Darkwater

loom of my younger manhood. They were years mingled of half breathless work, of anxio

crimson and gold and sunshine. Here are rows of books and there is a table. Somber blackboards clothe the walls to the right and beside your desk is the delicate ivory of a nobly cast head. But you see nothing of this: you see only a silence and eyes,-fringed, soft eyes; hard eyes; eyes great and small; eyes here so poignant with b

, which knells suddenly: "Do you trust white people?" You do not and you know that you do not, much as you want to; yet you rise and lie and say you do; you must say it for her salvation and the world's; you repe

minds of my pupils a concrete social problem of which we all were parts and which we desperately desired to solve. There was little danger, then, of my teaching or of their thinking becoming purely theoretical. Work and wage were thri

calm rivers. The city overflows into the valleys of Illinois and lies there, writhing under its grimy cloud. The other city is dusty and hot beyond all dream,-a feverish Pittsburg i

power, who held all the thunderbolts of modern capital in his great fists and made flour and meat, iron and steel, cunning chemicals, wood, paint and paper, transforming to endless tools a disemboweled earth. He was one who saw nothing, knew nothing, sought nothing but the making an

n as anything God ever made. He was the slave for the miracle maker. It was he that the thunderbolts struck and electrified into gasping energy.

ith the infinite softness and ancient calm which come from that eternal race whose history is not the history of a day, but of endless ages. Here, surely,

tamed sewerage, unguarded railroad crossings, saloons outnumbering churches and churches catering to saloons; homes impudently strait and new, prostitutes free and happy, gamblers in paradise, the town "wide open," shameless and frank; great factories pouring out stench, filth, and flame-these and all other things so fa

d some curbing from those who have seen the vision and panted for life; but eastward from St. Louis there is a land of no taxes for great industries; there is a land where you may buy grafting politicians at far less rate than you would pay for franchises or privileges in a modern town. There, too, you may

enough? It was a good town. There was no veil of hypocrisy here, but a wickedness, frank, ungilded, and open. To be sure, there were things sometimes to reveal the basic savagery and thin veneer. Once, for instance, a man was lynched for brawling on the public square of the county seat; once a mayor who sought to "clean up" was publicly assassinated; always there was theft and rumors of theft, until St. Clair County was a hissing in go

ds that made food made powder, and iron for railways was iron for guns. The wants of common men were forgotten before the groan of giants. Streams

slowly the mighty had disgorged. Even the common workers, the poor and unlettered, had again and again gripped the sills of the city walls and pulled themselves to t

erican worker was threatened with starvation, but it was what was, after all, a more important qu

g themselves even better than before, bargained with the men of might and held them by bitter threats; the less skilled and more ignorant seethed at th

sland closing, slowly the footsteps of the yearly million men became fainter and fainter, until the stream of immigrants overseas was stopped by the shadow of death at the very time when new

with justice and with right, save for one thing, and that was the sound of the moan of the Disinherited, who still lay without the walls. When they heard this moan and saw that it came not across the seas, t

f every newspaper column, the lie of every cub reporter, the exaggeration of every press dispatch, and the distortion of every

n lynched by hundreds in the face of a sneering world. They saw a people with heads bloody, but unbowed, working faithfully at wages fifty per cent. lower than the wages of the nation and under conditions which shame civilization, saving homes, training children, hoping against hope. T

dustrial barons of the new South. Who was this who dared to "interfere" with their labor?

they groveled on their knees and shed wild tears at the "suffering" of their poor, misguided black friends, and yet, despite this, the Northern employers simply had to offer two and three dollars a day and from one-quarter to one-half a million dark workers arose and poured themselv

the indecencies of life. What they feared was not deprivation of the things they were used to and the shadow of poverty, but rather the definite death of their rising dreams. But if fear was new-born in the hearts of the Unwise Men, the b

zy with fruit and river, half-asleep beneath the nod of God,-here, then, was stag

amers bridges swing on great arches of steel, striding with mighty grace from shore to shore. Everywhere are brick kennels,-tall, black and red chimneys, tongues of flame. The ground is littered with cars and iron, tra

in the hearts of the giants; the clustered cunning of the modern workman, skilled as artificer and skilled in the rhythm of the habit of work, tasting the world's good and panting for more; fear of poverty and hate of "scabs" in th

far may men fight for the beginning of comfort, out beyond the horrid shadow of poverty, at the cost of starving other and what the world calls lesse

ice lies with the lowest; the plight of the lowest man,-the plight of the black m

e, and graft sat enthroned in the City Hall. The new black folk were exploited as cheerfully as white Polacks and Italians; the rent of shacks mounted merrily, the street car lines counted gleeful gains, and the crime

nt them. Just as employers monopolized meat and steel, so they sought to monopolize labor and beat a giant's bargain. In the higher trades they succeeded. The best electrician in the city was refused admittance to the union and driven from the town because he was black.

won higher wages and better hours; then again in the spring they struck to make bargaining compulsory for the employer, but this time they fronted n

and of the government before their faces; it was against entrenched union labor, which had risen on the backs of the unskilled and unintelligent and on the backs of those whom for any reason of race or prejudice or chicane th

ed quickly to ward the gathering thunder from their own heads. The thing they wanted was even at their hands: here were black men, guilty not only of bidding for jobs which white men could have held at war prices, even if they could not fill, but also guilty of being black! It was at this blackness that the unions

im-Crow" cars to a "Jim-Crow" army draft-all this history of discrimination and insult festered to make men think and willing to think that the venting of their unbridled anger against 12,000,000 humble,

ve, from noonday until midnight; they killed and beat and murdered; they dashed out the brains of children and stripped off the clothes of women; they drove victims into the flames and hanged the helpless to the lighting poles. Fathers were killed before t

led the white dead on the street, but the cunning mob caught the black men between the factories and their homes, where they knew they

n France, and Indians in Calcutta; all that aroused human deviltry had accomplished in ages past they did in East St. Lo

ch they had fled. Delegations rushed North from Mississippi and Texas, with suspicious timeliness and with great-hearted offers to take these wo

Negro problem," sees only another anti-Negro mob and wonders, not when we shall settle this problem, but when we shall be well rid of it. The student of social

i Valley cannot be recruited from Ellis Island, because in Europe men are dead and maimed, and restoration, when restoration comes, will raise a European demand for labor such as this age has never seen. The vision of industrial supremacy has come to the giants who lead American industry and finance. But it can never be realized unless the laborers are here to do the work,-the skilled laborers, the

divert the thoughts of men, and particularly of workingmen, into channels of race hatred against blacks. In every one of these centers what happened in East St. Louis has been attempted, with more or less success. Yet the American Negroes stand today as the greatest strategic group in the world. Their services are indispensable, the

ut ever below lies the river, blue,-brownish-gray, touched with the hint of hidden gold. Drifting through half-flooded lowlands, with shanties and crops and stunted trees, past struggling corn and straggling vi

pupils to solve. We could bring to its unraveling little of the scholarly aloofness and

t, and capacity. There are great groups,-now with common history, now with common interests, now with common ancestry; more and more common experience and present interest drive back the common blood and the world today consists, not of races, but of the imperial commercial group of master capitalists, inter

n be no doubt that we have passed in our day from a world that could hardly satisfy the physical wants of the mass of men, by the greatest effort, to a world whose technique supplies enou

s, sprung from ancient habit more than from present reason. They persist and are encouraged because of deeper, mightier currents. If the white workingmen of East St. Louis felt sure that Negro workers would not and could not take the bread and ca

ealth than they can possibly use, while a vast number emerge with less than can decently support life. In earlier economic stages we defended this as the reward of Thrift and Sacrifice, and as the punishment of Ignorance and Crime. To this the answer is sharp: Sa

goods we need. Private ownership of land, tools, and raw materials may at one stage of economic development be a method of stimulating production and one which does not greatly interfere with equitable distribution. When, however, the intricacy and length of technical production increased, the ownership of these things becomes a monopoly, which easily makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. Toda

ed not be decreased,-it may even be vastly increased, with proper encouragement and rewards. Are we today evoking the necessary ability? On the contrary, it is not the Inventor, the Manager, and the Thinker who today are reaping the great rewards of industry, but rather the Gambler and the Highwayman. Rightly-organized industry might easily save the Gambler's Profit and the Monopolist's Interest and by paying a more discriminating

en." Today, at the beginning of this industrial change, we are admitting that economic classes must give way. The laborers' hire must increase,

to white women, but black folk and brown and for the most part yellow folk we have widely determined shall not be among

er experience its rank injustice, because they were black. What I had to show was that no real reorganization of industry could be permanently made

n are lonely. The rich are lonely. We are all frantic for fellow-souls, yet we shut souls out and bar the ways and bolster up the fiction of the Elect and the Superior when the great mass of men is capable of producing larger and larger number

f Louis XIV, but it is far better trained than the Sans-culottes and it has infinite possibilities. What a world this will be when hum

Think again of East St. Louis! Think back of that to slavery and Reconstruction! Do we want the wants of American Negroes satisfied? Most certainly no

ce paid for waste, which is Interest, and for Chance, which is Profit, and making all income a personal wage for service rendered by the recipient; by recognizing no possible human service as great enough to enable a person to designate another as an idler o

rtain minimum of machine-like work and prompt obedience and submission. This necessity is a simple corollary from the hard facts of the physical world. It must be accepted with the comforting thought that its

distinctions enter? Who shall be Artists and who shall be Servan

econd

gloomily into three flickering fires, which cast and recast shuddering

t least among the princes of America, for out of th

a?" he thought,-"That's where I go to the governor's wedding of little Marguerite, my white f

all this unrest and moving will lead to. Then, there's poor Lucy-" And he threw the letter into the fire, but eyed it suspiciously as it flamed green. "Stranger thi

yellow and wrinkled parchment. Slowly he wrote in a great and golden book: "I have been strangely bidden to the Val

orehouses, its wide-throated and sandy streets, in the mellow glow of a crimson sun. The governor glare

t the niggers. They are acting queerly. I

emi

from the "Jim-Crow" car, and clasped his hand cordially. They talked in whispers. "Search diligently," said the governor in parting, "and bring me word again." Then returning to his guest, "You will excuse me,

f Chinese official in town and everybody want

or the early wedding, stepped out on the rear balcony of his mansion, just

d that was gathering to celebrate a sout

far backyard that flamed? Forgetful of his robes he hurried down,-a brave, white figure in the suns

her arms,-a little mite of a baby that wailed weakly. Behind mother and child stood a shadow. The bishop of New York turned to the right, inquiringly, and saw a black man in bishop's robes that faintly re-echoed his own. He turned away to the left and saw a golden Japanese in golden garb. T

He stepped back with a gesture of disgust, hardly listening to an

" The white bishop turned on his heel and nearly trod on the yellow priest, who k

cherubim were folded black against the stars. As he hastened down

xiously: "Did you hear anything? Do you hear that noise? The crowd is growing strangely on the streets and there see

trong and mighty chord. It rose higher as the brilliantly-lighted church split the night, and swept radiantly toward them. So high and clear that music f

wedding music! W