It is too late in the day to discuss whether it would have been better
had the Negro never been brought into the Southern States. If his
presence here has been beneficial, or is ever to prove so, the price of
the benefit has already been dearly paid for. He was the occasion of the
deadliest and most expensive war in modern times. In the next place, his
presence has corrupted politics and has limited statesmanship to a mere
question of race supremacy. Great problems concerning the political,
industrial, and moral life of the people have been subordinated or
overshadowed, so that, while important strides have been made elsewhere
in the investigation of social conditions and in the administration of
State and municipal affairs, in civil-service reform, in the management
of penal and charitable institutions, and in the field of education, the
South has lagged behind.
On the charts of illiteracy and crime the South is represented by an
immense black spot. Such are a few items of the account. It will require
millions more of dollars and generations more of earnest work before the
total cost is met of bringing the black man to this side of the globe.
But the debt has been incurred and must be liquidated.
The welfare of the Negro is bound up with that of the white man in many
important particulars:
First, the low standard of living among the blacks keeps down the wages
of all classes of whites. So long as the Negroes are content to live in
miserable huts, wear rags, and subsist upon hog fat and cow-pease, so
long must the wages of white people in the same kind of work be pressed
toward the same level. The higher we raise the standard of living among
the Negroes, the higher will be the wages of the white people in the
same occupations. The low standard of the Negroes is the result of low
productive power. The less intelligent and skilled the Negroes are, the
less they can produce, whether working for themselves or others, and
hence, the less will be the total wealth of the country.
But it may be asked, When the standard of living of the Negroes is
raised, will not wages go up, and will not that be a drawback? Certainly
wages will go up, because the income of all classes will be increased.
High wages generally indicate high productive power and general wealth,
while low wages indicate the opposite. Only benefits can arise from
better wages.
In the next place, the Negro's propensity to crime tends to excite the
criminal tendencies of the white man. The South enjoys the distinction
of having the highest percentage of crime in all the civilized world,
and the reason is that the crimes of the one race provoke counter-crimes
in the other.
The physical well-being of the one race has such a conspicuous influence
upon that of the other that the subject requires no elaboration. The
uncleanliness of person and habits of the Negroes in their homes and
in the homes of their employers tends to propagate diseases, and thus
impairs the health and increases the death-rate of the whole population.
Again, the lack of refinement in intellect, manners, and dress among the
Negroes is an obstacle to the cultivated life of the whites. Ignorance
and the absence of taste and self-respect in servants result in badly
kept homes and yards, destruction of furniture and ware, ill-prepared
food, poor table service, and a general lowering of the standard of
living. Furthermore, the corrupt, coarse, and vulgar language of the
Negroes is largely responsible for the jumbled and distorted English
spoken by many of the Southern whites.
Seeing that the degradation of the Negro is an impediment to the
progress and civilization of the white man, how may we effect an
improvement in his condition?
First, municipalities should give more attention to the streets and
alleys that traverse Negro settlements. In almost every town in the
South there are settlements, known by such names as "New Africa,"
"Haiti," "Log Town," "Smoky Hollow," or "Snow Hill," exclusively
inhabited by Negroes. These settlements are often outside the corporate
limits. The houses are built along narrow, crooked, and dirty lanes,
and the community is without sanitary regulations or oversight. These
quarters should be brought under municipal control, the lanes widened
into streets and cleaned, and provision made to guard against the
opening of similar ones in the future.
In the next place, property-owners should build better houses for the
Negroes to live in. The weakness in the civilization of the Negroes is
most pronounced in their family life. But improvement in this respect is
not possible without an improvement in the character and the comforts
of the houses they live in. Bad houses breed bad people and bad
neighborhoods. There is no more distinctive form of crime than the
building and renting of houses unfit for human habitation.
Scarcely second in importance to improvements in house architecture
is the need among Negroes of more time to spend with their families.
Employers of Negro labor should be less exacting in the number of hours
required for a day's work. Many domestic servants now work from six in
the morning until nine and ten o'clock at night. The Southern habit
of keeping open shopping-places until late at night encourages late
suppers, retains cooks, butlers, and nurses until bedtime, and robs
them of all home life. If the merchants would close their shops at six
o'clock, as is the custom in the North, the welfare of both races would
be greatly promoted.
Again, a revolution is needed in the character of the Negro's religion.
At present it is too largely an affair of the emotions. He needs to
be taught that the religious life is something to grow into by the
perfection of personality, and not to be jumped into or sweated into
at camp-meetings. The theological seminaries and the graduate preachers
should assume the task of grafting upon the religion of the Negro that
much sanity at least.
A reform is as much needed in the methods and aims of Negro education.
Up to the present Negro education has shared with that of the white man
the fault of being top-heavy. Colleges and universities have developed
out of proportion to, and at the expense of, common schools. Then,
the kind of education afforded the Negro has not been fitted to his
capacities and needs. He has been made to pursue courses of study
parallel to those prescribed for the whites, as though the individuals
of both races had to fill the same positions in life. Much of the
Negro's education has had nothing to do with his real life-work. It
has only made him discontented and disinclined to unfold his arms. The
survival of the Negroes in the race for existence depends upon their
retaining possession of the few bread-winning occupations now open to
them. But instead of better qualifying themselves for these occupations
they have been poring over dead languages and working problems in
mathematics. In the meantime the Chinaman and the steam-laundry have
abolished the Negro's wash-tub, trained white "tonsorial artists" have
taken away his barber's chair, and skilled painters and plasterers and
mechanics have taken away his paint-brushes and tool-chests. Every year
the number of occupations open to him becomes fewer because of his lack
of progress in them. Unless a radical change takes place in the scope of
his education, so that he may learn better how to do his work, a tide of
white immigration will set in and force him out of his last stronghold,
domestic service, and limit his sphere to the farm.
All primary schools for the Negroes should be equipped for industrial
training in such work as sewing, cooking, laundering, carpentry, and
house-cleaning, and, in rural districts, in elementary agriculture.
Secondary schools should add to the literary courses a more advanced
course in industrial training, so as to approach as nearly as possible
the objects and methods of the Tuskegee and Hampton Industrial and
Normal Schools. Too much cannot be said in behalf of the revolution in
the life of the Negro which the work of these schools promises and, in
part, has already wrought. The writer is fully aware that education has
a value aside from and above its bread-winning results, and he would
not dissuade the Negro from seeking the highest culture that he may be
capable of; but it is folly for him to wing his way through the higher
realms of the intellect without some acquaintance with the requirements
and duties of life.
Changes are needed in the methods of Negro education as well as in its
scope. Educators should take into account, more than they have yet done,
the differences in the mental characteristics of the two races. It is
a well-established fact that, while the lower races possess marked
capacity to deal with simple, concrete ideas, they lack power of
generalization, and soon fatigue in the realm of the abstract. It
is also well known that the inferior races, being deficient in
generalization, which is a subjective process, are absorbed almost
entirely in the things that are objective. They have strong and alert
eyesight, and are susceptible to impressions through the medium of the
eye to an extent that is impossible to any of the white races. This fact
is evidenced in the great number of pictures found in the homes of the
Negroes. In default of anything better, they will paper their walls with
advertisements of the theater and the circus, and even with pictures
from vicious newspapers. They delight in street pageantry, fancy
costumes, theatrical performances, and similar spectacles. Factories
employing Negroes generally find it necessary to suspend operations on
"circus day." They love stories of adventure and any fiction that gives
play to their imaginations. All their tastes lie in the realm of the
objective and the concrete.
Hence, in the school-room stress should be laid on those studies that
appeal to the eye and the imagination. Lessons should be given in
sketching, painting, drawing, and casting. Reprints of the popular works
of art should be placed before the Negroes, that their love for art
may be gratified and their taste cultivated at the same time. Fancy
needlework, dress-making, and home decorations should also have an
important place. These studies, while not contributing directly to
bread-winning, have a refining and softening influence upon character,
and inspire efforts to make the home more attractive. The more interest
we can make the Negro take in his personal appearance and in the
comforts of his home, the more we shall strengthen and promote his
family life and raise the level of his civilization.
The literary education of the Negro should consist of carefully selected
poems and novels that appeal to his imagination and produce clear
images upon his mind, excluding such literature as is in the nature of
psychological or moral research. Recitations and dialogues should be
more generally and more frequently required. In history emphasis should
be given to what is picturesque, dramatic, and biographical.
Coming to the political phase of the Negro problem, there is a general
agreement among white men that the Southern States cannot keep pace
with the progress of the world as long as they are menaced by Negro
domination, and that, therefore, it is necessary to eliminate the Negro
vote from politics. When the Negroes become intelligent factors in
society, when they become thrifty and accumulate wealth, they will
find the way to larger exercise of citizenship. They can never sit upon
juries to pass upon life and property until they are property-owners
themselves, and they can never hold the reins of government by reason
of mere superiority of numbers. Before they can take on larger political
responsibilities they must demonstrate their ability to meet them.
The Negroes will never be allowed to control State governments so long
as they vote at every election upon the basis of color, without regard
whatever to political issues or private convictions. If the Negroes
would divide their votes according to their individual opinions, as the
lamented Charles Price, one of their best leaders, advised, there would
be no danger of Negro domination and no objection to their holding
offices which they might be competent to fill. But as there is no
present prospect of their voting upon any other basis than that of
color, the white people are forced to accept the situation and protect
themselves accordingly. Years of bitter and costly experience have
demonstrated over and over again that Negro rule is not only incompetent
and corrupt, but a menace to civilization. Some people imagine that
there is something anomalous, peculiar, or local in the race
prejudice that binds all Negroes together; but this clan spirit is a
characteristic of all savage and semi-civilized peoples.
It should be well understood by this time that no foreign race
inhabiting this country and acting together politically can dominate the
native whites. To permit an inferior race, holding less than one tenth
of the property of the community, to take the reins of government in
its hands, by reason of mere numerical strength, would be to renounce
civilization. Our national government, in making laws for Hawaii, has
carefully provided for white supremacy by an educational qualification
for suffrage that excludes the semi-civilized natives. No sane man, let
us hope, would think of placing Manila under the control of a government
of the Philippine Islands based upon universal suffrage. Yet the problem
in the South and the problem in the Philippines and in Hawaii differ
only in degree.
The only proper safeguard against Negro rule in States where the blacks
outnumber or approximate in number the whites lies in constitutional
provisions establishing an educational test for suffrage applicable
to black and white alike. If the suffrage is not thus limited it is
necessary for the whites to resort to technicalities and ballot laws,
to bribery or intimidation. To set up an educational test with a
"grandfather clause," making the test apply for a certain time to the
blacks only, seems to an outsider unnecessary, arbitrary, and
unjust. The reason for such a clause arises from the belief that
no constitutional amendment could ever carry if it immediately
disfranchised the illiterate whites, as many property-holding whites
belong to that class. But the writer does not believe in the principle
nor in the necessity for a "grandfather clause." If constitutional
amendments were to be submitted in North Carolina and Virginia applying
the educational test to both races alike after 1908, the question would
be lifted above the level of party gain, and would receive the support
of white men of all parties and the approbation of the moral sentiment
of the American people. A white man who would disfranchise a Negro
because of his color or for mere party advantage is himself unworthy of
the suffrage. With the suffrage question adjusted upon an educational
basis the Negroes would have the power to work out their political
emancipation, the white people having made education necessary and
provided the means for attaining it.
When the question of Negro domination is settled the path of progress of
both races will be very much cleared. Race conflicts will then be less
frequent and race feeling less bitter. With more friendly relations
growing up, and with more concentration of energy on the part of the
Negroes in industrial lines, the opportunities for them will be widened
and the task of finding industrial adjustment in the struggle for life
made easier. The wisest and best leaders among the Negroes, such as
Booker Washington and the late Charles Price, have tried to turn the
attention of the Negroes from politics to the more profitable pursuits
of industry, and if the professional politician would cease inspiring
the Negroes to seek salvation in political domination over the whites,
the race issue would soon cease to exist.
The field is broad enough in the South for both races to attain all that
is possible to them. In spite of the periodic political conflicts and
occasional local riots and acts of individual violence, the relations
between the races, in respect to nine tenths of the population, are very
friendly. The general condition has been too often judged by the acts of
a small minority. The Southern people understand the Negroes, and feel
a real fondness for those that are thrifty and well behaved. When fairly
treated the Negro has a strong affection for his employer. He seldom
forgets a kindness, and is quick to forget a wrong. If he does not stay
long at one place, it is not that he dislikes his employer so much as
that he has a restless temperament and craves change. His disposition
is full of mirth and sunshine, and not a little of the fine flavor of
Southern wit and humor is due to his influence. His nature is plastic,
and while he is easily molded into a monster, he is also capable of
a high degree of culture. Many Negroes are thoroughly honest,
notwithstanding their bad environment and hereditary disposition to
steal. Negro servants are trusted with the keys to households to an
extent that, probably, is not the case among domestics elsewhere in the
civilized world.
It is strange that two races working side by side should possess so
many opposite traits of character. The white man has strong will and
convictions and is set in his ways. He lives an indoor, monotonous life,
restrains himself like a Puritan, and is inclined to melancholy. The
prevalence of Populism throughout the South is nothing but the outcome
of this morbid tendency. Farmers and merchants are entirely absorbed in
their business, and the women, especially the married women, contrast
with the women of France, Germany, and even England, in their indoor
life and disinclination to mingle with the world outside. Public
parks and public concerts, such as are found in Europe, which call out
husband, wife, and children for a few hours of rest and communion with
their friends, are almost unknown in the South. The few entertainments
that receive sanction generally exclude all but the well-to-do by the
cost of admission. The life of the poor in town and country is bleak and
bare to the last degree.
Contrasting with this tendency is the free-and-easy life of the blacks.
The burdens of the present and the future weigh lightly upon their
shoulders. They love all the worldly amusements; in their homes they are
free entertainers, and in their fondness for conversation and love of
street life they are equal to the French or Italians.
May we not hope that the conflict of these two opposite races is working
out some advantages to both, and that the final result will justify all
that the conflict has cost?