OF THE SOLUTION OF THE QUESTION
The question is often asked, “Now that the race problem in the
South has been laid down and discussed, what solution of it do you
offer—what have you to propose to ameliorate the conditions which
have grown out of that problem?”
The answer is simple. None, but to leave it to work itself out
along the lines of economic laws, with such aid as may be rendered
by an enlightened public spirit and a broad-minded patriotism.
The solution proposed so glibly by ignorant doctrinaires is like
the nostrum of the quack—good only for fools. The single solution
that can really solve it is that which time alone can disclose—the
natural and imperative resultant of the forces represented in the two
races. The racial traits, instincts, and forces which have governed
and propelled them since the dawn of history will in all human
probability still control and propel them so long as they exist as
races.
One fact that may be stated with some degree of assurance is that
there is no one universal Negro problem or question except the single
one constituted by the existence in the same country of two populous
and fecund races, essentially and, perhaps, radically different in
their history, manners, life, and instincts. In fact, the problems
are almost as numerous and as various as the communities where the
two races exist side by side. For example, one problem exists where
the races are equally educated; another, where they are equally
ignorant; a third, where the one race or the other is in numerical
superiority; yet another, where the members of either race are of one
class or another. All of these things have to be fully considered in
determining the various questions that seem to be inherent in the
subject, and any positive formulation of one set of conditions may
readily be met by the production of a partially if not a totally
different set of conditions.
Out of all these questions, as has been stated, but one essentially
common to the whole obtrudes itself: Whether two races, like
the white race and the black, with such histories and such
characteristics as those races have, can continue permanently to live
together under conditions similar to those which exist in the United
States with mutual benefit to both?
On the proper answer to this question depends our future, both as
a people and as a nation. Next to the question of Representative
government, this would appear to be the most vital and fundamental
question that exists within the limits of the United States to-day.
Hinging upon it are such subordinate questions as representation,
personal security, freedom of speech, race integrity, national
strength and permanency, and, possibly, even national existence.
The Negro race has already doubled three times in the United States
since the beginning of the last century, and, unless conditions
change, it is possible that before the end of the century there may
be between sixty and eighty millions of Negroes in this country; a
situation which will tax all, and more than all, of the wisdom and
constancy of the white race.
In fact, the situation is already too serious to be disposed of
without the expenditure of all the courage, wisdom, and patriotism
of the entire white race in America, or, at least, without more than
they have yet shown. Hitherto, the Negro race has been treated on the
one side as an amiable and servile class, useful under regulation
and direction to furnish the labor of a great section, and on the
other side as a pliable class, useful under certain conditions as a
weapon to punish or control the opposite party. The one section has
leaned decidedly to keeping the Negro as a mere laborer; the other
has leaned with firmness to using him for its own advantage. But,
when the Negro race shall reach the numbers suggested, new questions
will have arisen. The question then will be, “What shall be done with
this colored population of sixty to eighty millions of souls?”
It is true that prognostications of increase in a population often
fail, but judging the future by the past and taking into account
known racial characteristics, it would appear that the number thus
prophesied will in all human probability exist in the United States
by the end of the century. If it does exist, it is useless for us
of the present generation to blink our eyes to the gravity of the
situation.
The answer at present would appear to be alternative: either they
must live separately among us—that is, a people within a people,
separate and distinct—or they must be amalgamated and mixed in with
the whites; or, they must be removed and still live separate and
distinct, whether in some country beyond the confines of the United
States, or in some portion of this country which shall be given up to
them.
It is not believed by those best acquainted with the subject that
the solution of the race question will ever be along the lines of
amalgamation. That there will be some intermixture is doubtless true,
but unless all observations are erroneous, while the percentage of
mulattoes in the total Negro population has increased, this increase
is mainly due to the intermixture of the white with the mulatto, or
of the mulatto with the pure Negro, and the intermixture between the
pure Negro and the pure white is growing less all the time.
“The general conclusion,” says the Director of the Department of
Commerce and Labor of the Census Bureau, after giving tables of
increasing per cent. of mulattoes to total Negro population of
the several divisions of the country, “seems warranted that the
proportion of mulattoes to total Negroes was found by the enumerators
to be high or low, according as the proportion of whites to Negroes
is high or low. That is, it appears that where the whites are in
large numbers and the Negroes in small numbers, the proportion of
mulattoes to Negroes is likely to be higher than where the whites are
in small numbers and the Negroes in large numbers.”
Moreover, the percentage of mulattoes in the total Negro population
is decidedly greater in cities than in the country.
Although the reports are admittedly incomplete,[100] “yet even
so,” says the Director, “it is a step away from ignorance to have
the observation of many thousand enumerators at four independent
inquiries as evidence that in the United States between one-ninth and
one-sixth of the Negroes were of mixed blood, while in Cuba one-half
and in Porto Rico five-sixths have been so classed by the census.”
As race feeling grows the intermixture of the two races will
necessarily grow less and less.
The solution of the question, then, must be along one of the other
lines suggested. That is, the Negro race must either remain distinct
and keep to itself, or it must be removed to some region, whether
within or without the confines of the United States, where it will be
substantially separated.
There are those who advocate warmly the attempt, however apparently
Herculean, to remove the Negro race without further delay. That it
may come to this in the future is certainly possible. It is, however,
much more likely that the Negro race will find its best security in
remaining in this country, a people within a people, separate and
distinct, but acting in amity with the stronger race and trying to
minimize rather than magnify contentions upon those points as to
which the stronger race is most determined. Should the time ever come
when, for any reason whatever, a conflict arises between the two
races, which would appear to jeopard the supremacy of the stronger
race, the weaker race would go down, never to rise again on this
continent.
When the writer first began to study the conditions of the race
problem they appeared to be most disheartening. As, however, he
surveyed the entire field, he has become more hopeful, and certainly
more firm in his convictions as to a few principles.
One of these principles is the absolute and unchangeable superiority
of the white race—a superiority, it appears to him, not due to any
mere adventitious circumstances, such as superior educational and
other advantages during some centuries, but an inherent and essential
superiority, based on superior intellect, virtue, and constancy. He
does not believe that the Negro is the equal of the white, or ever
could be the equal. Race superiority is founded on courage (or,
perhaps, “constancy” is the better word), intellect, and the domestic
virtues, and in these the white is the superior of every race.
Another principle is that many, if not most, of the difficulties
of the race problem since the war have been caused, or at least
increased, by the ignorance of those outside of the South, who, most
cocksure of their position where they were most in error, have tried
to force a solution on lines contrary to natural and unchangeable
laws. The selfish politician and the cocksure theorist have equally
contrived to create problems where none might have been but for their
bigotry and their folly.
The first step toward the solution of the problem would be taken if
the Negro were simply let alone and left to his own resources, with
such help as equity or philanthropy might contribute—in other words,
if the whites and blacks were left to settle their difficulties and
troubles in the various States and sections precisely as they would
be left were all whites or all blacks.
Among the errors made in the early years none was more fatal than
the inculcation in the mind of the Negro that he was the ward of
the nation, and, as such, would be sustained. He was not sustained
in the end and he never can be; but he learned just enough from the
experience of that time to know that the Government was powerful
enough to trample down the Southern whites. The memory of that
time has been an _ignis fatuus_ to delude him ever since. And the
continual harping on this theme by the section of the Northern press
and the politicians, who forget that this is no longer the decade
following the war, is just sufficient to mislead them.
At the end the Negroes must rise by their own exertions and their own
approach to the standards by which peoples rise. And the chief aid in
this is the sympathy of those among whom they live.
Left alone, the whites and the blacks of the South would settle their
difficulties along the lines of substantial justice and substantial
equity.
Yet another principle is that the final settlement must be one in
which the great body of that portion of the white race who know the
Negroes best shall acquiesce. No other will ever be final.
The “MacVeagh Commission,” which visited Louisiana in 1876, reported
that the Negro party had a great majority in the State, had had
possession of every branch of the State Government, and had been
sustained by the United States Government, and yet the whites had
defeated and ousted them. Were the same conditions to exist to-day
the same results would occur. This country is as “fatally reserved
for” the Anglo-Saxon race as it was when the Virginia Adventurers
declared it to be so in their first report to Elizabeth.
And, lastly, I am satisfied that the final settlement must be by the
way of elevating both races.
There is much truth in the saying that unless the whites lift the
Negroes up, the Negroes will drag them down, though it is not true in
the full sense in which it was intended. It is not true to the extent
that the white must lift the Negro up to his own level; it is true
to the extent that he must not leave him debased—at least, must not
leave him here debased. If he does, then the Negro will inevitably
hold him, if not drag him down. No country in the present state of
the world’s progress can long maintain itself in the front rank,
and no people can long maintain themselves at the top of the list
of peoples if they have to carry perpetually the burden of a vast
and densely ignorant population, and where that population belongs
to another race, the argument must be all the stronger. Certainly,
no section can, under such a burden, keep pace with a section which
has no such burden. Whatever the case may have been in the past,
the time has gone by, possibly forever, when the ignorance of the
working-class was an asset. Nations and peoples and, much more,
sections of peoples, are now strong and prosperous almost in direct
ratio to their knowledge and enlightenment.
It can readily be demonstrated by unquestioned proof that the wealth
and strength of modern nations are in almost exact proportion to
the education of the population. It is not, however, necessary for
the present argument to go outside of America. Viewing the matter
economically, the Negro race, like every other race, must be of far
more value to the country in which it is placed, if the Negro is
properly educated, elevated, and trained, than if he is allowed
to remain in ignorance and degradation. He is a greater peril to
the community in which he lives if he remains in ignorance and
degradation than if he is enlightened. If the South expects ever to
compete with the North, she must educate and train her population,
and, in my judgment, not merely her white population, but her entire
population.
I know well all the arguments against educating the Negroes. I
know the struggle that the South made in the days of her poverty
to educate that race, even at the expense of her white children;
expending upon them, out of taxes levied by the whites on the
property of the whites, over $110,000,000, though over a fifth of the
whites were left in ignorance.[101] I know the disappointment from
which she has suffered. What is charged as to the educated Negro’s
being just educated enough to make him worthless as a laborer and
leave him useless for anything else has in it often too much truth.
I am well aware that often the young Negro thinks his so-called
education gives him a license to be insolent, and that not rarely it
is but an aid to his viciousness. But, for all this, the economic
laws are as invariable and as certain in their operation as any other
laws of nature.
In the first place, it seems to me that our plain duty is to do the
best we can to act with justice and a broad charity and leave the
consequences to God.
But there are other reasons for our continuing in well-doing. And
not for sentimental reasons and not for political reasons, but
for reasons on which depend the future of the South and of the
Southern people; for reasons as certain as that light is safer than
darkness, and that intelligence is better than stupidity, or even
mere craftiness, the South must educate all her population. She
must do this, or she must fall behind the rest of the country. She
has no option in this matter. She has the population and they are
increasing. The matter seems to me to be not susceptible of question
on sound economic grounds. We must educate them. It is not a question
of choice, but of necessity.
We have the Negro here among us to the number of ten millions and
increasing at a rate of about twenty-five per cent. every ten years.
They are here; what must we do with them? One of three courses must
be taken: We must either debase them, keep them stationary, or
improve them.
Everyone will discard the first plan.
No one can make the second feasible. A race, like a class, is always
in a state of change, at least, under conditions like those in
America.
Then, we must adopt the third course.
At this point, the question arises: How shall they be improved? One
element says, Improve them, but only as laborers, for which alone
they are fitted; another, with a larger charity, says, Enlarge this
and give them a chance to become good mechanics, as they have shown
themselves capable of improvement in the industrial field; a third
class goes further yet, and says, Give them a yet further chance—a
chance to develop themselves; enlighten them and teach them the
duties of citizenship and they will become measurably good citizens.
Yet another says, Give him the opportunity and push him till he is
stuffed full of the ideas and the learning that have made the white
race what it is.
The last of these theories appears to the writer as unsound as the
first, which is certainly unsound. Keep them ignorant, and the clever
and the enterprising will go off and leave to the South the dull, the
stupid, and the degraded.
The question is no longer a choice between the old-time Negro and the
“new issue,” but between the “new issue,” made into a fairly good
laborer and a fairly enlightened citizen, who in time will learn his
proper place, whatever it may be, or the “new issue,” dull, ignorant,
brutish, liable to be worked on by the most crafty of those who would
use him; a noisome, human hot-bed, in which every form of viciousness
will germinate.
Perhaps, the best argument ever advanced for general suffrage was
that of George Mason in the Constitutional Convention: that through
a general suffrage it may be known what is underneath. The Negroes
will always have their leaders, and it is better to have enlightened
leaders than ignorant.
Nothing could be more disheartening than the poor return that
the Southerner has received for his outlay and patience. Often,
worthlessness and insolence on the part of the beneficiaries of his
bounty, and misunderstanding and abuse on the part of Pharisaical
critics, have been his reward. But, for all this, let us keep on
doing what we believe to be right. We have in the past had experience
of the Negro fairly well trained and in amity with the white, where
he recognized the latter’s superiority. We have the high authority of
one of the leading Negro teachers and leaders, that the Negro yearns
toward the white. This is strongly corroborated by the well-known
fact that wherever the Negroes and the Southern whites are let alone,
and are not affected by outside influences, they, for the most part,
live in harmony. If we keep on and manage the race question with
firmness and with equity, we shall yet show the Negro that his true
interest lies in maintaining amity with the Southern white. This we
can never do if we take ground against educating him and leave the
Northern white to advocate uplifting him. In such case, the North
would always have an argument, and the Negro always proof, that the
Northerner is his friend and the Southerner not.
The alleged danger of the educated Negro becoming a greater menace
to the white than the uneducated is a bugaboo which will not stand
the test of light. That this might be true if the white is allowed
to remain uneducated, may readily be admitted. The answer, however,
to the argument, if it has any merit whatever, is that we must give
a sound and not a spurious education and simply educate our whites
better. If there were not a Negro on the continent of America, we
shall have to do this anyhow, unless we are willing to have the
Southern people fall ever further and further behind the people of
the North and West.[102]
Education is now the talisman—the desire and aim of all the vast
influx of immigrants who come within our gates. The children of the
foreign-born population of the country are, by the last census, less
illiterate, even in the North, than those of the native-born. Unless
we furnish these people good schools, we can never hope to get a good
class of immigrants to come to us. Without good schools, if we get
any, it will be only the poorest class. And nothing would help us
more in the South than to get in the best class.
* * * * *
Now, as to the form of education which will be of most value to the
Negroes and of most value to the South—for the two, instead of being
opposed to each other, as, according to our self-righteous critics,
we appear to believe, are bound up in one.
Unhappily, the system of education heretofore pursued with the
Negroes has been so futile in its results that a considerable
proportion of Southerners, knowing the facts against all the
assertion of Negro leaders, and all the clamor of those outside the
South who are ignorant of the facts, believe sincerely that the
educated are more worthless and more dangerous to the welfare and
peace of the community in which they live than the uneducated.
That is, it is the sincere belief of a considerable number of
enlightened and thoughtful whites, perfectly conversant with the
situation, that the earnest effort of the South to educate the
Negroes, extending through a generation, at an expense of over
$110,000,000, contributed out of the property of the Southern whites,
has been a complete failure in that the beneficiaries of this effort
are not as good workers, or as good citizens, as the generation which
preceded them, and use the education so given them, where they use
it at all, in ways which are not beneficial to themselves and are
injurious to the whites.
This is a condition sufficiently grave to require thoughtful
consideration, and it must be met by argument rather than by
vilification, or even by mere dogmatism.
It is, undoubtedly, true that the apparent result of the effort to
educate the Negro has been disappointing. There are a few thousand
professional men, a considerable number of college or high school
graduates, but, for the greater part, there is discernible little
apparent breadth of view, no growth in ability, or tendency to
consider great questions reasonably. There is, indeed, rather a
tendency to racial solidarity in opposition to the whites on all
questions whatsoever; continued failure to distinguish soundly
between outward gifts and character; a general inclination to
deny crime and side with criminals against the whites, no matter
how flagrant the crime may be. There is, moreover, a not rare
belief among the whites that the preachers and leaders contribute
to increase these tendencies and teach hostility rather than try
to uplift the race morally. This view is held sincerely by a
considerable section of the well-informed whites of the South.
All this is very disappointing, and yet the only lamp by which we can
guide our way safely is the light of experience. Enlightenment and
religion are the two great powers that have raised races and peoples.
Since the dawn of history, Education and Christianity have raised
the Western nations, among them the Anglo-Saxon race. With all the
faults men show in practice, these two contain the vital principles.
They are founded on those precepts, by which alone nations rise and
civilization advances—knowledge, morality, and duty.
Whatever disappointment, then, there may be, this much at least may
be laid down: There are only two ways to solve the Negro problem in
the South. One is to remove him; the other is to elevate him. The
former is apparently out of the question. The only method, then, is
to improve him.
In suggesting the method of education that will prove of greatest
service, it is easier to criticise than to reform. Hitherto, the
idea has been to educate the Negro race just as the white race is
educated; that is, to give him book education and “turn him loose.”
There was, it is true, no field except the curious politics of the
time in which the Negro could exercise his powers, based on such an
education. The whites did not want this; the Negroes could not use
it; but this made no difference with those who had the matter in
charge. Education was understood to be ability to show book-learning.
With this meagre equipment, the “educated Negro” rushed into
politics, or into the pulpit, which mainly was but another name for
the same thing. Sentiment, however, demanded that the Negro should
be placed on an equality with the whites, and other conditions were
left out of account, with disheartening results.
It is axiomatic to say that the education given to the Negro should
be of the kind which will benefit him most. A few plain principles
may be stated: He should be taught that education consists of
something more than a mere ability to read and write and speak;
that education includes moral elevation as well as intellectual
development; that religion includes morality and is more than
emotional excitement. He should be taught that one of the strongest
elements in racial development is purity of family life; he should
be taught that the duties of citizenship are much more than the
ability to cast a ballot, or even to hold an office; that elevation
to superiority among the people of his own race is of far greater
moment to him at this time than external equality with another race,
and that true superiority is founded on character. He should be
taught to become self-sustaining, self-reliant, and self-respecting.
A people, like a class, to advance must either be strong enough to
make its way against all hostility, or must secure the friendship of
others, particularly of those nearest it. If the Negro race in the
South proposes, and is powerful enough to overcome the white race,
let it try this method—it will soon find out its error; if not, it
must secure the friendship of that race. Owing to conditions, the
friendship and the sympathy of the Southern section of that race are
almost as much more important to the Negro race than is that of the
North, as the friendship of the latter is more important than that of
the yet more distant Canadian section of the white race.
The best way—perhaps the only way—for the Negro race to progress
steadily is to secure the sympathy and aid of the Southern whites.
It will never do this until the race solidarity of the Negroes is
broken and the Negroes divide on the same grounds on which the whites
divide; until they unite with the whites and act with them on the
questions which concern the good of the section in which they both
have their most vital interests.
The urgent need is for the Negroes to divide up into classes, with
character and right conduct as the standard for elevation. When
they make distinctions themselves, others will recognize their
distinctions.
As a result of the above principles, it would appear, first, that
elementary education should be universal. Even the commonest laborer,
speaking in general terms, profits by it.
This education should be of the kind best adapted to the great body
of those for whom it is provided. The wisest and most conservative
teacher of the Negro race, following the precepts of his own great
teacher, General Armstrong, has attained his distinction largely
by the success he has achieved in applying methods of industrial,
rather than of mere literary education. In this view he is bitterly
opposed by many, perhaps by most, of the “educated Negroes,” who
are fond of declaring that they act upon principle; that the object
of education is to make men, not to make potatoes, or even to make
carpenters; little realizing that “men,” in the sense in which the
term is, or should be used, are no more made by the superficial and
counterfeit education which most of their so-called college graduates
display, than are vegetables or mechanics. It has taken a generation
and something like $150,000,000, including the entire input from
public and private sources, to produce one Booker T. Washington,
and—to select from the other school—one Professor Du Bois, though I
take pleasure in stating my belief that there are a considerable
and possibly an increasing number of modest, unassuming, faithful,
and devoted teachers and representatives of both schools not so
distinguished, but, perhaps, not less worthy than these. But, the
question arises, or should arise, How many thousands are there who,
in the making of these, have been ruined for the life for which they
were fitted?
It might seem that the true principle should be elementary education
for all, including in the term “industrial education,” and special,
that is, higher education of a proper kind for the special
individuals who may give proof of their fitness to receive and profit
by it.
A college education should be the final reward and prize only of
those who have proven themselves capable of appreciating it and who
give promise of being able to use it for the public good.
To ignore rules founded on such plain common sense is worse than
folly. The money so expended is not merely thrown away; this might
be tolerated; it is an actual and positive injury. It unfits the
recipient for the work for which alone in any case he might be fit,
and gives him in exchange only a bauble to amuse himself with, or a
weapon with which to injure himself and others.
Finally, and as the only sound foundation for the whole system of
education, the Negro must be taught the great elementary truths of
morality and duty. Until he is so established in these that he claims
to be on this ground the equal of the white, he can never be his
equal on any other ground. When he is the equal of the white, it will
make itself known. Until then, he is fighting not the white race, but
a law of nature, universal and inexorable—that races rise or fall
according to their character.
FOOTNOTES:
[100] Twelfth U. S. Census; Bulletin 8, p. 17.
[101] See Appendix.
[102] See Appendix.
APPENDIX
SOUTHERN TAXATION AND EDUCATION.
As small as may appear to be the amount expended by the South on
public education, those who have not known conditions there can have
little idea as to the strain upon her resources which this amount has
caused. In “The Present South,” pp. 42, 43 _et seq._, Edgar Gardner
Murphy says:
“The figures of our national census show that from 1860 to 1870
there was a fall of $2,100,000,000 in the assessed value of Southern
property and that the period of Reconstruction added, in the years
from 1870 to 1880, another $67,000,000 to the loss.
“In 1860 the assessed value of property in Massachusetts was
$777,000,000, as contrasted with $5,200,000,000 for the whole South.
“But at the close of the war period Massachusetts had, in 1870,
$1,590,000,000 in taxable property, as contrasted with but
$3,000,000,000 for the whole South.
“It is interesting to note that in 1890 there was ‘expended for
public schools on each $100 of true valuation of all real and
personal property’ 22.3 cents in Arkansas and 24.4 cents in
Mississippi, as compared with 20.5 cents in New York and 20.9 in
Pennsylvania. See Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education,
1902, Vol. I. p. xci.”
ILLITERACY IN THE SOUTH.
The following is taken from Publication 8, Twelfth United States
Census:
“The illiteracy of the native white population of the Southern States
ranges from 8.6 per cent. in Florida, 8 per cent. in Mississippi,
and 6.1 per cent. in Texas, to 17.3 per cent. in Louisiana, and 19.5
per cent. in North Carolina, as contrasted with 0.8 per cent. in
Nebraska, 1.3 per cent. in Kansas, 2.1 per cent. in Illinois, 1.2
per cent. in New York, and 0.8 per cent. in Massachusetts. A far
juster comparison, however, is that which indicates the contrast, not
between the South and the rest of the country in 1900, but between
the South of 1880 and the South of to-day.’
TABLE SHOWING THE RANK OF EACH STATE IN PERCENTAGE OF ILLITERACY OF
THE NATIVE WHITE POPULATION TEN YEARS OF AGE AND OVER:
1900.
1 Washington 0.5
2 South Dakota 0.6
3 Montana 0.6
4 Nevada 0.6
5 Wyoming 0.7
6 Massachusetts 0.8
7 Minnesota 0.8
8 Nebraska 0.8
9 Connecticut 0.8
10 Oregon 0.8
11 Utah 0.8
12 Dist. of Columbia 0.8
13 North Dakota 0.9
14 Idaho 0.9
15 California 1.0
16 New York 1.2
17 Iowa 1.2
18 Wisconsin 1.3
19 Kansas 1.3
20 New Hampshire 1.5
21 Michigan 1.7
22 New Jersey 1.7
23 Rhode Island 1.8
24 Illinois 2.1
25 Pennsylvania 2.3
26 Ohio 2.4
27 Maine 2.4
28 Oklahoma 2.5
29 Colorado 2.7
30 Vermont 2.9
31 Indiana 3.6
32 Maryland 4.1
33 Missouri 4.8
34 Delaware 5.6
35 Texas 6.1
36 Arizona 6.2
37 Mississippi 8.0
38 Florida 8.6
39 West Virginia 10.0
40 Virginia 11.1
41 Arkansas 11.6
42 Georgia 11.9
43 Kentucky 12.8
44 South Carolina 13.6
45 Indian Territory 14.0
46 Tennessee 14.2
47 Alabama 14.8
48 Louisiana 17.3
49 North Carolina 19.5
50 New Mexico 29.4
POPULATION AT LEAST TEN YEARS OF AGE AND NUMBER AND PER CENT.
ILLITERATE FOR THE NEGRO AND WHITE RACES: 1900 AND 1890.
———————————————————+—————————————————————————————————————————————————————
| POPULATION AT LEAST TEN YEARS OF AGE.
+——————————+——————————+———————————————————+———————————
RACE. | | | Number Illiterate.| Per Cent.
| | | |Illiterate.
| 1900 | 1890 +—————————+—————————+—————+—————
| | | 1900 | 1890 |1900 |1890
———————————————————+——————————+——————————+—————————+—————————+—————+—————
Continental U. S.: | | | | | |
Negro population. | 6,415,581| 5,328,972|2,853,194|3,042,668| 44.5| 57.1
White population. |51,250,918|41,931,074|3,200,746|3,212,574| 6.2| 7.7
———————————————————+——————————+——————————+—————————+—————————+—————+—————
South Atlantic and | | | | | |
South Central | | | | | |
divisions: | | | | | |
Negro population.| 5,664,975| 4,751,763|2,717,606|2,883,216| 48.0| 60.7
White population.|12,020,539| 9,456,368|1,401,273|1,412,983| 11.7| 14.9
———————————————————+——————————+——————————+—————————+—————————+—————+—————
“There are 352 counties in the United States in which one-half the
Negro population at least 10 years of age was illiterate in 1900.
With the exception of New Madrid County, Mo., all these counties are
in the South.
“If the educational facilities of the country should remain up
to their present standards, but not improve, and should impart
the elements of education to as large a proportion of the rising
generation as they have done to those between 10 and 14 years in
1900, then, at the end of the generation, illiteracy among the
Negroes in the country will have sunk from 44.5 to 30.1 per cent.;
that is, nearly one-third of it will have disappeared. At the
same time, illiteracy among the whites in the country will have
sunk, immigration aside, from 6.2 to 3.5 per cent.; that is,
about three-sevenths of the illiteracy among the whites will have
disappeared.
“At the present time, nearly one-half of the Negroes in the Southern
States are unable to write, but if educational facilities for that
race remain about as they are at present for another generation,
and be availed of to the same extent, the proportion would sink to
one-third. The illiteracy of the Negro at the present time is about
four times that of the white in both the North and the South; in the
North a little less, in the South a little more.”
COST OF VIRGINIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
Total amount of State and Local Taxes
expended in Virginia on Public Schools
from 1870-71 to 1890-91—20 years $22,759,249.38
Amount received from Peabody Fund 296,134.00
Private contributions 324,926.59
——————————————
Total $23,380,309.97
==============
Cost of Negro education in Public Schools,
including total Current Expenses $4,792,290.06
Amounts appropriated by the State to
Hampton and Virginia Normal Institutes 471,708.72
Cost of permanent improvements, sites,
buildings, etc., for Colored Schools 588,223.05
—————————————
Total cost of Colored Public Schools and
Normal Institutes for 20 years $5,852,222.57
Total cost of White Schools for same period 17,528,087.60
——————————————
Total of all Public Schools same period $23,380,310.17
==============
Percentage of whole fund expended on White Schools $75.00
Percentage of whole fund expended on Colored
Schools 25.00
——————
$100.00
Actual statistics for 1891 show the following facts:
Total taxes. Per cent. of whole.
White $1,769,576.06 91.7
Colored 163,175.67 8.3
————————————— —————
Total $1,959,751.73 100.0
The U. S. Census for 1890 shows the population of Virginia to be as
follows:
White 1,015,123 = 61.3%
Colored 640,857 = 38.7%
————————— ——————
Total 1,655,980 = 100.0%
Thus showing that while the Negroes comprise nearly four-tenths
of the population, they furnish less than one-tenth of the amount
expended on public schools.
The number of Public Schools for the year 1898-90 was
White 5,358
Colored 2,153
—————
7,511
The total cost of Public Schools for the year
1889-90 was $1,604,508.80
The cost of Negro Schools for the same year
was about 420,000.00
Now, if we use the percentages on preceding pages and allow all the
taxes paid by Negroes (on both personal and real property) to go into
the School Fund, we will see that there was a deficit of $256,824.33
to be made up from the taxes paid by white people, or, in other
words, the total amount of taxes on personal and real property paid
by the Negroes will cover less than half the expense of their schools
alone.
By THOMAS NELSON PAGE
BRED IN THE BONE
Illustrated, $1.50
“A book to be thoroughly enjoyed.”—_Literary World._
“In Mr. Page’s best vein.”—_Washington Star._
“He belongs to the Old Virginia quality; he knows the life of the
people; he knows the negro and renders his dialect perfectly; he has
an eye for the picturesque, the poetic, and the humorous; and his
style shows exquisite taste and skill.”—_Nashville American._
GORDON KEITH
Illustrated by George Wright
12mo, $1.50
“Since the publication of ‘Red Rock’ Mr. Page has given us nothing so
important as ‘Gordon Keith,’ a novel of serious purpose and generous
dimensions, crowded with actors and full of incident.... It is a
strong, sincere, and deeply interesting novel of character and of
manners as well.”—HAMILTON W. MABIE, in _The Outlook_.
BOOKS BY MR. PAGE
RED ROCK
A Chronicle of Reconstruction
Illustrated by B. West Clinedinst
12mo, $1.50
“One of the most satisfactory works of fiction that the South has
ever produced. On all this crowded canvas there is not a figure
that is not drawn from the life, and given character by sympathy or
insight into motive.”—_The Dial._
THE OLD GENTLEMAN OF THE BLACK STOCK
With 8 colored illustrations by H. C. Christy
12mo, $1.50
“This is not only one of the most characteristic and charming of
Mr. Page’s studies of Virginia character, but it is a story which
readily lends itself to illustration, and especially to the kind
of decorative illustration which Mr. Christy has given it.”—_The
Outlook._
IN OLE VIRGINIA
Marse Chan, and Other Stories
12mo, $1.25
“Nothing more beautiful than these stories has ever been penned
by a Southern writer. The person who has not read them has missed
something akin to the loss of the town-bred child who treads among
forests of stone houses, and who has never known a forest of nature,
the perfume of wild dog-roses, and the unsoiled beauty of God’s
sunshine.”—_New Orleans Picayune._
THE BURIAL OF THE GUNS
12mo, $1.25
“One can hardly read the story that gives the name to this
volume without a quickening of the breath and moisture of the
eye.”—_Christian Register._
“Three of them are war stories, and all are told in Mr. Page’s
charming style.”—_Chicago Inter-Ocean._
Transcriber’s Notes
pg ix Changed: due consideration of every other question whatsover.
to: due consideration of every other question whatsoever.
pg 115 Changed: barbarism shown by the prevalance
to: barbarism shown by the prevalence
pg 218 Changed: any other relation, believes this implicity
to: any other relation, believes this implicitly
pg 237 Changed: that this war it not waged
to: that this war is not waged
pg 299 Changed: hte enterprising will go off
to: the enterprising will go off