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?