washlady, while she will announce your best friend: “A woman came to see you, sir,” may be a quaint, but nevertheless convincing evidence of the deep-rooted feeling of racial dignity and pride.

Of course, one must remember that in northern cities as far down as Washington, the negro has succeeded in developing a great deal of self-respect. Way down south the respect and awe of the negro before the white man is more frequent and more natural. The negro there is always in fear of the white man, the negro girl is often proud to become the mother of a white man’s illegitimate child (so at least the white young gentlemen from the South tell us, and they ought to know), and the negro is invariably proud of his admixture of white blood. Even in Washington, a very light negro has once profusely thanked me because I had made a mistake and taken him for a white man.

But even in the South, the higher the educational standard, the less bovine complacency does one find with the condition of the things as they are; perhaps only the illiterate oxlike plantation hand of the South is satisfactory in this respect from the southern point of view. Even in the very center for the teachings of the Christian principle about the necessary attitude when the other fellow smites your cheek, in Tuskegee, I have found some of the most charming people of the colored, semi-colored and very slightly colored race boiling over with the most bitter feeling towards the injustice of the white south, but very careful in their expression of their sentiments lest Booker Washington might hear of it.

And what is the growing tendency of the day? The entire southern bourgeoisie testifies that the negro is becoming more impudent every day. This simply means that there is less and less complacency, even on the part of the domestic servant, with the condition of things as they are.

Thus only in climbing down the social scale do we reach to the negro farmer, tenant or agricultural laborer leading a purely animal existence, poor, ignorant, uncultured. It would be useless to seek from him any conscious or rational attitude of the race problem, for he may not even be conscious of the fact that any such exists. But is one at all justified to draw any conclusions from the attitude of this class of the negro race? The different strata of negro society differ just as much in their attitude to this grave problem of their legal, political, economic and social position as would the different classes of any other nationality and race. The higher the individual negro is in general culture and civilization, the more sensitive his nervous system, the more he expects from life, the more deeply he reacts to insult and injury. The essential fact is that to some extent all the negroes feel it and resent it, and are dreaming of better days, as fifty years ago they were dreaming of personal freedom. The other essential fact is that with the growth of education this sum total of discontent is rapidly growing. Are we to assume that a growing wave of discontent and protest of ten millions people will never express itself in some material effects upon the political and social conditions of this country? Then surely is the theory of class struggle, and the conception of history as the resultant of material economic forces, but an idle dream.

IX. The Negro’s Progress During a Half Century. (September, 1909.)

We deeply sympathize with the average reader’s abhorrence of statistical tables, but in the following chapters repeated excursions into the mysteries of statistics will be inevitable. We have stated a great many theories with as little prejudice as we could, and now we have come to the point where some testing of the conflicting theories by actual facts is absolutely essential. For in the broadest sense, the negro problem may be defined as the problem of the role the negro race is destined to play in the future of this country. And in order to judge as to what the negroes will be able to give in the future we must learn, at least in a general way, what they have succeeded in accomplishing in the past, at least during the half a century which has elapsed since they have been granted their personal freedom.

And it is needless to say that in this study, preconceived notions and a priori reasoning are of. very little help, and cold statistical facts all-important. The political dictum that “All men were created equal” would be as useless as the quasi-scientific assertion that anthropologically the negro is nearer to the anthropoidal apes than the white man. Fortunately the negro problem has always attracted so much attention that it naturally proved a grateful field for many serious students and called forth a great many special investigations and monographs. In fact it is no exaggeration to say that we know a great deal more about the southern negro than of his immediate neighbor. But of all the sources of informations, the most important remain the works of the United States Census Office, and the very interesting publications of the Annual Atlanta Conference held in connection with the Atlanta University, of which thirteen annual reports have appeared by this time. It may be useful to mention right in the beginning of this study, that unfortunately the data of the U.S. Census referring to the year 1900, are considerably out of date by this time and the conditions have changed perceptibly since then. Students of the negro problem will therefore await with a great deal of impatience the publication of the results of the thirteenth census soon to be undertaken. However it is only reasonable to expect that the tendencies which have manifested themselves during the preceding decade or two will have become more strongly developed during the first decade of the twentieth century; and after all it is tendencies and not bare facts which we are mainly concerned with.

Population. The growth of the negro population is the essential thing to be considered. It is one of the usual arguments against the lower races, that they cannot survive in competition with them. From that point of view a simple mechanical automatic solution to the negro problem must work itself out by the gradual extinction of the negro race. We have already shown in an earlier chapter how the number of negroes rapidly grew under slavery. This, however, is not argument against the theory of extinction, since the negro then was not living in competition with the white race. But the fifty years since emancipation surely should have furnished an excellent opportunity for the testing of this theory. Conditions favored it altogether. The emancipation left the millions of negro slaves in a horrible economic condition. The slaves of yesterday were transformed into free wage workers without property in a ruined land. In the mad desire to experience some real freedom a great many negroes drifted into the cities where the opportunities for finding employment were at their worst. They did act like so many helpless children who would be absolutely unable to take care of themselves. Nevertheless they did not die out. Relying upon the faulty figures of the eleventh census of 1890, which has a very bad reputation among the economic fraternity, even the famous sociologist, Benjamin Kidd, concluded that the negro in the United States was destined to extinction, and he thought to have found in these figures a complete corroboration of the superiority of the white race. The well known statistician Frederic Hoffman tried to prove the same with a great many complicated tables. But the results of the twelfth census completely destroyed this illusion. The increase of the negro population at the successive censuses is shown in the following table:

By this time the negro population has surely reached ten million people. It is true that the ratio to the entire population has slightly declined within recent years. But this can very easily be explained by the rapid increase of immigration from Europe. If immigrants be excepted, then it will be found that the negro population is increasing more rapidly than the native white population, notwithstanding the frightful negro mortality and especially that of the negro children. Because of a faulty enumeration in 1890 the rate of increase of the negroes from 1880 to 1890 seemed to be only 13.8 per cent, but for the following ten years the increase was 18 per cent.

Of course this mere increase in numbers really shows nothing except the power to procreate, but one is forced to quote these figures because so much has been said about the inevitable disappearance of the negro race, and especially about his frightful rate of mortality. It was shown on the basis of the twelfth census that the death rate of whites in this country was annually 17.3 per thousand and that the negroes 30.2 per thousand, and this difference was frequently emphasized even by such level-headed men as Professor Willcox as an argument against the negroes. If the modern status of medical and sanitary science is taken account of, this point of view is perfectly preposterous. Modern anthropology has admitted that the comparative death rate is a sociological and not an anthropological characteristic. Death depends upon conditions of life, upon the sanitary conditions surrounding us, upon our level of education as affecting our mode of life, upon our occupations, etc. In all these characteristics the negro differs from his white neighbors, could one expect to find the same death rate among a nation of laborers and a nation of teachers, business and commercial men? In this connection an interesting illustration of the many conditions influencing the death rate has been given in a scientific publication a few years ago. It was shown that among the Russian peasants the death rate varies in an inverse ratio to the amount of land they hold, so that those who had the largest farms, over 135 acres, had a death rate of 19.2 per thousand and those who had the smallest farms, less than 13.5 acres, showed a death rate of 34.7, and the intermediate groups had intermediate rates. A pretty illustration indeed of the literally killing effects of poverty. We shall see presently what the degree of poverty among the American negroes is.

Having established the fact that the negro population of this country shows a healthy rate of increase and is not only in no danger of extinction, but seems to be fully able to hold its own, at least as compared with the native American element, we may take up the interesting question of distribution of the negro race.

It is a matter of familiar knowledge that the vast majority of the negroes live in the south. But we know a great deal more than that. It appears from’ the census figures that the negro population in 1900 was distributed as follows:

South Central Division 4,193,952 47.5%
South Atlantic Division 3,729,017 42.2%
North Central Division 495,751 5.6%
North Atlantic Division 385,020 4.4%
Western Division 30,254 0.3%

Total 8,833,994 100.0%

Thus the north has by the end of the last century absorbed over one-tenth (10.3%) of the negro population. This was not accomplished in a day. It shows that a steady movement of southern negroes northward is constantly taking place.

The negro population of the northern and western states increased as follows:

In 1860 344,719 or 7.8% of total negro population.
In 1870 459,198 or 9.4% of total negro population.
In 1880 626,890 or 9.5% of total negro population.
In 1890 728,099 or 9.7% of total negro population.
In 1900 911,025 or 10.3% of total negro population.

The increase from 7.8 per cent to 10.3 per cent within forty years may not strike the reader as very remarkable. But these percentages are somewhat misleading without a more careful analysis. Looked upon in another way they show that the negro population in the northern and western states has increased by 265 per cent or more than two and a half times within this forty years while the total negro population has a little less than doubled. In any case, detailed figures aside, we see conclusively that while the vast majority of the negroes is still in the south and will be in the south for many generations to come, perhaps forever, as far as that word has any human meaning at all, nevertheless there is a constant and continuous stream of negroes northward; and that stream is probably much greater than the figures seem to show, for the following two reasons: First, there is also a stream of negroes returning, and, secondly, the fecundity of negroes as of all other races and nationalities must be lower in the northern cities than in the southern plantations. As this movement northward has recently not abated but rather grown in strength, there is not very much more than one million of negroes beyond the boundaries of the south, to which they have been supposed to belong climatically.

This persistent movement northward is significant for two reasons: To begin with it is the most eloquent demonstration that the negro is enterprising enough to look for a change of economic and social surroundings and opportunities, notwithstanding the tremendous difficulties of such migration in view of his extreme poverty, and thus is no different from other races in kind; and secondly that the negro problem, whatever we may mean by that phrase, is becoming less a local problem and more a national one. From the proletarian and especially from the socialist point of view this second consideration is specially important, for it simply means that in the economic as well as the political field the labor movement can less and less afford to neglect the negro, and is being forced by the inexorable force of circumstances to form some logical plan of dealing with this problem. We may rail as much as we like against the public franchise monopolist or any other capitalist for importing negro scabs, we may even throw bricks at the negro scab, and possibly smash a few hara negro skulls, but it is worse than childish, it is criminal to deceive oneself that it would be possible by such primitive means to dam the inevitable movement of labor from one part of the country to the other, when they are not and cannot in the very nature of things be divided by any legal barriers, and when such definite differences in the economic and social status of labor in these two parts of the country persist. As we shall have opportunity to emphasize more than once in the concluding chapters of our study, the law of self-preservation will force us towards an active effort at the solution of the negro problem.

Simultaneously with this movement northward, and constituting part of it, there is an even stronger, more pronounced movement of the negro toward the cities. Originally, it will be remembered, the negro was almost exclusively an agricultural worker, and whether an agricultural or industrial worker, he lived in a rural community. For one thing, there were very few cities of any size in the antebellum south. In 1880 there lived in the cities with a population over 4,000 849,721 negroes, or 12.9 per cent of the entire negro population; in 1890 1,482,651 negroes, or 17.6 per cent, and in 1900 1,810,407 negroes, or 20.5 per cent. Thus over one-fifth of all the negroes lived in cities ten years ago, and judging by the rapid increase in their relative number, this proportion must have increased to nearly one-fourth by this time. Thus the economic problem presented by the negro is still mainly an agricultural problem, but not exclusively so, and is becoming less and less so. Another reason, why we should know a little more about him.

Because of the rapid influx of European immigrants into American cities, the proportion of negroes to the total urban population is not increasing; it still constituted in 1900 as in 1880 a little over 6 per cent, but in the South they constitute over 30 per cent of the entire city population, and proportionately their number is growing very rapidly.

One can frequently hear a southerner express the opinion that the only motive for a negro to move to the city is to enable him to exploit his wife or his wife’s employers by living off the leavings of their table. There are, however, many more less frivolous reasons why the negro prefers to drift away from the country into the city, and on the whole they are not so very different from the reasons which drive the white American farmer into town. It is the economic opportunity which the city offers, the opportunity for social life, and in the case of the negro an additional factor of comparatively safety from the arbitrary rule of the local planter.

A better understanding of these movements will be derived from the study of occupational statistics, perhaps the most fascinating part of statistics, when properly presented.

According to the census of 1900 there were in the United States altogether nearly 58 million persons of all races over 10 years of age, and of these 29 millions or almost exactly one-half were gainfully employed, in the language of the census. That means that the remaining one-half were mainly wives working at home or children in schools, etc. When, however, the separate races are taken, it is found that out of 51,250,000 white persons over 10 years of age, 24,912,000 were gainfully employed or 48.6 per cent, while of the 6,415,581 negroes over ten, 3,992,337 were employed or 62.2 per cent. This fact may be interpreted in a great many different ways, but it surely is sufficient evidence that the negroes are not parasites on the economic structure of this country.

Now, what are the negroes employed at? It is largely because of their economic status at present that the negro problem is of such momentous import to the socialist and labor movement. Here again, a brief comparison with the population at large is necessary in order to emphasize the distinctions. The total working population of this country is distributed as follows:

Agricultural pursuits 10,381,765 35.7%
Professional service 1,258,538 4.3%
Domestic and personal service 5,580,657 19.2%
Trade and transportation 4,766,964 16.4%
Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits 7,085,309 24.4%

Total 29,073,233 100.0%

That gives a bird’s-eye view of the occupations of the American people, though not a very satisfactory one. The distinctions here are industrial and technical rather than economic, and it is only by inference and painstaking analysis that we arrive at the conclusion that the vast majority of the latter class are employees, while in the agricultural class most of them are independent or at least quasi-independent producers. The failure to analyze the economic status of the persons gainfully employed is one of the weakest points of the American censuses, but that is the best material available.

Be it as it may, the distribution of the negroes gainfully employed shows several distinctive features.

Agricultural pursuits…2,143,154…53.7%
Professional Service…47,219…1.2%
Domestic and personal service…1,317,859…33.0%
Trade and Transportation…208,989…5.2%
Mechanical and manufacturing pursuits…275,116…6.3%

Total…3,992,337…100.0%

A proletarian race! The figures above quoted leave no room for any difference of opinion. Considerably over one-half of the negroes employed are in agriculture, and as we shall presently see only a very few of them own the land they till. A good third belong to the group of personal and domestic service, so that only much less than one sixth — less than one-seventh even, is employed in professional service, trade and transportation or even mechanical pursuits. Of the male negroes earning a living, 58.3 per cent were employed in agriculture, and 23.8 per cent in domestic and personal service, and of the female negroes 44.2 per cent in agriculture and as much as 51.8 per cent in domestic and personal service. A race of laborers and servants, that is what the negroes are, and that is what they are destined to be in the opinion of the southern white man.

It is to test this latter point of view, that the statistics, dry as they are, are here quoted. At a glance it must be observed that even about one-half a million of negroes engaged in trade, transportation and manufactures are not a factor which ought to be left out of consideration. But more light may be obtained by mentioning specific occupations rather than very large and largely artificial groups, and also by comparing the data for a series of censuses so as to discover any natural tendencies which may assert themselves. The following table may be a little too long, but we feel quite constrained to make use of it. In it are mentioned all the occupations which are employed, or rather were employed in 1900, over 250 negroes:

Thus the occupations of the negroes are found not to be so uniform as one might have thought from the preceding statements. In addition to the occupations enumerated claiming about 90 per cent of all employed negroes, one may mention the following employing from ten thousand to twenty-five thousand persons: Turpentine farmers and laborers, barbers and hairdressers, nurses and midwives, clergymen, tobacco and cigar factory operatives, hostlers, masons, dressmakers, iron and steel workers, seamstresses,’ janitors and sextons, housekeepers and stewards, fishermen and oystermen, engineers and firemen. From five to ten thousand persons were employed as lumbermen and wood choppers, boatmen and sailors, clerks and copyists, merchants and dealers, messengers, painters and glaziers, brick and tile makers. Numerous other occupations claimed from one to five thousand each.

It is impossible to go here into a detailed comparative study of the occupational distribution of the employed negroes, to disclose the less important tendencies in the economic shifting of the negro labor because the question of the economic status of the negro one alone might be made subject of several volumes. Besides this has already been done by such a statistical authority as Professor Walter F. Willcox of Cornell University in the various census publications dealing with the negro, and in various articles in economic periodicals. These studies are made available to the average reader by the republication as a supplement in A.H. Stone’s work “Studies in the American Race Problem.” But while the facts as stated by Professor Willcox are undoubtedly correct, the difficulty with the professor is that he hastens to claim a race significance to results of economic environment. He has done it in interpreting the death rate of the American negro, and he repeats this mistake in explaining the changes in the occupations of the negro men and women:

“In the industrial competition thus begun the negro seems during the last decade to have slightly lost ground in most of those higher occupations in which the services are rendered largely to whites. He has gained in the two so-called learned professions of teachers and clergymen. He has gained in the two skilled occupations of miners or quarrymen and iron or steel worker. He has gained in the occupations, somewhat ill defined so far as the degree of skill required is indicated, of sawing mill or planing mill employee, and nurse or midwife. He has gained in the class of servants and waiters. On the other side of the balance sheet he has lost ground in the South as a whole in the following skilled occupations: Carpenter, barber, tobacco and cigar factory operative, fisherman, engineer or fireman (not locomotive), and probably blacksmith. He has lost ground also in the following industries in which the degree of skill implied seems somewhat uncertain: Laundry work, hat k man or teamster, steam railroad employee, housekeeper or steward. The balance seems not favorable. It suggests that in the competition with white labor to which the negro is being subjected he has not quite held his own.”

How carefully guarded and carefully weighted are these statements, how perfectly professorially the tone! Things are not, they only seem to be. And, yet, and yet how perfectly evident the animus.

It is no coincidence that Professor Willcox’s papers are reproduced in Mr. Stone’s book. If Mr. Stone approvingly reproduces the professor’s statements, it is because it was Mr. Stone’s opinions and views that have shaped the opinions and views of Professor Willcox on the negro problem.

The veiled insinuation that the comparative skill of the white and negro laborer are the determining factors in determining these indicated changes. As a matter of fact, it is perfectly obvious, as soon as the thought is suggested, that the losses of negroes in various occupations are often explained by the development of a specific opposition, from a newly developed labor union, or by the direct consumer as such. If for reasons of racial prejudices, or even legitimate racial feeling, as some would insist, the white southerner prefers an Italian barber to a negro one, this may be a misfortune for the negro but surely it need not necessarily be his fault, unless it be his fault to have been born a negro.

In view of this opposition, which is too well known to need any evidence, the fact that slowly but surely the negro is nevertheless forcing his way into industrial work, is of tremendous significance. Most of the occupations practiced in the South employ some negro labor. There can be no claim of the physical incapacity of the negro, for physically the negro is much stronger than the southern white man. The claim is often made, however, and supported by a good deal of evidence, that the negro is too frivolous, careless, shiftless, to be depended upon, to be trusted with important and regular work, and that he is too stupid to handle expensive and complicated machinery The evidence on this point is far from uniform. To sift it all would be impossible and scarcely necessary. But as evidence of biological inferiority it is not conclusive, and sociologically it leads to diametrically opposite conclusions from those which the southern gentlemen seem to derive from it.

It is not conclusive biologically, because it is not uniform. A biological characteristic must appear universally and uniformly. If a goatee is a characteristic of a goat, it is because each and every normal billy goat has a goatee, and not 25 or 45 per cent of them. The negro has proven himself fit to do any mechanical work which the white man is doing. The thousands of the graduates of the Tuskegee and other industrial schools have demonstrated it. And if there is on the average less efficiency in the negro mass, it evidently must be explained by the conditions of its existence in the past ana present. In the professions, arts, sciences and trades and business, the negroes, at least some negroes, have proven their ability to do the required work. And even if in competition with the various white races they should prove less efficient, it could be easily explained (waving aside the possibility of the failure being due to prejudice) by the conditions of their life during the last two hundred years, and also by the conditions of their individual education. As Mr. Booker Washington wisely remarks in one of his books, it is not at all fair to compare the negro farmer with the educated American farmer of the middle west. Even the superiority of the imported farmer of Italy over the negro, of which Stone makes so much capital, is very far from conclusive, in view of the differences in the conditions of their growth and education. The essential fact remains that in the competition with the dominant white race which has all the advantages of legal, social and economic position on its side, the negro has been able to hold his own, and in many branches of work to encroach upon the white man. In any case the fluctuations are too fine, too subtle, they must be looked for with too fine a comb of statistical analysis to be given any value in an organic estimate of race value. Such race distinctions must be self-evident, obvious, or they are not race distinctions at all.

These race distinctions are usually emphasized most obstinately in the case of the negro famer. And yet, it is especially in his case that the historical and social conditions must be taken into consideration. The previously quoted tables showed that over one-half of the negroes gainfully employed belong to the agricultural class, and therefore the condition of the negro farmer must be carefully studied. The interested are referred to the classical work of Professor Du Bois on “The Negro Farmer,” published by the U.S. Census Office, and only the essentials are here given.

Present conditions, as Du Bois correctly points out, can only be understood by bringing in mind the historical development from slavery. The normal farm of the ante-bellum days was the large plantation worked by slave labor under the direction of the supervisor for the account of the white plantation and slave owner. After the war a weak effort was made to perpetuate this system with the substitution of the hired labor for slave labor. But this soon broke down, partly because of the refusal of the freedmen to work under such conditions, and partly because of the inability of the slave owners of several generations to assume the new and difficult roles of capitalistic entrepreneurs at a moment’s notice. As a result a tenant system arose. It was almost exclusively a share tenant system in the beginning as the tenant had no money to become a money rental tenant. Gradually money tenantry has been gaining way, and as the highest form, farm ownership by the negroes. The process was slow, but the evolution unmistakable, as is shown by the following figures:

Thus, one-third of the negro farmers are cash tenants, and one fourth or nearly 200,000 farmers are owners of their farms. Considering that forty or fifty years ago, they were almost all slaves without any property rights at all, it can scarcely be claimed that they have done so very badly, especially as they had to meet the competition of the white man all the time.

It is but natural that the vast majority of the farms owned or rented by the negroes are very small, smaller than the corresponding holdings of the white man. In the aggregate the amounts loom up considerably, and it is these aggregates that are often quoted in the discussions of the negro problem. But it conveys very little to say that the negro farms cover an area of over thirty-eight million acres, or nearly 60,000 square miles, that the total value of the property of these farms, owned as well as rented, amounts to half a billion, and the gross value of the products of these farms in 1900 to a quarter of a billion dollars.

More important are the following data indicating the general size of the negro farms:

Thus the negro farmer is found to be in a very precarious condition as regards the amount of land held; 88.3 per cent of the farmers, or practically seven-eighths of them held less than 10 acres apiece, 69.3 per cent or practically seven-tenths of them operated less than 50 acres per family. This shows that as farmers the negroes must suffer from lack of land and the accompanying consequences of such insufficiency of land.

No less significant for the characterization of the economic status of the negro farmer the following data of the gross (not net) earnings of these farms are:

This table is significant enough for the general economic condition. of the negro farmer. It must not be forgotten that these figures of gross products, and that the net after deducting the cost of feeding the cattle and especially after payment of rent (usually one-half of the product) will be correspondingly smaller. Even taking into consideration the lower standard of prices and living in a southern rural community, the extreme poverty of the negro is clearly established. Eighty-five per cent. of the negro farmers have a gross product of less than $500; more than one-half of them have a gross product of less than $250.

These budgets do not leave much room for the saving of a surplus and accumulation of property. And had the negroes accumulated none, that would hardly be a valid argument of their economic unworthiness. But in the entire discussion of the economic status of the negro, this power of accumulation has always been assumed to represent the most important test. We shall reach this question presently (in the following chapter of our study), but limiting ourselves here to the statistical representation of the matter we must show that as a matter of fact the negroes have accumulated quite a considerable amount of property. It was shown in one of the preceding tables that 187,797 farms were owned by negro farmers and these farms included nearly 16,000,000 acres valued at approximately $180,000,000 and producing about $60,000,000 of agricultural products.

The above, we appreciate, is a very meager account of the wealth of information contained in the census concerning the economic status of the American negro. But the trying nature of statistics must not be forgotten. We have quoted enough, however, to give to the absolutely uninitiated some conception of the conditions under which the negro lives, and in our following installment we shall discuss the general bearing of these figures upon the negro problem.

IX. The Negro’s Progress During a Half Century, Continued. (December, 1909.)

IN the preceding installment of this chapter a lengthy excursion into the domain of statistics was undertaken. But such excursions are so tedious and discouraging to the untrained, that it would be suicidal for any writer to resort too frequently to it. The main facts necessary for the understanding of the problem were elucidated. And details, however interesting to the specialist, would only prove cumbersome to the general reader. Notwithstanding the general title of this series of articles, which aim to look upon the entire negro problem from the point of view of economic evolution, we must abstain from such details concerning the economic conditions of the negro population, as of comparatively little import for the proper understanding of our problem. The wealth of descriptive material concerning such details is overwhelming. But, strange as it may seem, it is mostly irrelevant from our point of view. For once the nature and occupational composition of this population is understood, the detailed problems of the economic life of the negro are self-evident, and have little that is peculiar. Farmers with little land, farmers with insufficient education, laborers with small wages — these are all old problems, which must be dealt with separately. Only the legal and social position of the negro and his peculiar racial characteristics, if any there be, interfering with his normal development along the same lines as would a white man (if they do so interfere) — these are the factors which make for a negro problem— and they must be studied.

In the study of the development of the negro race in the United States for the last fifty years this is the most important question for us just at present: Does that development indicate the existence of evidence of such racial inferiority, does it disprove the theory, or, finally, does it leave the question still open?

Now, what are the main tendencies as they have been elucidated by an analysis of the statistical evidence brought together?

The negro population grows rapidly. Its growth is a little slower than that of the white population, because of absence of negro immigration, and also because of the high mortality of negro children, but this is evidently a result of the social forms of existence, and cannot be considered a racial characteristic. The negro is, therefore, amply able to hold his own in the midst of a white population and is in no danger of dying out.

The negro population is gradually spreading out throughout the country, thus showing an appreciation of the comparative advantages of various localities and extending the negro problem throughout the breadth of the United States.

It is moving towards the cities from the rural district. Again this is as it should have been expected. Economically, socially, from the point of view of anything that makes life worth living the American city is preferable to the country, and no race or nationality fails to show this tendency in this or any country.

Occupationally, the working negro population belongs to the lowest groups of farm or other unskilled labor, the labor they were made to perform while in slavery. But gradually a drifting into other occupations is noticeable, into trade, transportation, artisan and factory work and even professions. Negroes are found in dozens of various occupations within these large groups.

In the agricultural field an interesting, steady though not a very rapid transition from share and cash tenantry to farm ownership, one-fourth of the farms operated by the negroes being owned by them.

Thus there is even a steady accumulation of property in agricultural pursuits as well as other occupations, though of necessity it is very slow. This is in the line of economic progress of the negro population in this country; and it is only the line of progress that is important, because the actual data are subject to rapid changes and at best are ten years old, referring to 1900.

Now is there any one feature of this process of economic progress that is distinctly negro rather than universally human? Could the progress of several million slaves suddenly liberated under such circumstances as the negroes received their emancipation — could it have been on any different lines?

It would be preposterous to derive any evidence of racial inferiority from these general data. Yet the economic status and development of the negro is often claimed to be the strongest proof of such inferiority. To defend this position, only little details and never the general tendencies as indicated in the preceding pages, are usually emphasized.

What, then, is the economic indictment which in its ablest form was probably expressed by Mr. A. Stone in his “Studies of the American Race Problem”?

Indictment One: The negro is slow in accumulating property.

Of course. So he is. So am I, gentle reader, though I can claim Caucasian blood for hundreds of generations back. So are many of you, I am certain. Property may be both a misfortune and a crime from the point of view of modern capitalistic society, but it can hardly be called a racial characteristic. It is too universal.

It may be admitted that he is slower in this process of accumulation than the white man. Does this call for racial explanations, when —

1. He started from the bottom of chattel slavery only fifty years ago and thus had a long road to travel.

2. He had his feeling of economic self-reliance destroyed by centuries of slavery.

3. He did not have the equal treatment before the law and in other social relations, which is essential for opportunity?

Thus he begun at a lower plane, did not have the necessary economic training and was constantly handicapped by legal discrimination, and social prejudice, which have destroyed his opportunity. And waving aside all these material factors which should be clear to every serious student of southern conditions, there is the palpable psychological factor of habit — habit which is acquired by education, and therefore can be traced directly to the preceding generation, and can thus be termed hereditary — hereditary, that is, in a social and not in a biological sense. That there is nothing essentially racial in this is demonstrated not only by the actual figures of accumulated negro property, but by the growth of a negro bourgeoisie, of which many examples are given by Booker Washington in his book on “The Negro in Business/’

Indictment Two: The negro is an inefficient worker. Again the facts may be cheerfully admitted. But what is their interpretation? The degree of efficiency of white workers is also a very variable quantity. Efficiency is the result of home training and school education. Thus all races and nationalities in unfavorable social and political conditions are inefficient. The German is more efficient than the Italian, the Italian is more efficient than the Russian, etc., etc., and the American is a very efficient worker because of the comparatively favorable conditions under which he grew up. The northern man is vastly more efficient than the southern mountaineer, though they both come from the same stock. How efficient a negro worker can be made, a study of the graduates of the Tuskegee can indicate. When the miserable school facilities provided for the negro by the south are considered and it is understood that the training of the negro worker is left to his equally inefficient parent, who is either an ex-slave or child of an ex-slave — the reasons for inefficiency must be readily understood. But the growth in the number of negro draymen, steam railroad employes, miners and in other correlated occupations shows readily how rapidly this inefficiency vanishes.

In the same way the other indictments of thriftlessness, unreliability, improvidence and extravagance are easily met. The indictment that the negro is not fit to be employed in any regular mechanical or manufacturing pursuit is disproved by the number of negroes so employed. The very claim of the south that technical schools of the Tuskegee type are necessary for the negro for the purpose of teaching him these virtues of thrift and efficiency and habits of regular work are an admission that these faults are only due to social environment and not to racial idiosyncrasies. The racial characteristics cannot be changed in one generation.

Another line of attack upon the potential capacity of the negro proceeds on intellectual grounds. The claim that the negro is not a human being at all, but a beast (of burden?) created with two hands and the power of speech so as to be more useful to the white man — is a view that has persisted from the beginning of slavery, in the middle of the seventeenth century down to the dawn of the twentieth century.

This argument admitted the economic functions of the negro without giving any credit to his brain.

In estimating the intellectual achievements and progress of the negro population his extremely poor school facilities must not be forgotten. Fifty years after emancipation a large proportion of the negroes is still illiterate.

Fifty years ago almost the entire negro population consisted of illiterates. According to the antiquated data of the twelfth census, referring to 1900, the illiterate negroes constituted 44.5 per cent of the entire negro population. The percentage is appalling, but in view of the southern attitude toward negro education, not surprising, and indicates a very rapid increase in the average intelligence of the negro masses. In 1880 illiterates numbered 70 per cent among the negroes; in 1890, 57.1 per cent, and in 1900, 44.5 per cent. With such a rapid drop within twenty years it is not unreasonable to assume that not more than one-third remains illiterate at present, and possibly a much smaller proportion. For besides the increase in school facilities, the gradual weeding out of the older, illiterate generation must be taken into account.

The percentage of illiterates in various age groups is shown in the following table:

Two very important conclusions may be made from this table. First, there is the peculiar fact that for the five age groups from 10 to 34 years the percentage of illiteracy is about the same; this is an evident result of the growth of southern antagonism to negro education within the last decade.

Even were the entire south making an energetic effort to force the negro into schools, the evidences of growth of illiteracy among the negroes, as given by the statistical data quoted above would still be satisfactory. For as the great majority of the adult negroes are children of slaves, and not a few of them ex-slaves themselves, and nearly three-fourths of them agricultural laborers or petty farmers, one does not expect from them any deep appreciation of the advantages of education. As a matter of fact, however, the conditions are exactly the reverse. The negro schools in the south are wretched; they run a shorter time than the white men’s schools; they are placed in disgusting buildings; their teachers are paid less than the white teachers, and above all, there are not enough of them. The facts are so well established that it would be waste of space to marshal any statistical evidence in their support. Thus the fall in the illiteracy of the negro is an indication not only of the passive growth of their educational level, as would be the case with foreigners arriving in New York, upon whom education is forced, but also of their active struggle towards light. In view of the dire poverty of the negro population in the southern cities, it is astonishing to find how hard the negro mothers are fighting to get their children into public schools, and how many small paid private schools there are supported by negro servants and washwomen for the education of their little ones. Surely to any unprejudiced mind this is a remarkable illustration of the intellectual possibilities of the negro race.

The possibility, usefulness and even necessity of some degree of education for the negroes is admitted even by a large portion of the white south. This opinion is the result of purely egotistic considerations for the greater efficiency of the man with a common school education as an industrial worker. Nevertheless the white man finds a last Resort for his good old reliable theory of racial inferiority in the claim that the negro is less able to digest the results of education; that he is slower to make progress in school and that at best he may well assimilate the rudiments of an education, but soon a limit is reached beyond which the negro mind cannot go. The higher fruits of culture and civilization are not for the negro brain. Such is the theory.

It is perhaps as difficult to refute this theory as to demonstrate it by either physiological or psychological experimental data. The entire statistical matter concerning this problem is so scanty as not to deserve even mentioning. The theory, or so much of it as is not due to obstinate prejudice or willful misrepresentation, is a result of everyday observation. A teacher finds a negro child stupid — and a judgment is pronounced over the entire negro race. That some of the negroes have reached the highest standards of general culture or specialized training is easily shown by the number of negro teachers in negro colleges. But if, in addition, it can be easily shown that the condition of life of the vast majority of negro families are such as to hold back the development of the negro child, then any racial argument becomes quite unnecessary.

The American philistine has always sung loud praises to the influence of the American home upon the moral and intellectual development of the young generation. Is the negro home such as was developed through two hundred years of chattel slavery calculated to produce bright and intelligent children? And is it at all wonderful, at all surprising to find that a child coming from such a home is not so highly developed mentally as the child of a white professor or professional man? Even if the comparative backwardness of the negro child were recognized as a universal phenomenon would there be any need for a racial interpretation?

As a matter of fact, however, any one with sufficient opportunities for observation can convince himself to his own satisfaction that among the negroes, as among the white, the “natural” intelligence of the children is as a rule directly proportionate to the intellectual level and social status of the negro family.

If any further facts are necessary to establish the negro’s capacity for higher education than that given by the common public school, sufficient evidence is furnished by the statistics of secondary schools and colleges. In interpreting the figures here again the extreme difficulties in the way of a negro child striving for higher education must not be forgotten. The insufficient schools, discrimination against negroes in the best colleges and universities, and last, but not least, the inability to meet the financial burden of higher education.

According to the reports of the U.S. Commissioner of Education there were in 1896-7, 15,203 high school pupils of the negro race enrolled in the sixteen southern states, of whom 8,259, or 54.3 per cent, were girls. In 1902-3 the total number grew to 20,909, of whom 12,915, or 61.8 per cent, were girls. In 1907-8, according to the latest data available, the number was 26,279, of whom 58.5 per cent were girls. The number of negro collegiate students in the south during the same period increased still more rapidly— 2,108 in 1896-7, 3,688 in 1902-3 and 4,602 in 1907-8.

The same rapid growth is noticeable in professional courses, with the single exception of theology.

No great overflow of the professions with negroes is noticeable, because the schools of training for them are very few, the expenses of professional training very high and far too high for the majority of the negro students and conditions of success not very encouraging. But here again signs of progress are not missing and all racial arguments fall to pieces.

“Nevertheless, the negroes have not yet succeeded in producing a single great intellectual or scientific worker. What better evidence of their racial inferiority, of the utter futility of higher university education for the negro is necessary?”

That is a familiar southern argument. Besides begging the question (for there are at least a few men among the negroes who have done high grade intellectual work), the argument neglects a very important factor — the very narrow limitations under which higher education for the negro is growing, if at all, in this country. The southern whites accuse the sentimental northerners for pampering and spoiling the negro by providing him with numerous institutions of higher learning. Even Booker Washington, the acknowledged friend of his people, does not miss the opportunity to kick the French grammar and astronomy.

Atlanta alone has five or six negro colleges, universities and similar institutions. But the sad truth of the matter is that notwithstanding the high sounding names of colleges, universities, academies, seminaries and institutes, the vast majority of these institutions are so limited in their means that they are able to do only elementary work and the best of the negro colleges cannot compare with the mediocre small New England college. Howard, Atlanta, Fisk, Shaw and a few normal and industrial institutes constitute the entire cultural apparatus which this rich and powerful nation has furnished for the higher training of the leaders and professional men of a ten million element of the population.

But, insists the southerner, small as they are, these educational facilities for the negro are much greater than they should have been, for education only spoils the negro morally and does him no good intellectually.

That this argument is actually made, any one knows who has at all lived in the south. Shall we dignify this argument by a refutation? Coming as it does in the beginning of the twentieth century, isn’t the argument itself the greatest indictment against the white south? Here we have been perhaps for a hundred years pointing to the American little red school house and the free American high school and the five hundred and odd American colleges as the greatest institutions of this free democracy, and then we are snapped through the amazing intellectual somersault, of assuming that when applied to a more primitive element of population, more ignorant, without the great traditions of home and family — and therefore evidently more in need of training, culture and civilization — that when applied to these unfortunate ten millions the self-same little red school house, the high school and the college became instruments of demoralization. Come now, let us be serious, and not talk like little spoiled children. The bias is too evident to be denied. Besides the southerner, in its childish simplicity, does not even try to deny it. He frankly says: Education spoils the negro, because it makes him think too much of himself, and deprives him of his respect for the white man.

Mind you, it is not often argued that education injures the negro intellectually, but it is claimed that intellectual training destroys the negro’s morals. This is in harmony with the other statements so frequently made. First that the sign of the negro’s racial inferiority is to be found in his moral character rather than in his mental capacity, and, second, that within the last fifty years the negro race in this country has undergone a very rapid and perceptible moral degeneration. Here are two statements which are really contradictory, for if this moral degeneration has actually taken place, and under the influence of changed social conditions (effect of environment), and if this moral level had been satisfactory — what reason is there to give it an ironclad, hopeless, racial interpretation?

Moreover it smacks of an utter lack of understanding of the nature of moral ideas to base any racial distinctions upon them. The differences between individuals of the same race are so great as are the differences in the prevailing moral ideas among different communities of the same racial stock, or those of the same community at different times — all under the influence of social environment. To take a very recent and vivid example, compare the exalted principles of social duty and self-sacrifice for political purposes which dominate the Russian intellectual youth just before and during the revolution, and the new philosophy of crude hedonism and self-indulgence reaching particularly in the domain of sex relations beyond the limits of ordinary decency. Compare these two extreme ethical standards governing the same racial groups at two different periods, scarcely five years apart, what has caused this remarkable change; if not the change in social conditions, the change in environment? and where are the racial biological foundations for our moral ideas, if the historical events of a year or two can entirely uproot them?

Dismissing, then, the organic biological racial interpretation of the moral depravity of the negro, how much truth is there in the statement that the last fifty years were years of moral degeneration of the negro under the influence of the freedom to which he was unused, for which he was unfit, and if there was such moral degeneration, what is its interpretation?

To begin with, the evidence in support of this indictment is by far not as strong and convincing as one would expect finding that the average writer on the subject assumes the fact without further discussion. In the very nature of the problem, any such evidence beyond personal impressions, always prejudiced, always misleading, is impossible without a very laborious and costly investigation such as has never been undertaken in this country.

What do we understand by a moral standard at present anyway? As the economic motive and the sexual motive are the two essential factors of social life — the relation towards property and towards sex relations constitutes the most of our so-called morality. The attitude of 10,000,000 people towards these two problems cannot be easily measured. Whether this attitude is improving or becoming more immoral, will depend not only upon our clearness of vision, and power to form an unprejudiced opinion, but also upon what our social ideals in regard to questions of property and sex are.

But let us for a moment forget our ultimate ideals. In the nature of things, the history of the negro for the last two hundred years in this country has not been such that we should look towards him for leadership in moral questions? We assume, then, that our present day bourgeois morality as it is universally taught, if not practiced, is right, and that by the respect towards property and towards the bourgeois family must the normal standard of any people be judged.

How then could these virtues have been strongly developed in the American negro. Respect towards property in a being who had none, but was property of another man — respect for the traditional monogamous family when such was systematically denied him for over two hundred years.

Thus the more intelligent negro leaders do not at all try to deny the laxity of the average negro in question of property and sex relations, they do violently resist any effort to explain these vices on racial grounds. They recognize it as a situation which must be met by education and training and a change in the social environment.

Is the situation being met? Has the last half a century witnessed an improvement or deterioration of the negro’s moral standard?

Surely the growth of negro property both in city and in country indicates a growing respect for private property; and the slow and steady development of a middle class necessarily followed by the development of the middle class virtues of steadier family ties. To begin with, the increase in property holdings of a family establishes a strong tie towards stronger, more permanent family relations, which the proletarian negro family, based upon the “economic independence of woman,” (gruesome as it is in the case of a negro woman) could not possess.

Now, it would be very difficult to prove these statements by statistical evidence. They are largely the result of personal observation, as corroborated by statements of many intelligent negro and white observers. But it is believed to be correct substantially. That there is still an enormous amount of promiscuity, abandonment and even the exploitation of women by lazy negro men, cannot be denied. It would have been preposterous to expect any other situation. Nor are the moralities of any large group of low-paid agricultural laborers very much higher in any European country. Promiscuity and abandonment may be found among the agricultural laborers of Italy, Spain, Russia and even the Germanic and Scandinavian countries.

The large and growing number of negro women in prostitution throughout the southern cities has often been quoted as a strong evidence of the growing negro depravity. But if the drift of negroes into cities, their ignorance combined with low wages of the negro city laborers, are not a sufficient explanation then it is only necessary to point out that the white men were the ones to teach the negro women sexual looseness, that it was the white slave owner or his overseer who has established the application of the Roman “jus primae noctis” to southern plantation life, and that when every negro woman was the property of some white man, there could have been no professional negro women of ill-repute. Even now the, demand for negro prostitutes comes primarily from the young generation of southern whites.

One more evidence of moral retrogression of the negro within the last fifty years is often quoted in figures of negro criminality. Professor Willcox, admitted to be an authoritative student of negro statistics, has made a great deal of this argument and it is now the popular resource of every negro hater in the country. How extravagant and misleading the statements concerning this topic often are, has been indicated in the chapter on Lynchings. With the more accurate student the one great important statistical fact upon which so much weight is put, is the higher percentage of prisoners among the negroes than among the whites. In 1890 there were in the southern states six white prisoners to every 10,000 white and 29 negro prisoners to every 10,000 negro persons. In the north the comparison was 12 and 69 to each 10,000 persons of either race.

What an indictment against the negro race! Isn’t it really? It is until one stops to consider all the conditions underlying this fact. Like the corresponding comparison of negro and white mortality the facts may sound very bad for the negro until we are able to understand the numerous statistical qualifications of the statement. And perhaps no stronger evidence is necessary of the primitive character of statistical science in this country than the acceptance of such broad, general statistical statements without further qualifying clauses.

The practice of enforced peonage through the instrumentality of anti-negro vagrancy laws in the south on the one hand and the frequency with which the crimes of white men in the south go unpunished is so well known that even Willcox himself feels the unreliability of his southern figures. He is forced, therefore, to refer to northern figures, for, he says, any special injustice to the negro in the north has never been claimed. Let us see: Is southern Ohio and southern Indiana and Maryland and Delaware and even Chicago and Philadelphia in the north or in the south? Is the attitude of the court, police and jury in these northern communities, where centers of negro population have been established, very much better than the attitude of the court, police and jury in Virginia and South Carolina?

But even eliminating this palpable influence of injustice to the negro — could we have expected anything else than a higher coefficient of criminality among negroes?

Crime is a social congestion. As such it is influenced by social and class conditions. If on one hand we have a racial element consisting of prosperous farmers, professional persons, employers, independent producers and employees of higher groups, and on the other hand a racial element consisting of pauperized farmers, underfed agricultural laborers, unskilled laborers, domestic employees, etc., where would we expect to find the higher criminality rate? If on one hand we find education, training, traditions of citizenship, and on the other illiteracy, ignorance, lack of family training and traditions of slavery where would we expect to find the higher criminality rate?

Surely a gentleman does not get drunk on the street (there is the club for that purpose), the Wall street operator does not need to be a pickpocket (there are the lambs to be shorn and that is not a crime), and thus there are dozens of statutory crimes which constitute the sad privilege of the ignorant and poor. Criminal statistics are worthless unless they take the educational, economic and social status of the criminal into consideration, and in addition to the economic status of the negro his social position, his treatment by other races as furnishing the motive of the crime must not be forgotten. These are true factors causing those infringements of social forms which we designate as crimes. To claim criminality as a racial factor is to misunderstand the social aspects of crime, as an individual infringement of social usage. A certain standard of public morality exists in even the most primitive community of savages. And with the little developed individualism of African races, where strict compliance on the part of the individual with all social usages is much more strongly enforced, and any infringement upon them very severely enforced, the racial tendency towards crime must necessarily be weaker than with highly individualized American communities.

In the preceding pages we have gone over the main evidence of economic, educational, intellectual and moral development of the negro race in this country for the last fifty years. It was our intention to show, in this rapid review — that the negro was human — that his growth and development, in its positive as well as negative features, was only what could be expected under the circumstances; that in face of many handicaps he was making a brave fight for intellectual and moral betterment such as entitled him and his race to an honorable place in the brotherhood of races, and that therefore there was nothing to fear from his final acquisition of all his social, civic and political rights. In doing it, we were intentionally dealing with social values; we did not want to cheapen the argument by reducing it to a mere test of name, possibly supplemented by photographs and illustrations, as is the habit of the average American journalist. A few Jewish or Irish names do not tell the story of the social value of the Jewish or Irish element of the American population. But surely it would not be difficult to present an array of highly respected negro names, like Washington, DuBois, Douglass, Dunbar and others. In fact, to a man who had the good fortune to make many friends among the “intellectual” negroes, as had the writer of these lines, the very suggestion of mental or moral inferiority of the negro sounds perfectly preposterous.

But the conceited Caucasian has one more argument up his sleeve in defense of the theory of his mental superiority. All the prominent negroes are not negroes at all, he claims, but mulattoes, quadroons or octoroons and they owe their ability and talents to their white parentage. The argument sounds probable, for among the intellectual leaders of the negroes there are a great many in whose veins runs one half or more of white Caucasian blood. To begin with, however, this rule is not without numerous exceptions, and a great many of them are full-blooded negroes or nearly so.

But granting, for argument’s sake, that the entire intellectual growth of the negro is due to the admixture of white blood, what are the inevitable conclusions from the premise?

This admixture of white blood is not an individual but a race phenomenon. Accurate statistical information on the subject is naturally lacking. According to the computations of the seventh, eighth, ninth and eleventh censuses the proportion of mulattoes to the entire negro population in 1850 was 11.2 per cent; in 1860, 13.2 per cent; in 1870, 12.0 per cent, and in 1890, 15.2 per cent. In the nature of things no accuracy can be claimed for these figures. This is sufficiently shown by the fluctuations from 1860 to 1870. Even accepting them, however, the percentage must have increased within the last twenty years to about 20 per cent. All the stringent laws against mixed marriages and miscegenation could not stem this movement because such mixture of racial elements but very seldom proceeds through legal marriages. The considerable increase between 1870 to 1890 shows that emancipation did not discontinue this evolutionary process. Nor is the direct sexual union of representatives of both races the only way to extend this racial assimilation, for the mulattoes intermarrying with the full-blooded negroes are at present the main factor in this process. To take, for instance, a very prominent case: Professor DuBois is often quoted as van example of a very able mulatto. But I have his own statement that there has been no white man or woman in his ancestry for several generations back.

It is, then, a condition and not a theory that confronts us. In many of our large cities one seldom sees a full-blooded negro. The admixture of a greater or lesser amount of white blood is noticeable at a rough estimate in about 75 per cent of the city negroes. This is true not only of the northern cities, but of the southern as well. I found it to be a case by personal observation in Atlanta, New Orleans) Norfolk and many other cities of the sunny south. Thus we are dealing with a mixed race, and all talk of the organic limitations of the African negro are quite beside the mark.

Whether such a mixture of races is desirable and whether it really threatens the intellectual and social growth of the south, is a difficult question which we do not feel ourselves called upon to answer. The fact is that it exists and grows, though mixed marriages are rare. The only difference is that in the olden days the “best” families were responsible, and now it takes place mainly on the bottom of the social scale.

History teaches us, however, that there never were any pure races. Even in the Jewish race, so proud of its purity, anthropologists have found many unmistakable traces of the negro race, strong enough to produce many negroid individuals in that race even today. From a purely biological point of view the interbreeding of such species and varieties is considered a factor of progress. No argument for miscegenation and stimulated mixture of races is here intended. To us personally the idea of the original miscegenation between full-blooded members of the two races is almost unthinkable, surely, much more abhorrent than it is (or was) with the ordinary southern white man, who is after all responsible for most of the interracial mixture and who now so loudly and eloquently champions racial purity. But the fact is that such intermixture has gone so far and produced so many intermediary types, that it is perfectly preposterous to speak of racial purity at present. Surely with thousands of pretty quadroons and octoroons, many of whom can scarcely be distinguished from dark-skinned Spanish beauties, the problem of further interracial mixture is very much more simplified. Some years ago Prof. Franklin Giddings called forth a storm of protest by his assertion that provided there be no further influx of Africans into this country, in a century or two the negro race as such will disappear in a process of amalgamation. There is considerable scientific evidence to be brought forth in defense of Prof. Giddings’ position, but the probable developments of two centuries of the future need not be argued here. The essential fact remains that the influx of white blood into the negro race has been so great that any conclusions as to the American negro, which are drawn from the African negro as such, lose all scientific value. Even biologically the American negro is rapidly becoming a well defined type of its own, and he must be judged not by analogies and inferences, but by his own achievements.

Our brief account has shown, it is hoped, that for the last half a century — the first half a century of freedom — he has demonstrated a capacity for growth — economic, intellectual and spiritual — which in view of the many obstacles and difficulties in his way, conclusively demonstrates his right to an honorable position among the civilized nations of the world. His vices and his virtues, his failures and achievements in no way differ from those which any white Caucasian nationality would have demonstrated under the same conditions. This, and not the actual figures of capital and land acquired, is the essential fact to be derived from the study of the negro’s progress during the last fifty years. This, and not the temporary and transitory problems of land, good farming or industrial education, must form the cornerstone of our hypothetical solution of the negro problem.

X. The Solution—A Prophecy and a Remedy. (May, 1910.)

WAS IST der langen Rede kurzer Sinn?

This is to be the last installment of the long and drawn out series of my studies of the Negro problem. I can almost hear both the editor and the patient reader of the entire series (if there be any such person) drawing deep sighs of relief. I sometimes feel as if I had played a successful confidence game upon both the editor and the reader. For surely Comrade Kerr would never had agreed to accept a series of fifteen articles about the forsaken negro, for whom we have until now shown so very little concern.

Ah, but there is the rub. Has the socialist done his duty by the Negro in this country? And what may perhaps appeal more strongly to the class-conscious socialist, has he done his duty by the American working class and by the socialist movement in thus neglecting the negro? And even if my articles have accomplished nothing more than to continually remind the American socialists of this tremendous social and economic problem, a problem of exploitation of labor, I still cannot help flattering myself that my efforts were worth while. For it is unfortunately true that in the North the vast majority of the socialists are entirely oblivious to the existence of the problem, while in the South the socialist’s attitude often characterizes him as a Southerner rather than a socialist.

But surely the socialist attitude on this problem cannot be a purely academic one. To him, as to every thinking American for that matter, it must not only be an interesting problem but one of tremendous vital importance. The question is not only: “What will the Southerner do to solve that problem?” or “what will the negro do to solve the problem?” or “What will happen to solve the problem?” but “What will we do to help solve it?” And what will the problem bring to the struggle of the American working class for his emancipation? What will the effect of the ten million negroes be upon the social evolution of the country? In short, what will be the solution of the Negro Problem? And what can and ought the socialist contribute to this solution?

It was for the very object of formulating an answer to these questions that I have planned my series of studies, but now that I have reached the final stage, I confess that I face the duty of giving a solution with a good deal of apprehension. It is an accepted maxim of medical science that when a long list of remedies is recommended for a disease, the disease is probably an incurable one, or at least that the real remedy has not yet been discovered. For the real remedy is usually found, when discovered, to be a simple and specific one.

What is a solution to a social problem, anyway? And to go back one step further, what is a social problem? In the entire vernacular of the publicist there is scarcely a more useful, more convenient and more abused word.

A social problem, we take it, is a condition of social maladjustment. Its manifestations are discomfort and pain, finding outward expression in dissatisfaction and complaints. A problem is therefore a truly objective social fact, in so far as the subjective impressions of pain or discomfort find objective expression. To some white southern gentlemen the position of the negro in the South may present no problem at all, for they may feel that they “have got the negro just where they want him.” But even if all the millions of white persons inhabiting the South, thought so (which they don’t) the problem would still persist, as long as the ten millions of negroes still remain dissatisfied, still suffer discomfort and pain.

From this point of view there never will cease to be problems in social life, and efforts at their solution will forever agitate the minds and hearts of sentient beings, for only in death would there be complete adjustment and absence of all friction, Nevertheless, individual problems must some day be solved, for, in the words of the immortal Spencer, unstable equilibrium constantly tends to become a stable equilibrium. For life, (social as well as individual) is a continuous process of adjustment of internal relations to external relations, and the adjustment is not perfect, as long as some pain persist.

As my previous articles have to some extent indicated, an enormous literature on the negro question exists in this country, and seldom a book or even an article is written, without containing a “solution” of the problem carefully outlined, and a very long list of such “solutions” may easily be quoted. That the problem still exists, that the pain and discomfort still exist, may be claimed by these physicians of the ills of the body politic to be due to the fact that in its blindness society has not yet resolved to apply this or that solution. But the difficulty of applying this or that “remedy”, and the vast difference between the “remedies” lie in the fact, that not only the “remedies” but also the results to be accomplished vastly differ as between one self-appointed doctor and another. And just here lies the great difference between bodily and social ills. Physicians may differ in their remedies, but the object which they strive to accomplish is presumable a definite one — to bring the suffering patient to health and vigor. But the aims of the many solutions of the negro problem are different and contradictory.

When a discussion of an important social problem is led up to the final “solution”–one of the three methods may be pursued:

1. We may simply picture things as they ought to be, in contrast to things as they are, we may picture the social ideal and stop at that. This method is used more frequently than the reading public is conscious of, and when clothed in sufficiently eloquent phraseology, often receives a cordial welcome, especially when the wishes of the writer agree with those of the reader. Socialists and other honest social idealists have more frequently sinned in that direction than practical politicians. “Some time, when I do not know, or how, or where, but some time, there will be perfect equality upon the earth,” concludes C.S. Darrow his article on “the Problem of the Negro” (International Socialist Review, Nov, 1907.)

2. A specific plan of action for the solution of the negro problem may be offered. Obviously this plan will depend upon what is considered the desirable solution of the problem. And in actual practice these plans are so strongly influenced by what appears to be desirable from an individual or class point of view that all considerations of probability or feasibility are forgotten. Thus a big volume of nearly 600 pages recently appeared (The Negro Problem. Abraham Lincoln’s ‘Solution. By William P. Pickett) which carefully elaborates in all its minutest details the plan of forcible deportation of the negroes — a plan economically unthinkable, legally impossible, ethically monstrous in the twentieth century.

It is the only scientific solution, but unfortunately it is impossible— quoth a student in biology. What a fruitful conception of sociological science, that permits the impossible to be scientific!

3. An effort may be made to throw a glance into the future, to give a forecast as to the probable development of the social relation under the influence of conditions and forces studied. To one who accepts the doctrine of economic interpretation of history, or at least believes in the applicability of the law of causation to social as well as to physical phenomena — such a glimpse promises some results, though the virtue of accuracy may not be claimed for it. It is true that often “the wish is father to the thought”, but on the other hand, prophecies are not always necessarily hopeful ones. Spencer, after fighting the doctrines of Socialism for many years nevertheless finished by writing a book on the “Coming slavery” admitting thus that the Cooperative Commonwealth was coming, though to him it was slavery nevertheless.

Thus a solution of a social problem as usually given, is either an ideal, a remedy or a prophecy, but a true solution should be all these things together. It should draw an ideal that is practical, present a remedy that should be useful, and make a prophecy that should be acceptable to our sense of justice as well as satisfy our curiosity as to the future, for unless it does satisfy our sense of justice, the prophecy may be a true prophecy, yet it fails to be a solution.

Before we start at the constructive part of our conclusions, however, it is necessary to pass the solutions offered in a rapid review.

What are the ideals offered concerning the future of the race relations in this country and the future of the negro race?

Three, and only three solutions, may offer themselves as final, i.e. such solutions as will do away with the negro problem. Of course, I am fully conscious of the fact, that such a complete solution, no matter what it is, will not be for a great many years or decades. But theoretically this is immaterial. We must have the final ideal not because we can immediately strike out for it, but so that we may know what to do, in order to keep getting nearer to it, and not away from it. This — in our opinion — is equally true of socialism itself.

The future of the negro may be imagined to assume one of the three following ideal forms: 1) A definite relegation of the negro to the position of an inferior, and acquiescence in that situation by everybody concerned; 2) the elimination of the negro from the life of the American people either by removal or by territorial segregation, and finally, 3) the absolute destruction of all discrimination against the negro, and the achievement by the negro of full civic political and social rights.

The faithful may be surprised at the failure to mention socialism. But, formally at least, logically, these two problems are unrelated. Their connection, if any, is not logical, but historical and must be established. It is easy to conceive of a solved negro problem in a capitalist society, or at least the absence of all racial friction in such society; it is also possible to conceive, though perhaps somewhat less easily, of a negro problem, or some race discrimination surviving after the introduction of a cooperative commonwealth, as for instance the relegation of all negro citizens to the worst paying occupation. This is all hypothetical of course, but it is purposely stated here to underscore the fact that the connection between race justice and socialism is not self-evident. It is not enough to assert, “Socialism is the only remedy”, as did Charles H. Vail in his article in the Intern Soc. Review for Feb, 1901 — the historical and economic connection of it exists, must be established.

Let us therefore meet the solutions offered in a fair spirit, forgetting for the time our Socialist hopes and aspirations, and see which one of the three is at all leasable and offers the promised solution.

1) Recognition of and acquiescence in inferiority. That, according to the practically unanimous Southern opinion, is the only acceptable solution. Acceptable to whom? Why, to the white Southerner, of course. Do the negroes like it? Some do, and some don’t. The old antebellum darkeys, or the ignorant, illiterate, brutal plantation hands are willing to accept this, perhaps. But the new, “impudent” negro, the college negro, the professional negro, the business negro and the industrial negro worker do not accept it, and their number is growing all the time, while the antebellum negro and even the next generation will have died out in another 30-50 years. Education and economic growth in their mutual interaction, will rapidly increase the number of dissatisfied and rebellious negroes. And even if it was possible to repress the rebellious 10,000,000 negroes by armed force, can that be considered a “solution”?

Can that result ever, if possible, be considered desirable from any point of view of human progress? Can repression by brutal force of the desires and aspirations of millions of human beings, be thinkable in a democratic society? Human beings, to whom, as we have conclusively shown, nothing human is foreign, who have shown themselves fully fit to partake of all the fruits of our culture and civilization? Even among the Southerners, or at least the most intelligent of them, the consciousness is growing that this effort to hold half of their citizenship in suppression, is no less destructive of their moral and mental growth, than was slavery up to fifty years ago. The recognition-of-inferiority theory may be claimed to be a true prophecy, and it certainly is that, if only the immediate future is considered, but it is utterly devoid of all elements of a social ideal. It is not a thing worth striving for.

2) The elimination of the negro. Tn a purely abstract way, this has the elements of a true solution. That is, were it possible to actually remove all the persons of African descent to some other country, this would bring about a complete solution of the negro problem in ‘this country. In the same way, the killing off all these 10,000,000 negroes would be a true solution. Spain once solved its Jewish problem by forcibly ejecting all its Jews. Russia tried to solve its Jewish problem by killing off its Jews. I suppose this is what my friend the biologist meant by his statement that the elimination of the negro would be the only true scientific solution if it were possible. Of course, from the point of Justice, we might as well propose to kill them, as to eject them forcibly from a land, in which they have acquired a proprietary interest by a longer residence than the majority of the white persons inhabiting it.

If it were possible! Is it possible? In a democratic country, whose entire social and political philosophy is based upon the recognition of certain inalienable rights of the individual? For to all the proposals for voluntary emigration the simple reply is sufficient that such emigration is not contemplated, is not given even a serious thought to.

But even supposing that all the organic, constitutional difficulties in the way of such plan Were removed, could this solution be accomplished? Spain removed the Jews because it feared their economic power. Russia, (barring the demagogic reasons for Jew baiting) has the same fear of the commercial abilities of the Jews. But what is the greatest objection to the negro now? Not only in this country, but in the African colonies as well? That he does not want to eliminate himself? No, just the opposite, that he does not stay on one place, that he does not always prove himself a patient and reliable source of exploitation! Not only forcible removal, but even a peaceful propaganda among the Southern negroes for voluntary emigration to Africa would not be tolerated by the vast majority of the Southerners.

The proposals of elimination is neither an ideal nor a prophecy, though it is remedy, — it is only a quack remedy.

3) Territorial Segregation. Most of these arguments are applicable against the proposed segregation of the negroes within some of the states within this Union, a solution, which the famous English critic William Archer has recently advocated with a great deal of enthusiasm and conviction characteristic of a very superficial knowledge of the problem. Because of the weight of Archer’s name and the eloquence of his plea, a popular monthly has readily published and probably handsomely paid for this contribution. But neither the South nor the North, neither the negro nor the white have shown any enthusiasm or even any interest for the plan. And for a very good reason — for it is a remedy that has neither the qualities of an ideal for any considerable element of the population, nor is there the slightest indication that historical tendencies are moving in that direction. It is an invented prescription, and no such prescriptions have been worth the paper they were written on in sociological problems. It was shown in one of the preceding installments of the series that the tendencies were exactly in the opposite direction, towards a scattering of the negro population. Not only does it contain all the unsatisfactory elements of forcible emigration, in depriving Southern capital of a large supply of cheap labor, but it is much more open to attack, for even abstractly does it not produce the desired “solution,” but by concentrating the negro power, would give stronger expression to their dissatisfaction. And as for constitutional difficulties–only a foreign mind, utterly oblivious of the legal foundations of the structure of this nation, could suggest the introduction of the Russian “Pale of Settlement” doctrine, brought down from the Middle Ages to a twentieth century democratic republic,–a “pale of settlement” doctrine with the concomital feature–the denial of personal right of free travel, perhaps a passport system, and local police boards for rendering ethnographic decisions as to racial status of doubtful individuals.

4) Equalization of the negro status with that of the white man, is evidently the only solution that can be classed as such that will really solve the problem, i.e. receive this one problem as a source of social friction. It is the only solution that meets the requirements of a social ideal. It is the only solution, of which ten million negroes are dreaming, to which all their leaders are leading, no matter what different roads they chose, no matter how carefully they disguise their ultimate hopes.

But if satisfactory to the oppressed racial element, is it, or can it ever be satisfactory to the oppressing Caucasian Race? Is it, can it ever become the ideal of both sides to the controversy? That is, of course, the crucial point upon which our ideals must depend. Not that our opinions or wishes are really decisive of historical and sociological processes. But surely they are not without some influence, either of a stimulating or of a retarding nature. And in any case, disregarding blind elemental social forces, we are now discussing the ideal.

Enough has been said in the preceding chapter about the Southern attitude on this problem. and the facts of the negro’s growth during the fifty years of freedom in this country were rapidly pictured. To avoid repetition we must assume as true all those deductions which in the previous chapters we tried to establish. It has been demonstrated that the American negro is capable to absorb all the fruits of Caucasian culture and civilization. This being so, how can the negro’s emancipation from his present status interfere with social progress? How can it injure the interests of his white neighbor? Let us make this question quite clear to the reader. That it is to the interest of the white employer to “keep the negro down” and to keep his wages down, that a deep prejudice against the negro, and his legitimate demands for civic rights exist, all this is recognized Thus there is a real economic interpretation for the negro’s plights both in the economic relations of the present, and the psychologic aftermath of the economic relations of the past. But neither of these is evidently a basic, organic, unsurmountable difficulty. Economic relations of the present must change, the psychologic effects of past economic relations must wear off. If economically, and biologically the white race cannot be injured by the emancipation of the negro, then it surely will not succumb to the psychological effects of the shock.

For what does the civic emancipation of the negro race mean, when reduced to its component elements? It means opportunity, economic, educational, cultural, social. It means the chance to rise intellectually, morally, economically, politically, socially. Why should the rise, the growth of any of my neighbors hurt me, unless I want to profit by his ignorance and weakness?

Ah, but this means social equality, and that is something the South will never agree to, many a southerner exclaims (Socialists, unfortunately, not excluded. But of this later). Yes, social equality, of course. That is really a splendid, telling phrase, when confined to its proper meaning. That is something the negro lacks, the negro, like every free citizen, must have.

Now, what is “social equality?” What do you understand by it, my southern friend? Is it the right to enter your parlor against your wishes, to marry your daughter against her wishes? Those are decidedly individual and not social acts. Your home is your castle, you frequently repeat. Even the officer of the law dare not enter it without a special warrant. Why, all that means that the home if the least social of our existing institutions. It is primarily the retreat of the individual, and personal fancies and caprices, prejudices and favoritism frequently rule there supreme. It is because in the swift current of socializing influences we nevertheless remain individuals, and therefore of necessity, individualists, that we appreciate our home just because it is the place for the expression of caprices, fancies, moods and irrational or supra-rational manifestations of life.

Evidently, with this institution social equality has absolutely nothing to do. No sensible, cultured negro wants to force his way into a private parlor, by whose owner he is hated and despised; and no law on earth can force the negro upon this unwilling parlor. The Jews in this country never suffered from discriminating legislation, and in most European countries they have been free from it for many decades. But in this country as well as in Europe, an overwhelming majority of the parlors is by a silent understanding closed to the Jews. Have you ever heard of a concerted effort of the Jews to legislate themselves into your parlor or into your family?

Define this peculiar and narrow field as “parlor equality”, and then perhaps we will be able to keep the problem within its legitimate limits.

No, this is not social equality, and, moreover, I strongly suspect that even the bigoted Southerner understands this distinction. He is for Jim Crow cars, and Disfranchisement acts, and for vagrancy laws, and against negro schools, not because he is afraid of the negro’s intrusion in his parlor, but for other much more material, much more sordid reasons.

It is social equality that a negro has a right to demand, and to expect, and that he must have before we may claim to have solved the negro problem, i.e. equality at the hand of organized society, equality in all social institutions, equality before the election officers, equality in the civil service, equality in a library, built at public expense, to which at present he is not admitted, equality in the jury, when one of their race is on trial, equality in representation and the making of laws, under which he must live, equality at the hands of the school board, when money is appropriated for schools, equality in railroads, street cars, steamers, theatres and stores, which are truly public even if owned by private capital. Give the negro these, and he will not make any effort to force his way into your parlor, any more than the Jew forces or can force his way.

Now, I don’t want to be misunderstood for a moment, as trying to justify Caucasian snubbishness concerning the African or Yellow races. Personally, I think it silly, though I can understand its origin. There are other things, logically silly, but historically inevitable, whether we mention long skirts, boiled shirts, or excessive sexual modesty. In a limited way I practice social, or rather “parlor” equality, and I do it in no spirit of bravado, but because I found a few highly intelligent negroes whom I enjoy meeting. To tell the truth, I found it much easier to force my way into an intelligent negro’s house, than to get him into mine, possibly because there always lingers in the minds of the negro a suspicion as to the motives of the exceptionally cordial white man.

But I also know that it will be a long time before all the white folks will get rid of this prejudice as well as of many other prejudices and superstitions, and I also know that an organized effort to overcome this prejudice forcibly would be the surest way to give it new life. Only slowly, unconsciously do these large changes in mass psychology take place, but they are inevitable when the logic of events destroys the bases for the existing beliefs.

The final argument against the full emancipation of the negro remains: the fear of miscegenation, the necessity to fight for racial purity. In a previous chapter I have shown, how frequently, as in the work of Professor Smith of Tulane University, this was made the justification and explanation for the entire policy of negro repression, with absolute disregard of the actual facts of life. Of all the different aspects of the negro problem, that known as amalgamation has caused the greatest amount of hysteria, and it has become a topic of greatest difficulties for calm and. rational consideration by a Southerner. But here hysteria must be discarded, and the problem must be approached calmly, and without prejudices, if we are to arrive at reasonable results.

The charge of the negro’s desire to carry on a forcible amalgamation through rape is too silly to deserve more than a possible mention, even if it did move John Temple Graves to advocate the wholesale castration of all bad negroes as a preventative measure. The question of amalgamation is therefore a question of voluntary miscegenation.

What are the facts? First, that forcible miscegenation was for centuries practiced by the white man and he is therefore primarily responsible for the degree of amalgamation accomplished thus far, and no small degree it is, to be sure.

These results were achieved without any “parlor” equality of which the South is so fearful, in fact were accomplished while the negro, as slave, was at the bottom of the social ladder. There is one important factor to be taken into consideration. The charge is often been made by Southern writers, Tillinghast for instance, that it was really the immorality of the negro woman and not the voluptuousness of the Southern man that was responsible for this miscegenation. Supposing that this were true — then evidently the rise of the negro would decrease rather than increase this cause of amalgamation. For it must not be forgotten, that “amalgamation” of the races proceeded almost exclusively through illicit intercourse.

It is often claimed by Southerners that all this is a thing of a past. In the nature of things no statistics of illicit sexual intercourse is possible. But a series of articles in Pearson’s Magazine recently published, urging the Southern white youth to limit itself to white prostitutes, so as to avoid further amalgamation (this is no exaggerated misstatement, but the actual advice given by that author) seems to indicate that with all the supposedly natural, biological antagonism between the races, the southern gentlemen is not averse to concoursing with a negro prostitute, and continues to practice miscegenation, social equality or no social equality. And it is quite natural to suppose that in the simple psychology of a negro prostitute or semi prostitute a white client represents the more affluent and therefore more desirable class.

In the opinion of Prof. Smith, however, there are two different kinds of amalgamation vastly differing as to their Social effects. The woman, he insists, is the carrier of racial purity. The illicit relations of white men with negro women bring white blood to the negro race. The reverse relations, between negro men and white women, would contaminate the white race.

Granting this difference, miscegenation has not interfered with the purity of the Caucasian race, but has infused a good deal of Caucasian blood into the African race, and from the Southern point of view, could but improve the latter. To use a crude colloquialism, “Where is the kick coming?”

But, says Prof. Smith, if social equality (in his sense of “parlor” equality) is granted, it will be followed by mixed marriages of both types, and the American people will become a mongrel people.

Is the danger of such marriages real? And if they should really take place, would they represent a serious danger to the racial evolution of the white race in the United States?

I might as well admit it: To me, individually, a mixed marriage between a Caucasian and a real negro, seems monstrous, biologically as well as esthetically. I’d much rather eat at the same table with a negro woman than marry her. Southern practice seems to take the diametrically opposite view. But socially, I see no danger in such marriages. The Southerner objects to them from a social point of view, while conniving at them individually. I refuse to admit the social danger, first because I assume that my esthetic objections are shared by the vast majority of men and especially women, when a marriage relation is contemplated. As a result the mixed marriages are extremely rare. When they do occur, unless in the very bottom of social structure, the negro has usually more white than African blood, and is a negro constructively only.

X. The Solution—A Prophecy and a Remedy, Continued. (June, 1910.)

IF amalgamation is to continue, it is evidently probable only at the very fringe of the negro race among those members of it, among whom “crossing the hue” is frequent, to whom the entire status of the negro applies most cruelly, most unreasonably. There a racial prejudice often rises to destroy the happiness of innocent people, as for instance in the splendid play, the N***r, which was presented to the New York public at the New Theatre last winter. Where biological and esthetical reasons no longer exist, there the emancipation of the negro race will make further amalgamation possible.

It is possible to imagine that in the indefinite future such a legitimate amalgamation at the fringe will lead to completed amalgamation of the negro race. Professor Giddings a few years ago made that prediction, to the horror of the Southern Aristocracy, the same aristocracy, which often secretly gossips about the drop of African blood in this or that exclusive family. Of course, it is quite evident, that as a practical problem this far delayed process need not cause any one sleepless nights at present. Whether the light increase of legitimate amalgamation will overcome the decline in illegitimate relations, consequent upon the moral, intellectual and economic improvement of the negro race, is a statistical problem with too many unknown quantities to permit of an exact solution. But supposing such a result is inevitable, what are its historical horrors?

The 10,000,000 negroes represent scarcely more than 10 per cent of our population. Were we able to estimate the exact proportion of white blood in the veins of these ten millions negroes then the proportion of negro blood to the entire sum total of ethnic elements of this country would dwindle down perceptibly. Add to this the continuous flow of white immigration, which is a constant factor, depressing the percentage of negro blood. In another century the negroes, even including all the quasi-negroes, will represent no more than four or five percent. Their entire amalgamation would introduce one twentieth or one twenty-fifth into the Caucasian race. Is our conceit really so great as to actually make us believe that this is a danger to our national efficiency? There are hundreds and perhaps thousands of “white” men and women, highly esteemed by their friends, who have more than that amount of negro blood.

The scare of amalgamation is a phantom, which consciously or unconsciously, the Southerner holds before our eyes, in justification of his anti-negro policy and in furtherance of his brutal exploitation of negro labor.

Our ideal has been defined and defended. Is there any historical justification for it? Is it a dream or a prophecy? Thus we come to the second element in the solution of the negro problem.

It is quite easy to put a wet blanket over the hope of ultimate negro emancipation. As we have shown repeatedly, recent years have brought about a decided aggravation of the negro’s position. The curtailment of his rights goes on, and anti-negro riots become more frequent, the specific southern sentiment is no longer local — it gradually extends. over the rest of the country, because of the diffusion of the negro population, as A.H. Stone insists, and often even in advance of it, by direct psychological infection following the diffusion of the white southerners throughout northern cities. Even Booker Washington in the privacy of his study is discouraged and pessimistic at times, though insisting on the platform and in interviews that everything must turn out well in the end. The protests of the few radical negro leaders remain voices in the wilderness thus far. History does not favor the negro at present.

But…history does not move in straight lines. Under pressure of economic forces it follows the line of least resistance, no matter how roundabout and crooked. The logic of social evolution is not the logic of a human mind shaping itself to a purpose. And a careful analysis of the social forces, blindly acting, does to my mind, point at one sign of hope and promise for the negro. And that is the negro’s resistance, the negro’s reaction to the white man’s oppression.

In her lectures to the American audiences Mrs. Pankhurst very wisely pointed out that no element in society succeeded in gaining its rights in face of the opposition of the oppressors until it has made a nuisance of itself. This conforms with the socialist philosophy that the emancipation of the downtrodden must be the result of their own efforts, or as our Russian socialist friends eloquently express it in their motto: “Through struggle shall thou gain thy rights.”

Dissatisfaction and protest is the first step to resistance and struggle, and the dissatisfaction of the American negro must inevitably grow. All educational activity among the negroes tends to increase this dissatisfaction, the agitation of the radical negro tends to in- crease it, and even the sermon of economic betterment so meekly taught by Booker Washington, works in the same direction, in so far as it produces more efficient, more intelligent and more prosperous negro workmen.

We may therefore assume that the forces of negro dissatisfaction must eventually be measured by the entire strength of the negro population. It is perfectly clear however, that by themselves the negroes will ever be in a hopeless minority, and therefore unable to influence legislation, or forcibly acquire the rights, which are unjustly denied them. It is because of this evident helplessness that the negroes have been forced to hold tenaciously to the Republican party as their only ally, and as with the growth of industrialism and the protective spirit, the South is rapidly turning republican, all interest for the negro has entirely been lost, and the negro for the first time feels that he is without white friends.

But in political struggles sentimental friends are very much lc^s to be depended upon than business allies. Were a united white race confronting the negroes of this country, his position, in view of the present attitude towards the negro, would appear to be almost a hopeless one. But the 80 million white men and women are not so united, and among the struggling factions of the white race the negro must look for his most trustworthy ally.

Thus far this is cool and business-like politics. When the question is asked, what element of the white population will want to join hands with the negro, the answer is: only that element which will be forced to do so, that element which will find itself on the same side of the fight as the negro: the American working class.

The present relations between these two social groups are such that our prophecy will seem to the negro but an idle dream, and the white workingmen, the vast majority of them, and practically all of them in the South, will dismiss it with disgust. The present antagonism between the white and the negro workingmen may be said to represent the most acute aspect of the negro problem. For barring, perhaps, the occasional outburst of violence and bloodshed, nothing hurts the negro as much, and nothing raises his wrath so as does the opposition of white labor to his efforts to obtain a footing in the industrial field, or to retain it after having once won it. “Granted that you do not want us in your parlor, nor in your cars, theaters, libraries, nor on your juries, or in your civil service ; and granted that you have decided to keep us out of all political life, and to deny us ally and help in the preparation of laws under which we must live, or the levying of taxes, which we must pay — surely, surely, you must give us an opportunity to pursue peacefully our trades and to earn a living.”

This very thing the white workmen, whether organized or not, do deny the negro laborer, unless he is willing to remain satisfied with the lowest and least remunerative employment.

Thus the white and negro workmen are not only not allied in their economic struggle, but are actually engaged now in suicidal struggle, a struggle, it must be admitted, of the white man’s making.

And right here the philosophy of political struggle comes in. In this peculiar struggle between white and negro labor, capital will invariably be found on the side of negro labor. This struggle furnishes the only opportunity for southern capital to become fond of the negro, and appreciative of the negro’s rights. Thus with the help of southern white capital, negro labor is enabled to become a very great nuisance and danger for white labor.

Unless we are ready to deny all intelligence in the American workman, we must admit that the only possible way to counteract this nuisance, to avoid that danger, is for the American workman to enter into an alliance with the negro competitor and thus realize the principle, that “when combination is possible, competition becomes impossible.” It is because I can look a little further into the future, and see the inevitable developments, that I welcome such struggles as the one that recently arose on the Georgia Railroad, for they help to clear the issues. And personally, I confess, that I can not repress my satisfaction when the negro laborer succeeds in beating his white brother, even if it be with the help of his employer. For the childish attitude of the southern white workman needs that lesson.

It is idle for the white workman to depend upon the negro hater’s fairy tales of the negro’s inability to enter industrial life. Southern capital is willing to defend this theory — on paper, until a real labor struggle sets in. And, of late, northern capital has learned to depend upon negro scabs as well. The vast contributions to the industrial schools of the type of Tuskegee and Hampton should by this time have opened the eyes of the American workman, to the fact, that the entrance of negro labor into industrial life of the country is a question of time only and cannot be resisted. A priori, the Socialist could have predicted that. Or was it to be assumed for a moment that 10,000,000 good strong pairs of arms would be left forever ununionized in the process of extracting surplus value?

And thus here and there, in the North and even in the South, labor unions are forced to organize the negro workers or to admit them into their own unions on certain terms of equality. Either this movement must grow, or the number of negro scabs must grow, and destroy the white man’s union. For nothing would be more dangerous, not to say detrimental, to the entire cause of organized labor, than the systematic breeding of a large body of embittered “scabs,” scabs out of choice, necessity and principle, scabs who are now taught by their own negro leaders, that their only chance to succeed is to underbid the organized white workman.

And what is true of the economic struggle must sooner or later be true of the political struggle as well.

It is not necessary for me to go into extended discussions concerning the importance of the political struggle for the betterment and final emancipation of the working class. But in this field the negro may at present appear to be absolutely powerless and therefore useless as an ally. Nevertheless, arbitrary as have been curtailments of the negro’s political rights, his political influence has not altogether been destroyed. And if this country is ever to see a powerful, influential political labor movement, it will be forced to take the negro into account.

The developments we are discussing will not take place in the immediate future, but in analyzing as large and broad a problem as this, it is not wise to hedge one self within narrow time limits. We are dealing here with broad historical tendencies and these point towards certain directions. The diffusion of negroes throughout the country must proceed at an accelerated rate. The breaking up of the solid democratic South will, though slowly, reestablish in some degree the political rights of some negroes in the South. The repeated failures of the disfranchisement amendments in Maryland, even the failure of Vardaman’s senatorial campaign in Mississippi point in that direction. And with the quiet balancing of powers in the bitter political struggles between capital and labor which this country must go through in some more or less distant future, the actual balance may be formed in the hands of isolated minorities. Will the fear of amalgamation, will the objection to “parlor” equality always be strong enough to prevent the American white workman from joining hands with his natural economically, and thus force him to remain the political as well as economic scab in employ of the moneyed minority?

Thus in the very struggle for emancipation, and not only after achieving the victory, will the American white working class be forced to join hands with the negro, and in return help him obtain his final goal — the economic and legal equality, not out of humanitarian considerations or because of a abstract desire to solve an interesting sociological problem.

Is an ideal and a prophecy sufficient? The poet is satisfied with the dream of the golden age in the future, the calm student and philosopher studies things, as they were, as they are and as they will be. But we are not all poets or philosophers, and a sorry world it would be if we were. The ordinary man, the man of action, when confronted with a difficult problem, asks: What shall I do? And only through the collective action of all these men is the prophecy and ideal realized. Whence the popularity of remedies, whether scientific or otherwise. It will be utterly futile, for me, therefore to avoid m prescribing for the social disease I have described and analyzed at such length.

Of remedies for the solution of the negro problem there are many more, even than there are ideals concerning the nature of the inevitable solution — for even when agreeing concerning the ideal, people may and do disagree about the best, quickest and easiest way of reaching it. Supposing we agreed that the only way to solve the negro problem was to get rid of the negro. Still there would be many different opinions about the best way to get rid of him: whether to forcibly ship him back to Africa, or to let him die off gradually by refusing him all knowledge of the laws of life and health, or to kill them off, which manifestly would be the quickest way.

But obviously it is unnecessary to subject to a minute and careful scrutiny all the different remedies proposed, as for instance the very elaborate plan of Rickett, to ship them to Africa, developed in a book of 600 pages. Nor need we spend too much time whether Vardaman’s plan of denying all schooling to the negro, or the industrial institutes and schools for servants are the best method to teach the negro, “his proper station in life.” Speaking as I do, to American workingmen and socialists, and assuming the ideal and the prophecy, which I have developed above — I want to consider one question only: What can the radical American workingman and the American Socialist do to help along the negro’s struggle for emancipation, and to make him an ally, rather than an obstruction and an enemy to the American working class in its struggle for emancipation?

In Socialist literature the problem is not a new one. In the International Socialist Review alone, before this series of articles began, I counted as many as ten articles on the negro problem. Such authoritative thinkers and leaders as Debs, Darrow, Meily and Vail have participated in these discussions, in addition to Southern comrades, qualified to speak because of their local interest in and first hand knowledge of the problem.

It is a sad fact nevertheless that there is very little interest concerning the negro problem among the Socialists outside of the narrow circles of Southern locals. Perhaps the first advice that must be given to the American Socialists is to pay a good deal more attention to this as to other practical problems of American life.

In so far as the Socialists have paid attention to this problem, however, it is somewhat difficult to define their attitude on the problem, or at least on its practical aspects of it. If one wants to limit himself to the official expressions of opinions such as are contained in the platform and formal party resolutions, one may get a fairly definite point of view. But I cannot help feeling that, with all due deference to official party resolutions, that they do not often reflect the true opinion of the body of the party members; and in any case there is never that unanimity of opinion which the consideration of official documents alone might lead us to assume.

Moreover, one fails to find very many expressions of official opinion. The “negro resolutions” adopted at the national convention of 1900 are specific:

“Resolved, that we, the American Socialist Party, invite the negro to membership and fellowship with us in the world movement for economic emancipation by which equal liberty and opportunity shall be secured to every man and fraternity become the order of the world.” But one fails to find similar expressions* of opinion in the labor platforms of either 1904 or 1908. As far as I was able to discover, the word “negro” fails to appear in either platform, and even in the demands enumerated in the platform of 1904 and much more thoroughly in the platform of 1908, there is none that even by construction can be made to apply to the peculiar grievances of the negro. Even the model state and municipal platforms presented to the National Convention of 1909 by a special committee avoid this matter. And yet discriminations against the negro are frequent in municipal, state and national life.

About the only demand, that by implication may be said to favor the negro, is the immediate demand:

“Unrestricted and equal suffrage for men and women.” But if in framing these demands the negro was actually kept in mind, — why were the Socialists, “in convention assembled” afraid to say so plainly? Was it because they were afraid to step on the toes of a few Southern delegates?

Is this fair? Is it wise? Is it practical?

Don’t tell me, that the Socialist’s justice towards the negro is self-understood! Why should the radical negro make such an assumption? Have the American labor unions inspired him with such faith in the fairness and justice of the American white workingman? Haven’t some of the most radical of the American politicians, such as Bryan and Watson, remained thoroughly reactionary as far as the negro is concerned? How does the radical negro, how does a Du Bois or a Trotter know that Socialists will treat him any better?

Socialist philosophy is incompatible with negro repression, you say? How is the negro to know it? And are you so very sure that a the cooperative, commonwealth is unthinkable with Jim Crow cars, and other characteristic virtues of modern Southern life?

I know, that in thus pleading for a “clear cut, uncompromising, revolutionary” negro plank in our national platform I go contrary to the opinions of the highest authorities on the Socialist movement.

Says Eugene V. Debs, (or at least, he did say some 6 or 7 years ago):

“Permit me to express the hope that the next convention may repeal the resolutions on the negro question. The negro does not need them and they serve to increase rather than diminish the necessity for explanation. We have nothing special to offer the negro, and we cannot make separate appeals to all the races.

“The Socialist party is the party of the working class, regardless of color — the whole working class of the whole world.” (I.S.R., Vol. V. 6. 260, Nov., 1903 “The Negro in the Class Struggle.”)

Nevertheless, such is the irony of circumstances, that only two months later Debs himself was forced to quote this long resolution verbatim, because “it constitutes a vital part of the national platform of the Socialist party and clearly defines its attitude towards the negro.” (I.S.R., Vol. V., p. 392, Jan., 1904 “The Negro and its Nemesis.”)

The negro resolution thus proved useful sooner than expected, and would prove useful again.

Far be it from me to question even for a moment the sincerity and humanity of as broad hearted a man as Debs. But wasn’t the attitude as quoted in the lengthy extract above, really begging the entire question?

The Socialist party in this country “in convention assembled” does not make the platform for the Socialist movement of the world, but for the United States only, and in these United States, there is a negro problem, and there is no Swedish or Irish problem. For this reason no “separate appeals to all the races” are necessary, but a special appeal to the negro is necessary, for the special grievances which he suffers from are to him no less real than the general grievances of each and every wage-earner. And when Comrade Debs says: “Properly speaking, there is no negro question outside of the “labor question” he voices an opinion, sincerely held by many Socialists, but unfortunately contradicted by facts of every day experience.

In the last analysis our attitude upon this one special problem of modern economic and social life will depend upon our general point of view upon the proper aims and objects of the Socialist movement. And here I feel full well, that I may come in conflict with the views of Comrade Kerr and those of the International Socialist Review, but the reader surely understands that no one but myself is to be held responsible for anything I may here state. Is the Socialist movement a movement exclusively shaped for the purpose of accomplishing the establishment of the cooperative commonwealth without further regard for anything that happens before that final goal is achieved, or is it the expression of all the economic and political aspirations of the working-class in the immediate present as well as in the more or less distant future when that final revolution will become an immediate issue?

Until very recently, the former opinion was held by a vast majority of the American Socialists. It is evidently this conception that prompts Debs to say, “with the ‘n***r’ question, the ‘race war’ from the capitalist view point we have nothing to do. In capitalism the negro question is a grave one and will grow more threatening as the contradictions and complications of capitalist society multiply, but this need not worry us. Let them settle the negro question in their way, if they can. We have nothing to do with it, for that is their fight.”

But if, as the evolution of the Socialist movement in this country during the last five years has unmistakenly demonstrated, anything that concerns the working class in the present is also a concern of the Socialist party, if in 1908 it was thought necessary to present eighteen specific industrial, political and social demands, including such as the abolition of the senate, woman suffrage, conservation of health, a creation of a department of health and what not, can we still consistently hold that the race friction is “their fight”. When the engineers and firemen of the Georgia Railroad insisted upon the discharge of the negro firemen, because they were negroes, and the later were supported by the Railroad managers, who ostensibly demonstrated a greater humanitarian feeling then the white fellow wage earner, was the fight between white and black wage-earners their fight or was it our fight? No, comrades, it will not do to avoid the issue. Every struggle of this nature (and they are rapidly multiplying) is an indication that the situation is becoming graver, and every struggle of this kind that the Socialists disregard is an opportunity lost.

And supposing it were understood by the negroes that the Socialists (under socialism) expect to grant the negro his right to work and the “full enjoyment of the product of his labor?” Is that enough? Will that convince the negro that the Socialist movement is his movement?

“Socialism,” says a Southern writer, “is primarily an economic and industrial movement, the object of which is to secure to every man, white and black alike, economic justice and equality in the full enjoyment of the product of his labor.” (“Socialism and the Negro” by E.F. Andrews, Inter. Soc. Review V, p. 524, March, 1905.)

Only economic and industrial? Does it not also strive tor political and social justice in its broadest sense?

Shouldn’t we at least explain to the negro, that having no interest in his economic exploitation, we shall for the same reason not undertake to keep up his political and social repression, and will not hold to the psychological superstructure after the economic basis is gone?

And thus I am ready to offer my first prescription: The Socialist party must take a definite attitude on the negro problem, and must not be afraid to proclaim. And this attitude must include something, a good deal more tangible than the promise of “full products of one’s labor in the cooperative commonwealth.” It must include, if it to be logical and honest — a clear, unmistakable demand for the entire abolition of all legal restriction of the rights of the negro. Only on this ground will it ever succeed in proving to the negro, that the Socialist party is his party, not only in the future but in the present.

Including “social equality?” shall many a southern socialist exclaim, horrified.

I beg your pardon, but do you mean “social” equality — equality of social rights, or parlor equality in the individual home? If the former, by all means. And as to the latter, that is one thing the Socialist movement has no concern with. Whether you will insist upon receiving at your home only white persons, or only bleached blonds, or only Presbyterians, or only musical people — is no concern to the Socialist — But mind you, this is true only as far as your home is concerned.

And it was undoubtedly this loose and confused thinking that permitted the use of term “social equality” when the question of mixed locals arose in Louisiana some five years ago. What has the Socialist local to do with your home? And when the Southern Socialists pleaded the prejudices of the “comrades of the gentler sex”, one might ask how many Socialist comrades there are among the “gentler sex” in the South?

Of course the National Organization may permit, as Comrade Eraste Vidrine suggested, (“Negro Locals,” I.S.R. Vol V., p. 390, Jan., 1905.) the negroes of any locality to organize negro branches, as it permits the organization of Polish, Italian, Jewish and other branches. But the problem is, shall the Socialist organization permit any local to discharge an Italian because he is an Italian, a Jew because he is a Jew, a Catholic because he is a Catholic, or a Negro, because he is a Negro?

The “social” life, concomitant upon Socialist organization, (i. e. entertainments and festivals) have often been urged as an insurmountable difficulty against admitting negroes to Socialist locals. Here again is there a hopeless mixture of civic rights and “parlor” privileges. The difficulty is exaggerated, for the more intelligent negro (and he is the only possible candidate for membership) has no desire to invade himself upon a society in which he is not welcome. Besides, it is no secret, that in cities with a mixed population the festivities and entertainments of the Socialists are conducted on national (and for all I know may be conducted even on religious) lines.

But in thus committing himself in the most flatfooted fashion against any discriminations against the negro, within the limits of his own organization, the Socialist will not have done his entire duty by the negro, nor by the rest of the American working class.

The attitude of the Socialist movement on this all important problem must not only be passively correct and decent, but actively aggressive. Armed with the true Marxian explanation of the negro’s economic, political and legal status, and the thorough understanding of the only satisfactory, inevitable and necessary solution, the Socialist party has a sacred duty before it:

1. It must make an earnest effort to convince the growing negro radical element, that as economic exploitation was the cause of the dismal fate of the negroes in the past, their only hope in the future lies in joining hands with the movement towards the curtailment and final abolition of the economic exploitation.

And it must make a still more earnest and energetic effort to convince the American labor movement, as expressed in labor and trade unions, that in resisting the economic and civic growth of the negro it is simply building obstructions in its way.

In other words, the Socialist movement, viewing the labor problem in its entirety, not in any Utopian or phantastic way, but practically, and yet seeing much further than the immediate narrow interests of this or that little group for higher wages or a privileged position — the Socialist movement must make the one practical effort necessary to direct the negro problem into the narrow channel towards its true solution.

Will we be wise enough to do it?

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.