The Negro in the South

REVOLUTION IN

he first relates to the economic history and condition of that people; the second is a study of their religion. In these two essays I am to treat

ica. The southern United States, however, while profoundly influenced by this revolution from the first, has not until to-day actually felt its full effect. The new factory system of the early nineteenth century is just

f living in certain great centres. That very concentration led to a wonderful contact of man with man which sharpened mind and sharpened thought and in the long run made the Europe of to-day. On the other hand, the southern United States, th

he South as to be caught in the vortex of the new i

f the United States were so busy with large questions that they forgot larger ones, so busy settling matters of commerce and representation and politics that they forgot ma

ht to have been increasing in intelligence, law and order, the use of machinery, industrial concentration, and the intensive culture of land with the rest of the world, she lost a half century in a development backwa

hich southern leaders did not fail to note and gloat over, but they were evils of anot

evolution in methods of work which Europe saw begin a century ago. This is exactly what has happened, and to-day the Industrial Revolution is beginning south of Mason and Dixon's line. The forecast of change was apparent by 1850. Sl

the horrors of the slave trade had shocked even the eighteenth century, and southern labor laws which made knowledge a crime and migration of laborers a capital offense, simply could not be enforced. It was in vain that the solidly united capitalistic classes

in Kansas and Utah, in New Mexico or in Arizona; it could have stayed only temporarily in Missouri and in Texas. It had already reached its territorial limit, it was bound to have evolved something different. It will always be an interesting speculation

the arguments of men, the nation appealed to the last resort of dogs, mur

onomic activities: first, the iron industry; second, the manufacture of cotton cloth; third, the transportation of these goods to, from, and through the South; and fourth, the general exchange of goods in this growing Southern industrial p

was new in the South, there was also much that was old, and of these old things the most im

ee Negro labor was an impossibility, and free Negro citizens unthinkable, to cherish a very distinct idea that the way to get along with the emancipated Negro was to make him a slave in fact if not in name. The idea that was back of the first apprentice laws and the various labor

was the labor codes. The Fourteenth Amendment gave the freedmen civil rights and put a premium on granting them political rights, but the premium was not accepted and the civil rights remained unenf

ss of college graduates-no such question came before the country; it was, as we are fond of saying, a situation and not a theory that confronted the country and that situation was this: here in the South we had attempted to abolish slavery by act of legislature-it was

solving of that economic problem with labor really free was to put in the South a political power which should make slavery in fact or inference for

d democracy they were sane and sound. Some of them were silly, some were ignorant, and some were venal, but they were not as silly as those who had fostered slavery in the South, n

ite South is still content to live (see Note 8). If these men had been protected in their legal rights by the strong arm of the government, they would have been able to protect themselves in a generation or so. They would have increased in intelligen

of a country with the ideal of slavery in their minds and the laboring classes ignorant and without political power, there is but one system tha

-to use the great American thesis, they were "not in business for their health." They were going to grant to the laborer just as little as they must; the laborer was unused to a system of free labor, he was not a st

which bears many likenesses to the serfdom that replaced slavery in Europe. The land belonged to the landlord-it was rented out to the serf; the serf was nominally free, but as a matter of fact he was not free at all; he was held to his labor: he rose with the morning work bell of

law system-therefore the business men went into politics in the South with the same result as when business men go into politics in the North. Things were done quickly and quietly; they were done not for the good of people who had

buy land are either non-existent or confined to infertile regions. Judge and jury are in honor bound to hold him down; if by accident or miracle he escapes and becomes a landholder, his property, civil and political status are still at the mercy of the worst of the white voters, and h

city of farm labor, the migration of Negroes, and the increase of crime and lawlessness. Serfdom like slavery demands ignor

this group on the environment th

istinct efforts to reach economic safety. The first effort was by means of the select house-servant class; the second

contact with the culture of the master and the family, because he had often the advantages of town and city life, was able to gain some smattering of education, and also because he was usually a blood relative of the master class. These house servants, therefore,

e of the barber and the caterer. For the most part, however, the black applicant was refused admittance to the economic society of the nation. He held his own in the semi-servile work

ts but they could not by this means often escape into higher walks of life. The better tenth of them went gradually into professions and th

towns. Here it was that the class of slave artisans made themselves felt in freedom and they were joined by numbers of unskilled workmen, such as steam railway hands, porters, hostlers, etc. This class attracted considerable

an distributed land in Georgia and the government sold South Carolina lands for taxes. For the most part, however, the Negroes had to buy their own lands which they did in some cases by means of their bounty money for serving in the army or by means of

disappearing, yet there are more colored barbers in the United States to-day than ever before, but a larger number than ever cater to only colored trade. The Negro lawyer serves almost exclusively colored clientage, so that his existence is half forgotten by the white world. The new Negro business men are not successors of the old. There used to be Negro business men in Northern cities and a few even in

the case of perhaps 100,000 town Negroes, representing at least 300,000 persons, the group economy approaches a complete system. To these we may add the b

serfdom on the part of landholding capitalists, and a determined effort

cotton manufacture in Carolina and Georgia; railways were consolidated into systems and extended, commerce was organized and concentrated. The greatest single visible result of this was the growth of cities. Towns of eight thousand and more had a tenth of

outside the landholders, were successful, and even the landholders were helped by the earnings of the city; the house servants with the upper class of barbers and

expedients for fastening serfdom on th

efficient. To-day these schools are worse than they were twenty years ago; the nominal term is longer and the enrolment larger, but the salaries are so small that only the poorest local talent can teach. There is little supe

d intensification of the problems of the city, and in red

t to peonage for crime came debt peonage, which used the indebtedness of the Negro tenants to prevent their moving away; then came the system of labor contracts and the laws making the breaking of a labor contract a crime (see Note 10); after that came a cr

00 for each county in some states (see Note 12). Such laws and their administration required, of course, absolute control of the government and courts. This was secured by manipulation and fraud,

to the country was landowning. The Negroes had succeeded in buying land: by government gift and bounty money they held about three millio

nnot invest in this land as a speculation, for he is too poor to wait. He must have land which he knows how to cultivate, which is near a market, and which is so situated as to provide reasonable protection for his family. There are only certain crops which he k

and protection. But it is precisely here in the black belt that it is most difficult to buy land. Capitalistic culture of cotton, the high price of cotton, and the system of labor peonage have made land high. Moreover in most of t

imply in the increase of the average size of farms in the last decade but it must also be remembered that the farms do not belong to single owners but are owned in groups of five

who have been helped by their former masters or by some other patrons, who have been aided by members of their own families in the North or in the cities, or who have escaped the wretched crop system by some sudden rise in t

as so to deplete the ranks of laborers that a n

d with Charleston and Savannah. They saw a new industrial solution of the problem of Negro labor. It was a simple program: Industry and disfranchisement; th

agitators; here was a chance to keep them down to reasonable demands by black competition and the threat of more competition in the future. Moreover

ce, and it convinced not only those who wanted to be convinced but practically all Amer

nd venal vote;-relieve us from this and the lion and the lamb will lie down together;-the Negro will go peacefully and contentedly to work and the whites will wax just and rich. We all remember with what confidence and absolute certainty of

ot figured as the prime issue? Have the southern representatives in Congress any settled convictions or policy save hatred of black men, and can they discuss any other matter? Is it not th

e. The fate, wishes, and destiny of ten million human beings cannot be delivered, sealed and bound into

e Primary system, there are still fifty congressmen in Washington fraudulentl

the contrary stripped them naked to their enemies; discriminating laws of all sorts have followed, the administration of other law

cried the landlords, "we want docile laborers." "We do not want educated Negro artisans," cried the white artisans, and they enforced their demands by their votes and by mob violence. "We do not want to raise the Negro; we want to pu

or; it was demanding intelligent labor, while the supposed political and social exigences of the situatio

ystematically restricting his development; it is restricting his education so that the public common schools of the South except in a few cities are worse this moment than they were twenty years ago; it is seeking to kill self-respect by putting upon the accident of color every mark of humiliation that it can invent; it

bor must compete with black labor, it must approximate black labor conditions-long hours, small wages, child labor, labor of women, and even peonage. Moreover it

prejudices of the rank and file of white laborers and farmers against the growing competition of black men, so that black men by law could be fo

back and shot to kill, and that stopped the riot with a certain suddenness (see Note 15). The South is realizing that lawlessness and economic advance

gns of this: white and black miners are working as a unit in Alabama; white and black masons are in one union in Atlanta (see Note 16). The economic strength of the Negro can

the other hand the far-sighted ones know that the present freedom of labor exploitation must pass-that some time or other the industrial system of the South must be made to conform more and more to the growing sense of industrial justice in the North and in the civilized world. Consequently the secon

view of the white world is usually that there are two possibilities. First, that the immigrants will crush the Negro utterly; o

is a large group of Negroes who have already gained an assured place in the national economy as artisans, servants, and laborers. The worst of these may be supplanted, but the best could not be unless there came a sudden unprecedented and improbable influx of skilled foreign labor. A slow infiltration of foreigners

ile the white native and immigrant not only has the economic defense of the ballot, but the power to use it so as to hem

r a moment to suppose that the Negro in the South is going to hold his own in the new competition with immigrants if, on the one hand, the immigrant has access to the best schools of the community and has equal pol

s are allowed access to the schools and given votes as they undoubtedly will be, then there can ensue only accentuated race hatred, the spread of poverty and disease among Negroes, the

chance to cast his vote like a man and be counted as a man in the councils of the county, city, state and nation, then there will ensu

d. He is perfectly willing to come into competition with immigrants from any part of the world, to welcome them as human beings and as fellows in the struggle for life, to struggle with them and for them

o revive this system under another name; it has failed since then satisfactorily to maintain the present rural serfdom or to establish a disfranchised caste of artisans; and it will fail in the future to keep the stubbornly up-struggling masses of black laborers down, by shackling their

e; for I am meek and lowly in heart:

easy and My bu