THE FUTURE OF THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN
Upon my arrival in London I found myself, at the end of my journey,
once more at my point of departure. A few days later, October 9th, to
be precise, I sailed from Liverpool for New York. I had been less than
seven weeks in Europe, but it seemed to me that I had been away for a
year. My head was full of strange and confused impressions and I was
reminded of the words of the traveller who, after he had crossed Europe
from London to Naples, and had visited faithfully all the museums and
neglected none of the regular "sights," wrote to friends he had visited
in Europe a letter full of appreciation, concluding with the remark:
"Well, I have seen a great deal and learned a great deal, and I _thank
God it is all over_."
It occurs to me that the readers who have followed me thus far in
my narrative may find themselves at the conclusion of this book in
somewhat the same situation as myself at the end of my journey. In that
case it will, perhaps, not be out of place to take advantage of this
concluding chapter to do for them as well as I am able what I tried to
do for myself during my hours of leisure on the voyage home--namely,
make a little clearer the relation of all that I had seen and learned
to the problem of the Negro and The Man Farthest Down.
I have touched, in the course of these chapters, upon many phases
of life. I have had something to say, for example, in regard to the
poverty, education, Socialism, and the race problems of Europe, since
all these different matters are connected in one way or another with
the subject and purpose of my journey and this book.
In attempting to add the moral to my story, however, and state in
general terms the upshot of it all, I find myself at a disadvantage. I
can, perhaps, best explain what I mean by recalling the fact that I was
born a slave and since I became free have been so busy with the task
immediately in front of me that I have never had time to think out my
experiences and formulate my ideas in general terms. In fact, almost
all that I know about the problems of other races and other peoples I
have learned in seeking a solution and a way out for my own people. For
that reason I should have done better perhaps to leave to some one with
more learning and more leisure than I happen to possess the task of
writing about the Underman in Europe. In fact I would have done so if I
had not believed that in making this journey I should gain some insight
and, perhaps, be able to throw some new light upon the situation of
my own people in America. Indeed, I confess that I should never have
taken the time--brief as it was--to make this long journey if I had not
believed it was going to have some direct relation to the work which I
have been trying to do for the people of my race in America.
In this, let me add, I was not disappointed. As a matter of fact, if
there was one thing more than another, in all my European experiences,
which was impressed upon my mind, it was the fact that the position
of the Negro in America, both in slavery and in freedom, has not been
so exceptional as it has frequently seemed. While there are wide
differences between the situation of the people in the lower levels of
life in Europe and the Negro in America, there are still many points of
resemblance, and the truth is that the man farthest down in Europe has
much in common with the man at the bottom in America.
For example, the people at the bottom in Europe have been, in most
cases, for the greater part of their history at least, like the Negroes
in America, a subject people, not slaves, but bondmen or serfs, at any
rate a disadvantaged people.
In most cases the different under-classes in Europe only gained their
freedom in the course of the last century. Since that time they have
been engaged in an almost ceaseless struggle to obtain for themselves
the political privileges that formerly belonged to the upper classes
alone.
Even in those places where the man at the bottom has gained political
privileges resembling in most respects those of the classes at the
top he finds, as the Negro in America has found, that he has only
made a beginning, and the real work of emancipation remains to be
done. The English labourer, for example, has had political freedom
for a longer period of time than is true of any other representative
of this class in Europe. Notwithstanding this fact, as things are, he
can only in rare instances buy and own the land on which he lives. The
labouring people of England live, for the most part, herded together
with millions of others of their class in the slums of great cities,
where air and water are luxuries. They are dependent upon some other
nation for their food supplies, for butter, bread, and meat. And then,
as a further consequence of the way they are compelled to live, the
masses of the people find themselves part of an economic arrangement
or system which is so vast and complicated that they can neither
comprehend nor control it.
The result is that the English labourer, of whose independence the
world has heard so much, is, in many respects, more dependent than any
other labouring class in Europe. This is due not to the fact that the
English labourer lacks political rights, but to the fact that he lacks
economic opportunities--opportunities to buy land and opportunities to
labour; to own his own home, to keep a garden and raise his own food.
The Socialists have discovered that the independence of the labouring
classes has been undermined as a result of the growth of factories and
city life, and believe they have found a remedy.
What the Socialists would actually do in England or elsewhere,
provided they should manage to get into power, is difficult to say,
because, as my experience in Europe has taught me, there are almost
as many kinds of Socialists as there are kinds of people. The real
old-fashioned Socialists, those who still look forward to some great
social catastrophe which will put an end to the present régime, believe
it will then be possible to use the political power of the masses
to reorganize society in a way to give every individual an economic
opportunity equal to that of every other.
Taking human beings as we find them, I have never been able to see how
this was going to be brought about in precisely the way outlined in
the Socialist programme. Some individuals will be good for one thing,
some for another, and there will always be, I suppose, a certain number
who will not be good for anything. As they have different capacities,
so they will have different opportunities. Some will want to do one
thing and some another, and some individuals and some people, like
the Jews for example, will know how to make their disadvantages their
opportunities and so get the best of the rest of the world, no matter
how things are arranged.
I have referred to the Socialists and the revolution they propose not
because I wish to oppose their doctrines, which I confess I do not
wholly understand, but because it seemed to me that, as I went through
Europe and studied conditions, I could see the evidences of a great,
silent revolution already in full progress. And this revolution to
which I refer is touching and changing the lives of those who are at
the bottom, particularly those in the remote farming communities, from
which the lowest class of labourers in the city is constantly recruited.
Let me illustrate what I mean: Under the old system in Europe--the
feudal system, or whatever else it may at various times have been
called--civilization began at the top. There were a few people who
were free. They had all the wealth, the power, and the learning in
their hands, or at their command. When anything was done it was because
they wished it or because they commanded it. In order to give them
this freedom and secure to them this power it was necessary that vast
numbers of other people should live in ignorance, without any knowledge
of, or share in, any but the petty life of the estate or the community
to which they belonged. They were not permitted to move from the spot
in which they were born, without the permission of their masters. It
was, in their case, almost a crime to think. It was the same system,
in a very large degree, as that which existed in the Southern States
before the war, with the exception that the serfs in Europe were white,
while the slaves in the Southern States were black.
In Europe to-day the great problem to which statesmen are giving their
thought and attention is not how to hold the masses of the people down
but how to lift them up; to make them more efficient in their labour
and give them a more intelligent share and interest in the life of the
community and state of which they are a part. Everywhere in Europe the
idea is gaining ground and influence that the work of civilization must
begin at the bottom instead of at the top.
The great medium for bringing about these changes is the school. In
every part of Europe which I visited I was impressed with the multitude
of schools of various kinds which are springing up to meet the new
demand. The movement began earlier and has gone farther in Denmark than
it has elsewhere, and the remarkable development of Danish country life
has been the result. What has been accomplished in Denmark, through
the medium of the country high schools, and in Germany, through the
universities and technical training schools, is being industriously
imitated elsewhere.
In England I found that people were saying that the reason why German
manufactures had been able to compete so successfully with the English
products was because Germany had the advantage of better schools. In
Germany I found that the German army, organized in the first instance
for the national defence, is now looked upon as a great national
school, in which the masses of the people get an education and
discipline which, it is claimed, are gradually raising the industrial
efficiency of the nation.
There, as elsewhere, education is seeking to reach and touch every
class and every individual of every class in the community. The deaf,
the blind, the defectives of every description are now beginning to
receive industrial education fitting them for trades in which they
will be more useful to the community and more independent than it was
possible for them to be when no attempt was made to fit them for any
place in the life of the community.
The effect of this movement, or revolution, as I have called it, is
not to "tear down and level up" in order to bring about an artificial
equality, but to give every individual a chance "to make good," to
determine for himself his place and position in the community by the
character and quality of the service he is able to perform.
One effect of this change in point of view which I have described is
that to-day there is hardly any one thing in which the people of Europe
are more concerned than in the progress and future of the man farthest
down.
In all that I have written in the preceding chapters I have sought
to emphasize, in the main, two things: first, that behind all the
movements which have affected the masses of the people, Socialism or
nationalism, emigration, the movements for the reorganization of city
and country life, there has always been the Underman, groping his way
upward, struggling to rise; second, that the effect of all that has
been done to lift the man at the bottom, or to encourage him to lift
himself, has been to raise the level of every man above him.
If it is true, as I have so often said, that one man cannot hold
another down in the ditch without staying down in the ditch with him,
it is just as true that, in helping the man who is down to rise, the
man who is up is freeing himself from a burden that would else drag him
down. It is because the world seems to realize this fact more and more
that, beyond and above all local and temporary difficulties, the future
of the man farthest down looks bright.
And now at the conclusion of my search for the man farthest down in
Europe let me confess that I did not succeed in finding him. I did
not succeed in reaching any place in Europe where conditions were so
bad that I did not hear of other places, which friends advised me to
visit, where conditions were a great deal worse. My own experience was,
in fact, very much like that of a certain gentleman who came South
some years ago to study the condition of the Negro people. He had
heard that in many parts of the South the Negro was gradually sinking
back into something like African savagery, and he was particularly
desirous of finding a well-defined example of this relapse into
barbarism. He started out with high hopes and a very considerable fund
of information as to what he might expect to find and as to the places
where he might hope to find it. Everywhere he went in his search,
however, he found that he had arrived a few years too late. He found
at every place he visited people who were glad to tell him the worst
there was to be known about the coloured people; some were even kind
enough to show what they thought was about the worst there was to be
found among the Negroes in their particular part of the country. Still
he was disappointed because he never found anything that approached
the conditions he was looking for, and usually he was compelled to be
contented with the statement, made to him by each one of his guides
in turn, which ran something like this: "Conditions were not near as
bad as they had been. A few years ago, if he had happened to have come
that way, he would have been able to see things, and so forth; but
now conditions were improving. However, if he wanted to see actual
barbarism he should visit"--and then they usually named some distant
part of the country with which he had not yet become acquainted.
In this way this gentleman, who was hunting the worst that was to be
seen among the Negroes, as I was hunting the worst that was to be seen
among the people of Europe, travelled all over the Southern States,
going from one dark corner to another, but never finding things as bad
as they were advertised. Instead of that, backward as the people were
in many of the remote parts of the country, he found, just as I did
in Europe, that everywhere the people were making progress. In some
places they were advancing more slowly than they were in others, but
everywhere there was, on the whole, progress rather than decline. The
result in his case was the same as it had been in mine, the farther
he went and the more he saw of the worst there was to see, the more
hopeful he became of the people as a whole.
I saw much that was primitive and much that was positively evil in the
conditions in Europe, but nowhere did I find things as bad as they
were described to me by persons who knew them as they were some years
before. And I found almost no part of the country in which substantial
progress had not been made; no place, in short, where the masses of the
people were without hope.
It will, perhaps, seem curious to many persons that, after I had gone
to Europe for the express purpose of making the acquaintance of the
people at the bottom, and of seeing, as far as I was able, the worst
in European life, I should have returned with a hopeful rather than a
pessimistic view of what I saw.
The fact is, however, that the farther I travelled in Europe, and the
more I entered into the life of the people at the bottom, the more I
found myself looking at things from the point of view of the people who
are looking up, rather than from that of the people who are at the top
looking down, and, strange as it may seem, it is still true that the
world looks, on the whole, more interesting, more hopeful, and more
filled with God's providence, when you are at the bottom looking up
than when you are at the top looking down.
To the man in the tower the world below him is likely to look very
small. Men look like ants and all the bustle and stir of their hurrying
lives seems pitifully confused and aimless. But the man in the street
who is looking and striving upward is in a different situation. However
poor his present plight, the thing he aims at and is striving toward
stands out clear and distinct above him, inspiring him with hope and
ambition in his struggle upward. For the man who is down there is
always something to hope for, always something to be gained. The man
who is down, looking up, may catch a glimpse now and then of heaven,
but the man who is so situated that he can only look down is pretty
likely to see another and quite different place.
THE END
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