THE PRESENT SOUTH

•y^y^-

PROBLEMS OF
THE PRESENT SOUTH

A DISCUSSION OF
CERTAIN OF THE EDUCATIONAL, INDUSTRIAL
AND POLITICAL ISSUES IN THE
SOUTHERN STATES

BY
EDGAR GARDNER MURPHY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1 90s
All rights reserved

Copyright, z904>
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped, Fublished March, 1904. Reprinted
June, 1904; July, 1905.

Ci

00c

J. S. Cusliing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, MasB., U.S.A.

Ka JEs ^0ns
DU BOSE AND GARDNER
MURPHY

PREFACE
With two exceptions, the papers here included
have been prepared for this volume and have not
heretofore appeared in print. Even in these excep
tional instances the chapters have attained only a
small private circulation, and they are here presented
in a somewhat altered form. While, therefore, the
volume is thus so largely and so directly representa
tive of matter that has not before found its way to
print, I am aware that certain repetitions will be
noted. These are chiefly due to the fact that the
book has but one essential theme, and that each
chapter is an attempt — from a somewhat different
point of view — to discuss this one subject. The
volume is an effort to contribute, from a standpoint
within the life and thought of the South, to the
discussion of the rise of democratic conditions in our
Southern States. The problems of the South — in
dustrial, educational, political — appear as phases of
the essential movement toward a genuinely demo
cratic order.
The limitations of space have made it necessary
to postpone the discussion of some of the topics
which it seemed desirable to include. Chapters
upon "The Negro Tax and the Negro School," —
a more explicit discussion of the proposal to accord
to the negro schools only the amount collected from
- vji

viii PREFACE
negro taxes ; " The South and the Amendments," —
a criticism of the proposal to enforce the terms of
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments by Con
gressional action; "The Broader Emancipation," —
a more definite study of the progress of the negro
since the Civil War ; " Commerce and the Common
Schools," — a discussion of the direct relation of
public education to the general economic efficiency
of the people; these, and a number of chapters
dealing with some of the less familiar phases of our
social and political development, may possibly find
place in a later volume.
The chapters just named, as well as those here
published, have been written — as already suggested
— from within the hfe and thought of the South.
They assume, however, no representative finality.
They are not intended as an authoritative interpre
tation of Southern opinion. Their essential conclu
sions will be rejected by some forces within the South
and accepted by others. Their service — if they are
to prove of service at all — will be found, however,
not in the immediate evidences of agreement or dis
agreement, but in such contributions as they may
offer toward that slowly forming, collective verdict,
in reference to Southern issues, in which the public
opinion of our whole country. North and South, will
gain at length its rational and articulate expression.
Popular judgments, operative as living social forces
upon a large and inclusive scale, act and react upon
the national character. To contribute, however in
adequately or imperfectly, to their formation is a
legitimate and honorable interest.
This volume offers, moreover, no dogmatic "solu-

PREFACE ix
tion " of the problems with which it deals ; least of
all have I ventured to engage in the familiar occu
pation of "solving the negro question." The great
problems of hfe are never solved in any mathe
matical or final sense. They are solved only in the
sense that life becomes adjusted to thera, or in the
sense that their conflicting or complementary ele
ments find a working adjustment to one another, an
adjustment consistent, in larger and larger measure,
with wisdom, right, happiness; but always coinci
dent with the possibility of misconception and with
recurrent periods of acute antagonism. The prob
lems of racial cleavage, like the problems of labor
and capital, or the problems of science and religion,
yield to no precise formulae; they are problems of
life, persistent and irreducible. And yet they are
subject to approximate adjustments, increasingly
righteous, intelligent, and effective, and yielding an
increasing measure of social peace, of industrial co
operation, of individual freedom and happiness. It
is in this sense that the word " solution " is employed
in the pages which follow. Toward the establish
ment of such a working adjustment of the factors
of any national problem it is well to labor, in order
that the problems of American life may become the
occasions of a keener and more widely distributed
sense of social obligation, a larger and saner political
temper, a purer civic devotion, rather than the occa
sions of national demoralization.
While, therefore, these chapters are written from
within the South, written by one who through birth,
education, training, has shared its traditions and its
experience, they have been written within the national

X PREFACE
perspective. More than once I have expressed the
conviction that, in a certain local and palpable sense,
the peculiar problems of the South are sectional in
their form. And yet such a view is in no way
inconsistent with the contention that the time has
now come when every problem of every section of
our country is to be conceived in the terms of the
Nation's life.

E. G. M.

Montgomery, Alabama,
March 5th, A.D. 1904.

CONTENTS CHAPTER I
PAGE
The Old in the New  i
CHAPTER II
The Schools of the People  29
CHAPTER in
A Constructive Statesmanship  51
CHAPTER IV
The Industrial Revival and Child Labor . . 95
CHAPTER V
Child Labor and the Industrial South . . .127
CHAPTER VI
The South and the Negro  151
CHAPTER VII
A Narrative of Cooperation  203
CHAPTER VIII
Culture and Democracy  251
Appendices  289
xi

THE OLD IN THE NEW

THE PRESENT SOUTH
CHAPTER I
THE OLD IN THE NEW
In the year 1865, at the close of the final catas
trophe of the Southern arms, the following declaration
was made in London, England, by the late T. H.
Huxley. Mr. Huxley, man of science and man of
letters, speaks as one in detachment from the local
and partisan passions of the long controversy, but
also as one who is, upon the whole, in sympathy with
the contention of the North. His words have specific
reference to the issue of emancipation.
" The question," he observes, " is settled ; but even
those who are most thoroughly convinced that the
doom is just must see good grounds for repudiating
half the arguments which have been employed by the
winning side, and for doubting whether its ultimate
results will embody the hopes of the victors, though
they may more than reahze the fears of the van
quished. It may be quite true that some negroes are
better than some white men ; but no rational man,
cognizant of the facts, beheves that the average negro
is the equal, still less the superior, of the average
white man. . . .
"But," continues Mr. Huxley, "whatever the posi
tion of stable equilibrium into which the laws of social
3

4 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
gravitation may bring the negro, all responsibiUty for
the result will henceforth Ue between Nature and him.
The white man may wash his hands of it, and the
Caucasian conscience be void of reproach for ever
more. And this, if we look to the bottom of the
matter, is the real justification for the abolition
policy." ^
It seems difficult to escape the conclusion that,
in Mr. Huxley's thought, the poUcy of emancipation
represented the rejection, rather than the expression,
of responsibility. The negro was to be freed from
slavery in order that the Caucasian might be freed
from obUgation.
One is amazed to reaUze that an Englishman of
such varied learning and of such masterful acumen
should have had so imperfect a perception of the
essential temper of American life. The issue of
emancipation carried no such significance to the
North. It bore no such significance to the South.
The broader heart and the higher conscience of
Southern life have often found utterance in the deci
sions of Southern courts, and in the declarations of
press and pulpit. These expressions have repre
sented, especially, the slaveholding class, the class
which had been most directly involved by the policy
of emancipation, and the class, therefore, which might
have been expected to cherish an attitude of deliberate
irresponsibility. Yet, in striking contrast with Pro
fessor Huxley's words, are the following paragraphs
IT. H. Huxley, "Emancipation — Black and White" (1865), in
" Science and Education," pp. 66, 67, D. Appleton & Co., New York.
Mr. Huxley included the address, unchanged, in the latest edition of
his works.

I THE OLD IN THE NEW S
from one of the most intensely Southern of Southern
publicists, one high in the counsels of the Confeder
acy, an ex-slaveholder, a veteran both of the Mexican
War and of the War between the States, — all in aU,
perhaps, in these recent years, the most typical repre
sentative of the old South. It was at Montgomery,
Alabama, — the first capital of the Confederacy, — that
the late J. L. M. Curry addressed these words to a
Southern audience on the evening of May 9, 19CX).
"We have heard much already," said he, "and
wiU hear more before we adjourn, of slavery. It was
an economic curse, a legacy of ignorance.
" It cursed the South with stupid, ignorant, unin-
ventive labor. The curse in large degree remains.
The poUcy of some would perpetuate it and give a
system of serfdom, degrading to the negro, corrupt
ing to the employer. The negro is a valuable laborer ;
let us improve him and make his labor more intelli
gent, more skilled, more productive. . . . ShaU the
Caucasian race, in timid fearfulness, in cowardly
injustice, wrong an inferior race, put obstacles to its
progress.' Left to itself, away from the elevating
influence of contact and tuition, there will be retro
gression. ShaU we hasten the retrogression, shaU
we have two races side by side, equal in political
privileges, one educated, the other ignorant .' Unless
the white people, the superior, the cultivated race, lift
up the lower, both will be inevitably dragged down.
"Look at these roses on this platform. They
have been developed from an inferior plant by skiUed
culture into gorgeous American Beauties. So it is
with other flowers and fruits; so with animals, and
so it is with men. Eight hundred years ago our

6 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
ancestors were pirates, careless of laws, either of
God or man, and yet by culture and education, and
discipUne and free institutions and Uberty of worship,
they have been made the people that they are to-day.
God's throne is justice and right and truth. Unseat
Him from that throne and he becomes a demon ; and
so will sink our Southern civilization into infamy if
we are guilty of crudest injustice to an inferior race,
whom God has put into our hands as trustees for
their elevation and improvement, and for His glory." ^
As I heard Dr. Curry's words, I do not know
which was the more inspiring, the moral virility with
which he spoke, or the earnest and impassioned ap
proval with which his audience responded to his mes
sage. For the words were as typical as the man.
They were not an exceptional declaration. Such
words from Curry, and from others like him, had long
been familiar to Southern ears. There was not a
Southern legislature to which Curry himself — by
special invitation — had not brought a like appeal
again and yet again. There was always something
leonine in the regal and commanding power with
which his eye flashed his instinctive scorn of wrong,
and with which his voice thundered the realities of
that moral obUgation which binds the strong man to
the weak. There was something deeply veracious,
something restorative of one's essential confidence in
Ufe, to note that the highest appeal to the people
whom he addressed was always followed by the most
spontaneous and most serious tribute of applause.
1 See Report ofthe Conference of the Society for the Consideration
of the Race Problems and Conditions of the South, published by the
B. F. Johnson Publishing Company, Richmond, Virginia, pp. 112, 113.

I THE OLD IN THE NEW 7
The measure of the Southern conscience cannot be
taken from the expressions that have sometimes
greeted an uninteUigent censure from without. It is
only when a people, united by a common suffering
and bearing a common burden, are overheard in their
converse with one another, it is only when the South
speaks freely to the South, that one may catch that
real spirit of noblesse oblige which . has so largely
dominated the development of Southern life. It is
one of the incredibUities of history that in the world's
discussions of the South the occasional victories of
impatience should loom so large, and that the South's
far greater victories of magnanimity should loom so
small. There is, indeed, nothing more characteristic
of the Southern temper — whatever the suggestion
of Mr. Huxley's inference — than that deep note of
responsibiUty which sounds through Dr. Curry's
words. The sense of responsibility may express
itself wisely or mistakenly, perversely or construc
tively, but whatever the form of its expression, the
consciousness of obligation is not absent.
It is, therefore, by no accident of language that this
sense of responsibility, as expressed in the words just
quoted, should define, under certain characteristic
assumptions, the policy of the South in reference to
the negro. There is a distinct assumption of the
negro's inferiority; but there is -also a distinct as
sumption of the negro's improvability. It is upon
the basis of this double assumption that the South
finds its obligation. If the negro were not peculiarly
in need of progress, or if the negro were utterly in
capable of progress, the problem of his progress
could bring no especial burden to the South. Recog-

8 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
nizing the double fact, first the fact of the negro's
need and then the fact of the negro's promise, the
South, as suggested in our quotation, has conceived
her responsibility both as a policy of supreme self-
interest and as an obligation of Christian stewardship.
This sense of responsibility is the present residuum
of the moral forces of the old South. It is a natural
and legitimate development. It was under slavery
that men learned the oppressive significance of the
negro's heritage from barbarism. It was under slav
ery that men first learned the presence of those latent
capacities by which the negro has so often tran
scended the limitations of that heritage. It was
through the bond of slavery that the wiser South was
taught, in the light of an immediate self-interest, the
advantage to the white man in the negro's integrity
and skill, — the disadvantage, indeed the peril, to
the white man in the negro's inefficiency and vice.
Finally, it was through this bond of slavery that the
truer South was taught, in the countless daily appeals
of the negro's absolute dependence, — the appeal of
ignorance to knowledge, of weakness to strength, of
suffering to a sympathetic and interested power —
the spirit of that tender and generous paternaUsm
which so often made the master a sort of feudal
providence to those in servitude.
If the rigors of slavery made it a system of bond
age to the negro, its responsibilities made it also a
system of bondage to the master. There were many
men to whom these responsibilities brought moral dis
aster, men who abused authorities which were so much
greater than flesh and blood should wield. There
were other men, however, whose genius, half domestic

1 THE OLD IN THE NEW 9
and half executive, set the ideal of the institution,
and as controversy gathered about the institution
they became the more sensitively jealous of this ideal
— holding it up to themselves and to one another,
and attempting, ever the more seriously as the quarrel
raged, to discharge its responsibiUties, and to justify,
by a broader solicitude and a more considerate kindli
ness, the awful prerogatives of the master. Yet the
issue of this struggle was, to many, but a heavy
and saddened heart. The burden was too great, and
emancipation brought a quick sense of inexpressible
relief. Emancipation did not, however, remove the
negro. The negro remained and the white man
remained. Their proximity to each other was as palpa
ble, as inevitable, as ever. The burden was lightened,
was altered in its form, but the fact of responsibility
continued, and the ideal of responsibiUty could not
perish. The appeal of the weak still came up to
the hearts of the strong. The crude necessities of the
ignorant and the helpless still asked an answer. The
habitual directions of moral interest are not easily
overcome, and the strong custom of a protective and
directive oversight still bound the white man to the
fortunes of his humbler fellows.
At this point in the new development of the rela
tionship between the races, and across the many lines
of its promise, — its promise to the negro and to the
peace of the South, — there crashed the congres
sional policies of reconstruction. I enter here upon
no criticism of these policies in detail. I pause only
to point out their direct effect upon that sense of
responsibility to which slavery had contributed. The
policies of reconstruction represented two cardinal

10 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
movements of purpose. One was the withdrawal of
political and civic power from those, especially those
in official position, who had borne arms against the
United States. This effort was an expedient of dis
trust. It was as natural as it was unintelligent, and
it was as successful as it was mischievous. Those
who had borne arms, especially those in positions
of responsibiUty, were largely the slaveholding class,
the representatives of the aristocracy, the men who
were the heirs of the broader and nobler traditions
of the South. They were most generously disposed
toward the freedmen. They were most scrupulously
faithful to the terms of their surrender. They, like
men, had fought it out; and they, like men, had
accepted the verdict in containment, if not in full
content. The measures of reconstruction took power
from them, leaving power in the hands of the young
and the irresponsible. When these men came to
their throne and faced the presence of the negro, it
was as though a Pharaoh had arisen who knew not
Joseph. It was from their ranks that the more vio
lent measures of the Ku-Klux Klan too often gained
support. Nor had they faced the bitter realities of
war. They knew not therefore, they could not know,
the cost and the worth of peace.
The old South was the real nucleus of the new
nationalism. The old South, or in a more general
sense the South of responsibility, the men of family,
the planter class, the official soldiery, or (if you
please) the aristocracy, — the South that had had
power, and to whom power had taught those truths
of Ufe, those dignities and fidelities of temper, which
power always teaches men, — this older South was

I THE OLD IN THE NEW ii
the true basis of an enduring peace between the
sections and between the races. But a doubt was
put upon its word given at Appomattox. Its repre
sentatives were subjected to disfranchisement. Power
was struck from its hands. Its sense of responsi
bility was wounded and confused.
This was not all. The suffrage which the masters
were denied was by the same act committed into the
hands of their former slaves, vast dumb multitudes,
more helpless with power than without power. Men
from afar, under whose auspices this new preroga
tive was bestowed, were present to instruct them,
not in fitness for it, but in its apt and grateful use.
The negro masses, upon the suffrage as a basis, were
reorganized out of their old economic and human
dependence upon their masters of the past, into a
formal political dependence upon the vague and
beneficent authority which had freed them. I write
primarily, not in order to accuse, but in order that
we may understand.
The effect of the new alUance of the freedmen, the
effect upon their own relation to the poUtical reor
ganization of Southern society, must be evident.
The strong and effective forces which had secured
this new alignment were soon withdrawn. The
actual reorganization of the South was left, as was
inevitable, to the resident forces of Southern life.
The new alUes of the freedmen could not share in
so short a time that identity of interest in the soil,
in the intimate fortunes of the South, which the
negro had once felt. The agents of reconstruction
who remained were just strong enough to modify
this feeling in the negro, to make the negro distrust

12 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
the South and to make the South distrust the negro.
They were not strong enough seriously to contribute,
or to aid the negro in contributing, to the rebuilding
of the political commonwealth. With the checking
and the confusion of their sense of responsibility
toward the blacks, it is therefore not unnatural that
the negro's older allies should have omitted him from
even a humble partnership in the task of rehabilita
tion. To the consciousness of the South, engaged
in a desperate struggle for unification and for reinte
gration, the ballot of the black man thus unfortu
nately represented not only a negro suffrage, not only
an incompetent suffrage, but an alien suffrage.
The political reorganization which was proceeding
was all the more difficult because the South was just
entering, by pain and sacrifice, into the crucial move
ment of the century. The historian of institutions
must perceive that the real struggle of the South from
the date of Lee's surrender - — through all the accidents
of political and industrial revolution — was simply
a struggle toward the creation of democratic con
ditions. The real thing, in the unfolding of the later
South, is the arrival of the common man. Southern
development is, in its essence, but an approach to
democracy, to democracy not merely as a theory of
administration, but as an expression of society itself.
The thinking and responsible life of the South, as
we have seen, had been an aristocracy. We may
note the fact without criticism, for it was inevitable.
We may note its passing without regret, because its
passing was the deeper emancipation — an emancipa
tion which is bringing to the South a richer and
larger life than the older age, with all its charm and

1 THE OLD IN THE NEW 13
fulness, could have dreamed. Yet men have often
failed to realize the drastic conditions of reorganiza
tion into which Southern experience was compelled,
both by the issue of the Civil War and by the federal
policies which foUowed. It was nothing less than
the reconstitution of an aristocratic society under
democratic conditions. The change was inevitable,
but the effort to force the change, to create it " over
night," to take an aristocratic civilization and to ham
mer it into another shape between sundown and sunup,
to create republican institutions by miUtary power, to
inaugurate freedom by force and a democracy by
martial law, was — in the nature of the case — impos
sible. And for two reasons. Democracy is a thing
of growth and not of fiat ; and democracy, of all the
forms of governmental or constitutional Ufe, is the
very form which cannot be nailed on from outside.
It is by its very essence a form of government pro
ceeding from within. It is an instinct of life before
it is an organization of society. Because democracy
is an institution of freedom, the very effort to force
democracy is its denial and subversion. There has,
therefore, never been a cruder oligarchy than that
represented by the reconstruction governments of the
Southern States.
Yet, under all the conditions of the new order, the
movement toward democracy — however thwarted or
embarrassed — made gradual progress. Civilization
must be reattempted, society must become a coherent
and stable force; life, liberty, and property cried out for
government. The only existent forms of government
were democratic. Democracy was the assumption of
civilization; and therefore the thought and purpose

14 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
of the South attempted their own reorganization under
the new conditions. The aristocracy, however, could
no longer stand alone. It could not express itself, it
could give neither currency nor efficiency to its con
ceptions, it could not create government nor adminis
ter laws, except by some deeper alUance with human
numbers. The aristocracy could furnish leadership,
but the people must furnish votes.
There were but two quarters from which the vol
ume of cooperation could be increased. The older
civilization had contained two great classes of " non-
participants." First were the slaves. We have seen
the working of the forces and the rise of the condi
tions which made it unnatural and impossible for the
aristocracy — still, as yet, the leaders of the new
order — to turn for cooperation to the blacks. The
removal of their own civil disabilities had not made
the leaders of the aristocracy forget. Nor had the
negroes themselves forgotten either their natural
gratitude to their new masters or their unnatural
suspicion of the old. In the movement toward
democracy, in spite of whatever theoretic inconsist
ency, the conditions thus made it impossible to
include the blacks.
In the older civilization, the other class of non-
participants were the non-slaveholding white men.
I use the term non-participants in what is, of course,
a broad and general sense, a sense in which I have
employed many of the expressions of this chapter.
Non-participants they were, but some of them were
men of wealth and influence. As a class, however,
the non-slaveholding white men had been outside
tbe essential councils of the South. Many of them

1 THE OLD IN THE NEW 15
voted ; some of them, through sheer personal distinc
tion, had entered the ranks of the privileged, but as
a whole they stood aloof ; they were supposed to fol
low where others led ; they might furnish the ballots,
but the " superior " class was supposed to provide the
candidates for important office. There was no inti-
m^ "^cordial alliance between their forces and the
folc6s of the aristocracy. Multitudes of them were
left wholly illiterate. White illiteracy at the South
long antedates the Civil War. In i860, less than
I per cent of the adult native white population of
Massachusetts were illiterate; in Pennsylvania, less
than 3 per cent ; in Connecticut, less than i per cent ;
in New York, less than 2 per cent : but of the adult
native white population of Virginia, in i860, more
than 14 per cent could not read and write ; in Ten
nessee, more than 16 per cent; in North Carolina,
more than 21 per cent.^ To the white non-partici
pants of the older civilization the aristocracy turned
instinctively, however, in its reorganization of the
1 This striking contrast between the civilizations of the North and
the South is largely due to the historic difference in the attitude of the
respective sections toward the education of the masses. Says James
Bryce, "In old colonial days, when the English Commissioners for
Foreign Plantations asked for information on the subject of educa
tion from the governors of Virginia and Connecticut, the former re
plied, ' I thank God there are no free schools or printing-presses, and
I hope we shall not have any these hundred years ; ' and the latter,
' One-fourth of the annual revenue of the colony is laid out in main
taining free schools for the education of our children.' " — " The
American Commonwealth," Third Ed., Vol. I, Chap. XLIX, p. 618.
Thomas Jefferson, in his effort to secure the foundation of public
schools in Virginia, points, in vigorous fashion, to the contrast between
the policy of Virginia and the liberal policy of New York. See Letter
to John Cabell, Washington Edition of Jefferson, Vol. VII, pp. 186,
188; Ford Ed., Vol. X, pp. 165, 167.

1 6 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
South. The alienation of the negro and the menace
of negro power not only eliminated the negro from
the attempted reorganization of government, but
operated also as a constraining force to draw to
gether the separate classes of the stronger race, and
to fuse them — men of ignorance with men of culture
— into a racial unity far more powerful, far more
effective, than the South had known before.
Politically, industrially, and I had almost said
socially, this fusion is now practically complete.
Still there are, in the white population, large numbers
of the Uliterate; but in the distribution of political
and industrial responsibilities the South knows no
longer the old distinctions of clan and class. The
line of illiteracy is now local rather than social. It is
a phenomenon conspicuous in rural localities, con
spicuous nowhere in the cities. The democratizing
of the South has assimilated within its progress all
the classes and factions of its white people. The
aristocracy exists no longer as a distinct political or
industrial force. The expanding and enlarging Ufe
of democracy has included in the conscious move
ment of our civilization the most important of the
non-participants of the older order. It is one of the
far-reaching achievements of a democratic age.
I have said that the old South was the true basis
of the new nationalism. It has also been the real
basis of the new democracy. It is true that it has
maintained at the South the old consciousness of
importance — a consciousness which still impresses
itself upon the life of the Nation, and which has been
wholly unmoved by the fact that the South contains
to-day but one-fourth of the white population of the

t THE OLD IN THE NEW 17
land. It has maintained the old self-confidence, both
in counsel and in action. It has maintained, in large
degree, the old rfeverences and the old assumptions
of social usage. But, chiefly, it has maintained, as
one of the deepest forces of its social heredity, the
old sense of responsibility toward the unprivileged.
It is this force which has given distinction and beauty
to the alUance between the aristocracy and the com
mon people.
It is in its surrender to this force that the old aris
tocracy has passed away. It is in response to this
force that the plain people have arrived, have arrived
through the manifestation of those latent powers of
initiative, those native capacities of energy and pur
pose, which have proved the amazement of the his
torian. Where the aristocracy has been sometimes
faithless to its broader mission, the plain people have
often wrested the rights which have been denied. In
more than one locality the common people have
ruthlessly assumed the reins of power ; it is a phe
nomenon attended by its perils as well as by its in
spirations. But upon the whole it is chiefly by
cooperation that the white solidarity of the South
has been secured, a soUdarity which has been the
broader ground of the new democracy, and which
has sought a larger social unity upon the basis of
unity of race. As a basis for democracy, the con
scious unity of race is not whoUy adequate, but it is
better as a basis of democratic reorganization than
the distinctions of wealth, of trade, of property, of
family, or class. The passion for rehabiUtation has
swept the circle of social life, and has included every
child within its policies. Through large sections of

i8 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
the South it has made the enthusiasm for popular
education a form of civic piety. The cause of the
common schools has become, not only a tenet of
patriotism, but a social faith. It has entered the
programme of politics. Popular education is to-day
the theme of debate before multitudes gathered in
humble "meeting-houses," or on the quiet hillsides
under the open sky, or in the forest pulpits of the rural
church. The debate proceeds, often attended by
larger audiences and a deeper interest than any that
attend the partisan discussions of the political cam
paign, a debate characterized by no clatter of the
demagogue, but by that note of seriousness found in
a man's voice only when he talks of the intimate
reaUties of his domestic or religious experience. This
is no vision of far-distant possibilities. It is a story
of the present. Does it mean merely that democracy
is being attempted .¦• It means rather that democracy
— so far — has been achieved. Democracy in its
essence has arrived when the rich man and the poor
man, the man of the professions and the man of
trade, the privileged and the unprivileged, unite to
build the common school for the children of the
State. It means that the non-participants have
come to take their part, in a certain high and Uberal
sense, not only as the factors of government, but as
the heirs of a larger world.
And what of that other class of the " non-partici
pants " in the older civiUzation ? What of the negro ?
It was inevitable that thus far he should have been
largely omitted. It was inevitable that the movement
of democracy should have first included the non-par
ticipants of the homogeneous population. But is the

1 THE OLD IN THE NEW 19
negro to be omitted in perpetuity .' Is the organiza
tion of democracy in our Southern States never to
include him .' Is he never — as a factor of govern
ment and as the heir of a free and generous life — to
be accepted as a participant in our civilization ?
Such questions necessitate the definition of certain
terms. Democracy does not mean the erasure of
individuality in the man, the family, or the race. Its
unity is truer and richer because not run in one color
or expressed in monotony of form. Like all vital
unities, it is composite. It is consistent with the indi
viduality of the man, it is consistent with the full indi
viduality and the separate integrity of the races. No
one has ever asserted that the racial individuality of
the Jew, preserved for sixty centuries and through
more than sixty civilizations, by conviction from within
and by pressure from without, was a contradiction of
democratic life. Democracy does not involve the
fusion of races any more than it involves the fusion
of creeds or the fusion of arts. It does not imply
that the finality of civiUzation is in the man who is
white or in the man who is black, but in the man —
white or black — who is a man. Manhood, in a
democracy, is the essential basis of participation.
We hear upon every hand that the South has
refused its -recognition to this principle. As a matter
of fact, and under their amended constitutions, tens
of thousands of black men are to-day registered voters
in the Southern States, voters registered not against
the consent of the South, but by the South's free and
deliberate wiU.^ In view of the brief period of time
since the negro's emancipation and in the Ught of the
1 See also footnote to p. 198 of this volume.

20 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
negro's political history, this voluntary registration of
black men in the South, this partial but increasing ac
ceptance by the South of the quaUfied negro as a par
ticipant in the functions of government, is of far greater
significance in the essential history of democracy than
any temporary record of exclusion or injustice. The
negro common school — nearly one million six hundred
thousand negro children are enrolled in public schools
supported by the Southern States'^ — this negro com
mon school, with its industrial and poUtical signifi
cance, is of greater import in the history of our
institutions than any temporary or partial denial of
political privilege. With the suffrage question, in
detail, I shall deal hereafter. I pause here only to
protest against that crudity of impatience with which
the world has so largely observed the development of
Southern Ufe. Expecting within the brief period of
a generation the entire re-creation of our industrial
fortunes and of our political institutions, men have
waited to see the whole character of a civilization
doffed like an outer garment; the fabric of a new
order — involving the deepest issues of memory, of
passion, of pride, of racial and social habit — instantly
re-created upon a strange loom and woven forthwith
after a pattern commended by that strenuous dilet-
tanteism which deals daily, with impartial ease, moral
ity to presidents, reminders to empires, and a reserved
approval to the solar system. Are not the real achieve
ments of democracy at the South of far more signifi
cance than its failures ?
Yet the gains of the past are not to be the occa-
1 See Report of the U.S. Commissioner of Education for 1902, Vol.
II, p. 2063.

I THE OLD IN THE NEW 21
sions of surrender, but the ground of constructive
effort. They are ours, not to excuse, but to inspire us.
Out of those gains and out of the history which they
have brought us, I think the cardinal considerations
have come forth. The first is that, whatever Mr.
Huxley may have read into the poUcy of emancipa-
tion, that policy meant to North and South, to the
Nation as a whole, only a deeper acceptance of obliga
tion. The second consideration is that this sense of
responsibility, deepened rather than destroyed by the
burden of slavery, was the noble and fruitful gift of
the old South to the new, a gift brought out of the
conditions of an aristocracy, but responsive and opera
tive under every challenge in the changing conditions
of the later order. It was personified in Lee. It
spoke in Curry, in Wade Hampton, in L. Q. C Lamar,
in William L. Wilson. It has continued to speak
through men like John B. Gordon and Henry Grady
in Georgia, like Thomas G. Jones and Hilary A.
Herbert of Alabama, like Fenner and Blanchard of
Louisiana, like Montague in Virginia, Uke Aycock and
Heyward in the CaroUnas. It Ues also at the heart
of the future South, the South of younger men and
more varied forces, and it is to this sense of responsi
biUty, to this local and resident consciousness of power
and right that — for every real and permanent enlarge
ment of democracy — the appeal must be addressed.
That the South wUl do justice to the negro and to
the more helpless elements of her industrial Ufe, I
have no manner of doubt. Certain current proposals
of political poUcy at the South, certain passing phases
of industrial oppression, receive direct and, frequent
criticism in the pages which are to follow. But this

22 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
criticism is the criticism of a vigorous confidence,
not the criticism of distrust. It is a criticism which
assumes, before all things, the presence in Southern
life of that quick sense of social obUgation — always
the deepest virtue of the nobler aristocracy — which
has come over to us from the past. It is a criticism
which represents the conviction that now, as ever,
the appeal to the local conscience, to the resident
forces of Southern character, — this and only this
is the real hope of the future of democracy in our
Southern States.
But — the reader asks — shall the Nation have
nothing to say ? Is not the South too sensitive to
criticism from without? True, this sensitiveness is
here. Is it a thing to be regretted .-• Is it not better
than indifference .'' Is it not a more wholesome social
asset than the leaden torpor of certain other localities
of the Nation ? Is it not a force of constructive good
as compared with the temper of that self-satisfaction
which is so conscious of its own attainment that it is
wholly and placidly unconscious of the world's vaster
hope, the century's ideal, the broader expectations of
society .' Is not this sensitiveness of the South a
patent evidence of that very sense of responsibility to
which reference has been made .' Those only are
sensitive to criticism who are conscious of failures
because they are peculiarly conscious of great, com
manding, haunting responsibiUties.
But is not this larger and more sympathetic
recognition of the sense of local obUgation but
another phase of the old cry to "Let the South
alone".? In one sense. No; for in one sense that
cry has been clearly wrong. There is such a thing

I THE OLD IN THE NEW 23
as a national citizenship, and the rights of aU its
elements, however humble, must be the subjects of
national discussion. But what is a national discus
sion } Is it a criticism assuming that the Nation in
its righteousness is on one side and that the South is
sitting in darkness on the other ? If the Nation must
include the South in the partnership of responsibility,
the Nation recognizes and includes the South in the
partnership of rectification. There is no federal
law which is not dependent for its efficiency upon
the action of Southern juries and upon the effective
sentiment of Southern communities. If this is one
country in the sense that there is no conceivable way
for men in the South to commit wrongs outside of the
Nation, it is also one country in the sense that there
is no conceivable way for the Nation permanently to
correct these wrongs except through the moral forces
of the South.
It is forgetfulness of this fact, it is the petulant
depreciation of the South as a whole, which has called
forth the cry, "Let us alone." And, as thus inter
preted, this cry reflects no desire to ignore the
national interest and the national responsibilities
created by the rights of a national citizenship. Thus
understood, it is not so much a declaration of section
alism as a protest against it.
Too often we find that when our Northern jour-
naUsm discusses wrongs at the North or at the West,
it criticises the wrongs, but when it discusses wrongs
at the South it criticises the South. Such a criticism
tends to make evils arising in the Southern States
issues not between Americans everywhere and the
foes everywhere of a true Americanism, but crude

24 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
and bitter issues between the North and the South.
It is a temper reflecting a Pharisaism which is the
very soul of sectionalism — a Northern sectionalism
as offensive as any sectionalism in our Southern
States. The North, as the North, has nothing to do
with wrongs at the South. The North, as the North,
is, in the affairs of the South, a meddler pure and
simple. The Nation, including the South as well as
the North, and the West as well as the South and the
North, has to do with every issue in the South that
touches any national right of the humblest of its
citizens. Too long it has been assumed, both at the
North and at the South, that the North is the Nation.
The North is not the Nation. The Nation is the life,
the thought, the conscience, the authority, of all the
land. The South desires from every quarter — as
every section should desire — a true national partici
pation in her interests. She wishes from every
spokesman of the Nation, whether in journalism or
elsewhere, a criticism national in the exacting nobility
of its ideals, national in its moral vigor, but national
also in its intelligent and constructive sympathy.
The development at the South of a larger sense
of nationaUty will be coincident with the development
of democracy. It is a consummation which a truly
national journalism and the forces of a truly national
criticism will advance. Such discussion is inevitable.
It is therefore the part of the South both to welcome it
and to inform it. This criticism may well speak frankly
and accurately of evils, of the misdirections of growth,
of failures both in purpose and in accomplishment.
But its effect will be corrective in proportion as its
temper is fraternal and its animus is cooperative.

THE OLD IN THE NEW

25

Its dominant note may well be the note of a dis
criminating but sincere appreciation. The record
of the Civil War, upon its Southern side, closes with
a chapter of defeat ; but it is a record of triumphs
also, the triumphs of military genius, of industrial
resourcefulness, of heroic if not unparalleled sacri
fices. Yet the historian will record that the victories
which have followed Appomattox are perhaps greater
than the victories which preceded it. Indeed, one
is reminded of that suggestive and moving passage
in which J. R. Green has presented the dramatic
moment in the passing of Puritan England: —
"A declaration from Breda, in which Charles
promised a general pardon, religious toleration, and
satisfaction to the army was received with a burst
of national enthusiasm ; and the old Constitution was
restored by a solemn vote of the Convention, that
'according to the ancient and fundamental laws of
this Kingdom the government is, and ought to be, by
King, Lords, and Commons.' The King was at once
invited to hasten to his realm ; and on the 25 th of
May, Charles landed at Dover and made his way
amidst the shouts of a great multitude to Whitehall.
" In his progress to the capital Charles passed in
review the soldiers assembled on Blackheath. . . .
Surrounded as they were by a nation in arms, the
gloomy silence of their ranks awed even the careless
King with a sense of danger. But none of the vic
tories of the New Model were so glorious as the
victory which it won over itself. Quietly and with
out a struggle, as men who bowed to the inscrutable
will of God, the farmers and traders who had dashed
Rupert's chivalry to pieces on Naseby field, who

26 THE PRESENT SOUTH CHAP.
had scattered at Worcester the ' army of the aliens,'
and driven into helpless flight the sovereign that now
came 'to enjoy his own again,' who had renewed
beyond sea the glories of Cressy and Agincourt, had
mastered the parUament, had brought a King to
justice and the block, had given laws to England,
and held even Cromwell in awe, became farmers and
traders again, and were known among their fellow-
men by no other sign than their greater soberness
and industry.''^
Such was the victory of Puritanism over itself. It
was indeed a triumph of self-conquest. And yet
there is, perhaps, a victory even more striking, in the
story of the men who turned their faces homeward
from Appomattox. These went back, not as trades
men to their trading, but as men unused to the
harder offices of industry, to take up, with unfamiliar
labor, a grim and desperate struggle for life and
bread. These went back to no waiting opportunities,
to no world of appointed tasks, but to a saddened
and desolated land in which tasks must be found
and opportunities created. Before them was no
prospective enjoyment of a successful compact with
former foes, but the torturing vision of long years
in which, through the consequences of their defeat,
their homes and their meagre fortunes were to be
the scene of administrative "occupation." They
were to work out their task, not as members of a
homogeneous population, heirs of a single civic fate,
but confronted by the vast multitude of their former
bondmen, — dark, vague, uncertain masses, — half-
1 " History of the English People," J. R. Green, Vol. Ill, Chap.
XII, p. 321; Harper & Brothers.

I THE OLD IN THE NEW 27
pitiful, half-terrifying, free forever from the white
man's mastery, yet never free from the brooding and
unyielding heritage of the black man's barbaric past.
Under such conditions it was no easy thing to win
the temper of confidence, to achieve the victories of
patience, to find and actualize an industrial efficiency,
a civic hopefulness, which might yield again an or
dered and happy world.
The South, still possessing much of the fine genius
of the old aristocracy, stood thus upon the threshold
of a democratic age. We can hardly say that her
entrance was unimpeded. She has brought little
with her except her native resources, her historic and
habitual faith in American institutions, her memories,
her instinctive love of order and culture and beauty,
her sense of civic responsibiUty. But she has crossed
the threshold; and she has closed the door behind
her.

THE SCHOOLS OF THE PEOPLE

CHAPTER II
THE SCHOOLS OF THE PEOPLE*
Any description of the conditions of pubUc educa
tion at the South must involve certain confessions of
inadequacy and certain hearty celebrations of sub
stantial progress.
It is not unnatural that there should stiU be left
among us a large margin of the undone. That mar
gin still remains — partly through the personalness
with which the South has always conceived the train
ing of the child, partly because of the class distinc
tions of the past, partly because of the poverty which
followed war, partly because of the methods of spo
liation which followed peace. The programmes of
public expenditure which were made difficult by pov
erty were made odious by spoliation. Thus the do
mestic temper of Southern life, wrought upon by the
moral distrust of appropriations for public purposes,
and strengthened by the self-absorption of private
industry, resulted in an exaggerated individualism
which became half a dogma of politics and half a
philosophy of self-reliance. It is therefore inevitable
that democracy should have become, with many, a
1 An address delivered, in part, before the General Session of the
National Educational Association, Boston, Massachusetts, July lo,
1903. 31

32 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
mere creed of public economies ; and that self-reliance
should have become, with some, but a doctrine of
neglect. It may be said in general terms that the present
public school system of the South dates from 1870.^
In the period, however, which immediately followed
the Civil War, the dissatisfaction of Southern life with
the political organization of the State drew the life
of the South with increasing earnestness into the de
nominational organizations of the Church. These, at
least, were loyally and securely Southern. It is natu
ral, therefore, that the actual educational organization
of the Southern States should have first been denomi
national rather than civil, — an organization which
left primary education to the home, which threw its
influences into academic aiid sometimes narrow forms,
but which has developed some of the noblest as well
as some of the most characteristic forces of Southern
life. But the institutions of the Church represented
largely, though not exclusively, the education of the
aristocracy. Following the period of reconstruction
there arose a demand, increasingly self-conscious and
increasingly imperative, from the great masses of an
awakening democracy. As the sense of democracy
is aroused education must be democratized. As the
multitudes of our Southern citizenship came into the
consciousness of power they turned instinctively to
1 A State system of free public education was in partial existence in
certain of the Southern States before i860. In Alabama, the Act of
February 15, 1854, may be regarded as the beginning of the State grs-
tem ; but here, as elsewhere throughout the South, the issue of the Civil
War involved a reorganization of the system vrith the inclusion of the
children of the colored population.

II THE SCHOOLS OF THE PEOPLE 33
put their citizenship to school. It is the way men
do. The beginnings of a real democracy, a democracy
no longer bewildered by the older aristocracy which
had been based upon slavery, no longer embarrassed
by the later bureaucracy which had been based upon
plunder, drew all men more closely together under
the forms of the State, made men seek in the unity
of their civic heritage and in response to the needs
of a common citizenship what we call to-day the com
mon school. The public school came in response to
a more largely distributed consciousness of public
Ufe, a larger life of public interests and of pubUc
responsibiUties. As the masses of men came to share
the powers of the State, as men came to be the State,
they wanted to do the thing well. We find in all
lands and with all peoples that as democracy becomes
a reality the school becomes a necessity.
And yet, while our public school system at the
South has been necessary as an attempt, — an attempt
which has had the consecrated intelligence and the
heroic industry of our noblest souls, — we cannot say
that it has thus far been wholly possible as an achieve
ment. Its aspiration, however, is one of the great
unifying and constructive forces in the Ufe of the
South to-day, an aspiration which, already expressed
in the deliberate and official poUcy of every Southern
State, would include within the opportunities of a
free school at the public charge all the children of its
citizenship, rich and poor, white and black. And that
aspiration in its generosity and its justice, is itself, I
submit to you, an achievement of ennobling and splen
did augury.
For this policy of pubUc education at the South

34 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
has called us to no holiday emprise. The way is
thronged with difficulties. The task has first involved
a problem of population. Ours is a double popula
tion, a population divided by the felt and instinctive
diversities of race. The land is occupied by two
families of men between whom the difference in color
is, perhaps, the least of the distinctions which divide
them. The differences in racial character are accen
tuated by the differences of social heritage — one is
the population of the free-born, one has been the
population of the slave-born.
The doctrine of race integrity, the rejection of the
poUcy of racial fusion, is, perhaps, the fundamental
dogma of Southern life. It is true that the animaUsm
of both races has at times attacked it. The formative
dogmas of a civilization are reflected^ however, not in
the vices of the few, but in the instincts, the laws, the
institutions, the habits, of the many. This dogma of
the social segregation of the races, challenged some
times by fault of the black man, challenged sometimes
by fault of the white man, is accepted and approved
and sustained by the great masses of our people, white
and black, as the elementary working hypothesis of
civilization in our Southern States.
The great masses of our colored people have them
selves desired it. It has made our public school sys
tem, however, a double system; and it is inevitable
that it should have often made the negro schools
inferior to the white schools. But the social and
educational separation of these races has created the
opportunity and the vocation of the negro teacher,
the negro physician, the negro lawyer, the negro
leader of whatever sort. It has not only preserved

II THE SCHOOLS OF THE PEOPLE 35
the colored leader to the negro masses by preventing
the absorption of the best negro Ufe into the Ufe
of the stronger race ; it has actually created, within
thirty years, a representation of negro leadership in
commerce, in the professions, in Church, and School,
and State, which is worthy of signal honor and of
sincere and generous applause. The segregation of the
race has thrown its members upon their own powers
and has developed the qualities of resourcefulness.
The discriminations which they have borne in a meas
ure by reason of their slavery, and which have es
tablished the apartness of their group-life, are the
discriminations which are curing the curse of slavery
— an undeveloped initiative — and are creating the
noblest of the gifts of freedom, the power of personal
and social self-dependence. The very process which
may have seemed to some like a policy of oppression
has in fact resulted in a process of development.
Our problem of population has thus involved a
double system of pubUc education. If the duality of
the system has been of advantage to the weaker race,
it has been more than an advantage to. the children
of the stronger. It has been indispensable and im
perative. In social as in personal achievement the
necessities must precede the charities. The primary
necessity of life in its every stratum of development
is the preservation of its own genius and its own
gains. The matured manhood of a more developed
race may have something to give, should have some
thing to give, through helpful contact, to the Ufe of
the undeveloped. But the more highly developed
race must not make this contact through its children.
In the interest of our own further development and

36 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
of our own larger achievement, in the interest of all
that our achievement and development may mean in
a nobler, juster, and more generous guidance of a
lowUer people, the point of helpful contact must not
be placed among the masses of the young, and the
leverage of interracial cooperation must not seek its
fulcrum upon the tender receptivities and the un
guarded immaturities of childhood.
It is not merely that the marked differences of
race suggest marked differences of method. We,
at the South, are dealing with the negro, not as an
individual, but as a multitude. In hundreds of our
Southern counties the negro population is greater
than the white. In my own home county, the
county of the capital of the State of Alabama, our
colored people outnumber our white people almost
three to one. In an adjoining county the propor
tion of the colored population to the white popula
tion is six to one. Under such conditions the
abandonment of the dual system of pubUc education
and the enforcement of a scheme of coeducation
for the races would involve, not the occasional send
ing of a few negro children to a white school — as
is your custom here — but the sending of a few
white children to the negro school. It would not
mean — ¦ as some would mistakenly advise — the train
ing of the children of the weaker race in the at
mosphere and under the associations of the stronger,
but the attempted training of the children of the
stronger race in the atmosphere and under the asso
ciations of the weaker. Such a policy, would not
give either promise or advantage to the stronger
race, to the weaker race, or to any far-reaching and

n THE SCHOOLS OF THE PEOPLE 37
constructive interest of civilization. A double system
of public education is, with aU its burdens and with
its varied difficulties, an inevitable and unchangeable
issue of our problem of population at the South.^
But our problem of population — turning now with
more especial consideration to the white population
of the South — includes a formidable problem of dis
tribution. It is not only predominantly rural; it is
relatively more meagre in its numbers than many
have yet attempted to reaUze. There are almost as
many cities of twenty-five thousand people in the one
small State of Massachusetts as in all the States of
the secession put together. Taking our figures —
as throughout this address — from the twelfth and
latest census of the United States, we find, in the
single State of Massachusetts, twenty cities having a
white population of more than twenty-five thousand
— nearly twice as many as the total number of such
cities in all the States of the late Confederacy. There
are, including the State of Texas, in all the States of
the secession but twelve cities having a white popu
lation of over twenty-five thousand.
The one State of Massachusetts alone has forty-
seven cities with a white population of over ten
thousand. All the States of the Confederacy to
gether have but thirty-eight such cities.
Moreover, the total aggregate white population of
1 Even where the negro children are in a minority, as a negro
writer has pointed out in the Congregationalist, Boston, May 30,
1903, — it is an injury to the children of the weaker race to be edu
cated in an environment which is constantly subjecting them to adverse
feeling and opinion. The result must be the development of a morbid
race consciousness without any compensating increase in racial self-
respect.

38 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
all the cities in Alabama, South CaroUna, North
Carolina, and Tennessee, having a population of
ten thousand inhabitants and over, does not equal
in number the population of the city of Buffalo or
the city of Pittsburg.
The total aggregate white population of the States
of Alabama and South Carolina does not equal the
white population of the city of Chicago ; and the
white population of the present city of New York
exceeds the aggregate white population of the
States of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi,
and South Carolina.
I have dwelt thus upon the relative meagreness
of the numbers of the white population of the South
because it is inevitable that that population will have
to bear for many years the larger share of the re
sponsibilities of education and of government. The
burdens and the peculiar difficulties of the South are
thus greater, I believe, than the world at large has
yet appreciated. Of direct taxation the negro con
tributes little. Of indirect taxation he contributes
an honorable and increasing share. The rents pay
the taxes and the negro tenant helps to pay the rents.
In a press telegram of the current week I am there
fore glad to find the following characteristic illustra
tion of the temper of the South in reference to the
common schools of our colored people. The message
appears in the columns of one of the daily journals
of New York City under date of July 7 : —
" Atlanta, Georgia, July 6. — Advocates of schemes
to block negro education by State aid are in a
bad minority in the House of Representatives of
the General Assembly of Georgia. To-day after a

" THE SCHOOLS OF THE PEOPLE 39
sharp debate the House, by an overwhelming vote,
rejected a resolution providing that in the distribu
tion of money to common schools the county authori
ties should apportion the money among white and
colored schools according to the taxable property of
the two races. This would have meant the death of
negro education in Georgia, as the blacks pay only
one-fifteenth of the taxes, although receiving about
one-third of the State appropriation for public schools.
To-day's debate showed that the sentiment of the
Georgia legislators is that the State should contribute
to the limit of its ability to the common school edu
cation of its colored people."
Georgia's action is not unique. The vote of her
legislature reflects the settled and estabUshed policy
of every Southern State.^
Returning to the fact that the white population of
New York City exceeds the aggregate white popula
tion of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and
South Carolina, you wUl observe that our problem of
population has thus brought clearly into view some
of the difficulties of isolation. Ours is not only a
rural population ; in many sections it is a population
so small in numbers as to be but thinly distributed
over large areas, with poor roads, with inadequate
recourse, therefore, to strong centres of organization,,
and without that consequent social efficiency which
easily secures the creation and the administration of
the efficient school.
In the United States at large 20 per cent of the
1 See an effective criticism of the above proposal by Charles B.
Aycock, Governor of North Carolina, in his biennial message to the
General Assembly, 1903, Raleigh, N.C.; Edwards and Broughton.

40 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
school population live in cities of twenty-five thou
sand population or over; at the South our cities of
twenty-five thousand contain but 6 per cent of the
chUdren of our public schools. Our city schools,
however, are usually adequate and efficient.
The East has suffered, perhaps, from an over-
municipalization of life, from the tendency of popu
lation cityward. The South has suffered from the
under-municipalization of life, from that too general
dependence upon agriculture which has kept almost
85 per cent of our population in the country, and has
given us cities few and small. The building of good
roads, the development of manufactures, the method
of school consolidation, the increasing tendency to
apply the educational qualifications of the suffrage to
white men as well as black, the policy of our legisla
tures reenforced by the educational patriotism of all
our people, wUl at length give us Southern schools
adapted to Southern needs.
Those needs will slowly but surely have more ade
quate response. Our people are resolved to have
their schools, despite the difficulties presented by our
problems of population, — a population which is, as
we have seen, biracial in character, comparatively
small in number, comparatively rural in its distribu
tion, — and despite the fact that our task of public
education involves not only these grave problems of
population but as grave a problem of resources.
The figures of our national census show that from
i860 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.

" THE SCHOOLS OF THE PEOPLE 41
In i860 the assessed value of property in Massa
chusetts was ;^777,ooo,ooo, as contrasted with
;SSS, 200,000,000 1 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. The stand
ards of assessment are probably much more exacting
at the East than at the South, yet this consideration
does not operate wholly to erase the contrast which
remains. Such had been the shrinkage in values
at the South, such had been the relative increase
in values in New England, that the one small State
of Massachusetts had more than one-half as much of
taxable property as the combined wealth of all our
Southern States.
The very theory of emancipation was that the fate
of the black man was the responsibility of the Nation,
yet the issue of war left the negro in his helplessness
at the threshold of the South ; and the South, with
the gravest problems of our civilization challenging her
existence and her peace, was expected to assume the
task of the education of two populations out of
the poverty of one. I confess that I think the con
science of the South has something to say to the
conscience and the opulence of the Nation, when,
with millions for battleships, tens of millions for
armaments, millions for public buildings, and tens of
millions for rivers and harbors, the Nation allows the
academic fabric of paper theories to stand between
the vast resources of its wealth and the human
1 The fact that slaves were included in such estimates does not
lessen the economic catastrophe represented in the loss of a form of
property in which so much of energy and wealth had become involved.

42 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
appeal. North or South or East or West, of the chil
dren of its citizenship.
A democracy which imposes an equal distribution
of political obUgation must find some way to afford a
more equal distribution of educational opportunity.
To a national philanthropy or to our national legisla
tion there should be an appealing significance in the
fact that the annual expenditure for pubUc education
in the United States at large is — per capita of the
pupils in average attendance — ^21.38, that in the
great States of the West the average expenditure is
!^3i-59. while for such States as Alabama and the
Carolinas this expenditure is approximately but
^4.50. Let us not, in contrasting these figures, for
get the educational heroism of the South. Unques
tionably the South must call more freely and more
generously into play the policy of local taxation by
the school district or by the county, but of the State
revenues for general purposes 50 per cent, in Ala
bama and the Carolinas, are appropriated to the
support of public education.^
It is inevitable, however, that our problems of popu
lation, our problem of an isolated rural Ufe, and our
problem of resources should have resulted in the ilUt-
eracy of the present. If I dwell for a few minutes
upon the figures as to the illiterate, I do so with the
reminder that there are worse things in a democracy
than ilUteracy, and with the passing assurance that I
1 It is interesting to note that in 1890 there was " expended for
public schools on each jSloo of true valuation of all real and persona)
property " 22.3 cents in Arkansas and 24.4 cents in Mississippi, as com
pared with 20.5 cents in New York and 20.9 cents in Pennsylvania-
See Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1902, Vol. I. p. xc».

n THE SCHOOLS OF THE PEOPLE 43
shall soon be able to turn to the brighter side. But
remedies and congratulations will not avail us save as
we frankly and resolutely face the facts.
There are in our Southern States more than
3,500,000 souls ten years of age and over, who can
not read and write ; nearly 50 per cent of the colored
population, and 12.7 per cent of the white.^ Of the
native white population of our whole country, ten
years of age and over, the South has 24 per cent;
but of the native white illiteracy of our country, the
South has 64 per cent.
There are in the United States 231 counties in
which 20 per cent and over of the white men of
voting age cannot read and write. Of these 231
counties, 210 are in our Southern States.^
Taking a few of our States individually, we find
that — among the white population ten years of age
and over — there are 54,000 illiterates in South Caro
lina. That is, for South Carolina or for any other
Southern State, a very large number of white people.
It is only 13.5 per cent of the total white population
* 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 igoo, but between the South of 1880 and
the South of to-day. This progress is indicated in Table V of the
Appendix, p. 300.
2 See Appendix A, Table VIII. It will be noted that a number of
the counties classified as in the South, and a number outside the
South, include in the "white" population — on the border of Mexico
and on the Canadian frontier — an appreciable foreign element.

44 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
over the age of nine. Yet this is a company of white
people greater in number than the aggregate white
population of the five largest cities of the State, —
Charleston, Columbia, Spartanburg, Greenville, and
Sumter. The white illiterates of Georgia are but 11.9 per
cent of the white population ten years of age and
over, but their number exceeded in 1900 the number
of the aggregate white population of Georgia's three
largest cities, — Atlanta, Savannah, and Augusta.
The white illiterates of Tennessee, 14. i per cent
of the white population ten years of age and over,
exceeded in 1900 the number of the total white popu
lation of her six largest cities, — Nashville, Memphis,
Knoxville, Chattanooga, Clarksville, and Jackson.
The white illiterates of Alabama, nearly 15 per
cent of the white population of ten years of age and
over, exceeded in 1900 the number of the aggregate
white population of her fifteen largest cities ; and in
1900 the number of the white ilUterates of North
Carolina, 19.4 per cent, was more than double the
number of the combined white population of her six
teen largest cities.^
The possible surprise occasioned by these con
trasted totals should suggest to us that such figures
teach much more than the relative magnitude of the
number of the illiterate. The figures indicate, not
only the number of the white ilUterates in the State,
but the relatively small proportion of the white popu
lation now found within the cities. Such comparisons
indicate the presence of many colored people in our
1 See Twelfth Census of the U.S. (1900), Vol. I, Table 23, and Re
port of the U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1902, Vol. II, p. 2316.

" THE SCHOOLS OF THE PEOPLE 45
Southern cities, but they especially indicate a fact
upon which I have already dwelt as of cardinal and
conspicuous importance, the fact that the population
of the South is still characteristically and preponder
antly rural.
It is not as a prophet of calamity that I have dwelt
upon some of the facts as to our ilUteracy. The
problem is formidable, but no problem need be the
occasion of discouragement so long as that problem
is apparently yielding to the forces of its reduction.
Relatively and actually, iUiteracy is not gaining upon
the schools. The schools, in spite of all our diffi
culties, are gaining upon our iUiteracy. Taking our
population of prospective or possible voters, the male
population, white and black, ten years of age and
over, we find that there is not a State in the South
which has not largely reduced its illiteracy within
the twenty years from 1880 to 1900.
Upon the other hand, as I take some kindly satis
faction in reminding you, there is but one State in
New England — Rhode Island — which has not added
both to the percentage and to the aggregate of its
male illiteracy since 1880.^ Your percentages of gen
eral male illiteracy are very much lower than our
own, but they are a Uttle greater to-day than they
were twenty years ago. If your figures must include
the foreigner, ours must include the negro. New
York had over forty-seven thousand more of male
ilUterates in igoo than in 1880; Pennsylvania had in
1900 over sixty-two thousand more such illiterates than
in 1880 ; Massachusetts, over twenty-three thousand
more than in 1880; and the percentages have grown
1 See Twelfth Census of the U.S., Vol. II, Table LV, p. cL

46 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
with the aggregates. Totals have grown a Uttle in
some of the States of the South, but including even the
colored population, the percentage of male illiterates
has been reduced in Alabama from 49 to 32 per cent;
in Tennessee from 36 to 20 per cent; in Georgia
from 48 to 29 per cent; in North CaroUna from 46
to 27 per cent; in Arkansas frora 35 to 19 per cent.
In the Southern States our public schools, with all
their embarrassments, are overtaking our illiteracy;
in some of the Eastern States the illiteracy of future
voters has gained just a little upon the range and
contact of the pubUc schools. Illiteracy is, in fact,
not a sectional, but a national, problem ; and I think
that we must everywhere declare that a democracy
"which still comprises' more than six millions of people
who cannot even read and write has not yet ade
quately solved the problem of popular education.
I find, however, no hopelessness in the illiteracy of
the South, because, as I have suggested, we are now
making decisive reductions in its volume. I find
no hopelessness in it, because it is the illiteracy, not of
the degenerate, but simply of the unstarted. Our
unlettered white people are native American in stock,
virile in faculty and capacity, free in spirit, unbroken,
uncorrupted, fitted to learn, and worthy of the best
that their country and their century may bring them.
To speak hopefully of the taught is to speak even
more hopefully, even more confidently, of the teacher.
The relative poverty of the South has its compensa
tions. It places at the coraraand of the public school
system of the Southern States a teaching force of
broad ambitions, of real culture, and of generous re
finement. The high social standard of our teaching

n THE SCHOOLS OF THE PEOPLE 47
personnel is our assurance that the training of the
children of the South is in the hands of worthy repre
sentatives of its thought and feeling. We know that
in its public school system the South of to-day is
touching through its best the Ufe and the institutions
of to-morrow.
The crowning argument of our hopefulness Ues, how
ever, in the educational enthusiasm of all our people.
Alabama, within five years, has doubled her general
appropriations for public education. The masses of
a sincere people are taught the great realities of
order, liberty, and culture, not merely by what they
have, but by what they long to have. The things
that a whole people, in the passions of their sacrifice,
have resolved to do are of more significance and of
more importance in the history of a democracy than
anything that they may have failed to do.
But the Nation must be considerate of the South
and the South must be patient with herself. The
burden of responsibility among us must long fall
heavily upon the few. We have seen that there are
in our Southern States 210 counties in which 20
per cent, or over, of the white men of voting age can
not read and write. Place to one side the great un
lettered masses of our colored population, add to these
the unlettered numbers of our white population, andyou
will at once see that the number which remains has a
part to play which is so serious in its responsibilities
and so far-reaching in its moral and civic significance
that the South may well receive the large-tempered
understanding of all the lovers of mankind, and of
all the wise befrienders of the State.
A final and happy element of hopefulness Ues in

48 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
the thought that if our system of public education is
largely uncompleted, we can build, in completing it,
by the Ught of the gains and the errors of older com
monwealths. Tardiness should save from false starts
and should protect us from traditional mistakes. I
trust that we shall build in such a manner as more
largely to practicalize and moralize the general sys
tem of public education. I trust that our conscious
ness of the problem of illiteracy will not lead us to
the mistaken conclusion that the supreme task of any
system of schools is the mere removal of illiteracy.
The school must stand, rather, for a larger and larger
measure of trained inteUigence, of controlled and
sobered will, of sound, resourceful, and efficient life.
I trust that we shall realize, moreover, that the
fullest duty of the modei-n school, of the public
school in a democracy, is a duty not only to culture,
but to citizenship. The State-supported school must
give the State support, — support as it teaches with
a healing wisdom and an impartial patriotism the his
tory of the past; support as it looks out into the
track of an over-freighted destiny and clears and
steadies the vision of the future ; but first of all, sup
port to the Nation in this day — in this day because
this day is not supremely our fathers' or our chil
dren's, but uniquely and supremely ours.
The schools of a people, the schools of a real peo
ple, must be, primarily, not the moral gymnasia of
reminiscence or the transcendent platforms of future
outlook. They must touch this day's earth and this
day's men through the truths and the perils of to-day.
They must be instructors of the contemporary civic
conscience. And in this hour, I take it, they must

n THE SCHOOLS OF THE PEOPLE 49
help the Stats to bring to men a profounder and
therefore a simpler reverence for the institutions akid
the processes of public order. For a long time we
have heard that democracy is an institution of 'lib
erty ; but if democracy be not also an institution of
pubUc order, liberty will not long be an institution
of democracy. Where minorities — mob minorities.
North or South or East or West — presume to admin
ister the laws of the majority, the elementary compact
of democracy is dissolved. The mob which abandons
the processes of social self-control weakens the per
sonal self-control which stays and conquers crime,
and increases by its ferocities the very animalism it
has attempted to destroy. Its instructions in horror
touch the minds of tens of thousands, its barbarities
burn to-day the guilty and set aflame the hates and
humors which to-morrow burn the innocent.
Such spectacles are national phenomena, challeng
ing everywhere the national forces of American good
sense, and demanding of us whether the mere gravity
of the crime or the mere weakness of the constabu
lary is enough to excuse any American community in
abandoning the safeguards of justice and the solemn
processes of trial for the processes of a social hysteria
which divides its noisome interest between the details
of the crime and the souvenirs of the execution. Are
these the august and reverend trappings of Justice in
a democracy .'
Our schools must teach our children what their
country is. Our schools. North and South, must
help men to see that liberty of government means
that there is no liberty except through being gov
erned, that being governed and being governable are

50 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap, ii
largely the measure of our distance from the jungle;
that a governed and governable people, when chal
lenged by the sickening atrocities of crime, by the
torturing spectacles of lust and hate, first have a
sober recourse to the thought, not of what is due to
the criminal, but of what is due to their civilization,
their country, and their children.
For we may be well assured that, whether we teach
through the school or not, the teaching is being done ;
for society itself is the final educational institution of
our human life. Not only through school and home
and Church, but through the habits of our commerce,
through books, through each day's press, through our
posters on the streets, the music in our parks, our
amusements and our recreations, — above all, through
that great enfolding, effectual instrument of our social
self -projection, the public opinion of our day, our
children are being put to school.
I pray that within these varied orbits the people's
schools may do their schooling weU, not as detached
or isolated shops of truths and notions, but as deliberate
and conscious factors of a sounder social equilibrium.
I pray that they. North and South and East and
West, may take their places as the organs of that
force of social gravity, that moral dynamic which in
the University of the World keeps the poise of fac
tions and classes, upholds the authority of institu
tions, the majesty and the happiness of government,
the worth of laws, the high securities of freedom —
that moral dynamic which wise men have called the
fear of God, the force of affection and sobriety which
holds life to reverence and reverence to reason, — as,
through their uncrossing pathways, the stars flash,
star-lighted, round their suns.

A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP

CHAPTER III
A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP

The movement of democracy at the South presents,
essentially, a task of constructive statesmanship. If
the representatives of political and party action are
earnestly concerning themselves with the problems of
popular education, it is because such problems are
the reflection, not only of the desire of the people, but
of the need of the State. It is understood that uni
versal education is, in the broadest sense, no mere
topic of the educator. It is the interest of the
citizen. IlUteracy is being recognized with admirable can
dor and increasing courage. Here and there a voice
is heard which speaks with depreciation of its signifi
cance. There is an occasional note of denial and
resentment. But with increasing knowledge denial
is abandoned, and with increasing reflection resent
ment passes into concern, and concern into a deepen
ing soUcitude both for the unfortunate and for the
South. Men recognize that the greater reproach is
not illiteracy, but indifference to it. They perceive
that its significance cannot be offset by dwelling upon
the admitted and often darker evils of other sections.
When the Ufe of the State is burdened or imperiUed
S3

54 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
by unfortunate conditions, the word of a true patriot
ism is that which recognizes these conditions in order
to remove them. It is never that word of superficial
partisanship which, lulUng to sleep the consciousness
of need, gives permanence and increase to the need
itself. If States do not grow wise by forgetting their
knowledge, it is equally true that they do not add to
their knowledge by forgetting their ignorance.
The South has been moved, however, by the fate
of the unfortunate as well as by the need of the
State. Her interest in the unlettered masses of her
white people is due to no motive of condescension or
contempt. Most of them are a people of pure and
vigorous stock ^ — our "contemporary ancestors," as
the president of Berea has described them. Many of
them are distinguished by peculiar intelligence and
force. Some of them are people of property. An
occasional reactionary spirit declares that because he
esteems and loves them, and because they are better
than many of the literate population of other sections,
the movement which reveals their ignorance and
insists upon their education is to be resisted. The
answer of the South, as a whole, is that — because she
esteems and loves them — their children are entitled
to the broadest opportunities and the best advantages
which life may offer; that any movement which
reveals their ignorance in order to bring them knowl
edge, which would increase their knowledge not upon
the ground of their incapacity, but upon the ground
of their value to society, which asserts their right to
the world's best, and the world's right to their best,
is a movement to be commended and reenforced.
There was a time when ilUteracy was a normal

in A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 55
factor in society. That time has passed. Illiteracy
is abnormal; literacy is the normal assumption of
civilization. When practically aU men — all of the
general masses of mankind — were illiterate, Uteracy
was hardly an element in the movement of popu
lar progress or in the play of industrial competi
tion. Such conditions have passed forever. Literacy
in the greater fraction and ilUteracy in the smaller
fraction of population means that the smaller frac
tion is subjected to a relative disadvantage in
every movement of experience, whether reUgious,
social, political, or industrial. It is shut out, reli
giously, from the broader outlook upon that word
of God which is daily uttered in the increasing
freedom and fulness of human life; it is shut out,
socially, from that wholesome largeness of temper
which results from the knowledge of a more varied
world of men and things; it is shut out, politically,
from the educative influence of those great national
debates which form the instruction of the plain man
in economic truth and democratic policies, thus help
ing to make of citizenship no mere local perquisite,
but a national privilege. The fraction of the Uliter
ate is shut off, industrially, from that confidence which
results from being able to read what others read, to
know what others know, and so to do, to the freest
and best advantage, the business of life. The farmer
or the laborer who can read and write finds in that
power the enlargement of his market. He is not
only more fitted to work or to produce, he can be
informed in a broader sense as to the conditions of
industry, and can sell to more intelligent advantage
his product or his labor. It is evident that, here and

56 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
there, the individual member of society may rise by
sheer force of some pecuUarity of character, or some
chance of opportunity, out of many of the limitations
which illiteracy imposes. But it is true, upon the
whole, that for the great masses of men in the civiU
zation of our world to-day, illiteracy is the symbol of
non-participation. II
Thus, in relation to the fuUer life of our civiliza
tion, there are in our Southern States two classes
of non-participants, — the masses of our negroes and
the illiterates of our white population. There is now
Uttle question at the South as to the nature of her
policy toward the latter. Their freest education and
equipment is almost everywhere recognized as the
supreme interest of society and the State. The na
ture of the policy of the South toward the former, the
task of the education of the negro, presents a prob
lem upon which there has been much of serious and
expUcit difference. Writing from within the South,
and as a part of the South, I may wish the negro
were not here, but my wishing so would not provide
him either with adequate transportation or another
destiny. He is here among us. We are face to face
with him. We must take him as we find him, and
talk about him as he is. The problem he presents is
one which silence has not dissipated, nor indifference
answered; which bitterness may always intensify,
but which bitterness has never solved. There are
those who tell us that the negro is to go to Africa.
How long will it take to persuade the negro he
should go ? Then how long wUl it take to persuade

HI A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 57
the white man to let him go ? Then how long will
the going take.? If he fails, he wiU return; if he
succeeds, the white man wiU foUow him upon his
lands, as he has followed the Indian here and the
Filipino across the seas, and, competing with him
upon his new soil, will create the same difficulties
which were here abandoned. The great problems
of civiUzation, for individuals or for races, are not
solved by deserting them.
In the meanwhile nine millions of them are here.
What are we to do with them ?
There are some who tell us that " as a matter of
scientific fact " the negro death-rate is a little greater
than the negro birth-rate, and that therefore the negro
is to become extinct. But a busy world cannot count
so much on " sociological data " as to pause to calcu
late the proper estimates of extinction for a race which
does its dying by doubling its numbers within forty
years. And in the long generations through which the race
is dying, what are we to do ?
If education as a power of real and constructive
good is of value to a Uving race, to a race achieving
and succeeding, it is of stUl greater value to a faUing
race. If society needs the corrective and upbuilding
force of education to protect it against ignorance in
the wholly capable, the ignorance of the partially
incapable requires — for the protection and upbuUd-
ing of society — not less education, but more, an edu
cation practical in its forms but human and liberal in
its spirit.
And yet it were folly to ignore the fact that the
policy of negro education has been often and seriously

58 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
questioned. One may well write of it, however, not
as an alien policy, but as a poUcy of the South, inas
much as negro education has been for thirty years —
under local administrations elected by the people —
the official and authoritative policy of every Southern
State. If, therefore, I speak here at length of the
schooling and the training of this backward race, I
do so, not because it is a duty which the South has
ignored, but because the South, with generous fore
sight and incalculable patience, has so largely attempted
to discharge it.
Three objections, however, have partially attended
and embarrassed the maintenance of this policy of
our Southern States.
I. There has been opposition to the policy upon
the ground that the education of the schools would
lead to vanity in life ; that the supposed tendencies
of the negro would increasingly draw his ambition
in the direction of the higher education, and that the
higher education of the negro would imperil the inter
ests of race integrity.
II. There has been opposition to the negro com
mon school, — first, upon the ground that it has done
too little, inasmuch as it has left the general life of
the race so largely unaffected; secondly, upon the
ground that it has done too much, and has " spoiled
good field hands by teaching books."
in. There has been opposition, not only to lower
education and to higher education, but also to indus
trial education, — to industrial education upon the
ground that this form of negro training must result
in industrial friction and competitive warfare between
the races.

HI A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 59
It would be strange indeed if education — a policy
of God long before it was a policy of man, a poUcy
of the universe long before it was a policy of society
— were to find its first defeat at the negro's hands.^
And yet in each of these objections there Ues the force
of a half-truth, a half-truth to be frankly recognized,
and to be fully understood before it can be fully met.
I believe, however, that the long-standing policy of
the South has been fully justified, and that such mis
apprehensions as have existed have arisen partly from
the misunderstanding of the facts and partly from
certain evident errors in our traditional educational
methods. I. In dealing with the familiar question as to the
"increasing perils of the negro's higher education,"
let us see, first of all, if these perils are increasing ;
then we may inquire as to how far they exist at all.
Let us see how much higher education the negro is
getting, not merely at the South, but from anybody
anywhere. Let me say at once, however, that the South can
not well be opposed to the higher education of those
who are fitted for it.^ Where individual capacity
exists, the only thing, the only right and wise thing
1 See Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of North
Carolina, 1902, p. viii. Superintendent Joyner's report should be care
fully read in forming any adequate estimate of the real temper of the
South in reference to negro education.
2 See also an admirable paper on " Negro Education," by W. B. Hill,
Chancellor of the University of Georgia, in the Proceedings of the
Sixth Conference for Education in the South, 1903, p. 206, published
by The Committee on Publication, Room 607, 54 William Street, New
York City.

6o THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
in the world, to do with it is to equip it and direct it.
The repression of it will result, not in its extinction,
but in its perversion. A thwarted and perverted
capacity is a peril both to the individual and to the
State. Repression is not a remedy for anything.
The repression and perversion of the capacities of
our greatest negro would have raade him the most
dangerous factor in Southern life. Such capacities
raay be seldom found. Where, however, these capaci
ties exist, there is neither joy nor safety nor right nor
common sense in the belittling of a thing which God
has given, or in the attempted destruction of a power
which has entered into the experience of the world as
one of the nobler assets of the Nation and of humanity.
But higher education is, it seems, not a broaden
ing pathway of negro progress. The dread that our
colored people, in increasing multitudes, would thus
clutch at the vanities of culture in order to leave
behind the homelier interests of useful labor has not
been realized. Let us note the facts. Says Com
missioner Harris : —
" In 1 880, the population of the entire country had
4362 persons in each r, 000,000 enrolled in schools of
secondary and higher grade, but in that year, 1880,
the colored people had only 1289 out of each
1,000,000 enrolled in secondary and higher educa
tion. This means that the general average of the
whole country showed three and one-half times as
many pupils in schools of secondary and higher edu
cation as the general average for the colored people.
"In 1890, the number of colored persons in high
schools and colleges had increased slightly, namely,
from 1289 to 2061 in each 1,000,000 of the colored

Ill A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 6i
population, and in the year 1900 they had reached
2517 in each 1,000,000. But in the meantime the
general average for the United States had increased
from 4362 to 10,743 per 1,000,000. WhUe the num
ber in colored high schools and colleges had increased
somewhat faster than the population, it had not kept
pace with the general average of the whole country,
for it had fallen from 30 per cent to 24 per cent of
the average quota.
" Of all the colored pupils only i in 100 was en
gaged in secondary and higher work, and that ratio
has continued substantially for the past twenty years.
If the ratio of colored population in secondary and
higher education is to be equal to the average for the
whole country, it must be increased to five times its
present average."^
If the figures of the commissioner could take into
account the number of negroes who are classed as
pursuing the courses of " colleges " which are colleges
only in name, the figures would show a still larger
percentage of negro pupils in strictly primary work.
The statistics indicate, as compared with the white
race, no relative increase in the number who are
taking a so-called higher education, and the record of
all the facts would indicate that truth still more clearly
than the figures quoted.
It is true that higher education possesses its
"perils." All education possesses its perils. They
are apparent among any white population as well as
among any negro population. There is always pres
ent the danger of superficiality, the danger of self-
1 See Report of United States Commissioner of Education for 1899-
igoo, Vol. I, pp. Iviii and lix of the Preface.

62 THE PRESENT SOUTH CHAP.
glorification, the insistent temptation to substitute
show for reality and cleverness for work. Education,
on its most elementary side, involves risk. Many a
life, among our white people, has been educated out
of contentment without being educated into efficiency.
Many a blind heart which was at peace in its blind
ness has gained only enough light to lose its peace
without the gain of fuU and accurate sight. These
are but the familiar risks of liberty. Many a man
would have been prevented from being a murderer if
he had been kept always in a prison. But society
has realized that while the lifelong prison might have
prevented murder, it would also have prevented man
hood, and that it is well to give men freedora, upon
the broad and familiar ground that the smaller risk of
murder is of sUght concern as compared with the
larger chance of gaining manhood.
Education brings its dangers. But the risk of
making fools is of smaller import than the larger
chance of making men. Through long experience
society has also found that the dangers of ignorance
are greater than the dangers of knowledge. In the
case of the negro it is evident that the educational
process has a larger record of faUure than in the
case of the Caucasian. This was inevitable. The
kind of education which has been tried by the negro
in the mass has not been adapted to his racial need ;
it has been the Caucasian's kind. But as the Cauca
sian's kind is the only kind which the Caucasian has
been largely active in giving, the faults of misadapta-
tion can hardly be charged against the negro.
Undoubtedly our negroes in the mass need, chiefly,
an education through industrial forms. Of this I

ni A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 63
shall speak hereafter. It is, however, in the interest
of the race as well as in the interest of the South
that the exceptional negro should be given a broad
and generous measure of exceptional advantage.
That every race is a wiser, safer, and better social
force for having a leadership — wise, well-informed,
and true — is axiomatic. No race can succeed, as
one of their number has wisely said, "by allowing
another race to do all its thinking for it." The
South has insisted, and has insisted wisely, on main
taining the absolute distinctness of racial Ufe. The
wisdom of this insistence, the deep sociological value
of what has been called "race prejudice," — despite
its sometimes brutal and excuseless manifestations in
every section, — will have, I believe, an ever widening
recognition. But if human society is to estabUsh its
distinctions of racial Ufe, it will find that it can base
these distinctions upon intelUgence more securely
than upon ignorance. Ignorance will be blind to
them, will hate thera and attack them. IntelUgence
will perceive them, and, if they are reasonably and
soundly fixed, will understand them and cooperate
with them. The " troublesome " negro at the South
is not the negro of real intelligence, of sound and
generous training, but the negro possessing, or pos
sessed by, the distorted fancies of an untrained will
and a crude miseduca.tion.
The very segregation of the negro race seems thus
to estabUsh the necessity for the real training of their
abler minds, — for those differentiations of negro
ability which will give to the race a sane and in
structed leadership from within.
The development of this leadership, the opportuni-

64 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
ties of freer and larger growth, are more important to
the race, to the South, and to the interests of racial
separation than can easily be reaUzed. Racial dis
tinctness is chiefly threatened at two levels, the lowest
and the highest ; at the lowest, where vice obUterates
the safeguards of domestic purity; at the highest,
where the occasional refusal of the broadest develop
ment sometimes obliterates the safeguards of Uberty.
The true and permanent way to lead the negro race to
keep wisely to itself is to make it sufficient within
itself. The race which is to be forever forced to go
outside of itself to touch the broadest and richest life
of its generation will never be consciously and finally
anchored in the doctrine of race integrity. The true
basis of race individuality is not in race degradation
nor in race repression, but in race sufficiency.
n. In discussing the questions arising from the
negro common school, it is perhaps too often assumed
that the policy of general education has been really
tested. If the results are unsatisfactory, is it not
largely due to the inadequacy of the experiment.-'
Almost half of our colored people in the Southern
States — after forty years of freedom — are wholly
illiterate. Large numbers of them are indeed the
despair of statesmanship. But they are not worth
less because they have gone to the school. Rather,
they are worthless because they left it, or they have
left it because they were worthless. Shall the worth-
lessness of these negroes condemn the school ? Shall
we condemn the education of the negro, shall we
condemn the education of any people, dn the evi
dence presented by those who, through poverty or

in A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 65
weakness or wilfulness, have touched the system of
education only to desert it ?
Nor in bringing an impeachment against negro
education are we merely impeaching the negro ; we
should also be impeaching the only remedial, cor
rective, and constructive policy of a democracy. If
we are not going to educate them, what are we going
to do with them ?
At least, let us not condemn the policy of negro
education until we have established it and until the
negro has tried it. One who will carefully and accu
rately investigate the real conditions of negro life
may well maintain that those among thera who have
really tried it, who really know soraething and who
can really do something, are, on the whole, a credit
to themselves, to the South, and to their country.
The great overwhelming masses of them, however,
have as yet come about as near to illustrating the
results of education as though education were the
scourge, rather than the sceptre of broad, efficient,
and resourceful living.
Great numbers of them can read a little and write
a Uttle. But is that education .? Who wiU presume
to test the high policies and to dispute the imperative
validity of education in a democracy, because, for
sooth, thousands of witless and idle blacks, after a
prolonged and convulsive labor of aspiration and per
spiration, can just manage to put some kind of a
vague scrawl upon a piece of soiled paper with a lead
pencil ? Yet these people are supposed to show the
evil result of negro education. Now, it would be hard
to say just what that much education proves, except
perhaps that there would be less folly if there were

66 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
more knowledge.^ But a constructive statesmanship
may well protest against the insistent and preposter
ous assumption that one can ever judge any sort of
education, negro, Caucasian, or Malay, by seizing a
random conclusion from the general raob of the uned
ucated. There is no test, there can be no test, of the
policy of the school except in the number and quality
of those who have at least seriously attempted the
sacred experiraent for which it stands.
We may well continue to be tolerant of the policy
of negro education until we ourselves have applied it,
and until the negro has practised it.
We may condemn him for his failure to practise it.
Yet the fault is not wholly his nor ours. The fault
is not his alone, inasmuch as the pubUc resources of
the South have been utterly insufficient for the double
burden placed upon them. As we are told by the
United States Coraraissioner of Education, it is es
timated that the South, since the year 1870, has
expended ;^ 109,000,000 upon the education of our
colored people.^ And yet it also appears that, for
these thirty-odd years, the annual school term afforded
to the negro child has averaged less than seventy
^ The general social and economic conditions presented by large
numbers of the colored population render it obviously impossible to
establish any close relation between mere literacy and crime ; yet Mr.
Clarence A. Poe, of Raleigh, N.C., clearly shows that even under the
more adverse conditions the literate negroes are the least criminal
(The Atlantic Monthly, February, 1904). There is also a clear dis
tinction to be made between literacy and "education." The greater
criminality of the negro at the North is due, not to his partial emancipa
tion from illiteracy, but to industrial discrimination and to the unwhole
some conditions of city life. See p. 186, and note on p. 173.
^ Report ofthe United States Commissioner of Education, 1899-190Q,
Vol. II, p. 2501.

HI A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 67
days. Indeed, the school term for our white children
in our rural districts has averaged little more. If
the negro child has had upon the average less than
three months in which he could go to school, he has
thus had more than nine months of every year in
which to forget what he learned. It is hardly wise
to condemn the policy of negro education, to con
demn any policy of religion or culture or statesman
ship, upon the basis of so inadequate a trial.
If the less fortunate results cannot be wholly charged
against the negro, neither can they be charged against
the dominant people of the South. Theirs has been
a task of baffling difficulty and of torturing confusion.
They have had to re-create their properties before
they could hope to create those institutions which
represent, through the resources of taxation, the active
participation of property in the tasks of government
and of education. The South has had to get some
thing before it could give anything. Yet out of its
poverty it has given much. The negro, too, has
given — directly or indirectly. As has already been
suggested, the rents pay the taxes, and the negro helps
to pay the rents.
The negro primary school is the result.
Before dealing more expUcitly with its merits and
its defects, let me dwell, in passing, upon the argument
of those — a decreasing number — who oppose the
negro school, not because it has done too little, but
because it has done too much. We are told that " it
has spoUed good field hands by teaching books."
The charge is in part well founded. It is a charge
which at one time or another has been brought, in
every nation in the modern world, against the educa-

68 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
tion of the agricultural laborer. It has been used so
long against the training of white men that one need
not be surprised to hear it made against the training
of black raen.
Those who are inclined to attribute the animus of
this objection wholly to what they may call the "race
prejudice of the South " have too readily forgotten
the arguments which, within less than half a century,
have everywhere opposed the education of the indus
trial classes. There are those who are always tempted
to believe that it is the chief business of the poor man
to remain poor, and of the cheap man or the cheap
woman to remain cheap. The leisure classes — and
the employing classes — both North and South are too
often opposed to any broad realization of an industrial
or political democracy, and the basis of this opposition
is a class feeling as well as an economic fear. The
wonder is, not that such opposition still exists, but that
it now exists under so raany evident raodifications.
As a raere class prejudice, one is indeed under no
constraint to argue with it. There are those, both in
England and in America, who have accepted as one
of thefinalities of thought that " shopkeepers," "trades
people," and "working-people" must never be any
thing else. There are those. North as well as South,.
who are confirmed in the opinion that the negro should
remain a field hand, a field hand only, and that the
nine millions of the negro population in our democracy
are forever to find their industrial function solely in
menial service or unskilled employments. So impos
sible a contention it is unnecessary to discuss.
But there is also an economic objection to the educa
tion of the agricultural laborer at the South. It is true

Ill ' A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 69
that certain special interests feel that their fortunes
are involved in the preservation of a labor unin-
structed and therefore cheap. These interests are in
stinctively averse to " the spoiling of field hands," and
it is altogether probable that where too many establish
ments are doing business upon the basis of the lowest
Uving wage some of thera will have to suffer through
any differentiation in the mass of their unskilled labor.
But in any normal diversification of interests there
will always be enough labor of the cheaper type.
There is little danger, at the South especiaUy, that
there will soon be any serious dearth of labor com
manding but the, lowest wage. Is not this precisely
the economic difficulty of the South at large .¦' A few
interests may see a peril in the fact that a few of the
negroes are ceasing to be field hands ; but the South
as a whole finds a greater peril in the fact that so few
of them are fit to be anything else.
For the broader welfare of democracy, involving
not merely one class but all classes, is not injured by
the " spoiling of field hands," if in that process the
man who was worth but fifty cents a day is changed
into a man worth a dollar and fifty cents. The pro
cess of change has manifestly helped the man himself :
it has helped the employer, unless he is a victim still
to the old economic fallacy that the " cheapest " labor
is the most inexpensive. He will also find, as I have
suggested, that it is always less difficult to secure
dozens of men worth a low wage than to secure one
man who is really worth a higher wage. This indi
cates that society wants, because society values, the
higher wage, — values it not only as a measure of the
increased efficiency which life demands, but as an

70 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
effective part in the forming of the wage standard
of every man who works. We have too long assumed
that the negro in the fields at fifty cents a day is a
non-competitor, and that he becomes a competitor
only when he comes to town, or when he attempts to
do what white men do. Every man who labors is a
competitor with every other man who labors. If
a considerable class in any civilization are on a fifty-
cent basis, the tendency of the reward of all eraploy-
ments is affected in the direction of that basis. The
annual salary of the cashier of the largest bank in
one of the older cities of the South has been but
IS2400; near him, in the surrounding territory, are
thousands of men on a fifty-cent basis. The man
worth only the low wage in the fields holds down the
wage of the unskilled laborer in the town, for if the
town laborer reject his wage the laborer from the fields
may be summoned to take his place. If the lower
skilled labor of the town reject its wage, the more
efficient of the unskilled may easily be substituted,
and thus on through the ascending scale, rank press
ing upon rank, the wage of each advancing or
depressing the wage of all.
The remedy, of course, lies not in the crude device
of paying the fifty-cent man more than he is worth.
It lies in adding to his wage by first adding to his
worth. If he is worth more, the employer can afford
to pay him more. His increasing efficiency bears
upward against the level of the labor just above him,
compelling, not merely a higher wage, but a higher
qualification for that wage; the ascending competi
tion of efficiency is substituted — from level to level
— for the depressing attraction of inefficiency at the

Ill A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 71
base; and society, as a whole, moves with a freer
sense of accomplishment and enters into a broader
measure of welfare.
For the man on a fifty-cent basis holds down, not
only the individual wage, but the collective profit of
the community. He is upon a basis of mere exist
ence, affording no surplus store for wants beyond the
demands of animal necessity. He has no margin to
spend. He is not a purchaser because he is hardly
a producer. Yet commerce is carried on, banks are
conducted, churches are extended, schools are sup
ported, homes are maintained, governments are ad
ministered, upon the margin that remains between
the bare limit of existence and the outer limit of the
wage. Where great masses of men are worth no
more than a mere existence they contribute little
more than a mere existence to society.
How shall he be worth more, worth more to the
farmer, worth more to the intimate and interwoven
fortunes of all labor and all society, — worth more
not only to himself but to the State, — worth more
that he may contribute more ? All the institutions
of civilization are first to unite in that exacting and
supremely difficult process by which he is to be trans
ferred from the ranks of the incapable to the number
of the capable. The horae, the Church, the press, —
the play and chaUenge of the forces of industry, — all
are to have their part ; but evidently one of the insti
tutions upon which society must most largely depend
for the conduct of this complex and stupendous task
is that simple, familiar, but much neglected institution,
the rural common school.
In the course of this change, many a field hand

72 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
will be " spoiled," spoiled, not by being raade more
useful, but by being made less useful. This fact can
not be forgotten or denied. In every such process
of transformation there is a fraction of failure. A
human being is taken out of one economic setting
and is not transferred successfully to another. It is
the tragedy of all education, but it is a tragedy of
education only because it is one of the inevitable
tragedies of all experience. Surgery saves life, but
surgery has sacrificed lives in trying to save thera.
The Church labors divinely for belief, but the Church
has sometimes made men doubters in trying to make
them Christians. Institutions are not perfect; men
are not perfect. Of all men, — when we especially
consider the exacting demand with which the negro
in his weakness is confronted in a modern democ
racy, — the negro may be expected perhaps to fur
nish the largest percentage of failures, of failures in
that process by which society transforms the masses
of the inefficient into the efficient. This would be
true under the best conditions. It is all the more
naturally and . inevitably true when we consider the
limitations of the chief instrument of this transfor
mation, the negro common school.
Let me dwell first, however, upon some of its
contributions to this process. It has its manifest
weaknesses. It may represent strange, grotesque
misadaptations of theory and method. I often sus
pect that the last thing it does is really to educate —
educate, that is to say, in the word's usual and
familiar sense. But there is one thing which this
school does. It represents the first contact, the first
constraining, upbuilding contact, of the life of civili-

m A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 73
zation with the life of the uncivilized. It serves in
at least four definite ways (aside from any knowledge
it may impart) as an institution of moral power in
the Ufe of every child within its walls.
(i) It represents the discipline of punctuality.
When the untutored child first gets into his mind
the notion of going to a particular place and of
doing a particular thing at a particular time, he has
begun to get into line with conscious, intelligent,
efficient human life. In other words, he has got
hold of one of the rudimentary assumptions of
civilization. Is it not of importance to realize
what a difference lies just here between the state
of the savage and the state of the citizen ? There
is a moral idea and a moral achievement in the
notion of punctuality, and the rural primary school
stands for that.
(2) It stands, also, for the discipline of order.
The child finds not only that there is a time to come
and a time to go, but that there is a place to sit and
a place not to sit. He finds that there is a place for
everything, that everything has its place, and that
even standing and sitting, as well as the whole task
of behaving, are to be performed under the control
and direction of another.
(3) The primary school stands also for the disci
pline of silence. For a group of chattering children
— negro chUdren, any children — there is a moral
value in the discipline of silence. To learn how to
keep StUl, to learn the lesson of self-containment and
self-command, to get hold of the power of that per
sonal calm which is half modesty and half courage,
to learn a little of the meaning of quiet and some-

74 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
thing of the secret of listening, — this is an element
in that supremacy of will which is the faculty and
privilege of the civilized.
(4) Finally, the primary school stands for the
discipline of association. It represents the idea of
getting together. Getting together is a civilizing
exercise. Ten people, old or young, cannot get to
gether in a common room for a common purpose
without every one's yielding something for the sake
of others — some whim, some impulse of restless
ness, some specific convenience, or some personal
comfort. Human society is a moral achievement.
Associated effort, however sUght the sphere of its
exercise, represents part of the discipline of civiUza
tion. The more ignorant the company, the greater
is the effort represented, and the more significant the
lesson. In the primary school, the children learn
something not only frora getting together, but from
one another. As the teacher, however lowly in
attainment, is usually at least one rank above the
pupils, the personality of the teacher makes the con
tribution of its influence. No negro school, however
humble, fails to represent something of this discipline
of association.
Now, these things are worth while. The disci
pUne of punctuality, the discipline of order, the
discipline of silence, the discipline of concerted ac
tion, — these are elements of merit in the influence
of our primary educational system which in the
training of a child-race are worth, of themselves and
irrespective of the nature and amount of the instruc
tion, all the cost of this system to the country and
to the South.

Ml A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSPIIP 75
When, however, we touch this system on the side
of its more positive contribution as an education, its
faults are conspicuous and formidable. We have
been giving the negro an educational system which
is but ill adapted even to ourselves. It has been too
academic, too much unrelated to practical life, for the
children of the Caucasian. Yet if this system is ill
adapted to the children of the most progressive and
the most efficient of the races of mankind, who shall
measure the folly of that scholastic traditionalism
which would persist in applying this system to the
children of the negro, — and which would then charge
the partial failure of the application upon those very
tendencies of the negro which a true educational
statesmanship might have foreseen, and which a wise
educational system should have attempted to correct 1
If the weaknesses of the negro have made him run
to the bookish and the decorative in knowledge, we
must remember that the schooling we have provided
for him has at least been bookish, even if it has not
been decorative.
The South, I think, will face this question and wiU
deal with it. We must incorporate into our public
school system a larger recognition of the practical
and industrial elements in educational training. Ours
is an agricultural population. The school must be
brought more closely to the soil. The teaching of
history, for example, is all very well ; but nobody can
really know anything of history unless he has been
taught to see things grow — has so seen things, not
only with the outward eye, but with the eyes of his
intelligence and his conscience. The actual things
of the present are more important, however, than the

76 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
institutions of the past. Even to young children can
be shown the simpler conditions and processes of
growth, — how corn is put into the ground; how
cotton and potatoes should be planted; how to
choose the soil best adapted to a particular plant,
how to improve that soil, how to care for the plant
while it grows, how to get the most value out of it,
how to use the elements of waste for the fertiUzation
of other crops ; how, through the alternation of crops,
the land may be made to increase the annual value
of its product ; — these things, upon their elementary
side, are absolutely vital to the worth and the success
of hundreds of thousands of these people of the
negro race, and yet our whole educational system has
practically ignored them. The system which the
negro has, let us remember, is the system which we
ourselves have given him.
I make no adverse criticism of our educational
authorities. The South's indebtedness to thera is
beyond expression. They are, for the raost part, in
sympathy with such suggestions. The question can
be reached at last only through the wiser training of
the teachers ; and, with the teachers actively ranged
upon the side of such amendments to our educational
policy, the change will come. Such work will mean,
not only an education in agriculture, but an education
through agriculture, an education, through natural
symbols and practical forms, which will educate as
deeply, as broadly, and as truly as any other system
which the world has known. Such changes will
bring far greater results than the mere improvement
of our negroes. They will give us . an agricultural
class, a class of tenants or small landowners, trained

HI A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 77
not away from the soil, but in relation to the soil and
in intelligent dependence upon its resources. Thus
the " spoiling of the field hand " wiU never mean a
real loss to the lands of the State, but an added force
of inteUigent and productive industry.
In a number of the fertUe agricultural counties of
the South there has been for twenty years a slight
but gradual decrease in the per capita wealth of the
county. The best negroes have been moving away.
Progress for the negro has come to mean emancipa
tion from the soU. The State becomes poorer when
the lands of the State are left in the care of the idle
and incapable. This error can be corrected only by
identifying the negro's progress with his labor, by in
creasing his value as a farmer through teaching him
to farm intelligently and successfully, — by linking
his interest and his hope directly to the land. As he
prospers, the larger owner will not have to waive his
rents. As the tenant comes up, the land comes up
with him. The successful farmer raises the value
and the productive power of the soil upon which he
stands. We can get the wealth out of the soil only by put
ting into the soil the intelligence and the skill of the
man who works it. When our tenants and our farm
labor can mix in their ideas with the land, and can
put thinking and planning into their ploughing, sow
ing, .and harvesting, the whole earth begins to lift up
its head like a pasturage of wealth, happiness, and
dignity. We must sow something more than seed.
We must put ideas into the ground if we are to get
more money out of it. A pound of ideas and another
pound of hard work will go further than ten pounds

78 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
of any fertilizer that was ever raade. And what is
the fertilizer but the practical product of an idea ?
Let me repeat. If the South is to advance the
wealth of the land, we must advance the practical
intelUgence of the labor which works it. If we are
to advance the intelligent usefulness of our labor, we
must go straight to the children. If we are to reach
the children, we must get hold of them through the
school. If the school is to represent saner methods and a
wiser educational system, we must begin with the
training of the teacher. The teacher who teaches
must be in sympathy with the soil, with honest work,
with intelligent and fruitful industry, and must be so
in love with the practical bearing of a practical edu
cation upon the concrete life of his people that the
drift and direction of his training will be toward thrift
rather than toward idleness. Education, under such
a teacher, will represent, as has been said, "not a
means of escaping labor, but a means of making it
more effective." This is where we touch upon the
contribution of Hampton and Tuskegee.
These are industrial normal schools, schools for
the finding and equipment of just such teachers.
They are, primarily, institutions for teacher-training.
They are not, primarily, institutions for the training
of domestic servants. Schools for instruction in
domestic service might well be founded by their
graduates in some of the larger cities of the South.
I hope that that may be. But the white race is pro
viding few teachers for our population of nearly eight
millions of negroes. The teaching of their countless
children — through the policy and the preference of

ill A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 79
the South herself — is left to negroes. Hampton and
Tuskegee are trying to better the quality and to
increase the technical and practical value of these
teachers. If these two schools could double the out
put of their work, they would be touching but the
remoter Umits of this stupendous task. Theirs is the
work of the education of these teachers through prac
tical methods and industrial forms, in order that they
may go forth to this backward people in our rural
South, and there may train the children in the intel
ligent use of the soil, of concrete objects, and of
natural forces, so that, as there comes about the ris
ing of this race, the whole land may rise with it, —
the true progress of the negro thus representing, not
the fattening of the industrial parasite, but that whole
some and creative growth which will capitaUze the
Ufe of the State with the skilled hands and the pro
ductive capacity of its masses.
III. Is there any danger in the coincident industrial
development of our two races 1 There are those who
tell us so. Many of the same men who assured us,
ten years ago, that industrial education is the only
education the negro should have, are now ready with
the assurance that for fear the industrial development
of the negro will clash with that of the white man,
this form of negro training is the most dangerous
contribution that has thus far been raade to the solu
tion of our Southern probleras. The poor negro !
The man who would keep him in ignorance and then
would disfranchise him because he is ignorant must
seem to him as a paragon of erect and radiant con
sistency, when compared with the man who first tells

8o THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
him he must work, and then tells him he must not
learn how.
He tells the negro he must make shoes, but that
he must not make shoes which people can wear ; that
he may be a wheelwright, but that he must make
neither good wheels nor salable wagons ; that he
must be a farmer, but that he must not farm well.
According to this fatuous phUosophy of our situation,
we are to find the true ground of interracial harmony
when we have proved to the negro that it is useless
for hira to be useful, and only after we have consist
ently sought the negro's industrial contentraent on
the basis of his industrial despair.
The South had no trouble with her slaves before
the war; we had no trouble with them during the
war, even when our women were left largely at their
mercy. We had no trouble with thera after the war,
till the carpet-bagger frora the North came down
upon them. They were a peaceful and helpful peo
ple because slavery had at least taught them how to
do something and how to do it well. The industrial
education of the negro is intended to supply, under
the conditions of freedom, those elements of skill,
those conditions of industrial peace, which our fathers
supplied under the conditions of slavery. It is not
without significance that no graduate of Hampton or
Tuskegee has ever been charged with assault upon
a woman. We raust not forget, however, that the critic of our
negroes still further arraigns thera because, in Ala
bama, for example, while constituting over 45 per
cent of the population, they pay perhaps less than 5
per cent of the direct taxes ; yet, strangely enough, the

in A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 8i
same man declaims in the next breath on the peril of the
negro's industrial rivalry. For thirty years this type of
the arraignment of the negro has paid the negro the
tribute of its fear, and has insulted the white man by
its assumption of his industrial impotence. Certainly
it should seem conspicuously evident that if there is
one thing the South need not fear, at present, it is
any general or too rapid increase in the productive
efficiency of the masses of her negroes. Her peril,
as has already been suggested, lies in precisely the
opposite direction. It is certainly no tribute to the
Caucasian to assume that his own proud and historic
race, with its centuries of start and the funded culture
of all civilization at its command, cannot keep ahead
of the negro, no matter what the negro can know or
do. The only real peril of our situation lies, not in
any aspect of the negro's wise and legitimate prog
ress, but rather in the danger that the negro will
know so little, will do so little, and will increasingly
care so Uttle about either knowing or doing, that the
great black mass of his numbers, his ignorance, his
idleness, and his lethargy will drag forever like a
cancerous and suffocating burden at the heart of our
Southern life. And yet, were the industrial develop
ment of the negro tenfold as rapid and twentyfold as
general in its scope, should we then be compelled to
witness the predicted annihilation of the weaker race
at the hands of our industrial mob .¦" I think not.
The native qualities of the negro persist as his
protective genius. Whenever the negro has looked
down the lane of annihilation, he has always had the
good sense to go around the other way. "The
negro," says Mr. Dooley, "has raany fine qualities;

82 THE PRESENT SOUTH , chap.
he is joyous, light-hearted, and aisily lynched." But
the last of these qualities is individual, not collective.
He avoids its expression by avoiding the occasion for
its exercise. If Burke was right in saying that we
cannot indict a whole people, it is also true that we
cannot lynch a whole race, especially when this race
has a preference for aranesty, will accept in the
white man's country the place assigned him by the
white man, will do his work, not by stress of rivalry,
but by genial cooperation with the white man's inter
ests, will take the job allotted him in that division of
the world's work which is made by the white man's
powers, and will do that work so well that the white
raan can make more from it by leaving it with the
negro than by doing it himself. Such has been the
working principle of the industrial coordination of
these races. North as well as South. It is a principle
which I have here stated in its crudest form. It is
often modified by especial consideration on the one
side, and by especial efficiency on the other. But
the principle itself runs back into the nature of men
and the nature of things.
A weaker race dwelling in the land of a stronger
race makes no war upon the stronger, creates no
critical social or industrial issues, takes the place as
signed it in the political, social, and industrial economy
of the land. The negro will prove himself so useful,
so valuable to the country, to humanity, that the
world will want him to live. He will not invite ex
tinction through industrial exasperations, through
self-assertive competitions. He gives way. He
comes back upon another track. He fits into his
own niche. The increase of his efficiency increases

Ml A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 83
the possible points of his adaptation to the world's
work. The world holds more of work than of workers,
and the more varied the opportunities for work, the
more chance for aU the workers. Industrial conflicts
are found in their acutest form, not in the complex
fields which only the few can occupy and where the
principle of the division of labor is most fuUy recog
nized, but in the elementary tasks which almost every
man can perform, and in which all the unfitted are
fitted for corapetition.
The field of corapetition is narrowed as the field
for differentiation is broadened. As we touch the
tasks of skill, we touch the keys of industrial har
mony. The negro comes with his skill to our indus
trial organization ; the world gives hira his place.
He takes it. He demands, he can demand, no more
than the world gives him. Whatever it may be, it is
his lot; and he accepts it. This is not cowardice.
Our negroes have fought well in war. It is some
thing deeper than cowardice. It is something deeper
than self-preservation. It is a profounder, a more
constructive impulse. It is self-conservation. It is
Ufe. And we need not dwell too much upon the theories
of alarm. There is nothing more weakly theoretic than
a theoretic fear. The apprehensions which have at
tended the progress of the negro have usually come to
nothing with the arrival of the facts. Just as it was
"conclusively established," before the general use of
the locomotive, that passengers going faster than
twenty miles an hour would certainly perish " frora
lack of breath," so it was confidently argued that the
negroes when emancipated would rise and slay the

84 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
women and children of their absent masters. Some
of the Nation's wisest men thought that emancipation
would lead to slaughter. Later, it was contended
that the immediate and universal bestowal of the
ballot — an act of unpardonable folly — would lead
to interracial war. But the oft-predicted "negro
rising " has never come. It is always well in deal
ing with the negro, or with any factor of experience,
to determine one's policy, not from the possible re
sults which one fears it may produce, but from the
actual results which one may see it does produce.
Here are the negroes of our representative South
ern communities. Does the South have serious
difficulty with those who really know something and
who can really do something ? Which class of ne
groes is the greater menace to our peace, — the
negroes who have the scores of little homes through
the better negro districts of our Southern cities, who
are increasing their earnings, sending their children to
school, buying clothes, furniture, carpets, groceries,
chiefly from the white man's stores and to the white
man's profit; or those negroes whose industry is
indeed no competitive menace to the most sensitive,
who, if they are without ambitions, are equally with
out exceUences, who are unskilled enough to satisfy
the most timorous, who work three days that they
may loaf four, who may be responsible for several
families, but who are without a sense of responsibil
ity for even one, who are without pride except the
pride of the indolent and the insolent .' Which class
of negroes chiefly figures in the police records and
makes the chief burden upon our courts.? Which
class of negroes constitutes, therefore, the real peril

ni A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 85
of our situation, the efficient or the inefficient.'
— the negro who is making real progress, or the
negro who is making none ? The one class adds
little to the wealth and much to the burdens and
perplexities of the State; the other is the most
adaptable and tractable element in the race, and it
adds by everything it produces, by everything it
buys or sells, to the volume of business and to the
wealth of the community.
We are sometimes tempted to go off upon a false
and hopeless quest. We at times imagine that the
two classes of negroes between which the South may
choose are the old-time darky and the present-day
negro. But practically there is no such alternative
for us to-day. We raust clearly see, many of us with
sorrow, that the old-time darky is forever gone.
He was the product of the conditions of slavery, con
ditions which no raan at the South could or would
restore. We cannot choose between the old-tirae
darky and the new. The South, in the exercise of
a practical responsibility, must necessarily make its
choice between the two classes of the new: the
class of quiet, sensible, industrious men and women
(as yet a minority, but a minority steadily increasing)
who seek through intelligence and skill to be useful
to themselves and to their country; and the class,
upon the other hand, which is backward, thriftless,
profitless — which draws from the land or the com
munity only what it may consume — which creates no
wealth because it has no needs, which furnishes the
murderer, the rapist, the loafer, the incendiary —
which presents no theoretic competition for the job
of our skUled laborer largely because this class of

86 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
negroes is not much possessed of any skill nor ranch
enaraored of any conceivable job. There are just
two classes of negroes in our land to-day, those who
are going forward and those who are going back
ward. I have little doubt as to the choice which the
South will raake.
The somewhat morbid fear of the negro's industrial
education would never have arisen but for the preva
lence of the economic error that the volume of the
world's work is fixed in quantity, and that if the negro
does a part of it, there will be less of it for the white
man. But one man's work does not reduce the vol
ume of the work open to other raen. Every raan's
work produces work for all. Every laborer who
is really a producer represents a force which is en
larging the raarket for labor. The man who makes
a table broadens the opportunities of industry be
hind him and before him. He helps to make work
for the man who fells the trees, for the man who
hauls the trees to the sawmill, for those in the mills
who dress the timber for his use, for those who dig and
shape the iron which goes into the nails he drives ;
he makes work for the man who provides the glue,
the stains, and the varnish, for the man who owns the
table at the shop, for the drumraer who tells about it,
for the raen who sell food and apparel to those who
handle it and who profit by its repeated sales from
the factory to the wholesaler, from the wholesaler to
the retailer, and from the retailer to the final pur
chaser. The man who makes a table makes business.
The man who makes shoes or harness or tools or
wagons makes business. The work of the trained
producer does not restrict the market of labor. It

Ill A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 87
enlarges that market. The friction sometimes due to
the negro's possession of a lower standard of living
passes away as the negro advances in real education
and genuine skill. As he begins to work productively,
he begins to live better. He is not like the myriad
labor of the Orient which never accepts American
standards. As the negro goes up, his standard of
living goes up. There will never be any question
about the negro being a consumer. He is ever a
free spender. To strengthen him, upon wise Unes,
as an American producer will add not only to his
capacity to work, but to his capacity to buy, and both
what he produces and what he purchases will directly
contribute to the wealth and peace of the comraunity
and the State.
And what, let us ask, is the alternative? If, in
dealing with these people, we are not to seek the re
sults of stability and harraony in the conditions of in
telligence and industry, where and how may we seek
them ? Is there a sound basis for stability and har
mony in these great black masses of ignorance and
idleness that we find about us .' Have prosperity,
peace, happiness, ever been successfully and perma
nently based upon indolence, inefficiency, and hopeless
ness .¦" Since tirae began, has any human thing that
God has made taken damage to itself or brought
damage to the world through knowledge, truth, hope,
and honest toil ? Industrial activity is the best secur
ity for industrial harmony. The world at work is the
world at peace.
The negro has his weaknesses. He has his virtues.
He is not here because he chose this land of ours.
The land chose him. We can abandon this task.

88 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
but it cannot abandon us. It is the grave but un-
escapable privilege of our Southern States to take it
and to work out through it, as the stewards of our
country's power and our country's will, one of the
greatest national obligations of American life.
What trait among the negro's weaknesses is made
better by idleness, hopelessness, and industrial help
lessness .' What trait among his virtues is destroyed
by right thinking, by real knowledge, by the capacity
to see clearly and to work successfully .' God made
him a man. We cannot and we dare not make him
less. But we may not be self-deceived. If we are
to make him all he raay become, we have before us a
task of iraraeasurable and appalling difficulty, a task
raore difficult than that attempted by the armies of
the North when they moved against the South, a task
more difficult than that of those heroic armies of the
South which withstood the North, but a task which
the higher and holier purpose of the North and of the
South, in response to the challenge of our chUdren
and of humanity, will yet perform. Its difficulty is
not a reason why we shall fail. It is the reason why
we shall succeed. The sore strain and trial of such a
task will touch, not merely the chords of our compas
sion, but the metal of our manhood, and the thing
will be done — done wisely, justly, courageously,
and with the patience of a great country's love —
just because it was so hard to do.

A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP - 89

III
I have dwelt thus long upon the subject of negro
education partly because many of the principles in
volved are to a degree identical with the principles
involved in the education of the unprivUeged masses
of our white people, partly because the Southern
policy of negro education invites a fuller discussion
than any policy of white education can require.
What is true, however, of the negro masses is
largely true of the white masses. With the few
necessary qualifications, everything that has here been
said in behalf of a more practical educational system
for the negro school may be said in behalf of similar
changes in the rural schools of our white people.
The differences in racial heritage should be recog
nized. Certain forms of industrial training may be
emphasized the more clearly with the masses of our
negroes ; certain forms of scholastic training may be
emphasized the more clearly with our white children.
The two races are not the same, and they will not re
spond in the same way to precisely simUar influences.
The average negro child starts much farther back
than the average white child. To recognize that fact
and to educate as though we recognized it is not cru
elty to the negro, but the fairest and tenderest kind
ness. Nor does this raean that the negro is always
to have a poorer quality of education. A difference
in forra, in the interest of a closer adaptability to
need, should represent, not the reduction, but the
preservation of the wisest and truest educational
standards.

90 • THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
The racial heritage of the white man raust be
clearly accepted and recognized in the form of his
educational system; and yet a white population so
largely dependent on its agricultural resources and
its productive industry must bring its public educa
tion into more articulate relations with the soil and
with its work. If the South needs to secure the
sounder industrial progress of her negroes, she must
be sure that the industrial progress of the great masses
of her white people is given a support which shall be
even more resourceful in its enthusiasm and even
more aggressive in its activities.
The relation of the system of public education to
the needs of an agricultural people is a subject
which has engaged the consideration of the great
States of the West just as it must engage the atten
tion of the South.i g^^ there is this significant and
striking difference, The West, since 1870, has re
ceived an efficient foreign white population of more
than 5,000,000 souls. The South is gaining compar
atively little from white immigration. In 1900 the
1 There is much of practical value in the Report for the year ending
June 30, 1900, of the State Superintendent of Education for Wiscon
sin. Those who may be interested in the general methods already
adopted in Ireland, France, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland,
and Germany may well turn, among the documents of the same State,
to the Report of the Commissioner appointed by the Legislature of
Wisconsin in 1899 "to investigate and report upon the methods of
procedure in this and other States and countries in giving instruction
in manual training and in the theory and art of agriculture in the pub
lic schools." Among practical elementary manuals on the subject of
agriculture may be mentioned : " Principles of Agriculture," by L. H.
Bailey; "Agriculture for Beginners," by Burket, Stevgns, and Hill of
Raleigh, N.C. (Ginn & Co.); and "Rural School Agriculture," by W.
M. Hays.

in A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 91
five Southern States — Alabama, Georgia, Missis
sippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina — had, in
a total population of over 8,800,000 souls, only
44,996 of the foreign-born. In the small State of
Vermont, with a total population of only 343,641,
there were 44,747. In the single State of Kansas
there were 126,685 of the foreign-born; in the one
State of Nebraska there were 177,347; in the State
of Ohio there were 458,734.1
It is from the ranks of the masses of our own peo
ple (if we are to have a sound and vigorous economic
development) that we must largely secure, not only
the populations of the market and the professions,
but the raore intelligent populations of our shops and
fields. We must put at the command of our humbler
white people — perhaps I had best say our prouder
white people — an educational system freed from the
follies of inadequacy upon the one hand and of mis-
adaptation upon the other. The stores of our fields
and our mines will be of small avail unless the skill
and equipment which shall transmute them into
wealth are exercised within the borders of the South,
in loyal and affectionate attachment to her interests
and her happiness.
Upon the necessity and the policy of white educa
tion, we are practically agreed. And yet the possi-
biUty of neglect is also present here. It is not that
danger of neglect which comes from bitter and defi
nite aversion, but the more subtle peril of vaguely
assuming that a work upon which everybody is
agreed is somehow going to be performed just
because we are agreed upon it. There is in mere
1 See also Table VII of the Appendbc, p. 304, columns 4 and 5.

92 THE PRESENT SOUTH CHAP.
agreement no real dynamic of social progress.
There is little raoral power in the universal affirma
tion that two and two make four. Our need to-day
in behalf of the unprivileged masses of the rural
South is not that we shall agree upon education, but
that we shall educate.
The task before the South is one of conspicuous
magnitude. Striking an average for the eleven
States of the secession, we have found that of the
native white population ten years old and over 12.2
per cent cannot read and write; while in North
Carolina and Louisiana — and Alabama is not far
ahead, — one white person in every six is recorded
as illiterate. No other eleven States in the Union
anywhere nearly approximate this condition. In all
the States outside of the South, taken together as a
group, the average rate of illiteracy among the native
white population is only 2.8 per cent as against 12.2
per cent of native white ilUteracy in the South.
The negroes are not here included. These figures
deal with none other than the native white popula
tion. If we add to these figures the number of our
white people who can just pass the test of literacy,
who perhaps can barely sign their names, but who
are practically ilUterate, our conditions are seen to
be still raore serious.
And yet the hope of democracy in the life of the
South to-day Ues in the fact, as we have seen, that
among increasing multitudes of men the agreement
to educate is passing into conviction. The percen
tage of white iUiteracy is large, but it is to-day de
creasing. From 1880 to 1890, according to the
United States census, the percentage of ilUteracy in

in A CONSTRUCTIVE STATESMANSHIP 93
the native white population ten years of age and over
.was reduced from 22.7 per cent to 15.9 per cent.
From 1890 to 1900 it was reduced from 15.9 to 12.2
per cent. The reduction of this percentage within
the next ten years wUl be even more striking. The
great host of the non-participants is entering into
its own.
A political statesmanship is recognizing that the
desire of the people is the education of all the people,
and that the political influence of the South is to be
advanced by no merely negative devices of resistance,
but by the South's intelligent and positive contribu
tion to the great national decisions upon economic
and party issues. Quality, as well as quantity, must
always enter into the subtle influence of constituen
cies. An educational statesmanship is perceiving
that, as the people come to know, the opportunity of
the university is enlarged. And the common schools
contribute to the university something more than an
increasing practical support. The university in the
South is beginning to appreciate the vital relation
between a sympathetic culture and coramon need,
realizing as never before that the ideals of the higher
learning cannot flourish in freedom or in fruitfulness
save in the responsive atmosphere of a popular faith
in ideas and a popular kinship with the scholar's
spirit. A religious statesraanship perceives that the
raission of Christ was to the largeness as well as to
the rectitude of Ufe, that breadth and sweetness of
teraper find a deeper security in the inheritance of the
educated man, and that what every citizen claims
in his heart for his own chUdren he raust desire as
instinctively for the children of another. The states-

94 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap. Ml
manship of our public press is perceiving that in the
existence of a generally educated public opinion there
reside some of the secrets of editorial independence,
of adequate circulation, of broader journalistic power.
An industrial statesmanship is declaring that the
South's largest undeveloped wealth lies in its unde
veloped populations.
Public education, as the primary policy of the
South, is thus presenting, not merely an opportunity
and a duty ; it presents a policy of investment — wise
and sacred and secure. A constructive statesman
ship — a statesraanship of educational and religious
insight, of political sagacity, of economic vaUdity —
is informing and renewing the life of the land ; and
not alone in the heritage of the past or in the wealth
of fields and forests and mines, but in the promise of
the forgotten child of the people, the enlarging
democracy finds its charter.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND
CHILD LABOR

CHAPTER IV
THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND CHILD LABOR

The present industrial development of the South
is not a new creation. It is chiefly a revival. Be
cause the labor system of the old South was so largely
attended by the economic disadvantages of slavery,
and because the predominant classes of the white
population were so largely affected by social and
political interests, it has often been assumed that the
old order was an order without industrial ambitions.
The assumption is not well founded. Instead of
industrial inaction, we find from the beginnings of
Southern history an industrial movement, character
istic and sometimes even provincial in its methods,
but presenting a consistent and creditable develop
ment up to the very hour of the Civil War. The
issue of this war meant no raere economic reversal.
It meant economic catastrophe, drastic, desolate, with
out respect of persons, classes, or localities. And yet
through all the phases of catastrophe there still re
mained the essential factors of the old prosperity —
the land and its peoples. Thus the later story of the
industrial South is but a story of reemergence.
Without sorae conception of the industrial interests
of the old South, the story of the later South is, how-
H 97

gS THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
ever, not easily understood. It is, for example, to
Colonel WUliam Byrd of Westover, known raore
recently in the pages of fiction, that we are indebted
for sorae of the interesting particulars as to the
early developraent of the iron properties of Virginia.
Writing in 1732, he teUs us, araong others, of "Eng
land's iron mines, called so from the chief manager
of them, though the land belongs to Mr. Washington."
These mines were about twelve railes frora Fred
ericksburg. A furnace was not far away. " Mr.
Washington," says Colonel Byrd, " raises the ore and
carts it thither for twenty shillings the ton of iron
that it yields. Besides Mr. Washington and Mr.
England, there are several other persons concerned
in these works. Matters are very well raanaged there,
and no expense is spared to make them profitable."
This " Mr. Washington," thus one of the earliest
factors in the iron industry of the South, was the
father of our first President.^
Before 1720 Governor Spottswood of Virginia had
estabUshed several iron-making enterprises, and the
General Assembly of Virginia had passed, in 1727,
"an act for encouraging adventurers in iron-works."
Not only in Virginia, but in North CaroUna and
1 Quoted in " Facts About the South," by R. H. Edmonds, Balti
more, 1902, from Swank's " History of Iron in all Ages." To Mr.
Edmonds's interesting brochure and to the columns of the Tradesman
of Chattanooga, as well as to the several issues of the United States
census, I am indebted for many of the statements in the first section
of this chapter. I especially wish to express my obligations to Mr.
Edmonds. It should be said, however, that the figures as to the
assessed value of Southern property in i860 include the wealth which
existed in the form of slaves. This should be borne in mind in noting
the contrasts here quoted on p. loi. See also the footnote to p. 41.

IV THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND CHILD LABOR

99

South Carolina as weU, there continued — untU the
close of the century — much interest in the develop
ment of this phase of manufacturing, and the colonial
forces made frequent requisitions upon its product.
In 1795, however, there had been developed an in
vention which began to transform the conditions of
Southern life. EU Whitney — a native of Massachu
setts then living in Georgia — gave to the world the
cotton-gin. With its introduction, cotton became the
dominant interest of the South. Other enterprises
suffered by comparison, as raen came to realize the
increased availability given by Whitney to the cotton
product, and the increased value thus contributed to
the cotton lands. From 2,000,000 pounds in 1 790, the
cotton crop rose to 10,000,000 pounds in 1796, and
to 40,000,000 pounds in 1800. Ten years later, the
crop amounted to 80,000,000 pounds, and by 1820 it
had reached the enormous total — as contrasted with
the yield of 1790 — of 160,000,000 pounds.
Nor was this astonishing increase of thirty years
coincident with " four-cent cotton." For nearly forty
years, beginning with 1800 and closing with 1839, the
average price per pound was over seventeen cents —
forty-four cents per pound being the maximum price
attained, and thirteen cents the minimum.
During this period it was inevitable that the cotton
interest should have become the all-absorbing occu
pation of the South. Beginning, however, with 1840
we may note a sharp decline in prices — reaching in
1 845 a point slightly lower than six cents — and while
from time to time the price rallied feverishly for brief
and uncertain periods, there was no general recovery.
The average price for the ten years, from 1840 to

100 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
1850, was the lowest average maintained throughout
any decade in the history of the American trade.
The same causes, therefore, which had drawn the
energy of the South in so conspicuous a degree to
cotton, were now operating partially to detach the
South from cotton and to secure the direction of
Southern effort upon other enterprises. Accordingly
in the decade frora 1850 to i860 — the ten years im
mediately preceding the CivU War — we find a raarked
and rapid developraent in the South's general agri
cultural and raanufacturing interests. According to
the United States census of i860, — as Mr. Edraonds
has pointed out, — ¦ the South, with one-third of the
country's population and less than one-fourth of the
white population, had raised raore than one-half of
the total agricultural products of the country. The
total nuraber of Southern factories in i860 was 24,590,
representing an aggregate capital of ^175,100,000. In
1850 the South had but 2335 railes of railroad as
contrasted with a combined total of 4798 miles for
New England and the Middle States; but by i860
the South had quadrupled the mileage of 1850, and,
while the total for New England and the Middle
States now reached 9510 railes, the South had
achieved a total of 9897 miles. In 1850 the com
bined mileage of the two Northern sections had ex
ceeded that of the South by 2463 miles. In i860
these conditions were reversed, and the South had a
margin of 387 miles to her credit. The railroad de
velopraent of the decade at the South represented an
expenditure, largely frora Southern sources, of over
;^220,000,000. Then came war and the raore bitter years that fol-

IV THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND CHILD LABOR loi
lowed war. In i860 the wealth of the South had
exceeded the combined wealth of the New England
and Middle States by $750,000,000, but in 1870 we
find the conditions reversed and the wealth of these
States exceeding the wealth of the South by $10,-
800,000,000. " The assessed value of property in New York and
Pennsylvania in 1870 was greater than in the whole
South. South Carolina, which, in i860, had been
third in rank in wealth, in proportion to the number
of her inhabitants, had dropped to be the thirtieth ;
Georgia had dropped frora seventh to the thirty-
ninth; Mississippi, from the fourth place to the
thirty-fourth; Alabama, from the eleventh to the
forty-fourth; Kentucky, from tenth to twenty-eighth."
The decrease in values at the South had been coin
cident with an increase in values at the North. In
i860 the value of assessed property in South Caro
Una exceeded by $68,000,000 the combined totals
for Rhode Island and New Jersey. But in 1870
the assessed property of Rhode Island and New
Jersey exceeded by more than $685,000,000 the
assessed value of the properties of South Carolina.
Beneath these cold and unresponsive figures there
lie what tragedies of suffering, what deep-hidden
recurrent pulses of despair, of self-repression, of pa
tience, of silent and solemn will, of self-conquest, of
ultimate emancipation !
About the year 1880 the long-waited change be
gins. By 1890 the industrial revival is in evident
progress. By 1900 the South has entered upon one
of the most remarkable periods of economic develop
ment to be found in the history of the modern Indus-

102 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
trial world. This is not over-statement. It is fair
and accurate characterization.
The agricultural progress of these twenty years has
been more than creditable as compared with the totals
for the country at large. But the most distinctive ele
ment in the economic movement of this period is the
increasingly dominant position of manufactures as
contrasted with agriculture. This industrial revival
is but the reemergence of the tendency which we
found so manifest in the statistics of i860. It is but
one reassertion of the genius of the old South.
In 1880 the value of the manufactured products
of the South was $200,000,000 less than the value
of her agricultural products. But in 1900 all this is
changed. The value of Southern manufactures then
exceeded the value of Southern agricultural products
by $190,000,000, and "if raining interests be in
cluded, by nearly $300,000,000."
In 1880 the products of Southern factories had not
reached a valuation of $458,000,000. By 1900, such
had been the progress of twenty years, their value
had reached a total of more than $1,463,000,000 —
an increase of $1,200,000,000, or more than 220 per
cent. To realize the deep and far-reaching signifi
cance of such figures, one must be able to see through
them — by the faculties of an intelligent and sympa
thetic insight — the vast industrial and social changes
which they represent. They mean that the industrial
centre of gravity at the South is shifting, however
slowly, from the field to the factory; and that the
factory is to take its place beside the church, the school-
house, the home, as one of the effectual and charac
teristic forces of civiUzation in our Southem States.

IV THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND CHILD LABOR 103

II
By " the factory " the average Southern community
understands the cotton factory. To the eye, in the new
industrial scene, it is the raost conspicuous represen
tative of the South's industrial transformation. In
the twenty years frora 1880 to 1900, the capital in
vested in cotton raanufacturing at the South increased
from nearly $22,000,000 to nearly $113,000,000, and
the number of estabUshments had increased from 180
to 412. So rapid, however, has been the growth of
this especial interest of the South, that since the tak
ing of the census for 1900 the number of cotton mill
estabUshments has reached, in January, 1904, a total
of over 900, — has already raore than doubled.
This astonishing development has been due to
many causes, — to the South's possession of the raw
material, and thus to the partial truth of the adage
that "the mills must come to the cotton;" to the
South's vast store of available and inexpensive fuels,
her ample water-powers, her attractive and " easy "
climate ; but chiefly to her supplies of tractable and
cheap labor. It is this last factor, rather than the
possession of the raw material, which has contributed
to the rapid development of cotton manufacture in
our Southern States.
What is the source of this labor .-' It lies in the
unlettered masses of the white population. The
negro population forms but an infinitesimal fraction
of it. Their practical omission frora the labor of the
cotton mills is attributed to a number of causes, — to
the inadaptabiUty of the negro to the long hours and

I04 - THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
the sustained labor of the factory system ; to the
desire of the Southern captains of industry to favor,
upon the grounds of sentiment, the training and em-
ployraent of white labor ; to the fact that, inasmuch
as it is often difficult to employ the two classes of
labor together, and as white labor — by reason of
its teachableness, endurance, and skill — is the more
valuable of the two, the preference is naturally given
to the stronger race. It is probable that all these
considerations, in greater or less degree, have entered
as determining factors into the situation as we find it,
although it is to the last that I should be incUned to
attribute the chief measure of importance. But the
situation, whatever the explanations, is what it is.
Men may not agree as to the alleged causes, or as to
their respective validity, but the fact remains, that
thus far the characteristic labor of the cotton factory
has been almost wholly white.
Upon a personal investigation of a large number
of mills, one will find, among managers, superin
tendents, and foremen, the representatives of almost
every social class. Although the mill can hardly be
called the instrument of an industrial democracy,
there will sometimes be found men in the ranks of
factory administration who have worked themselves
forward from the vague multitude of the unlettered
and unskilled. It is from this multitude, however, —
from the great army of the non-participants, — that
the population of the factory is chiefly drawn. From
their little homes in the " hill-country " of the Pied
mont, where for years they have maintained a pre
carious existence upon a difficult and forbidding soil,
thousands of them have been drawn within the

IV THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND CHILD LABOR 105
precincts of the new industrial life. Some of them
have come from the heavier lands in the malarial
sections of the "Black Belt." Whether from the
hiUs or from the vaUeys, — and most of them are
a " hUl-people," — they have sometimes found in the
factory an instrument of industrial rescue. In many
instances, however, the change from agriculture —
however hard the old life — has represented a loss of
freedom without a compensating gain of ease. I
have known cases where the bright promises of the
factory's labor agent have lured famiUes from their
little holdings of poor land to a fate even more dreary
and more pitiless. In other cases the change has
represented raore of gain than of loss. The family
has found in the opportunity presented by the mill
a new chance for a real foothold in the struggle for
existence. Having failed under the conditions of
agriculture, it has found under the conditions of
manufacture at least the possibility of another world.
On the farm the whole family has usually worked
together, and so the faraily still reraains, under the
changed conditions, the working unit. Often at the
week's end they will find theraselves in possession
of raore real raoney than they have seen in raonths
before, and, not clearly perceiving that more of
money does not always mean more of Ufe, — an error
not unusual araong raore favored classes, — and feel
ing the magic spell of fellowship, of closer social con
tact with other human souls and other human forces,
they soon forget whatever of advantage the old life
raay have contained.
Nor is the promise of the new world always vain.
With some the possibiUties of promotion are per-

lo6 THE PRESENT SOUTH CHAP.
ceived, and steadily and sometimes successfully pur
sued. The more important factories are now seldom
found without the factory school, where — in spite of
the many caUs to the mill, to meet the exigencies
of " rush orders " — the children, or a fraction of
them, are given an elementary training in " the three
R's." When the more ambitious boy or the more
capable girl is advanced to " piece-work,"^the result
of an active day is often a gratifying wage. But the
period of satisfactory earning power reaches its maxi
mum at about the eighteenth or nineteenth year, and
the operative is held by the rewards of the industry
at the only time when another career might seem
possible and practicable. When it is clearly per
ceived that the strain of the long factory hours does
not bring a really satisfactory adult wage, it is too
late to change ; and the few who pass upward in the
mill are but a small proportion of the mass. These,
under the pressure of the economic situation just
suggested, yield to that class tendency which is just
as active among the poor as among the rich. The
forces of a common origin, of neighborhood life, of
a social experience shut in by the factory enclosure,
— with no opportunity for the home, that best basis
of social differentiation, — all conspire to emphasize
the distinctions and the barriers of caste, and we find
in process of creation a "factory people." They are
marked by certain characteristic excellences and by
certain characteristic evils. I would not forget the
first in dwelling here upon the latter. There will be
found among them, in frequent and appalling evi
dence, two symbols of a low industrial life, — the
idle father and the working child.

TV THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND CHILD LABOR 107
Neither could exist without the partial complicity
of the mills. The adult raen among the new recruits
have untrained hands and awkward fingers. The
younger chUdren are taken at first as the "pupUs
of the industry," but the raUls have clung to them
with a tenacity which indicates that while their im-
raediate labor may be profitless, the net rewards of
their " instruction " do not faU exclusively to the
children. Upon the little farm among the hills the
faraily worked and lived close to the very lirait of
existence. The father, there, had often done the
hunting and the fishing while the women and the
children labored. The faraily earnings in the new
environraent at the mill present a small but appreci
able margin. As there has rarely been a thought or
a plan beyond a little fuller measure of subsistence, —
subsistence of the same kind and according to the
same standards, — it is now obviously possible when
this measure is attained for sorae one in the number
of the workers to "fall out." The father does not
seem to be seriously in demand, the children are.
The meraber of the family who ceases work is thus
not the youngest, but the oldest. If the father has
never entered the mill, — as is sometiraes the case, —
and if there still appears a Uttle margin in the family
wage beyond the limit of subsistence, the one who
falls out is the mother. The children work on.
Have they not always worked upon the farm, and
upon the farm have not their fathers and forefathers
worked before them ? Wrought upon at first more by
ignorance and apparent need than by avarice, though
avarice follows fast — the father and mother do not
easily perceive the difference for the chUd between

io8 THE PRESENT SOUTH CHAP.
factory labor and farm labor. It is true that the work
of the factory — especially for the younger children
— is often lighter than the work brought to the child
upon the farm. But the benumbing power of factory
labor lies not so much in its hardness as in its monot
ony. Picking up toothpicks frora a pile, one by one,
and depositing them in another, may be light work,
but when continued for twelve hours a day it is a
work to break the will and nerve of a strong man.
The work of the factory means usually the doing of
the same small task over and over again — moment
in and moment out, hour after hour, day after day.
Its reactive effect upon the mind is dulness, apathy,
a mechanical and stolid spirit, without vivacity or
hope. The labor of the farm is often hard, but it is
full of the play and challenge of variety. It is labor
in the open air. It is labor, not under the deadening
and deafening clatter of machinery, but under the
wide spaces of the sky, where sound comes up to
you frora free and living things, frora things that
raay mean companionship, and where the silence —
brooding — passes and repasses as a power of peace
and healing. Upon the farm the child labors, as it
labors in the home, under the eye of a guardianship
which is usually that of the parent, which is full of
a personal solicitude even if it be not full of intelli
gent affection. In the factory the child works as an
industrial unit, a little meraber of an industrial aggre
gate, under an oversight which must, of necessity, be
administrative rather than personal. Letting your
own child work for you is a wholly different thing
from letting another man work your child.
And the evU has its quantitative side. The child

IV THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND CHILD LABOR 109
is not alone. The child is a part of that vague and
pathetic industrial force which the world calls, and
ought to call, " child labor." No man would be per
mitted to operate his farm with that labor for ten
days. A distinguished Southern expert has testified
that 60 per cent of the operatives in the spinning
departments of the cotton mills throughout the Pied
mont district were under sixteen years of age.^ The
United States census for 1900 discloses the fact that
of the total nuraber of operatives in the cotton raills
of Alabama nearly 30 per cent were under sixteen;
and that in the Southern States as a whole the pro
portion of the cotton-miU operatives under sixteen
years amounted to 25.1 per cent. What farmer,
operating a large farm and employing large numbers
of hands, would presume to conduct his farm upon
the basis presented by such conditions.''^
Just how many of the workers of the mills are
under fourteen years and just how many are under
twelve it is difficult to say. The census of the
1 See Report of the Testimony in the Hearing of April 29, 1902,
before Subcommittee No. VII of the Committee on the Judiciary of
the House of Representatives, on House Joint Resolution No. 20, p. 16.
^ The gross number of cotton-mill operatives at the South under
the age of sixteen was, in 1900, 24,459 out of a total of 97,559 opera
tives. See Twelfth Census of the U. S., Cotton Manufactures, Bulletin
215. By the month of August, 1902, the number of establishments
had doubled, and therefore, if the same proportion was maintained,
the number under sixteen was approximately 50,000. Since the pas
sage of the child-labor laws of 1903, there has probably been a reduc
tion in the proportionate number of child operatives. The United
States census places the line of the division between the child opera
tive and the adult operative at sixteen years. If some operatives under
sixteen are a little old to be classed as " children," it is hardly less
obvious that there are many over fifteen who are a little young to be
classed as " adults."

no THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
United States makes no distinction in the ages of
those who are under sixteen. Only one Southern
State — North Carolina — makes any provision for
the collection of the statistics of labor, and in North
Carolina we are provided with the data for only those
who are under fourteen. In the last available report
for this State,^ i8 per cent of its textile operatives
were under this age. As the conditions in North
Carolina were probably not worse than in the South
at large, the total under fourteen in the whole South
was approximately 30,000 at the beginning of the
year 1903. The number of children under the age
of twelve in Southern factories — basing the estimate
upon definite figures from certain representative locali
ties' — was, at the beinning of 1903, about 20,000. The
passage of the North Carolina child-labor law — in
March, 1903 — has probably resulted in a raarked
reduction in the nuraber of the younger children in
that State. A siraUar reduction has probably taken
place in other States, for in the year 1903 — in addi
tion to Kentucky, Louisiana, and Tennessee, which
had already acted — child-labor laws were passed for
the first time, not only in North Carolina, but also in
Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia, and Texas. There
is thus but one manufacturing State in the South which
is now without such legislation.
Even here, however, the legislature of Georgia
has passed a bill visiting heavy penalties upon the
able-bodied parent who is guilty of living in idle
ness while his younger children are at labor for
his support. The demand for such a law and the
1 See p. 187 of the North Carolina Report oif the Department of
Labor and Printing, 1901.

IV THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND CHILD LABOR in
passage of such a law are manifestly a confession
that a child-labor law is needed. Even the less
progressive mills naturally rallied with righteous unc
tion to the passage of any legislation which would
seem to shift the responsibUity for present conditions
from the factories to the parents. Yet it is evident that,
although the parents have been part offenders, the
factories have been the principals. The parents have
often been too ignorant to be responsive to higher
industrial standards. The factories, however, are
controlled and administered by men of intelUgence
and property. Neither ignorance nor poverty can
be urged as an excuse for the persistent activity with
which so raany of their representatives have thronged
the lobbies of Southern legislatures in the effort to
defeat such an elementary law as the prohibiting of
factory labor for children under twelve. By the
advocates of protective legislation such an age limit
was felt to be inadequate. But in view of the vigor
and power of the opposition a twelve-year lirait was
regarded as the best obtainable result. Indeed it is
cause for congratulation that such a measure of suc
cess should have been secured, and that within so
short a period, in localities in which the problems
presented by the factory were of such recent growth,
eight States of the South should once for all have
abandoned the old laissez-faire conception of indus
trial evils, and should have accepted, at least in its
negative application, the principle of social responsi
bility in reference to the industrial status of the child.^
1 While many of the younger children are being excluded from the
mills by legislation, many more are being excluded and aided through
the moral pressure created by the agitation for protective laws.

112 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
In Georgia, legislation has been delayed, but a rapidly
maturing pubUc sentiment will soon secure the needed
law. Here, as in the States which have already acted,
there is occasion, however, for clear and insistent
reply to the pleas by which some of the representa
tives of the factories are still attempting to lull the
social conscience. Even where legislation has taken
place, the old objections still arise, partly as a criti
cism of existing laws and partly as a protest against
their full enforcement.

Ill
Still we hear the contention, sometimes upon the
lips of well-meaning raen, that legislation restricting
the labor of the child is " paternalisra," is usurpation
of the functions of the parent. But the right of the
parent is not the only truth of our deraocratic institu
tions ; these institutions rest also upon the right of
the child. The right of the child to Uve is only a
part of its right to be a child. The State which pre
vents a parent from killing a child by poison or from
maiming a child by a blow, may alsoprevent a parent
from kilUng or injuring the child by enforced and
unnatural labor. The lighter duties of the home and
the farm, duties which are half play, may often con
stitute no injury to children of tender years. And
yet we must remember that among the most dis
tinctive of the rights of the little child is the divine
right to do nothing. An abnormal tension upon
muscles and nerves, in the period of immaturity, is
an injury to all life, whether animal or human. To

IV THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND CHILD LABOR 113
the human organism, with its greater delicacy, the
peril is of course the greater. Immunity from such
a burden is, for the young, a physical and natural
right. All nature and aU society are organized upon
the basis of the recognition of this right. It is a
right which is much more important to the home and
to society than the right of the parent to shift the
burdens of the breadwinner to the shoulders of his
defenceless children. The State's protection of such
a right involves, not the restriction, but the enlarge
ment of liberty. It means the extension rather than
the negation of freedom, and its enforcement is not
paternalism, but democracy.
The democratic doctrine of the freedom of contract
is a good doctrine. But no wise democrat will try to
make this doctrine both iniquitous and absurd by
giving it as an instrument of domestic constraint,
into the hands of ignorant or idle or unscrupulous
parents. As was declared long ago, by such an indi
vidualist as John Stuart Mill, "the doctrine of free
dom of contract in relation to the child can mean
little more than freedom of coercion."
The advocate of industrial liberty may well ask.
How many of our younger children are clamoring for
the " right " to labor in the mills .'' I know of one
little girl who, tempted by a few pennies, cried to go
in. The next week she cried to come out. But
those sturdy foes of " paternalism " who so loudly
asserted her right to go in had nothing to say about
her right to come out. The real befrienders of her
Uberty, and of liberty in the State, may well be
chiefly concerned as to her right to come out.
There is no essential conflict between the right of

114 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
the parent and the right of the child, for the guarding
of the child's liberty will, through the increase of its
permanent efficiency, redound to the distinct advan
tage of the parent; but if such a conflict of rights
should arise, society must find its primary interest in
the assertion of the right of the child to its child
hood — for the child constitutes both the heritage of
the past and the promise of the future.
The movement of a population from industrial
dependence to industrial competence, frora distress
and poverty to comfort and property, is not a process
of ease for any of its elements. Above all, the indus
trial readjustment of a population, moving from the
conditions of agriculture to the conditions of manu
facture, raust bear with severity upon every form and
aspect of the faraily Ufe. But this process, however
painful, raust be adjusted with the maximum of com
passion to the lives of the helpless and defenceless.
The chief burden of this readjustment should not be
laid upon the child. The life of the child should be,
not the point of the severest pressure and the acutest
suffering, but the point of chief protection. And yet
I have knowledge, and every close observer of our
factory conditions has knowledge, of dozens of grown
men who pass their days and nights in idleness and
dissipation, while they live upon the wages of their
tender children.
This is partly due to the inhumanity of the man.
It is also due, however, to the indirect operation of
the system of child labor. A well-known observer
tells us that "a pathetic feature of the raoveraent
which is turning the mountaineer farmers into mill-
hands is the fact that no regular employment is fur-

IV THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND CHILD LABOR 115
nished to the men by the raUls. The women and
children all find places in the factories, but the men
are left with nothing to do but to care for the little
kitchen garden and carry the lunch pail to the family
at the raUl at noontime. The mills could employ
them, but they seem content with their self-imposed
tasks." 1 While the statement that " no regular em-
ployraent is furnished to the raen by the miUs " is not
wholly true of the mills in many of the sections of
the South, yet, as the statistics would indicate, the
tendency to put the economic burden partly upon the
defenceless merabers of the family naturally operates,
among the ignorant, as a temptation to the father to
shift that burden entirely to the woman and the chil
dren. This tendency represents a lowering of the stand
ard of parenthood Which the State cannot well ignore.
Aside from the direct benefits of legislation, the ex
pression of the interest of the State in the freedom
and the welfare of the child must react upon the
sentiment and practice of the family. Just as the
concern of the State for the welfare of the child,
expressed in the provisions for public education, has
actually deepened the interest in private education,
so the pressure of a higher ideal of solicitude, through
a considerate measure looking to the relief of the con
ditions of child labor, must react upon the standard
of parenthood, will lend a new and sweeter dignity to
childhood in the homes of the ignorant, and wUl bring
to the aid of the conscience of the father the whole
some forces of legal exaction and of social expecta-
1 See an address by Frank Leake (1900) before the Manufacturers'
Club of Philadelphia, Pa. (p. 14).

ii6 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
tion. The humblest home will come to reflect that
ideal of the value and promise of the child which has
become articulate in the judgment of society.
We may still expect to hear, at times, the reiterated
claim that child labor is " necessary " to the family.
It involves, however, so serious a confession that it is
now expressed with much less confidence than of old.
There wUl be fewer and fewer mills which will wish
to admit, explicitly, that they in fact pay an adult
wage so low as to force the economic burden of the
family upon the frailest and the youngest. It does
not sound well, and it is not true.
A weU-known expert has declared that he has had
direct knowledge of numbers of mills " making prof
its of 35 to 40 per cent, and some close to 100 per
cent, per annum on the capital invested." ^ Making
every allowance for any possible element of exaggera
tion, can so profitable an industry for one moraent
present the plea that it must fix its adult wage at
so low a point as to force the family, in the mere
struggle for existence, to throw the burdens of em
ployment upon its children under twelve .¦¦ Is such
an enterprise the instrument of our industrial awaken-
1 Address by Mr. Frank Leake (1900) before the Manufacturers'
Club of Philadelphia, p. 15. The year to which Mr. Leake refers was
one of exceptional prosperity, and later years would not show so large
a margin of profit, — but the rapid and continuous development of
cotton mills at the South is ample evidence that the business is not a
"failing venture," and that if there exists among the operatives an
economic necessity for the labor of little children, the responsibility for
that need rests squarely upon the mills. The profits of the mills, the
profits of any legitimate industry in America, easily justify an adult
wage which — under any normal conditions — will relieve the younger
children of the family from the burdens of sustained and confining
labor.

IV THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND CHILD LABOR 117
ing.' Our factories cannot long oppose the protec
tion of our children upon the ground that the chil
dren, and that the very standards of our industrial
life, are in need of protection from the factories.
There has been little plea that the raills have been
seriously dependent upon the younger children.
Certain factories have looked upon their eraployment
as an advantage, but by the greater number of ex
perienced operators their labor has been regarded as
peculiarly unreliable and expensive. Yet the raills,
as a whole, have clung to the younger children as
long as it was possible to do so, partly for the purpose
of training the child for the work, and partly for
the purpose of "holding the family." Both these
arguments seem to be gradually yielding, however,
to the argument for conservative legislation. It is
true that the chUd's fingers gain a certain added
dexterity from early work; but this advantage at
one end is more than offset by the dulling effect of
exacting labor upon the immature; by the increase,
at the other end, of premature seniUty and the con
sequent shortening, not only of productive capacity,
but sometimes of Ufe itself. Even where Ufe lasts
on — and there are observers who claim that child
labor has no effect upon the mere period of expec
tation — the victim of the child-labor system is early
counted among the relatively incapable.
I say the " relatively incapable," because, whUe he
may continue to do the labor of the child, he usually
fails to advance very far into the activities of the
man. There are exceptions to this rule. But the
canons of social security cannot be based upon ex
ceptions. The abnormal strain of premature labor

li8 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
induces premature development, and, as a rule, pre
mature development results in arrested development.
To the industry itself, dependent in all its higher
and more profitable forms upon the skill and effi
ciency of its operative class, there is neither wisdom
nor security in a policy which contributes to such
conditions. Nor will it serve, as an objection to a child-labor
law, to maintain that the mill must grant eraploy
ment to the younger children in order to hold the
faraily. Incredible as it raay seera, the demand for
the using of the children has come in raany instances
from the raills rather than from the parents. But
there have also been cases in which the " good mill "
has been placed under pressure from the parents,
the parents threatening to go to other mills unless
their younger children were admitted to labor. Such
an instance, however, instead of proving an objection
to a law excluding the younger children frora em
ployment, is in itself an argument for the enactraent
of the law. The passage of the law has a tendency
to put every raill under the sarae economic standard,
makes futile and impossible the threat of the parents
to go to other mills (inasmuch as the " other mills "
would also be subject to the law), and upholds the
juster regulations and the more wholesome condi
tions of the progressive factory.
One of the most serious phases of the Southern
factory system, especiaUy as that system touches the
life and fate of the child, lies in the habit of "long
hours." I have known mills in which for ten and
twelve days at a time the factory hands — children
and all — were caUed to work before sunrise and

TV THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND CHILD LABOR 119
were dismissed from work only after sunset, labor
ing frora dark to dark. I have repeatedly seen
them at labor for twelve, thirteen, and even fourteen
hours per day. In the period of the holidays or at
other "rush times " I have seen chUdren of eight and
nine years of age leaving the factory as late as 9.30
o'clock at night, and finding their way with their own
little lanterns, through the unlighted streets of the
mUl village, to their squalid homes. It was for the
correction of the evil of night work quite as much
as for the establishment of an age Umit that Southern
sentiment has recently been aroused.
In Alabama the campaign for a child-labor law
was organized under the leadership of a voluntary
State committee, including within its personnel rep
resentatives of the Church, the press, the judiciary,
the labor unions, and the mercantile and banking
interests of the State. The effort for the passage
of a child-labor law was defeated before the legisla
ture of 1900, largely through the skilful and aggres
sive opposition of the representative of one of the
New England factories in Alabama.^ The defeat of
the bUl served, however, only to increase the activity
of its advocates.^ The organization of the committee
^ A correspondence in reference to the partial responsibility of New
England for the opposition to child-labor laws at the South will be
found in the Appendix (B) to this volume, p. 309.
^ Explicit acknowledgment should be made of the work performed
at this time by the special agent of the American Federation of Labor,
Irene Ashby Macfadyen. Mrs. Macfadyen (then Miss Ashby) was
subjected — as an outsider and as a "labor representative " — to some
criticism, but her single-hearted devotion to her cause was supreme ;
and while she left the State in 1901, her able and conscientious work
contributed in no small degree to the ultimate success of the bill.

I20 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
was Strengthened and enlarged. An aggressive effort
was made to create a literature of the subject, a
literature which raight be available not only in Ala
bama but throughout the South, a number of pam
phlets were prepared upon the several phases of the
argument, and nearly thirty thousand copies were
freely circulated. The press of the South, almost
without exception, responded to the emergency. The
women's clubs, the Christian clergy, the labor unions,
and the representatives of a few of the mills, united
with earnest men and women of almost every class
in the demand for a conservative measure of legisla
tion. When the legislature of 1903 assembled at
Montgomery, the manufacturers met at the capital,
appointed a committee to represent them, and agreed,
through their committee, to enter into a discussion
of terms. The method of personal conference was
at once accepted in the hope that a bill might be
decided upon which would command — before the
legislature — the support of all the parties in interest.
A bill was agreed upon, signed by the representatives
of both sides, and passed by the General Assembly.
It did not satisfy either of the contestants, but the
advocates of legislation accepted it as the best meas
ure then obtainable. It prohibits child labor in fac
tories — save under a few exceptional conditions —
to children under twelve, prohibits any night work
for those under thirteen, limits the night work of
those under sixteen to forty-eight hours per week,
provides for the registration of the names and ages
of all minors in employraent, and affixes penalties
upon the parents for false registration of ages, and
upon employers for violations of the law. It is to

IV THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND CHILD LABOR 121
be noted that it totally, prohibits night work only for
those under thirteen and that the law provides no
special system of inspection. Upon these phases
of the biU the Chairman of the Child-labor Com
mittee expressed himself as follows: —
" The Alabama bill was a compromise. For ex
ample, the original measure totally prohibited night
work for all the children under sixteen years of age.
The representatives of the manufacturers, in the con
ference between the committee of the manufacturers
and the representatives of the Child-labor Comraittee,
refused to accept this provision, and even declined to
allow the prohibition of night work for children as
young as fourteen. They insisted that the limit
should be put down to thirteen years. I think that
the insistence of the manufacturers upon this point
clearly indicates that there is a fallacy somewhere in
the claim that our manufacturers have been exclu
sively the representatives of the tenderest philan
thropy. " Many of our factories are opposed to night work.
Many of the strongest men among the manufac
turers have never worked a little child after six or
seven o'clock at night. One must confess, however,
to a certain amount of disappointraent that the
strongest and best raen should so far yield to the
influence of the raen representing lower standards
that a coraraittee representing the manufacturing
interests of the whole State should demand as an
inexorable condition of legislation that the proposed
law should permit the continuation of night work for
children of thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen years.
" As to the plans for the future, and as to whether

122 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
or not we will ask for a system of state inspection,
these things depend upon the course of the mill men.
A comraittee of gentleraen, formally appointed to
represent the factories, have agreed in writing to the
terms of the law. I shall not assume that they are
going to go back on the word which they have thus
solemnly given, given not to me especially or to
our committee, but to the whole people of the State.
I shall assume that the law will be obeyed until I
learn that it is violated." ^
In Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina there
are partial — though inadequate — provisions for in
spection. As the evidences of non-compliance arise
and are accumulated, the system of State inspection
will be introduced throughout the South where it
does not exist, and will be strengthened where it
does exist, — for the people of the Southern States,
whatever their limitations, are not given over to indif
ference or to commercialism. The very name of
" reforra," under the exploitations of the reconstruc
tion period, was made odious to them. They have
not been farailiar with the social problems presented
by manufacturing enterprises, and they have been
without legislative precedents for the correction of
industrial wrongs ; but the South has been aroused
upon this issue, and the people of the Southern States
— if they are in earnest about anything — are to-day
in earnest about the liberties and the opportunities of
the child.
The South cannot and will not provide millions of
revenue at one end of her social system, in order to
give her children schools, and permit any industry,
1 See the issue of Charities, New York, May 2, 1903, pp. 454, 455.

rv THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND CHILD LABOR 123
however important, to stand at the other end of that
system and shut up her children in the factory.
Those who have contended for industrial reforms
have conceived these reforms as an integral element
of educational progress, and they have conceived
both these aspects of advancement, the movement
for industrial liberty and the movement for the
"schools of the people," as but two phases of the
one underlying, essential direction of Southern life,
the movement toward a truly democratic order.
The system of child labor, especially at the South,
is at war, not only with the welfare of the child,
the parent, the industry, but with democracy itself.
It stands, not only for arrested development in the
individual, for ignorance and industrial helplessness,
but for arrested development in the social class to
which the child belongs. These have been the white
non-participants of the older civilization. The greater
number of them, as indicated in the opening chapter
of this volume, are now being incorporated within
the general body of deraocratic life. They are be
coming conscious participants in the fulness and free
dom of their century. ' Those who have become
involved in the industrial movement represented
by the mill might well find through the raUl, — as a
few have done, — not only raore to eat and raore to
wear, but more to live for. The raill might well be
to all, as it has been to some, the instrument of their
transplanting, — out of a life of barren and isolated
non-participation into a Ufe of fruitful and generous
relationship with raen, with work, with the rewarding
world. But it has too often seemed to be the policy of
the factory to save only in order that it might consume.

124 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
The isolated faraily is called in from the barren
lands about its rural cabin, but too often it is re
deemed from isolation only that its helplessness may
bring profit to the instrument of its redemption. It
is put to dwell within the factory enclosure ; its in
stinctive desire to live somewhat to itself, to own a
little land, to have a home, is denied ; it must be " the
corapany's " tenant, it raust — usually — trade at " the
company's store," its children are to go upon "the com
pany's roll." The child is trained almost from infancy
into a certain human and economic dependence upon
one particular industry. If it have a few months,
now and then, for schooling, it must go to " the com
pany's school." If the family go to worship, there
is at the larger mills " the company's church," a
chapel in which the salary of the minister and his
helpers is defrayed by the sarae resourceful and gen
erous " company " — the company, by the way, which
has charged that the enactraent of a child-labor law
would be paternalism !
Here and there the exceptional child, through an
exceptional virility, rises out of the enfolding powers
of the system ; here and there a life escapes. But
as a rule the system is effective; and the familiar
saying, " once an operative, always an operative,"
rings all too seriously true. The operatives remain
a fixed and semi-dependent class. One manufacturer
bluntly informed me that he wished thera to remain
so, upon the double ground that they would then
" never organize and would never want or get high
wages." "My business," said he, "is a low-wages
business." I will not charge that his temper is repre
sentative. Many of the manufacturers honestly and

IV THE INDUSTRIAL REVIVAL AND CHILD LABOR 125
earnestly desire the progress of their people. But
the fact reraains that the factory systera, as a systera,
betrays a tendency to hold its hurabler industrial
forces in a state of arrested development ; which,
from the broader social standpoint and in relation
to the larger life of democracy, raeans an arrested
participation. Here is an eddy in the fuller and
freer current of deraocratic life ; here, in the indus
trial imprisonment of the child, is a contradiction —
however temporary — of those juster and deeper
forces which are claiming the human possibilities
of the individual — however lowly — as elements in
the power and happiness of the State.

CHILD LABOR AND THE INDUSTRIAL
SOUTH

CHAPTER V
CHILD LABOR AND THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH ^
Our subject brings to us a national question. And
yet I must begin what I shall try to say to you this
evening with a disclaimer and an explanation. As
my disclaimer, I would say that I use the word
" national " in no political or federal sense. The con
ditions of industry vary so greatly and so decisively
from State to State and from locality to locality that
the enactment of a federal child-labor law, applicable
to all conditions and under all circumstances, would
be inadequate if not unfortunate.
As my explanation, I would say that I use the
word " national " in that geographical sense in which
we must all say, and with all emphasis, that the prob
lem of child labor is a national problem. North and
South, it belongs to all of us. If the proportionate
number of child workers is greatest at the South, the
actual number of child workers, in the year 1900, was
greater in the one State of Pennsylvania than in all
of the States of the South together. Wherever we
find the factory and the child, we find the working of
those economic and human forces which draw the
1 An address delivered before the National Conference of Charities
and Correction, at Atlanta, Ga., May 9, 1903. Reported stenograph-
ically, and revised for publication.
K 129

130 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
child into the processes of industrial production.
The factory, like every instrumentality of progress,
brings its blessings and its evils. Let us recognize
its blessings. Let us yield to those blessings, potent
and far-reaching as they are, an intelligent and
generous measure of appreciation and applause.
But let us also have an intelligent perception of the
evils of the factory, and let us resolutely bring to
those evils — in the name of our children, our
country, and our industries — such remedies as we
may be able to secure.
While it may be soraewhat depressing for us to
reaUze that the industrial development of our country
bears its curse, it is inspiring to remember that the
realization of this curse has revealed the essential
soundness of the national heart. If child labor is a
general evU, the general recognition of this evil has
brought — in the recent successive victories of child-
labor legislation — the most conspicuous evidence
of the inherent right-mindedness of American life
with which I am farailiar. In Texas, in Alabama, in
South Carolina, in North CaroUna, in Virginia, Il
linois, New Hampshire, New York, — in State after
State, in locality after locality, — the common con
science of the land has pierced the sophistries by
which men would bind the children to the drudgery
of factory and mine, and has written its solicitude and
its compassions in the terms of law.^
Much of this legislation has b^n inadequate. In
1 See • an admirable summary of the child-labor legislation of the
United States in the Hand Book for 1904, compiled by Madeleine W.
Sykes and Josephine Goldmark ; National Consumers' League, 105
East Twenty-second Street, New York City. See also Report of the
U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1902, Vol. II, p. 2347.

v CHILD LABOR AND THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH 131
some States it has represented the effort to reaffirra
and to reenforce the intention of older statutes; in
other States it has represented the first explicit recogni
tion of the State's responsibUity toward the raore
defenceless eleraents of an industrial society, toward
the potential citizenship of the industrial child. In
all cases, however, — whether in response to the
demand for law enactment or for law enforcement, —
the heart of our country. North and South, has shown
itself to be a sound heart, and the soul of the Republic
has kept watch above its children. When we contrast
the recent victories of child-labor legislation, victories
so speedily secured, with the long struggle of the
heroic Shaftesbury, we gather an evidence, a signal
and gracious evidence,, of one of the ennobling dis
tinctions between his generation and our own.
In speaking to you this evening, I wish, however,
to deal as concretely and as definitely as I can with
certain phases of the struggle for legislation in our
Southern States. I have consented to do so, not be
cause I would ignore the evils of the North or would
exaggerate the difficulties of the South, but because an
account of the controversial experience of one section
in relation to a great and vital industrial issue may
be of some possible value to the experience of other
sections. At a very early period in the history of our move
ment for legislation, our proposal of a chUd-labor law
was met by a counter proposal. There were manu
facturers who admitted the existence of evils, who
lamented the prevalence of conditions which they
protested that they were anxious to rectify, but who
assured us that the real remedy was not the prohibi-

132 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
tion of child labor, but the enforcement of compulsory
education. The suggestion possessed an engaging
plausibility. And yet I confess that I believe it to be
well to survey with a watchful interest and a some
what exacting analysis the remedies offered by those
who have permitted, and who raay have profited by,
the very evils to be remedied. Under such condi
tions, the counter proposal is sometimes only the
raost deceptive element in a neat and effective
machinery of estoppel. This impression was not
abated by an examination of the terms in which the
proposal was conveyed. One of the most aggressive
of its advocates was a representative of New England
who has been largely interested in cotton-mill prop
erties at the South. ^ In the columns of the Evening
Transcript of Boston he declared that the thing for
Alabama to do was simply to follow the example of
Massachusetts, pass a law for compulsory education,
and, presto, the problem would be solved. We found,
however, that the physician was not ready for his
remedy. He was careful to add that any compulsory
education law which might be passed in Alabama
should "of course" not become operative till after
the passage of similar laws in the States of North
Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. This enthusi
asm for reform, only on condition that all the rest
of the world will reform too, is soraewhat famiUar to
the students of the history of economic progress.
I do not quite know why the representative of
Massachusetts investments at the South should have
opposed a child-labor law, why he should have felt
compelled to reject one method of reform because
1 See Appendix B, p. 320.

V CPIILD LABOR AND THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH 133
Alabama would not accept another; butmen have been
known to attempt the blocking of a reform which is
clearly possible by the safe and vigorous proposal of
a reform which is impossible. That a child-labor law
was practicable, and that under our local conditions a
compulsory education law was impracticable and im
possible, was evident to the vast majority of the
friends of progress in Alabama.
The counter proposal was as inadequate as it was
impracticable. What would compulsory education
mean in our Southern States ? Would such a provi
sion mean at the South what a similar raeasure would
mean in the States of the North ? It has been so
assumed, and as the proposal has been urged upon
us, our Northern friends have naturally made their
mental pictures, pictures constructed frora the mate
rials of their local experience, in which they have
seen the children freed from the mills by the siraple
operation of a nine months' compulsory attendance
upon the schools. But at the time when that sugges
tion — with such comraendable fervor — was urged
upon the friends of protective legislation, the public
school term of the CaroUnas was but seventy-six days
and the public school term of Alabama was but
seventy-eight days. Those terms are soraewhat longer
now. And yet you can easily see that with so inade
quate a school term this counter proposal of compul
sory education could hardly have been regarded as a
counter remedy. Even if adopted, it would have left
the chUdren of our humbler classes, for the greater
part of the year, entirely available for the factories.
Theprogrararae made possible by this counter proposal
could have been expressed within a sentence, — "For

134 THE PRESENT SOUTH CHAP.
the little children of the poor, three months in the
school, nine months in the mill."
Whatever the advantages of a policy of compulsory
education, I think you will at once agree with me
¦ that such a measure could be no adequate substitute
for a child-labor law. It is obviously true that we
cannot reach a comprehensive bettering of conditions
by the mere enactment of an age limit for eraploy
ment, nor by any of the expedients of a purely nega
tive and corrective legislation. All this we have not
failed to realize. But we have thought it best to do
for the children of the factories the one best possible
thing now obtainable in our Southern States ; for if
we cannot yet secure for every child a fixed attend
ance upon the school, we can at least secure for the
younger children that industrial freedom which will
afford them the possibility of the school. If we can
not compel them to be educated, we can at least
permit them to be educated. And how men who
claim to be in favor of compulsory education can at
the sarae tirae oppose the prohibition of child labor is
somewhat difficult for the uninstructed intelligence to
understand, — inasmuch as the present factory system
of our country with its low wages and its long hours
obviously represents, as it touches the lives of the
children, a systera of compulsory ignorance.
The movement for the prohibition of the labor in
factories of our children under twelve has also been
opposed by what I have regarded as a mistaken com-
raercial prejudice. A few representatives of our
"business interests," under the leadership of some of
the narrower trade journals of the South, have dis
puted the wisdom of protective legislation. Such

V CHILD LABOR AND THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH 135
opposition was inevitable. . It has made plausible
appeals to familiar forces. " Business " is everywhere
a word of mighty oraen. It is altogether natural that
it should be so. At the South, especially, we have
come to look with peculiar appreciation upon those
practical and material forces which have wrought
the rehabilitation of the land. After the desolation
of war, and after the more bitter desolation of the
period which followed war, it is inevitable that the
question of bread-winning should have become with
many of our people a question of absorbing and
paramount importance. "Prosperity," commercial
and industrial " prosperity," has been a name of
mystic and constraining force. To invite " pros
perity " has been a form of patriotism. To alienate
" prosperity " has seemed almost like apostasy.
When, therefore, we offered the proposals of
protective legislation for the children, we were met
with protests. We were greeted with indignant
questions : " Do you not see that this legislation
will touch the cotton factories .¦" " — " Do you not
know that the cotton factories are the agents of
prosperity .' " — " Do you want to compromise or to
arrest the prosperity of the South ? " — " Do you not
know that this child-labor law is an attack upon busi
ness .' " It was thus that we were questioned ; and yet
such questions, I submit to you, were in themselves
as gross and as insidious an insult as was ever offered
to the " business " and the " prosperity " of our
Southern States. For what do they imply .? They
imply, if they raean anything whatever, that there is
some inherent and essential connection between the
prosperity of the South and the labor of little children

136 THE PRESENT SOUTH CHAP.
under twelve years of age. They imply that the busi
ness success of the South is in some way involved in
the right to throw the burdens of employment upon
the immature. They carry the suggestion that our
material progress is dependent upon unwholesome
economic and humanitarian conditions, and that the
development of the South is possibly contingent upon
the prolonged, enforced, and unnatural labor of the
defenceless and the helpless. I resent that imputa
tion. I resent that suggestion not only in the name
of the South at large but in the narae of the business
interests and the conservative commercial forces of
our Southern States ; and I contend that from these
laws to protect our children under twelve no damage
can result to our business interests, — no damage
coraparable to the damage which would result frora
the general acceptance of the irapression that child
labor is the basis of our success, and that with the
restriction of child labor there would follow a restric
tion of our industrial developraent. I solemnly declare
that the forces which are injuring the prosperity and
compromising the industrial repute of the South are
the agencies, political or journaUstic, which have
tended to give currency to that assumption, and
which, by their opposition to protective legislation
for the younger children, have made our progress
synonymous, in many minds, with the baser methods
and the retrogressive poUcies of production. These
are the agencies which, despite their lavish zeal, are
injuring the standing of Southern investments and
Southern properties. And I as solemnly declare that
the men who are to-day befriending the industrial
South are the men, men in comraerce, in the trades,

V CHILD LABOR AND THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH 137
in the professions, men of every phase of contem
porary Southern experience, who in eight States of the
South have rejected this leadership, have welcomed
the prohibition of the labor of the younger children,
have resolved to free their properties from any occa
sion for prejudicial discussion and obUque advertise
ment, and have given notice to the world that the
prosperity of the South is based, not on the labor of
the immature, but on the fertUity of her fields, the
advantages of her climate, her cotton, her ores, her
forests, her waters, and — above all — upon the char
acter and the capacities of her manhood.
We have also been met by the manifestation of
what I must not hesitate to call a false humanitarian
prejudice. We have been assured that " these chil
dren are much better off in the mills than they were
out of the mills." And indeed I confess it to be
somewhat hard to deal with the arguments of those
who end by defending as a benefit what they have
begun by denying as an evil. We were first assured
that there were practically no little children in the
mills. The reports of the Twelfth Census of the
United States^ show that in the States outside
the South the relative number of the cotton-mill
employees under sixteen years of age had, in twenty
years, been reduced frora 15.6 per cent to 7.7 per
cent ; but that in the cotton raills of the South, dur
ing this period from 1880 to 1900, the relative num
ber of the operatives under sixteen years of age had
remained at approxiraately 25 per cent. Yet we
were assured that few of these were under twelve.
Just how many, as a matter of fact, were under
1 See Bulletin No. 215, on Cotton Manufactures.

138 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
twelve, no raan can accurately say. We began our
movement for reforms with every effort to secure the
definite data of exact conditions. Weeks were spent
in laborious investigation, only to find that the evi
dence was contradicted as rapidly as it was collected.
The most notorious facts were subjected to solemn
and peremptory denial. We soon found that our
best recourse in debate, a recourse abundantly con
vincing, was simply to assume what our opponents
were on every hand compelled, conspicuously, to
admit. On one day we might find the representatives
of the factories declaring that the mills contained
practically no children under twelve ; but on the next
day we found them thronging the lobby of the legis
lature to prevent the passage of a law which might
take those under twelve out of the factories. " Why,"
we asked, "do you oppose a law prohibiting some
thing which nobody wishes to do ; why object to
the abridgment of a Uberty which nobody wishes
to exercise ? " Under such persuasions it was hard to
beUeve that there were no factories employing, or
desiring the employment of, raany of the younger
children. And yet these protestations have becorae
an interesting evidence of sensitiveness. It is inter
esting to discover that the employment of the younger
children, the children for whora legislation had been
invoked, was thus denied, emphatically, as an evil.
Yet strangely enough we straightway find that their
employment is admitted and defended as a benefit.
We are told that " these children are much better off
in the mills than they were in the places where they
came from." I question whether it is ever fair to
estimate our duty to the child by the disadvantages

V CHILD LABOR AND THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH 139
of its past. But is the contention true ? Is the labor
of the mills a philanthropic provision for the children
under twelve ? To hear some of our opponents dwell
upon the mill as a philanthropy, you would suppose
the average child could find in the average cotton
mill a comprehensive educational equipment — a sort
of institutional civilizer : — kindergarten, grammar
school, high school, university, — and a trip to
Europe, all in one. Do not believe one word of it !
It is true, in some instances, that the general condi
tion of the child at the raUls is better and happier
than the condition of the sarae child before coraing
to the mills. I say, " in some instances," because in
many cases the child is less fortunate than before.
But, in the cases in which the change is a change to
better things, is the bettering of the fortune of the
child the result of child labor, or the result of the
general bettering of the condition of the faraily ?
Let us be clear about this.
It is true that the outward lot of the child of the
mill family is sometimes better than that of the poor
white child of the country. But where this is true,
it is true not because of child labor, but in spite of it.
There are raen at the East who claira that the condi
tion of the child in the sweat-shop is a " vast improve
ment " on the condition of the child in the crowded
foreign city where it once lived. Does that prove
that the sweat-shop labor of its tiny hands is respon
sible for the change ? No. Is child labor responsible
for the better condition of the factory child .'' Its Ufe
may share in the general improvement of conditions,
but the child, instead of receiving, as childhood
should, the maximum of immunity from distress, and

140 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
the largest freedom which the new environment
affords, is bearing in its tender strength the greatest
burden and the heaviest curse of the new prosperity.
Let us not be guilty of mental confusion. Let us not
credit the good fortune of the f amUy to the misfortune
of the child.
The cotton mills, indeed our factories of every sort,
are bringing their blessings to the South. They are
touching with inspiring and creative power the fate
of some of the poorer people of our isolated locali
ties, are enabling them to shift the industrial basis of
their lives from the conditions of agriculture, in which
they may have failed, to the conditions of manufac
ture, in which I trust they will at length succeed.
Let us grant, not reluctantly but gladly, the possible
blessings of the factory. But let us stick, resolutely
and persistently, to the question now at issue. That
question is not the economic and social advantage of
the factory. Upon that we may be all agreed. The
question now at issue is not the question as to whether
the factory is an advantage, but the question as to
whether the advantages and the blessings of the fac
tory, to the community or to the child, are based upon
the labor of our children under twelve. That is our
question. I yield all legitimate credit to our factories. I
yield instant and explicit tribute to those men among
us — no matter how greatly they may differ from me
upon the question of child labor — who have given of
their abilities and their fortunes to the upbuilding of
the industrial South. But I protest that the economic
and social advantage of the factory has nothing what
ever to do with this question in debate, and I further

V CHILD LABOR AND THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH 141
protest that when these questions are confused, when
men assume that the advantages of the factory to the
comraunity and to the child are based upon the mo
notonous and confining labor of our younger chUdren,
they are wronging not merely the community and
the children but our factories as well.
In the course of this discussion at the South, there
has also been much appeal to the interests of an
undiscrirainating industrial policy. There is much
prejudice against labor unionism. The South, upon
economic and social issues, is intensely and overwhelm
ingly conservative. Because, therefore, the child-labor
bills have had the sympathy of the labor unions, there
have been men who have attacked them as labor
measures. They have opposed a child-labor law be
cause the labor unions have approved it. Such men,
if they foUowed the logic of their argument, would go
back on the Ten Commandraents if the labor unions
should make a declaration of sympathy with the Deca
logue. Now, I hold no brief for the labor unions.
I am free to say, however, that when the capitalist
opposes protective legislation for our chUdren on the
ground that the labor union has approved it, he in
jures the interests of capital far more than he injures
the interests of the union. I can tell our friend the
capitalist — and he is my friend — that just now the
most striking and the most general encouragement of
labor unionism in this section of our country is the
fact that upon the one most vital, most practical,
raost popular industrial issue before the South to-day
labor unionism has got upon the right side, and
" capital " has too often been upon the wrong side.
Strictly from the selfish standpoint of the capitalistic

142 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
interest, what is the inevitable result of the joining of
such an issue ? That result might easily have been
predicted. The popular sympathy, the public opinion
of the South, has been drawn as never before to the
side of labor unionism, and it has come to question, as
never before, some of the too familiar methods and
policies of organized capital. In a conflict between
the organized forces of labor and the organized forces
of the employers, it is absolutely inevitable, as the
whole history of civilization might have informed us,
that the great common, fundamental instincts of
humanity were bound to go to the side which has
represented the need and ihe appeal of the defence
less. I am glad to say that thousands of the business
men of the South have recognized this fact, have
recognized it not only in justice to themselves but in
justice to our chUdren of the raills, and have labored
in season and out of season for wise and righteous
measures of reform.
These are the men who have represented the wiser
and higher conscience of our industrial development.
For we touch at this point certain profounder issues
in the industrial policy of the South than the mere
issue between unionism and capitalism. One is an
issue which touches the ethical assumptions, the
moral standards of our economic progress ; the other
touches the old, old issue between sagacity and
stupidity, between wisdom and folly, between justice
and selfishness, as we deal with the human factors
of industrial greatness.
The South has one great characteristic natural
product — her cotton. In its possession she is with
out a rival. Her monopoly may be chaUenged, but

V CHILD LABOR AND THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH 143
her preeminence will remain. Upon the basis of
this great and characteristic natural product we are
creating a great, characteristic, and coramanding indus
try — cotton manufacture. Its successes and its vic
tories are as inevitable as they are desirable. It can
have no enemies unless we constitute ourselves its
enemies. It can have no perils unless we ourselves
found it in embarrassment and league it with disas
ter. Its growth, its triumphs, its opportunities, its
rewards, its infamy or its glory are a part of the dis
tinctive heritage of our children and of our children's
children. What is the basis of this industry .? What
shall be its economic and moral character ? How are
we settling it and founding it ? This is the issue, the
intimate and inclusive issue, of this question of child
labor at the South. I am interested, therefore, in
the question of child labor, not merely for the sake
of our children of the raills, not raerely because I
have seen and photographed children of six and
seven years who were at labor in our factories for
twelve and thirteen hours a day, not merely because
I have seen them with their little fingers mangled by
machinery and their Uttle bodies numb and listless
with exhaustion, but because I am not wilUng that
our whole economic progress should be involved in
such conditions; and because as a Southern man,
born, reared, and educated in the South, I am
resolved to take ray part, however humbly, in the
settUng of the industrial character of this our great
est industry. Because I belong to the South and
because I love the South, I do not want its most
important and distinctive industry to stand under any
sort of odium, moral or economic. I beUeve that an

144 THE PRESENT SOUTH CHAP.
intelUgent moral interest in the conditions of the fac
tory, and the jealous guarding of its ethical assump
tions, will minister not merely to the humanity of its
standards and the happiness of its operatives, but
to the dignity, currency, and value of its properties.
In the interest of its success as well as in the
interest of its renown, I wish its repute to be as
fair as the white fields of our cotton. Comraand-
ing the economic and moral confidence of the in
vestors in our securities, of the spectators of our
progress, of the enlightened and approving opinion
of mankind, I wish this industry to take its place
among us as one of the noblest as well as one of
the greatest of the productive forces of our century
and our civilization.
We must, moreover, settle once for all the indus
trial policy of the South as that poUcy touches the
human factors of industrial greatness. In thinking
so much about sociology, let us not forget to think
a little about childhood, — nor about childhood only,
but also about the children. The two things are not
synonymous. Such are the academic hypocrisies of
humanity that the "age of chivalry," the age which
talked so nobly and so inordinately of womanhood,
did comparatively little for its women. And our
age, which talks very beautifully of childhood and
the child, is finding in its entrancing preoccupations
much opportunity to neglect its chUdren.
To this neglect the South cannot and — I thank
God — wUl not yield. If the cotton, the crude mate
rial of our industries, is peculiarly the South's, so
the human factors of our industry are also ours.
The children of our Northern mills — as Miss

V CHILD LABOR AND THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH 145
Addams ^ could inform you — are largely the chil
dren of the foreigner. If the Northern States can
legislate to protect the children of the foreigner,
surely we can legislate to protect the children of the
South. I speak not in jealousy of the foreigner —
God forbid! — but I dare not speak in forgetfulness
of our own, of the children of these humbler people
of our Southern soil — a people native to our section
and our interests ; of our own race and blood, slowly
preparing for their share in the advancing largeness
of our life, and worthy through their children of
to-day to constitute an ever increasing factor in the
broader and happier citizenship of our future years.
They are called a " poor " white people ; but from
that knowledge of them which has come through a
long experience of affectionate and familiar contact,
I can say that their poverty is not the essential pov
erty of inward resources, but rather the temporary
and incidental poverty of unfortunate conditions.
They are rich in capacities and aptitudes. The ex
ploitation of their children, though their own igno
rance may sometimes make them a party to its
processes, is a crime not only against the rights of
the defenceless, but a crime against the economic
progress and the industrial future of the South.
Why, the man upon the farm does not put the bur
den of sustained employment upon the immature
among his cattle. Shall we be less soUcitous of our
children.'' If cotton manufacture is to continue to
thrive at the South, it can do so only upon the basis
of the intelligence and efficiency of its operatives.
1 The preceding speaker, Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House,
Chicago.

146 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
Ignorance and helplessness may make the profits of
an hour, but the increasing and abiding wealth of
a great industry lies only in the hands of knowledge,
capacity, and skill. Sustained labor in the factory
has always tended to arrest the raental and physical
development of the child, and so to lower the pro
ductive power of the operative. An industrial State
which throws the burdens of employment upon its
children of tender years burns its candle at both
ends. The South makes comparatively small gains
from immigration. The sacrifice of the childhood of
our poorer people, the exhaustion of their best skill
and of their fullest vigor and intelligence means
nothing less than the exploitation of our one indige
nous industrial population, the real hope of the tex
tile future of our Southern States.
The potential industrial and moral wealth repre
sented by the child belongs, raoreover, not to the
eager avarice of a single industry, but to the growing
body of social opportunities and needs. Society has
need of the children, for it has need of the fullest
woraanhood and manhood. Its right to protect the
child is based upon this need as well as upon the
need of the child. A human life is a continuous
and expanding asset of social promise and fulfilment.
Stooping over the tiny spring, a single man might
drain it at the moraent of its first leap into the sun
light. But Nature hides the spring away; keeps it
within the kindly and secret protection of the cool
forest or the unyielding granite. Thus she nurses it
into charm and fulness. As it flows, it grows. Its
freedom gathers an access of volume and motion as
it runs. Out of its fulness and its freedom, receiv-

V CHILD LABOR AND THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH 147
ing tribute from earth and sky and flower, yielding
tribute to every thirsting thing, the brook leaps at
last, as a tiny pulse, into the river's arm, that it'may
lift somewhat of the burden of the world. So all
charm and all power have come out of a hidden
place. So all life is first enfolded within the protec
tion of a tender and secret hand, that, with every
potential force, it may belong at length to the labor
and welfare of the years. If the spring had been
given in its earliest moment to the thirst of one de
vouring avarice, the valleys would have lost their
noblest and fairest wealth. And yet there are those
who would build the factory, so often the symbol of
our ruthless industrial impatience, over the heart-
springs of the childhood of the South.
The world cannot permit a single industry, or a
half-dozen industries, to hold the child in an eco
nomic status which is out of touch with the assump
tions that underlie the industrial, educational, and
humanitarian organization of our huraan life. Under
these assumptions the function of the child is not
productive but receptive. Upon the preservation of
this function depends the child's future productive
power. Its protection constitutes one of the strong
est as well as one of the holiest interests of civiliza
tion. The reversal of this function, upon a universal
scale, would mean the degradation and extinction of
the race. Within the heart of the child lie the well-
springs of the future. Its freedom raeans the free
dora of our country. Its power, knit through the
slow years of free and happy growth, means the
power of our armies. Its play, its joy, its growing
knowledge, its simple and radiant courage, the smil-

148 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
ing, teasing challenge of its irresponsibilities and
immunities, constitute (if we will preserve them in
their unspoiled freshness) the indestructible sources
of the power, the dignity, the culture, the laughter,
the freedora, of a great people.
For, my friends, these children are no mere factors
of industry. They are vital and personal factors of
our country and of our humanity. They are heirs
with us of this immediate and present day, this day
of vivid human interests, — of imperious reciprocities,
of ever enlarging fidelities between land and land, be
tween class and class, between life and Ufe. They
are the heirs with us of a deeper and more compel
ling patriotism. Back of the patriotism of arms, back
of the patriotism of our political and civic Ufe, there
lies, like a new and coraraanding social motive, the
patriotism of efficiency. Every interest, every insti
tution, every activity of our day must reckon with it.
It is not merely the patriotism of industrial power.
It is the patriotism of social fitness and of economic
value. It is the passion of usefulness. It is the love
of being useful, and, therefore, the love of helping
others into usefulness. The man must be worth
something to his country ; his country raust be worth
something to the world. In the interest of our coun
try and of our world, it covets for every huraan Ufe
that eraancipation which raeans the freeing of capacity.
It is this patriotism which we shall invoke. North
and South, in behalf of every wounded, helpless,
defenceless element of our industrial society. It
realizes that the good of one life comes only out of
the fulness of all life ; that no power is safe which
reposes solely upon the weakness of another; that

V CHILD LABOR AND THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH 149
no liberty is safe which depends upon the slavery of
another; that no knowledge is safe or sound which
bases itself upon the ignorance of another ; and that
no wealth has reached the fulness of its distinction
and its happiness which depends for its existence
solely upon the poverty of others. It is to the im
mediate interest of every raan, that every other man
should have something to give. In so far as every
life becomes a producer and a contributor, every
other life becomes a beneficiary. Thus the meaning
of patriotism is but the nerve and instinct of so
ciety. To bring others into their own believing,
hoping, and loving, — this is religion ; to share with
others the powers of acquiring, and thriving, and
rejoicing, — this is wealth; to open to others the
liberties of thinking, and knowing, and achieving,
— this is education ; to enlarge for others the glory
of Uving, — this is life ; to behold the great throng
ing masses of raen alive and radiant with those ca
pacities and efficiencies which redeem the waste
and silence of the world, — this is indeed the supreme
efficiency, and this I beUeve to be the supreme
patriotism.

THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO

CHAPTER VI
THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO

Politically, there stiU exists "the solid South";
yet, for the more intimate phases of Southern opinion
in relation to the most serious of Southern problems,
no one may speak as a representative authority. In
the presence of the negro, we may say truly that the
mind of the South is of many'rainds. Just as the
negro divides the sentiment of the North, he divides
the sentiment of the South.
Under the different conditions obtaining to-day in
our industrial and political life, from year to year
and from place to place, the negro is different and
the white man is different. In each locality of the
South, the problem is, therefore, a different problem.
Ultimately, of course, the problem is one — is the
rautual social, industrial, and political adjustment
upon the same soil, of two races between whom the
difference in color is perhaps the most superficial of
the distinctions which divide them.
As this fundamental problem, however, is presented
under the concrete working conditions of Southem
life, it assumes a different phase in each State of
the South, in each county of the several States, and
even in the separate comraunities of each particular

154

THE PRESENT SOUTH

county.^ When studied in the city where the white
population slightly outnumbers the black, where
churches and schools are provided, and police pro
tection is abundant, the racial conditions of such a
State as Alabama present one problem ; in an adjoin
ing county, where the negroes outnumber the white
1 "The variety of conditions in different parts of a single State is
often greater than would be imagined. If one were to say that certain
counties of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama contain
fewer negroes than certain counties of New Jersey, Connecticut, Massa
chusetts, or Rhode Island, it might awaken surprise. But the figures
for a number of counties in the South are as follows : —

Total

Negroes

Total

Negroes

Garrett, Md.

17,701

126

Unicoi, Tenn.

5.581

130

"Buchanan, Va.

9,692

5

Union, Tenn.

12,894

79

Graham, N.C.

4,343

26

Van Buren, Tenn.

3.326

37

Fentress, Tenn.

6,106

25

Towns, Ga.

4.748

71

Pickett, Tenn.

5.366

II

Cullman, Ala.

9.554

21

Sequatchie, Tenn.

3.326

37

Winston, Ala.

17,849

7

"The twelve counties contain 90,756 people, of whom 575 are
negroes, a single negro to 1 75 of the population. Nantucket Island,
Mass., contains more negroes than most of these counties.
" But again it may cause surprise to find how small is the proportion
of white people in some counties. In- Issaquena County, Mississippi,
only six people in every hundred are white, and there are five other
counties in which the per cent is less than ten. In fourteen counties
in the South, seven-eighths of the people are negroes; in fifty-four
counties, three-quarters; and in one hundred and eight counties, two-
thirds. The great difference in race proportions in different counties
is shown in Alabama, for example, where the proportion varies from
Winston County, in which there are only seven negroes, to Lowndes,
in which they number over thirty thousand.
" It needs no argument to show that the ' negro problem ' is quite
a different thing in Winston from what it is in Lowndes." — George
S. DiCKERMAN, in the Southern Workman, Hampton, Va., January,
1903.

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 155
people six to one, where both races are poor, where
schools and churches are not numerous or usually
impressive, where the constabulary is necessarily in
adequate, our racial conditions present what may be
readily understood to be a very different problera
indeed. Even in the rural South, the problem, as suggested
by one of ray correspondents, varies from neighbor
hood to neighborhood. It is one thing in those
regions of light and sandy soil where the farms of
the white raan and the negro adjoin, where the white
man's farm is cultivated by his own labor, where the
negro is not to any large extent a dependent class,
and where the relation of master and servant exists
but to a slight degree ; it is another thing where the
negro exists in large numbers as a working class
upon the plantation of the white man. It assumes
still another phase in the regions of black and heavy
soil, where the white man who owns the land finds it
too unhealthful to work his own plantation, and the
large negro population comes into personal relations
only with boss, overseer, or superintendent. In our
mining regions, moreover, where the negro comes
into direct contact with the white man, not as a land
owner or overseer, but as a fellow-laborer, often with
the foreign laborer, we find a different problem still.
The problem differs not only frora locality to locality,
but frora man to man. There is a personal equation
as well as a local equation.
And in addition to a personal and a local equation
there is a class equation. In certain sections of the
South the negroes themselves are different from those
in other sections. Those negroes of Virginia who

156 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
have been reared in proximity to the white popula
tion of the higher type, reflect in aspiration, in
character, in manner, the better qualities of their
environraent. The negroes of other sections who are
the descendants of those inferior slaves that were
" weeded out " of the better plantations and " sold
South," present a far raore difficult situation.
And the white population, also, has its social classi
fications. Between the more intelUgent negroes and
the representatives of the planter-class — the old aris
tocracy — there is little if any friction. But between
the negro of any class and the representative of the
"plain people," the people whose energies are
re-creating the fortunes of the land, whose preju
dices are quite as vigorous as their industry, who
have never known the negro at his best and have too
often seen hira at his worst, — between the new negro
and the new white raan, there is likely to be enraity
and there is very sure to be suspicion. The Southem
white man also presents those marked varieties of
temperament and disposition which go everywhere
with a greater complexity and a deeper refinement of
social organization. He differs also under the chang
ing and instructive forces of travel, of education, of
experience. Frora class to class, frora raan to raan,
as well as frora place to place, what has been called
"the problem of the races" assumes a distinctive
phase and becomes a different problem.
Dwelling upon still another aspect of our Southern
situation, the writer addressed the following words,
in March of 1900, to a representative audience in the
city of Philadelphia : " Under whoUy normal and
natural conditions our race perplexities at the South

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 157
would have been serious enough. You have found
them serious here. Those of you who are famiUar
with Du Bois's book ^ on the subject of ' The Phila
delphia Negro ' know the humiliating difficulties of
the problem in a city which is so resourceful in its
educational and humanitarian provisions that we, of
smaller and poorer communities, are wont to look
upon you as just one great organized compassion.
If here you have found the task one of such sadden
ing perplexity, what will you say of the difficulties of
this task when presented under the conditions of
Southern life .' If the negro in Philadelphia presents
a problem which you have not solved in justice either
to the negro or to yourselves, what would you do
with him under conditions which should multiply by
fifty fold his numbers in your midst, which should
multiply the burden of his illiteracy and should increase
his tendencies to indolence ; under conditions which
should make his freedom the legacy of a desolating
war, under changes which had torn him from one
place in the social organism and had not fitted hira
to another, which had reraoved hira as a slave with
out fitting hira for freedom.? What would you do
with him under conditions which, through the admin
istrative poUcy of his liberators, had then placed him
in the care of those who, representing neither the
conscience of the victors nor the dignity of the van
quished, befriended him solely to despoil his truest
friends ; who, after using hira for the huraUiation of
his master, left him shorn indeed of his shackles, but
1 "The Philadelphia Negro, A Sociological Study," by W. E. Burg-
hardt Du Bois ; Philadelphia, The American Academy of Political and
Social Science, 1899.

158 TPIE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
shorn also of that heritage of care which the weak
should possess in the compassions of the strong ?
What could you have done with a problem, naturally
so difficult, that had been left to you under the con
ditions of military defeat, with its prostrating influ
ence upon social enthusiasm and civic hopefulness ;
under conditions of economic depression, of industrial
exhaustion and personal poverty — compelling the
worthier classes of the white population into so
intense a struggle for rehabilitation that the very
necessities of survival forced the superior race partly
to ignore the weaker; under conditions of antago
nistic legislation from an alien but dominant party
government, and often under the provocations of
harsh and self-sufficient criticism from those who
judged where they could not know, and who advised
where they had not suffered .-' You may not think as
I think, but suppose these were the things you did
think ; suppose you had not only the negro in Phila
delphia, but Philadelphia and the negro together
under such conditions as I have named, conditions
which you yourselves should really view as the great
masses of our people have viewed our conditions at
the South. I think you will see that there is to-day
with us not the negro problem only, under its varied
personal and local phases, but other problems with it,
and I think you wUl understand me, therefore, if I
say that when a man attempts to discuss the negro
problem at the South, he may begin with the negro,
but he really touches, with however light a hand, the
whole bewildering problera of a civilization."
The difficulties of the situation are not simplified
by the fact that this civilization is included within a

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 159
larger civilization and a more democratic order, and
that every problerii of the one necessarily emerges
under its varying poUtical and industrial forms as a
problem of the other. It is still true that there is
one sense in which the problera itself is profoundly
sectional. Locally as well as historically the negro
question is a Southern question. Seven-eighths of
the negro population are in the South, and they are
in the South to stay. . There will be occasional move
ments northward. Long-established negro " colonies"
in cities Uke New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati
will continue to increase in numbers. But these peo
ple, in the mass, and because of the silent, unyielding
sway of climatic and industrial forces, will remain south
of an imaginary Une connecting the cities of Washing
ton and St. Louis. Even within this Southern terri
tory, it is evident that it is the lower South, the South
within the South, which is receiving the largest rela
tive increase in the number of its negroes.
And yet, while this is true, it is also true that there
are two aspects of our question under which it raust
assume a national form. Although the larger pro
portion of the black population lies within the South,
the actual number of negroes at the North is steadily
increasing ; and the national distribution of the negro
as a factor of population involves the national
distribution of the negro as a problem of American
civilization.^ From being a problem which was once
1 The city in the United States having the largest number of negroes
in 1900 was Washington, D.C., with 86,702 ; then follow Baltimore
(79,258), New Orleans (77,714), Philadelphia (62,613), »"<! New
York (60,666). It will be noted that only one city south of Washing
ton has as large a negro population as the city of New York.

i6o THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
accorded a wrong solution in one section of our coun
try, it has become, for every section of our country, a
problem which has received no adequate solution
whatever. The issues presented by the negro in American Ufe
are national, however, in no merely geographical sense.
They are national because of the principles, because
of the industrial and political assumptions, which they
involve. The national welfare is the larger context
of every local problem ; and while the negro question
finds its locaUty in the South, it must find its ultimate
adjustment — if it ever receives adjustment — in the
conscience, the wisdom, the knowledge, the patience,
the courage of the Nation. The problem under its
older form was created by the compUcity of the
Nation. The problem under its later forms has been
created by the deliberate enactments of the Nation.
The Nation, including the South, the West, the East,
the North, cannot be permitted to evade responsi
bilities which it has always been zealous to accept
but which it has not always been so zealous to dis
charge. Least of all can the South be a party to
that evasion. If national action could be really in
spired by the wholesome and constructive spirit of a
truly national policy, could be pursued really in the
interest of the whole people, rather than in the in
terest of sectional bitterness or partisan advantage,
it would bring significant and lasting benefits. Too
often, however, the policies which have been pro
posed in the Nation's name have been so pursued
as to bring the negro into American Ufe as an issue
of sectionalism rather than as an occasion for nation
ality, — nationality of temper, of sympathy, of pur-

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO i6i
pose. It is not enough to say that governraent by
parties is inevitable. There are some crimes of which
even parties ought to be incapable.
I have not hesitated to speak of the presence of
the negro in American life as a "problem." We
have been told that the negro should be regarded not
as a problem but as a man. There is truth in the
suggestion. And yet out of this truth there arises
the problera — he is a raan, and yet a man unUke,
in history and in racial character, the raen about hira.
Every man, white or black, presents a problera. The
problem increases in perplexity when to the charac
teristics of the individual are added the characteristics
which distinguish and differentiate the group — social,
national, or racial — with which he is associated.
When this group is brought into contact with another
group, or with other groups, the elements of com
plexity are increased. The problem grows. Russia's
former serfs — struggling out of bondage in one form
and hardly attaining liberty in any form — present a
Russian problem. Her student-bodies — struggling
for the broadest realities of democracy under auto
cratic conditions — present another problem. Where
the anoraalous conditions are created not frora within
but by forces and eleraents frora without, the problera
is greater still. The Russian in China is a Chinese
problera. The Jew in Russia is a Russian problem.
The white man in Africa is an African problem.
The African in America is, and will be for centuries,
one of the problems of American life.
Nor can we say that the negro presents not a prob
lem but a task. That would be to assume that the
supreme need is the need of resources, material and

i62 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
moral, and that all could be well adjusted if there
were sufficient power and sufficient patience. These,
undoubtedly, are great needs. The task presents,
however, not only the aspects of moral and physical
difficulty but of intellectual confusion. If we all
knew what to do and there were not the strength or
the will to do it, the negro would present a task. Be
cause there is much strength and some wiU, and yet
because no ten men have ever yet agreed as to what
we should all do, the negro presents something more
than a task ; he presents a problera.
Fortunately, there is increasing agreeraent upon the
programme presented by such institutions as Hamp
ton and Tuskegee. And yet this programme is rightly
and obviously but a programme of beginnings. That
is its supreme success ; and that is its Umitation. What
lies beyond.' What, politically and socially, is the
terminus ad quem, the f ar-on result, of such wise and
righteous training.? Before that question raen divide.
It is altogether probable that large numbers of men,
white and black, North and South, have united upon
the support of this prograrame for wholly dissimilar or
for antagonistic reasons. All are agreed that this is
the next step. The next step to what 1 Before that
question will rise all the ancient and lurid spectres
of misapprehension and suspicion.
II
As the negro problem has been presented at the
North and in the South — its more especial local
home — it has apparently assumed, within the past
five years, certain raore acute and raore serious forms.

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 163
To these unfortunate developments the whole situation
has contributed, from the side of the negro and from
the side of the white man. And yet, while it is true
that there are grave evidences of loss, it is equally
true that there are marked evidences of gain. Prog
ress has been coincident with retrogression. Many
of our difficulties are due to the delinquencies of the
negro; quite as many, however, are due to his adr
vanceraent. Nor do the difficulties of the problera
Ue wholly with the negro. At the South, the pro
cesses of social evolution which were accentuated, if
not inaugurated, by the issue of the CivU War had
their profound effect upon the life of the negro
raasses. They have also involved, however, the life
of the white masses, and have set to work within
it certain forces of transformation which, for many
years, must bear with insistent pressure upon the
fortunes both of the negro and of the South. Let
us turn, first of all, to the consideration of some of
the social changes wrought in the masses of negro
life by the issue of emancipation.
Slavery was nothing if not a system of restraint.
This restraint was sometiraes expressed in ignoble
and brutal forras. It was sometiraes expressed in
the forms of a kindly and not ungenerous paternal
ism. But, good or bad, it held the race in check.
It imposed its traditional limitations, it exercised a
directive and restrictive oversight. It was bondage.
This bondage fixed, instinctively, a limit beyond
which the negro must not ascend ; it fixed a limit be
low which the negro must not fall. It operated in
both directions as a check. To the negro who was
inclined to rise into the larger liberties of thought and

1 64 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
knowledge it opposed — it was compelled to oppose
— its barriers. To the negro who was inclined to
descend into the debiUties of inefficiency and crime it
also opposed — it was compelled to oppose — its bar
riers. As the race had come to these shores from a
land of pitiless barbarism, the number of negroes
who tended to faU below the standard of slavery was
probably very much greater than the number who
tended to rise above it. It is evident, therefore, that
for some generations the net result of slavery was
not, in its practical operation, a disadvantage to the
masses of negro life. And yet the deep cry of the
few who would aspire will always possess — in God's
heart and in the heart of all our race — a more im
perious vaUdity than the dark longing of the many
who would descend.
Upon the two tendencies of the negro thus held
in check the effect of emancipation raust be evident.
Restraint withdrawn, negro life is released in two
directions — the smaller number of better negroes is
permitted to rise, and many of them do rise; the
larger number of weaker negroes is permitted to fall,
and raost of thera do fall. It was inevitable.
The South, the country as a whole, is confronted,
therefore, with an upward and a downward tendency.
We are in the presence of two different, two oppos
ing raovements — the one serving at many points and
in many ways to check the other, but each distinct
and each representing the social momentum of
natural and spontaneous forces. The masses of the
race, released from the restraint which slavery im
posed, and isolated, through the pressure of political
exigencies, from the sympathetic guidance of the bet-

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 165
ter South, have shown raany of the tendencies of
raoral and physical reversion. At certain points
within the South, especially at points where the white
population has represented the highest average of
culture and character, these tendencies have been
arrested. But it was to have been expected that,
upon the whole, the raasses of the negroes would first
become worse before becoming better.
And yet the process upward — although the story
of a smaller number — must be borne clearly and
steadily in raind. The failure of great raasses of
men — in the total life of any race — must not ob
scure the achievements of the few. Indeed, to the
historian of the great ventures and experiraents of
civilization, the achieveraents of the few are of more
significance than the failures of the many. For
achievement — even though upon a small scale — is
a demonstration of possibiUties. It gives a starting-
point for constructive theories and policies ; it gives
authority to anticipation.
It is no sraall thing that the illiteracy of the negro
males of voting age has been reduced in the South
ern States from 88 per cent in 1870 to 52 per cent
in 1900 ; and yet it is only when we tum to the more
intiraate victories, here and there, of individual raen
and woraen that we get the full measure of the
negro's promise. Nor would I be disposed to seek
that promise in the rare and exceptional attainments
of the men of genius. Neither in the marked reduc
tion of the illiteracy of the masses nor in the marked
distinction of such artists as Tanner or Dunbar or
such leaders as Washington, Grant, and Walker can
we seek the sure evidences of a people's essential

1 66 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
progress. All promise and all attainment are worth
while, but the only adequate measure of social effi
ciency and the only ultimate test of essential racial
progress lies in the capacity to create the home ; and
it is in the successful achievement of the idea and the
institution of the family, of the family as accepted
and honored under the conditions of Western civiliza
tion, that we are to seek the real criterion of negro
progress. For the very reason that the test is so severe — and
yet so instinctively American — the weaknesses of
the race will seem conspicuous and formidable.
American society, as a whole, stands not unscathed
in the white light of its own ideal. The heritage of
the negro. — his heritage from slavery and from the
darker age which preceded slavery — has given him
but sraall equipment for the achievement of this task.
And yet the negro horae exists. That its existence
is, in many cases, but a naive pretence, that negro
Ufe often proceeds upon its way with a disregard —
partly immoral, partly non-moral — of our accepted
marital conditions, is evident enough. And yet those
who would observe broadly and closely will find a
patiently and persistently increasing nuraber of true
farailies and real homes, a number far in excess of
the popular estimate, homes in which with intelli
gence, probity, industry, and an admirable simplicity,
the man and the woman are creating our fundamental
institution. Scores of such homes, in some cases
hundreds, exist in numbers of our American com
munities — exist for those who will try to find them
and will try, sympathetically, to know thera. But one
of the tragic elements of our situation lies in the fact

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 167
that of this most honorable and raost hopeful aspect
of negro Ufe the white coraraunity, North or South,
knows practically nothing. Of the destructive fac
tors in negro life the white coraraunity hears to the
uttermost, hears through the press and poUce court ;
of the constructive factors of negro progress — the
negro school, the saner negro church, the negro home
— the white community is in ignorance. Until it does
know this aspect of our negro problem it may know
more or less accurately raany things about the negro ;
but it cannot know the negro.
The white raan. North as well as South, feels — and
feels wisely — that the social barrier should remain.
So long, however, as it remains it shuts out not only
the negro from the white raan but the white man
from the negro. Seeing the negro loafer on the
streets, the negro man or woman in domestic service,
the negro laborer in the fields, is not seeing the negro.
It is seeing the negro on one side. It is seeing the
negro before achievement begins, often before achieve
ment — the achievement which the world esteems —
is possible. Knowing the white man only under those
conditions would not be knowing the white man.
Yet this side of the negro is usually the only side of
which the white community has direct and accurate
knowledge. It is the knowledge of industrial con
tact, and of industrial contact upon its lower plane.
It is not the knowledge of reciprocal obUgations, of
social revelatien. And at the point where this lower
contact ceases, at the point where the negro's real
efficiency begins, and he passes out of domestic ser
vice or unskilled employraent into a larger world, the
white community loses its personal and definite infor-

1 68 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
mation ; the negro passes into the unknown. As the
negro attains progress, he, by the very fact of prog
ress, removes the tangible evidence of progress frora
the immediate observation of the white community.
Thus the composite idea, the social conception of the
negro which is beginning to obtain among us, is de
termined more largely by the evidences of negro
retrogression or negro stagnation than by the evi
dence, the real and increasing evidence, of negro
advancement. Nor is the inadequacy of the composite picture of
the negro due only to the way in which the social
cleavage between the races imposes its limitation
upon the vision of the white community. The in
adequacy of the picture is due to subjective as well
as to objective causes. A partly mistaken concep
tion of the negro has resulted frora the fact that
the white world does not see the negro at his best ;
it has also resulted from the fact that the white world
which now sees the negro habitually, which judges
him and speaks of him most constantly, is not infre
quently the white world at its worst. How large a
number of the white world, upon its educated side,
have ever really seen the life of a negro home, or the
life of the negro school, or the Ufe of the saner negro
church ? The conception of the old-time darky is a
national heritage, a heritage more sacred to the South
than those outside the South can always understand.
That conception, however, as it lives in the conscious
ness of our domestic and Uterary life, is due not to
one factor only but to two. It was the result, like
all conceptions, of the thing seen and the seeing eye.
It was not due alone to the negro of our older age.

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 169
It was due to the eye which looked upon hira, which
judged broadly his qualities of character, which
had regard to his fidelities, and which understood,
with the huraor, the patience, the magnanimity of an
educated class, the occasions of the negro's failure.
The conception of the old-tirae darky is thus a
double contribution, the contribution of the better
negro as known and interpreted to us through the
better heart of the older South.
But the mind of that older South no longer domi
nates the visual habits, the racial prepossessions of
Southern Ufe. The political and industrial reorgani
zation of the South has formed a new democracy, a
democracy which has brought into its fellowship the
neglected masses of the white population, which has
been forced to seek its basis of organization upon the
one ground of the unity of race ; and within this larger
white world — alert, vigorous, confident, assertive —
many of the old attitudes of spirit have passed away.
An educated minority may transfer to the crude mul
titudes of a new order a sense of power, a sense of
freedom, a sense of responsibility, but not its more
intiraate phases of teraper, of individuaUty — its ur
banities, its genial huraor, its share in those perva
sive charities which spring frora a sense of leisure
and frora an assured consciousness of power, quite as
much as from a fertile earnestness of heart.
The old South does last on within the new, the old
South with its magnanimity and its poise ; and, here
and there, in numberless raen and woraen and in
many establishments of city and country, one raay
still observe the persistence and charra of that amaz
ing patience with which the South has served the

I70 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
negro while the negro has served the South. And
yet these forces are no longer dominant. The new
world which has resulted from our political and in
dustrial reorganization has brought into power vast
multitudes of the unlettered and the untrained, a
white population possessing all the pride, all the
energy, all the assertiveness of the older order, with
out its experience or its culture. It does not always
rule. It has usually been so wise and so sincere as to
choose its leaders froiti the ranks of trained and at least
educated men ; but among these it has usually chosen
those who were fitted to understand it and to serve it
rather than those who would instruct.it. Have North
ern constituencies wrought otherwise ? But when the
cruder forces of the South have found themselves in
the possession of nobler leaders, chosen by them or
chosen for them by the occasional influence of the
commercial and professional classes, the masses of the
people have been quick to respond to the appeal of
every free and upbuilding purpose ; and here Ues the
promise of the future. As yet, however, it is too soon
to expect that the new and untrained elements of the
white democracy will view the negro otherwise than
from their own personal and present and actual stand
point. In States where, in many localities, more than
20 per cent of the white men of voting age are ilUter
ate ; where the rural population which can read and
write does actually read and write but Uttle ; where
large numbers of the people have known nothing
of the slave except as the representative of a hated
competitive labor, and where the negro in freedom
has lost many of the virtues of his bondage, it is im
possible to suppose that ignorant men will judge the

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 171
negro, or any other factor of experience, otherwise
than ignorantly. Even where knowledge is greater
and experience broader, the popular conception of
the negro is largely determined by the irapressions
that arise among the ignorant. Almost every family
makes, in thought and expression, an " honorable ex
ception " of the servants of its own household, the
negroes it really knows; but the collective concep
tion, the composite picture of the negro, is too often
the negro as interpreted through the mediura of an un
trained public opinion, an opinion sometimes voiced in
the rant of the political hustings, in sensational press
reports, in the rumors of the street. The mind of
the white world, as it sees and judges the negro, is
thus not the raind of the white world at its best. It
is a mind now influenced by the presence within it
in abnormal proportions, of unsympathetic and untu
tored forces ; forces which are gaining daily, however,
in both sympathy and training; forces which may
well be the occasion, therefore, of no inconsiderate
pessimism but of a reasonable and wholesome faith,
a faith which the true citizen of a democracy gives,
and is bound to give, to every social possibiUty of his
country's Ufe. Ill
We may be tempted to say, therefore, that the
kindUer conception of the old-time negro resulted
from the fact that the white world at its best was
looking upon the negro at his best ; the harsher con
ception of the present negro resulting frora the fact
that a white world which is not at its best is looking
upon the negro at his worst. The generalization

172 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
thus expressed may be too clearly drawn, and yet
it is sufficiently evident that just at this period in the
history of the South the two races have entered
into new conditions, and that under these conditions
their relations to each other are at many points the
relations of disadvantage. The necessary social
cleavage between the races forces the negro — as he
rises — to rise out of the familiar view of the white
community. The race secures little credit for its
actual, its most significant, gains. The white world
has been influenced both in thought and in action,
not merely by the fact that negro progress has been
obscured, but by the fact that its own vision has been
affected by the rapid and overwhelming rise of a
great class — possessing the hereditary antipathies
of race, accentuated by the economic antipathies of
all free labor toward the labor of the slave. To the
resulting conception of negro life, to the inadequacy
of this composite picture of negro experience, — limi
tations due to the thing seen and to the seeing eye,
— we may attribute sorae of the serious signs of popu
lar exasperation, and raany of the more recent evi
dences of racial friction.
That these evidences have not been confined to the
Southern States is now one of the commonplaces of
current observation. And where racial irritation has
arisen at the North, it has been due largely to the same
causes, to the popular ignorance of the better phases
of negro life, and to the preponderance, in many of
our American cities, of uncontrolled and " difficult "
human masses. Yet there is present there another
factor which is also present in the South, and
which contributes its sinister and baffling element

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 173
to the composite picture upon which I! have just
dwelt. This factor is the " criminal " negiro ; numeri
cally not a large proportion of the race, but as a
factor of disturbance one of the baneful as well as
one of the most formidable of social forces.^ The
number of such negroes is relatively small, and yet
it has assumed a morbid and unfortunate importance.
To this importance three influences have contributed.
First, the distinctively criminal negro is often
guilty of unusual and abnormal crimes. He is asso
ciated in the pubUc mind with one crime, particu
larly, which is unspeakable in its brutality and
infamy. It is true that this crime has sometimes
been charged against the innocent ; that is true of all
crimes. It is also true — as has been suggested —
that the number of such crimes is relatively small ;
and yet it raust not be forgotten that, in order to
shield the victim, the suppression of the news of this
crime is often as significant as its exaggeration. But
the fact that the crirainals of this class are so few in
nuraber, should raake the attitude of the public raind
in deaUng with them a task of simplicity and ease.
And yet, because of the deep forces of inter-racial
suspicion, a crime which should be the very last
crime to present any other than an essential human
^ Negro crime seems to be proportionately greater at the North
than at the South — due probably to the fact that at the North the
negro is found under the conditions of the city, while at the South he
lives chiefly under the simpler and more wholesome conditions of the
country. The percentage of crime is, in both sections, much larger for
the negro than for the white population, and the statement of the text
as to the small proportion of criminal negroes refers only to the degen
erate roving type, peculiarly irresponsible, and guilty of the more serious
offences.

174 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
issue betv^een good and evU, has been made one of
the most complex and difficult of "questions," the
occasion for some of the most irreducible points
in the discussion of racial issues. I think it must
be fairly said that the difficulties of the situation are
chargeable to false conditions in the public opinion
of both races. Negro opinion, organized and unor
ganized, has seemed to be too protective; white
opinion has too often been lawlessly retributive.
That negro opinion, unorganized and uninstructed,
should be inclined to protect even the more degraded
criminal raay be easily explained though not excused.
A weaker race constantly subjected to indiscriminate
attack is likely to undertake an indiscriminate defence.
The very intensity of external criticism produces, in an
ignorant and untrained human mass, a morbid and
exaggerated solidarity. It is the blind moving of the
instinct of self -protection. The race, however mis
takenly, feels that it raust "stand together." A dis
position upon the part of the white world — the
stronger race — to judge the negro with firra but
clear discrimination and to administer exact justice
under the law would probably result in a gradual but
effective counter movement within the negro masses,
a movement to yield the guilty up to the processes of
trial. It is not, however, to the interest of the negro
that this movement should await the arrival of millen
nial conditions among the white race, and that the
development of a firmer attitude toward negro crime
should be delayed until the arrival of juster class
conceptions. The negro often assumes that he alone
is subjected to the prejudices of class, whereas almost
every element of society is compelled to face them

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 175
and to bear with them. The Jew has confronted
thera for centuries, in Araerica the Gerraan faces thera
araong the Irish, the Irishman faces them among the
Germans, the Italian meets thera at every point, and
— long after national idiosyncrasies have been
effaced — the poor man encounters thera in the pres
ence of the rich man, the rich man confronts them
in the jury composed of poor men.
It is in the negro's own interest that the negro
criminal should receive the penalty of his crime, for
the protection of the criminal means the demoraliza
tion of every social standard. In rural sections of
our country there is often the fear that the accused —
if surrendered — will be ruthlessly punished without
trial; but the tendency among the negro raasses to
protect the crirainal is also operative in the cities —
even in cities like New York or Boston or Phila
delphia — where there is every assurance that trial
will be accorded.
To negro opinion, as expressed in the formal
declarations of representative assemblies, we must
naturally look for a definite quality of leadership.
Yet these declarations have left much to be desired.
The denunciations of wrong usually place the word
"alleged" before all direct reference to serious of
fences, and the deprecations of " alleged " crime are
usually coupled with conspicuous counter charges
against the similar crimes of white raen. The domi
nant note, even to sympathetic observers, has seemed
defensive, exculpatory, rather than decisively cor
rective ; an appeal to the world rather than an honest,
wholesome word at home. More recently these ex
pressions have seemed to take a better tone, and

176 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
under the rapidly broadening influence of the wiser
and stronger negro leaders, I believe we shall soon
find that the organized opinion of the race will
reflect the standards of a sympathetic but effective
self -correction.
And how has the white race — in its knowledge
and pride and power — dealt with the problera of the
negro crirainal .'' Surely, not too well. The average
crirainal, the negro charged with coramonplace or
farailiar crimes, is — in the South at least — at no
unusual disadvantage. If brought before the court
he is sometimes punished with undue severity ; and
he is sometimes punished with absurd leniency.
Petty crimes are often forgiven him, and in countless
instances the small offences for which white raen are
quickly apprehended are, in the negro, habitually
ignored. The world hears broadly and repeatedly of
the cases of injustice, it hears little of those raore
frequent instances in which the weaknesses of a
chUd-race are accorded only an amused indifference
or a patient tolerance by their stronger neighbors.
That such an attitude has its disadvantages as well as
its advantages for the negro need not be forgotten.
Dealing with the negro criminal of the baser type,
white opinion has too often attempted to answer law
lessness with lawlessness and ferocity with ferocity.
To the popular raind the crimes against women appear
not only as attacks upon the individual but as attacks
upon the integrity of race. They are occasions both
of personal offence and of race humiliation.^ They
1 See u paper by the Hon. Alex C. King of Atlanta, Ga., in the
Proceedings of the Conference on the Race Problems of the South,
p. 160 ; the B. F. Johnson Publishing Co., Richmond, Virginia.

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 177
are often so intended by the criminal and are often so
accepted by the white community. The peculiar
horror of the crime, the morbid sense of race injury
which it arouses, the tendency of innocent negroes to
protect the guilty, all unite to produce a degree of
emotional tension, a condition of social hysteria which
few who have not endured the experience can under
stand. Add to the difficulties of the situation a wholly
inadequate constabulary — inadequate because the
South is not merely poor but so largely rural that
efficient police organization is practically impossible
— and the conditions for the rise of the mob are at
once apparent.^
The raob, so far as it has had a conscious philos
ophy, has atterapted the justification of its course upon
these grounds : — It has insisted that its methods were
necessary in order to prevent the crime ; in order to
avoid the procrastination of the courts ; and in order
to protect the victim of assault frora the ordeal of
presenting testiraony at the trial of the offender.
1 The inadequacy of a rural constabulary has not been sufficiently
considered in accounting for the presence of lynch law at the South.
That the mob tendencies are active in many Eastern locaUties is
evident from the large number of " attempted " lynchings. A score of
these have been noted in the limits of the city of New York within the
period of a year. In some cases the accused was actually in the hands
of the infuriated crowd. The lynching was prevented by an efficient
constabulary. Given, however, the conditions of rural life in our
Southern States, where farms are widely scattered, with poor roads,
infrequent railway service, limited telegraph facilities, and few large
centres of social organization, — and the " attempted " lynching has
its intended issue. Within the cities of the South lynchings have
been practically unknown. The cases of mob violence in the cities of
such Northern States as Delaware, Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois have
few, if any, recent Southern parallels.
N

178 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
It has become increasingly obvious, however, that
whatever the practice of lynching may or may not
be, it is not a remedy. It does not prevent crime.
Through the morbid interests which it arouses, and
through the publicity which it creates, it inflames to
the utraost the power of crirainal suggestion and
aggravates all the conditions of racial suspicion and
antagonism. The so-called " remedy " has always
been followed by new outbreaks of the disease, the
most atrocious crimes coming at short intervals after
the previous exercise of the mob's philosophy of
"prevention." It is true that the procrastination of the courts has
sometimes resulted in deep and pardonable irritation.
Where the nature of the offence is pecuUarly ab
horrent, where every circumstance has rightly se
cured for the victim the overwhelraing sympathy of
the public, and where the accused is a friendless
member of a weaker race this irritation has some
tiraes passed into uncontrollable exasperation. As a
matter of fact, however, such procrastination is more
frequent to the popular imagination than to the ob
server of real events. In the presence of the crime
to which reference is made, American courts do not
impose delays. " The delay of the courts " is in
large measure a popular superstition. Where it
occurs, it occurs not in cases where the accused is
a helpless and ignorant member of society, but where
the defence can command those resources of legal
talent and of technical procedure which are possible
only to the rich. In the cases of heinous crime, the
American court. North or South, is usually conscious
of its obligation to the community. Surely, if the

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 179
end be justice rather than senseless and futUe
slaughter, the court is not inferior to the mob as
the instrument of an intelUgent social verdict. The
crude theory that "the people" may resume their
delegated powers has no place in a democratic order.
The mob is not " the people " ; it is a temporary,
feverish minority, possessing only an incidental co
herence, without a fixed, identity, without continuity
or responsibility — assuming the most august pre
rogatives of society. Every mob is, in truth, an
attack upon " the people," for it acts in repudiation
of those institutional forms which the majority have
established. By its very existence it announces its
violation of the social compact and its rejection of
the freely established forras of popular administra
tion ; by its deliberate anonymity and its immediate
dissolution it confesses its irresponsibiUty and de
clares that its deeds were usurpations. The only
real instruments of "the people" for the administra
tion of social penalties are the constabulary and the
courts, and these instruments the people have es
tablished in order that one man alone, and he the
humblest, may not be without protection — if inno
cent — from even the collective power of the majority
itself. For • the constabulary and for the courts,
promptness and decision are important. But the
paramount and essential end of every true judicial
process is not promptness but justice, is not " ven
geance " — individual or social — but the solemn and
decisive determination of innocence or guilt. It is
the business of the court to free the innocent, it is
its business to set apart the guilty for the penalties of
an outraged law. All reasonable haste, all possible

i8o THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
diligence must be employed, but — as has been well
suggested — in our effort to prevent the mob from
turning itself into a court, let us not end by turning
the court into a mob.
The methods of the mob are also defended upon
the ground that they serve to protect the victim of
crime from the ordeal of publicly testifying in the
case. Many have regarded this as the strongest
argument in the mob's behalf. Yet when we have
eUminated the cases — by far the greater number —
in which the prisoner of the mob was not even
charged with any crime against woraen, but with
arson or robbery or atterapted raurder ; and when
we have' elirainated, among the cases of assault
against women, the nuraber in which death has
resulted and the victira is thus prevented from all
testimony, legal or extra-legal, the number of cases
which come within the traditional excuse is ex
tremely sraall. And even here, what is the high
chivalry of the raob which some would substitute
for the care and protection of an American court?
Does the raob permit the woman to escape the ordeal
of testimony ? Does it accomplish the very protec
tion which it proposes .¦' Not at all. The judge has
authority to clear the room of all but the direct
parties to the case, has the power to spare the victim
— under cross-examination — from any but the sim
pler and less offensive questions, has the right and
would surely have the will — in the North or South
— to arrange the place for the sitting of his court so
as to provide effectively and considerately for the con
ditions of privacy. But under the regime of the
mob, who is to protect the victira, in the hour of

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO i8i
wretchedness, frora the raorbid and miscellaneous
crowd about the rural home .¦¦ Posses of men are
scouring the surrounding territory. Absent with
them are probably her father, or her husband, or her
brothers. As each suspected negro is caught, he
must be brought back for identification, and the
woman in her season of agony and humiliation is
called upon, again and again, to face a different
prisoner and to pass upon the question of his iden
tity. In the dim Ught of her Uttle room she knows,
and all know, that error is possible. But she is
forced to endure this thing — and not in such pri
vacy as the court affords, but often in the gaze of
men — guards of the prisoner — whom she has never
before seen. And this is all supposed to be chivalry.
But raen who have seen its crude devices do not call
it so; they regard it as a stupid, ignorant, pitiful
travesty of reserve. The crime of which the prisoner
is accused is perhaps the most unutterably infamous
of human wrongs, and in a vague way men have felt
it to be too personal, too domestic, to permit of for
mal rectification. Beneath this deep feeUng there
is a certain touch of truth. Nor is the court a per
fect instrument for the punishment of such a crime ;
the crime is wholly outside our normal thinking and
feeling ; it is, whether committed by black or white
men, from the barbaric or the degenerate elements
in our life ; it is out of the very pit. There can be
no perfect instrument for its punishment, but the
court is the best instrument that we have — best for
the interests of privacy as well as for the interests
of justice — and in the defence of our courts the
very validity of our civilization is involved. The

i82 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
mob, as we have seen, violates the very canons of
the chivalry which it presumes to guard ; it thrusts
upon the victim of the crime an added martyrdom of
publicity ; it increases by the power of criminal sug
gestion the crimes it has undertaken to prevent;
it substitutes the chance humor of an irresponsible
minority for the deliberately established processes of
the majority, and so becomes a perU both to justice
and to freedom. IV
I think it raay be fairly said, however, that the
relative number of lynchings is decreasing frora year
to year. In the South, especially, there is an evident
disposition upon the part of the raore influential press
to accord to the negro the measure of exact justice
before the law.^ That this ideal will be attained
1 The expressions of such journals as the Constitution, of Atlanta,
Ga., and the Advertiser, of Montgomery, Ala., are noteworthy, and
yet quite characteristic of the Southern press.
Said the Constitution under date of June 27, 1903 : —
" The time when the lynching of a certain breed of brutes could be winked
at because of satisfaction that punishment came to him quickly and to the
uttermost, has given way to a time when the greater peril to society is the
mob itself that does the work of vengeance. Against the growth of that evil
the best sense of the nation needs to combine and enforce an adequate
protection." Said the Advertiser under dates of September 16 and October 6,
1903: —
" The white race has a duty which is imperative. It is a duty which . is
demanded by justice, by humanity, and by self-interest. Ours is and will
ever be the governing race. It will elect the lawmakers, make the laws, and
enforce them. That being so, that principle of eternal justice which bids the
strong protect the weak, makes it our duty to protect the negro in all his
legal, industrial, and social rights. We should see that he has equal and
exact justice in the courts, that the laws bear alike on the black and the
white, that he be paid for his labor just as the white man is paid, and that
no advantage be taken of his ignorance and credulity. . . .
" And the task is a simple and easy one. The courts and juries should

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 183
immediately no one can predict. So long as any ele
ment of the population is, as a class, in a position of
marked economic dependence upon stronger factions
or classes, it will certainly suffer — however unfortu
nately or unjustly — frora the pressure of civil and
political prejudice. The intelligent negro raay well
ask of our public opinion a larger measure of dis
crimination; and yet he may well lay the greater
stress upon his gains rather than upon his losses.
Certainly his gains will be of small avail if the con
templation of his wrongs shall supersede in his life
the positive acceptance and the definite using of his
rights. The consciousness of grievances is not an
inspiring social asset for a class or for a race. There
need be no surrender of essential principles, and yet
stress may well be laid, confidently and hopefully,
upon the privileges that are actually available for the
negro in American life. Here, in the using of the
positive liberties and advantages of education and of
industry, of religious and political freedom, the negro,
through the acceptance of a programme of positive
progress, may enter into a larger heritage than is
open to any Uke number of his race in any quarter
of the world. Important are sorae of the advantages
he has not ; but raore important are the many advan
tages which he has.
Nor can it be said that these advantages are Northern
know no difference between whites and blacks when a question of right and
justice is up for settlement. The man who employs a negro to work for him
should deal as fairly with him as he would deal by a white man. The life of a
negro who has done no wrong should be as sacred as the life of a white man.
He is in our power, politically and otherwise, and justice, humanity, and
good policy unite in demanding for him equal and exact justice. Keep the
negroes araong us, give them the full protection of the laws, and let them
have justice in all things. That is the solution of the race question."

i84 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
rather than Southern. There are to-day almost nine
millions of negroes in the United States. After thirty
years of freedom, nearly eight miUions of thera remain
within the borders of the South. Why have they
remained ? The broad and living decisions of great
masses of men possess a dumb but interesting signifi
cance. They are never wholly irrational or senti
mental. The negro remains at the South because,
among the primary and the secondary rewards of
honest life, he gets more of the primary rewards at
the South than at the North. There is no idle flat
tery of the South in this declaration of the Principal
of Tuskegee : —
" It is in the South that the black man finds an
open sesame in labor, industry, and business that is
not surpassed anywhere. It is here that that form of
slavery which prevents a man from selUng his labor
to whom he pleases on account of his color, is almost
unknown. We have had slavery in the South, now
dead, that forced an individual to labor without a
salary, but none that compelled a man to live in idle
ness while his faraily starved."
The words are not too strong.^ The negro knows
that in the essential struggle for existence the spirit
of the South has been the spirit of kindUness and
helpfulness. Nor is it true that the negro may there
perform only the deeds of drudgery, or those petty
^ Referring to the statistics of the United States Census for 1900
(Vol. II, p. ccvii), Booker T. Washington says: "Here is the unique
fact, that from a penniless population just out of slavery, 372,414
owners of homes have emerged, and of these 255,156 are known to
own their homes absolutely free of encumbrance. In these heads of
negro families lies the pledge of my race to American civilization." —
See the Tradesman, Chattanooga, Tenn., January i, 1904, p. 99.

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 185
offices that are the badges of a menial dependence.
The negro at the South is preacher, teacher, physi
cian, and lawyer ; he is in the dry goods business, the
grocery business, the livery business, the real estate
business, the wood and coal business ; as well as in
the business of running errands and blacking boots.
He is shoemaker and carpenter and blacksmith. He
is everywhere where there is anything to do, and
if he can do it well, he is usually treated fairly
and paid for it honestly. Except in professional
capacities, he is employed by all, he does business
with all. There is just one Une drawn, however,
and it is perhaps significant. In a Southern city,
with the life of which I am familiar, there is a
successful, respected negro raan, with many indus
trial and commercial functions toward the comraunity
in which he lives. He is a keeper of carriages, a
dealer in wood and coal, a butcher, and vendor of
vegetables, — and an undertaker. There is one de-
partraent of his varied establishraent which has never
had the monetary support of the white population,
and which is sustained entirely by the people of his
own race. The white people of the city will buy
their supplies of him, will purchase his wood and his
coal, will leave their horses in his stables, and wUl
ride in his carriages; — but he may not bury their
dead. There is in this simple incident a monograph
upon the subject of the negro in the South.
But the South gives to the negro soraething more
merciful than sentiment and something more neces
sary than the unnegotiable abstractions of social right.
The South gives to him the best gift of a civilization
to an individual — the opportunity to live industri-

i86 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
ously and honestly. As the representative of the
negro race whom I have already quoted has also said,
" If the negro would spend a dollar at the opera, he
wUl find the fairest opportunity at the North ; if he
would earn the dollar, his fairest opportunity is at the
South. The opportunity to earn the dollar fairly is
of much raore importance to the negro just now than
the opportunity to spend it at the opera." ^ The large
and imperious developraent of trades-unionism at the
North (the writer would not speak in criticism of
organized labor in itself) is already eliminating the
negro as an industrial factor. Du Bois's book on the
negro in Philadelphia, to which I have already re
ferred, is but a rescript of the story of his life in every
community at the East. Nothing could be more
searchingly relentless than the slow, silent, pitiless
operation of the social and economic forces that are
destroying the negro, body and soul, in the Northern
city. None knows it so well as the negro himself.
The race-prejudice, which Professor Shaler of Har
vard has recently told us is as intense at the North as
it is anywhere in the world, first forbids to the negro
the membership of the labor union, and then forbids
to the employer the services of non-union labor. If
1 It is of some significance that in 1900 there were 732,362 farms
operated by negroes in the South. We find that 150,000 Southern
negroes now own their own farms, and 28,000 more are recorded as
part owners. (Twelfth Census of the U.S., Vol. V, pp. xciii, 4, 172.)
The value of the property in all the farms operated by negroes at the
South was ;(S469,5o6,555. In more than half the counties of Virginia
over 70 per cent of the negro fanners are owners or managers, and in 33
counties of the State the proportion is over 80 per cent. — See the inter
esting papers in the Southern Workman, Hampton, Va., for October,
1902; and January, 1903. — See also the valuable monograph by Carl
Kelsey, "The Negro Farmer"; Chicago, 111., Jennings and Pye, 1903.

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 187
the employer turn wholly to the non-union men, he
finds that rather than work beside the negro, these
usually throw down their tools and walk out of the door
of factory or shop. And so the dreary tale proceeds.
The negro at the North can be a waiter in hotel and
restaurant (in some) ; he can be a butler or footman
in club or household (in some) ; or the haircutter or
bootblack in the barber shop (in some); and I say
"in some" because even the more menial offices of
industry are being slowly but gradually denied to
him. And what is the opportunity of such an envi
ronment to the development of self-dependence, what
is the value to his labor of so inadequate and restricted
a market for the complex capacities and the legitimate
ambitions of an awakening manhood i And what
lies at the background of the man .' What of the
family, the wife, the mother, the children ? What
are the possibilities, there, of self-respect, of decency,
of hope .-• what are the possibilities of bread ?
The economic problem lies at the very heart of the
social welfare of any race. The possibility of honest
bread is the noblest possibiUty of a civilization ; and
it is the indispensable condition of thrift, probity, and
truth. No people can do what is right or love what
is good if they cannot earn what they need. The
South has sins for which she raust give account ; but
it raay be fairly said that as yet the South has no
problera so great, so intiraately serious as this. The
South has sometimes abridged the negro's right to
vote, but the South has not yet abridged his right, in
any direction of human interest or of honest effort, to
earn his bread. To the negro, just now, the oppor
tunity, by honest labor, to Qarn his bread is very much

i88 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
more important than the opportunity to cast his vote.
The one opportunity is secondary, the other is pri
mary ; the one is incidental, — the greater number of
enlightened peoples have lived happily for centuries
without it, — the other is elemental, structural, indis
pensable ; it lies at the very basis of Ufe and integrity
— whether individual or social.

V
It is not possible or desirable, however, to ignore
the political issues created by the presence of the
negro in our national life. If the negro were the
only factor to be considered, the questions affecting
his political status might be temporarily postponed.
But the negro is, in some resiDCcts, the least of the fac
tors involved. The political and administrative organ
ization of our country is democratic. Its institutional
assumptions are the assumptions of a free democracy.
Before all questions which touch the political status
of any race or class of men there arises the primary
question as to the effect upon our country and its
constitution, upon its civic customs and its habits of
thought, of the creation of a serf-class, a fixed non
voting population. Such a class can be established
and continued only through habitual disregard to all
the moral presumptions of our organic law ; and such
disregard, in its reactive influence upon those who
continue it, must result in a lowering of political stand
ards and a vitiation of civic fibre, far more disas
trous to the strong than to the weak. Such practices
may begin with class discriminations, but these dis
criminations soon forget their class distinctions ; white

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 189
men end by using against white raen the devices
iwhich they began by confining to black men ; the
whole suffrage becomes corrupt; a corrupt suffrage
eliminates from political leadership the men who are
too free or too pure to use it ; it becomes the basis of
control for an ever degenerating political leadership ;
and what began as a denial of political privilege to
a despised faction at the bottom results in the con
trol at the top of those very elements of an irrespon
sible ignorance which discrimination was intended
to eliminate. The retrogressive forces which were
dreaded in a faction become enthroned over aU ; and
the real mind and conscience of the State, in attempt
ing to secure their freedom by protecting themselves
against the ignorant, are despoiled of their freedom
through the very processes of their self-protection ;
are put, by their own methods, in bondage to the
cruder forces of society.
The difficulties of the situation have been supremely
serious, and complex beyond description. It is obvi
ously true — as has just been stated — that a democ
racy cannot consent to the establishment of a
dependent class. And yet it is equally obvious that
within a nuraber of our Southern States that is pre
cisely what the negro is. He is so not primarily as
the result of political proscription, but simply because
he is so. A race which, while numbering from 30 to
50 per cent of the population, contributes but 4 or
5 per cent of the direct taxes of the State, is as yet
in an economic status which does not square with
those industrial assumptions which are as important
as the political assumptions of a genuinely democratic
order. The elementary contradiction of our situation

I90 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
lies, therefore, just here — in the very presence within
our life of the vast nurabers of a backward and essen
tially unassimilable people.
In the years following the Civil War the North
asserted, sometimes with a ruthless impatience and
often through unworthy instruraents, but with the
sincere conviction of the raasses of her people, that
the actual political administration of the Southern
States must be squared with the democratic assump
tions of the Constitution. And the North was right.
The South contended, upon the other hand, that
where the choice must be made between civilization
and democracy, between public order and a particular
form of public order, between government and a spe
cific conception of government, — civilization, order,
government are primary, and that any forms or con
ceptions of them — however sacred — raust await the
stable and efficient reorganization of social life. And
the South was right. It was opportune for the North
to declare that the freedman could not protect him
self unless given the ballot in the mass ; it was equally
opportune for the South — with whole States where
the negroes were a majority, with many counties
where the number of black men was treble the nura
ber of white raen — to declare that the supreme ques
tion was not the protection of the negro but the
protection of society itself ; that white supremacy, at
that stage in the development of the South, was
necessary to the supremacy of intelligence, adminis
trative capacity and public order, and involved even
the existence of those economic and civic conditions
upon which the progress of the negro was itself de
pendent. And here, also, the South was right.

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 191
The South was right and the North was right.
The North was strong and the South was weak.
The North imposed the forms of democracy. The
South clung to the substance of government.
Yet, because the very forms of government were
democratic and because these forms of government
were ruthlessly imposed by an irresistible and unsym
pathetic party power, the South in cUnging to the
very substance of civiUzation was compeUed to main
tain a lie. Up to this point the historian will not
accord to her the larger measure of blame for the
moral tragedy which foUowed. The effort, however,
to avert fraud and ignorance at one door admitted
them at another. The effort to prevent the demoral
ization of government resulted — as has been sug
gested — in the compromise of all the safeguards of
the suffrage. The growing youth of the South be
came habitually famiUar with ever lowering political
standards, as the subterfuges which were first era-
ployed against the black raan carae to be employed
between white men in the struggle of faction against
faction within the party. The better heart of the
South now rose in protest. An unlimited suffrage
was impossible, but the limitation of the suffrage
must be established not by fraud or force but under
legal conditions, and must be determined by a fixed
and equitable administration.
Thus the deeper moral significance of the recent
constitutional amendments of the Southern States
does not lie in the exclusion of the negro. The
exclusion of the negro had long since been accom
plished. It lies in the emancipation of the white
man, an eraancipation due to the awakening desire

192 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
to abandon the established habits of fraud, and to
place the elimination of the undesirable eleraents
of the suffrage squarely and finally under the terras
of law. The negro has, in the ultiraate result, every
thing to gain from such a course. Temporarily he
must suffer the consequences of an undemocratic
adjustraent to democratic conditions, an adjustment
due primarily to no wilfulness of the white man at
the South and to no apathy of the white man at
the North, but to the contradiction presented by his
presence in the Nation. There are always disad
vantages in securing for any adjustment a legal
status through illegal means, and the direct elimi
nation of all the undesirable elements of voting age
raight have seemed a comparatively siraple under
taking. Had the negro masses presented the only
illiterate elements, that method raight have been pur
sued. But there were two defective classes — the
unqualified negroes of voting age and the unqualified
white raen. Both could not be dropped at once. A
working constitution is not an a priori theoretic crea
tion ; it raust pass the people. The unqualified white
raen of voting age might be eliminated by gradual pro
cess, but they raust first be included in the partnership
of reorganization. Such a decision was a poUtical
necessity. They had been fused — by their participa
tion in the miUtary struggle of the Confederacy and by
their growing participation in the industrial and politi
cal power of the South — into the conscious and
dominant life of the State. Many of them possessed
large poUtical experience and political faculties of an
unusual order. Moreover — and we touch here upon
a far-reaching consideration — no amended Constitu-

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 193
tion, no suffrage reform, no legal status for a saner
and purer poUtical administration, was possible with
out their votes. They held the key to the poUtical
situation — with aU its moral and social issues — and
they demanded terms.
Terras were given them.^ Under skilfully drawn
provisions the raass of illiterate negro voters were
deprived of suffrage and the then voting white popu
lation — with certain variously defined exceptions —
was permitted to retain the ballot. Care was taken,
however, that all the rising generation and all future
generations of white voters should be constrained to
accept the suffrage test, a test applicable, therefore,
after a brief- fixed period, to white and black alike.
Such is the law.^
Lest, however, its technical and more strictly politi
cal provisions should be declared unconstitutional, its
practical administration is placed in the charge of
boards of registrars, having a large discretionary
power in the application of the law, and thus — by the
1 In Alabama the Democratic State Convention went so far as to
pledge that no white man would be disfranchised " except for infa-
. mous crime." In criticism of this pledge the writer pointed out that
its fulfilment would leave the ballot in the hands of all the white
vagrancy, perjury, and bribery of the State — as these offences were not
then " infamous " under the code ; and would be contrary to the per
manent interests of both races. The Constitutional Convention, largely
at the suggestion ofthe Press Association of Alabama, practically ignored
any literal interpretation of the unfortunate pledge, and the completed
instrument did, in effect, result in the disfranchisement of a large num
ber of white voters.
" No attempt is here made to distinguish between the suffrage pro
visions of the different States. A statement of these provisions in
detail, together with a discussion of some of the current proposals of
federal policy must be reserved for a later volume.
o

194 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
acceptance or rejection of candidates for registration
— actually choosing and creating the permanent elec
torate of the State. A system of appeals has been pro
vided, and in a nuraber of test cases white juries have
shown theraselves willing to reverse the adverse decision
of the registrars, and to return a verdict in the interest
of negro applicants ; but the system — as a system —
is manifestly subject to grave abuses. If it be used
as a responsible instrument for the fair and equitable
adrainistration of the law, it raay prove an honorable
and effective way out of an intolerable situation.
The essential principles involved, apart frora all
the exasperations of the discussion that has gathered
about the National Amendments are, however, but
the elementary principles of experience itself. In an
open letter to the Constitutional Convention of Ala
bama, they were thus expressed : —
" Southern sentiment will not approve the disfran
chisement of the illiterate Confederate soldier. In any
civilization, there is a deep and rightful regard for the
raan who has fought in the armies of the State. But,
with that exception, the State must eventually protect
itself, and protect the interests of both races, by the
just application of the suffrage test to the white and
black alike. The South must, of course, secure the
supremacy of intelligence and property. This we shall
not secure, however, if we begin with the bald dec
laration that the negro is to be refused the suffrage
although he have both inteUigence and property, and
that the illiterate white man is to be accorded the
suffrage although he have neither. Such a policy
would, upon its face, sustain the charge that we are
not really interested in the supremacy of intelligence

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 195
and property, but solely in the selfish and oppressive
supremacy of a particular race.
" Such a course, through its depressing influence
upon the educational and industrial ambitions of the
negro, would but increase his idleness and lawless
ness, and work injustice to the negro and to the State.
Take out of his life all incentive to the franchise, and
you will partly destroy his interest in the acquisition
of knowledge and of property, because no people
will, in the long run, accept as a working principle of
life the theory of taxation without representation. I
do not think the negro will riot or rebel, but I do
think he will be discouraged in the task of acquiring
soraething for the State to tax. It is not merely a
question of justice to the negro. It is a question of
enlightened self-interest. No State can live and
thrive under the incubus of an unambitious, unedu
cated, unindustrious, and non-property-holding popu
lation. Put the privilege of suffrage among the prizes
of legitimate ambition, and you have blessed both the
negro and the State.
" If, on the other hand, we accept the administra
tion of an educational and property test which is to
enfranchise the negro on his acceptance of its provi
sions, and is to enfranchise the white raan whether he
accepts them or not, we shall have adopted a measure
which will be an injustice to the white citizenship of
the South. It will be an injustice to the white raan
for the reason that it places for the negro a premium
upon knowledge and property — makes for him a
broader incentive to the acquisition of an education and
a home, leaves the white boy without such incentive,
makes the ballot as cheap in his hands as ignorance

196 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
and idleness, and through indifference to the God-
given relation between fitness and reward, tempts the
race which is supreme to base its supremacy more
and more upon force rather than upon raerit.
" No one shall justly accuse rae of wanting to put
the negro over the white man. If anything, however,
could bring about that impossible result, it would be
the iraposition of a suffrage test for the negro without
the application of the same test to the white raan.
Such action will increase for the negro the incentives
to an education, to industry, and to good behavior ;
and leave the white man without the spur of those
incentives. Whatever such a course may be, in rela
tion to the hurabler classes of our white people, it is
not statesmanship. I do not assume that the average
illiterate negro has the political capacity of the aver
age illiterate white man. The illiterate white man at
the South has attained ^ through the genius of race
and the training of generations — more poUtical ca
pacity than many a literate negro. Nor is ilUteracy
a crime ; but literacy is a duty. Old conditions are
passing away. The white man of the future who
would claira the political capacity to vote raust exer
cise enough political capacity to quaUfy. The obliga
tion to qualify is an obligation of helpfulness. No
one is a true friend to our white people who increases
for the negro the encouragements and attractions of
progress and refuses those incentives and encourage
ments to the children of the white man. I ara quite
sure that any suffrage test which estabUshes for the
negro an incentive to education and property, and
which makes the ballot in the hands of our white
population as free as ignorance and thriftlessness.

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 197
will serve, permanently, to injure the stronger race
rather than the weaker.
" To the white boy such a provision is an insult as
well as an injustice, for the reason that it assumes his
need of an adventitious advantage over the negro.
For us to ask the negro boy to submit to a test which
we are unwilling to apply to our own sons, would be,
in my judgment, a reflection upon the capacity of our
white population; and our people, wherever it raay
be attempted by the politician of the hour, will come
so to regard it. The absolute supremacy of intelli
gence and property, secured through a suffrage test
that shall be evenly and equally appUcable in theory
and in fact to white and black — this will be the ulti
raate solution of the South for the whole vexed ques
tion of political privilege." ^
That this faith was not wholly justified by the issue
of the Alabama Convention need not obscure the
fact that the final proposals of the Convention were
far more conservative, far raore truly democratic,
than at first seemed probable or possible. The
" temporary plan " with its intended inequalities has
already passed away. The permanent plan with its
just and equal provisions is still, however, under the
administration — as in Mississippi — of a system of
election boards.
If these boards of registrars — the essential and
distinctive provision in the suffrage systera of the
South — be administered arbitrarily and unfairly, if
they perpetuate the moral confusion and the debas
ing traditions which they were intended to supplant,
1 From An Open Letter to the Constitutional Convention of Ala
bama, by Edgar Gardner Murphy, Montgomery, Ala., April, 1901.

198 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
then the South will stand condemned both to the
world and to herself. She will have defeated the
purpose of her own deepest political and moral
forces. But let no one assume that such a result is
now in evidence. There have been many instances
of needless and intentional injustice. There are,
upon the other hand, many evidences which indicate
that while the old habits have widely affected the
immediate action of the registrars, there is a growing
disposition toward just administration, a disposition
to exclude the unqualified white raan and to admit
the qualified negro to the ballot.-^
A dogmatic impatience will avail nothing. The
Nation owes to the South an adequate opportunity
for the trial of the difficult experiment which she has
undertaken. Adequate results, a full determination
of success or failure, cannot be attained in five years
or in ten. All criticism of the actual poUtical read
justment of the South should, moreover, be positive
as well as negative, and adverse discussion should
deal sympathetically and constructively with the
question, " If not this, what ? " What is the alterna
tive ? One raust recur again and again to the thought
1 According to the Secretary of State for Mississippi more than
15,000 negroes are already registered there as voters ; in Virginia the
number registered is approximately 23,000; in South Carolina, 22,000;
in Louisiana, 6400; in North Carohna, 6250. In the latter State, as
well as in Alabama, many negroes have been discouraged from offering
to register by reason of the fact that the State organization of the party
with which they have been associated recently refused to admit even
their most respected representatives to its Conventions. Large num
bers have also refrained from registration because of their unwilling
ness to meet the poll-tax requirement. The interest of the masses of
the negroes in things political has, for quite different reasons, been
much exaggerated by the representatives of both parties.

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 199
that the fundamental embarrassments lie in the ele
mentary conditions that precede all the evils and
all the remedies. Partially anomalous remedies will
always arise out of essentially anomalous conditions.
The task is so complex, the difficulties are so
inscrutably formidable, the issues — involving all the
deepest and most fateful passions of races and parties
— are so far-reaching, that one may well pause be
fore attempting prematurely to substitute for a pend
ing poUcy of extrication a policy — even though
logically complete — which may be based upon raore
consistent but perhaps more academic conceptions of
public right. As one who vigorously opposed the
imposition of unequal or uneven tests the author feels
that he may fitly say that there would be nothing
gained and much lost by any return to older condi
tions, and that the whole Southern readjustment,
whatever its theoretic inconsistencies, should be ac
corded a reasonable trial.
The situation presents issues for which men upon
either side have often been willing to die. But for
strong raen it is soraetiraes easier to die than to wait.
The need of the present is not martyrdom, with all
its touching and tragic splendor, but just a little
patience. Huraan nature is everywhere essentially
the same. No raoveraent of our human life can long
support its own raomentura, or conserve its own in
tegrity, if it assume an irrational or unrighteous form.
PoUtical inequaUties will not endure. With time,
with reason, with patience, the moral forces of the
South can accomplish soraething which all the enact
ments and threatening of the Nation can delay but
cannot produce, — an equitable public temper, — with

200 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
which imperfect laws are just, and without which
Utopia itself would be but an institutional futility.
God has left no corner of the world without certain
of the resident forces of self-correction. The South
feels, and feels justly, that in the view of history she
has dealt as scrupulously as the North with the literal
obligations of the Constitution, and that in the travail
of her extrication frora an intolerable situation, her
policy is now entitled to considerate and adequate
trial. She has given her own welfare as hostage, in
pledge for her sincerity. With patience, and with
the rapidly increasing educational and industrial
quickening of the South, there is arising within her
popular life, a clearer outlook, a saner Americanism,
a freer and juster civic sense — and these are, at
last, the only ultimate security of our constitutional
assumptions. The practical situation presents, not a problem of
theoretic politics, sociology, or ethics. It is a problem
of flesh and blood, the elements of which are men
and women and little children ; the issues of which
lie not in the cheap and passing advantage of factions
and parties but in the happiness or the wretchedness
of miUions of our human kind. It is in raany of its
aspects the greatest, the raost difficult, problem in
American life — a problem all the greater because,
North as well as South, the forces of race prejudice
and of commercial and political self-absorption are
constantly and impatiently putting it out of sight. But
it is here. It is the problem of taking those institutions
and those principles which are the flowering of the
political consciousness of the most politically efficient
of all the races of mankind — institutions and prin-

VI THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO 201
ciples to which even the Anglo-Saxon is unequal save
in theory — and securing the just coordination under
them of this stronger race which has hardly tried
them with a race which had never dreamed them — a
race which, with all its virtues, is socially and politi
cally almost the least efficient of the families of men ;
— two races separated socially by antipathies of
blood, separated politically by the supposed division
of political interests ; the weaker distrusting the
stronger, the stronger distrusting the weaker; each
knowing the other at its worst rather than at its
best, and each passionately resolved to be judged by
its best rather than by its worst ; a situation of actual,
grotesque, far-reaching inequalities projected under
the conditions of a democratic order and continued
under the industrial and political assumption of the
parity of classes. A great problem ! A problem
demanding many things — the temper of justice,
unselfishness, truth — but demanding most of all a
patient wisdom, a wise, conserving, and healing
patience — the patience of thought and of work ; not
the patience of the opportunist but the deeper patience
of the patriot. Indeed, if one raay speak of it with
anything of hopefulness, it is only because this
problera has now corae for its adjustment into a day
when a deeper sense of nationality has merged within
its broader sympathies and its juster perspective the
divisive standpoints of the past, bringing into the
Nation's single and inclusive fate a new North as well
as a new South, a South with its boundaries at the
Lakes and the St. Lawrence, a North with its boun
daries through the fields and the pines of a reunited
country at the waters of the Southern Gulf.

A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION

CHAPTER VII
A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION

A NARRATIVE of the general raoveraent represented
by the Southern Education Board and the General
Education Board must be corrective before it can be
descriptive. In phrases of loose and somewhat inac
curate reference, the reader of our current press has
corae to recognize it under such terras as "the
Southern Conference Moveraent," "the Southern
Educational Moveraent," " the Ogden Moveraent,"
and "the Conference for Education in the South."
Of these terras only the last-named — " the Confer
ence for Education in the South " need here enter
into the essential structure of the story. While the
Southern and General Education Boards are distinct
from each other, and are distinct frora the Conference
for Education in the South, there can be no history
of the Boards without a preceding and accorapanying
history of the Conference.
It was in the year 1897 that the Rev. Edward
Abbott, D.D., of Cambridge, Massachusetts, raade to
Captain W. H. Sale of the Capon Springs Hotel,
West Virginia, an inforraal suggestion of such a
gathering. Dr. Abbott urged the advisability of
holding at sorae point within the South a personal
conference of raen and woraen. Northern and South-
205

206 THE PRESENT SOUTH ciiAP.
ern, who raight be interested in the probleras of
Southern education. Captain Sale assented to the
proposal and extended to those who raight attend
the hospitality of an attractive and historic inn. It
was thought that such a raeeting, coraprising repre
sentatives both from the North and from the South,
would be of service to the earnest educational forces
of both sections — bringing to the South a clearer and
juster perception of the motives and poUcies of the
North, and bringing to the North a broader and more
sympathetic appreciation of the needs and difficulties
of the South. Much was expected from the oppor
tunity for personal association. Accordingly, "the
first Capon Springs Conference for Christian Educa
tion in the South assembled in the chapel on the
grounds of the Capon Springs Hotel, on Wednesday,
June 29, 1898, at 8.30 p.m. ;"i and its membership
formed a sraall but interested corapany.
The president of the first conference was the
Rt. Rev. T. U. Dudley, LL.D., Bishop of Kentucky,
an aluranus of the University of Virginia, late
Chancellor of the University of the South at
Sewanee, Tennessee. Its vice-president was the
Hon. 5- L. M. Curry, agent of the Peabody and
Slater iBoards ; its secretary and treasurer was the
Rev. A. B. Hunter of St. Augustine's School,
Raleigh, North Carolina. Upon its executive com
raittee were Dr. J. A. Quarles of Washington and
Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, and the Hon.
John Eaton, forraerly United States Coraraissioner of
Education. The Conference, though small in attendance, touched
1 Proceedings of the First Capon Springs Conference, p. 3.

VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 207
a note of reality which gave its work significance and
made its existence permanent. Its continuous life
was made possible largely through the broad sympa
thies and the executive effort of Dr. HoUis Burke
Frissell, of Hampton, Virginia. The second Capon
Springs Conference met on the 20th of June, 1899;
and the third met — also at Capon Springs — on the
27th of June, 1900. Of the second conference Dr.
J. L. M. Curry was the president; of the third,
Mr. Robert C. Ogden of New York was president.
Mr. Ogden, by the unanimous request of both the
Southern and the Northern members, has frora that
time continued in service as the presiding officer.^
1 Among the men closely associated with the work of the Con
ference during the period of its sessions at Capon Springs, we find
a number of representative names, in addition to those already men
tioned. Among the members from the North were Dr. James
McAlister, president of the Drexel Institute, Philadelphia; William
H. Baldvdn, Jr., William J. Shieffelin, George Foster Peabody, George
McAneny, R. Fulton Cutting, the Rev. David H. Greer, Charles E. Bige
low, Albert Shaw, and Everett P. Wheeler, of New York ; the Rev.
A. D. Mayo, D.D., and General Guy V. Henry, of Washington ; the
Rev. S. D. McConnell, of Brooklyn ; George S. Dickerman, of New
Haven ; and Herbert Welsh of Philadelphia.
Among the members from the South were Dr. Ormand Stone,
Dr. A. H. Tuttle, and Dr. Charles W. Kent, professors in the Uni
versity of Virginia; Dr. A. K. Nelson and Dr. H. St. G. Tucker,
professors in Washington and Lee University; Dr. Julius D. Dreher,
president of Roanoke College; Dr. J. E. Gilbert of Washington,
D.C.; Dr. Charles E. Meserve, president of Shaw University; the
Rt. Rev. C. K. Nelson, D.D., Bishop of Georgia; the Rt. Rev. Howard
E. Rondthaler of North Carolina ; Dr. F. G. Woodworth, of Tougaloo
University, Mississippi ; Captain C. E. Vawter of Virginia ; Lyman
Ward of Camp Hill, Alabama; and — by no means least — the
Hon. William L. Wilson, then president of Washington and Lee
University. For a year as a member of its executive committee, and
always as an interested and active participant, Mr. Wilson oontinued

2o8 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
Many of the papers and addresses of these early
meetings are of permanent value. DeaUng frankly
and explicitly with almost every phase of the general
subject of education — for both races — there is a
definiteness of attack, a practicality of purpose, a
generosity of temper, which made possible — and
helpful — the expression of personal and sectional
differences. These differences served but to illus
trate two truths — the truth that upon the larger
number of cardinal issues there is, between North
and South, raore of agreeraent than of disagreeraent ;
and the truth that the frank and courteous expres
sion of such differences as raay reraain serves only
to create an atmosphere of mutual understanding
which soon establishes the possibility of intelligent
cooperation. If a literal and unvarying agreement
were the sole condition of cooperation, cooperation —
among the living forces in any department of activity
— would be impossible. There can be little coopera
tion between those, upon either side, who know only
their own opinions and can test that knowledge only
in the light of their own experience ; there can be
little cooperation between those who withhold or dis
guise what they really think. But between those who
are ready to learn as well as to teach, and who sin
cerely attempt to throw into clear and ample Ught
the landmarks of their respective positions, there is
possible a comraon outlook and a coramon work.
his association with the Conference until failing health forced him to
retire from active public service. No man carried greater weight
among his associates in these early and formative occasions. If
Dr. Curry was the presiding genius, men like President Wilson, from
the South, and Dr. Shaw and Mr. Ogden, from the North, were high
among the counsellors.

VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 209
Where, upon the other hand, there is mutual ig
norance, there is likely to be mutual suspicion.
Where there is mutual knowledge, there may be
something of disagreement, but there is sure to be
more of confidence ; and confidence rather than agree
ment is the essential basis of intelligent cooperation.
Among the formal resolutions of the first Confer
ence were the following : —
" Thoroughness in elementary instruction is of the
first importance, and in facilitating the advance along
higher lines the utmost care should be taken to allow
no faster or further progress than is consistent with
solid and durable foundations."
" Longer school terras, and a longer school life,
better qualified teachers and more thorough work, are
greatly to be desired in the public schools. Indus
trial education is to be encouraged in all schools, and
at least the elements of it in the public schools.
While deprecating the unnecessary multiplication of
rival institutions with high-sounding titles, we heartily
believe that in a few institutions well equipped for it,
provision should be made for the liberal or higher
education of those called to leadership as preachers,
teachers, editors, etc."
"The principles now widely applied, tending to
prevent the bestowal of gifts upon unworthy per
sons, have a proper field for exercise in the support
of institutions of learning . . . and while fully realiz
ing the difficulties in the way of any such application
of those principles, we are of the opinion that the
gifts of the North in aid of the educational work of
the South should proceed upon the lines of intelligent,
equitable, and discriminate selection. ..."

210 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
" Upon the principle that if one member of the
Union of States suffers, all the members suffer with
it, the duty of the whole country to foster education
in every part of it is manifest, and the question of a
larger and more energetic national aid in behalf of
efforts for the education of illiterate masses, deserves
the raost serious consideration of all patriotic citizens,
and never raore so than at the present time."
It will be noted that this resolution is not, in a
technical and explicit sense, an acceptance of the
proposal of national aid as a formal element in the
policy of the Conference ; but that suggestion is given
a cordial measure of approval. In the third Confer
ence a more explicit declaration in favor of national
aid was first accepted and then withdrawn. The
proposal from that day forward has gained increasing
consideration, and yet there has been much unwiUing-
ness to make the suggestion an expUcit part of a. f or-
raal prograrame. It has seemed right as well as wise
that those who accept it and those who reject it should
remain — without the introduction of a divisive issue
— as colaborers in the immediate practical advance
ment of the general programme of educational revival.
With the second Conference the word " Christian "
was dropped from the titular description of the gath
ering. This change was probably the result, not of
a desire to ignore any aspect of religious education,
but in order that the supposedly "secular" depart
ment of " public " education might have appropriate
and increasing recognition. The sessions of the Con
ference are still opened with prayer, and the coopera
tion of the leading representatives of denominational
education has always been requested and accorded.

VM A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 211
Among the resolutions of the second and third
Conferences at Capon Springs, were expressions
commending the idea of "the travelling Ubrary as
especially applicable to conditions in the South,"
comraending the adrainistration of the Peabody and
Slater Boards, suggesting a wiser discrimination in
the use of raoney contributed at the North for negro
education, advising the establishment of industrial
reformatories for youthful incorrigibles, encouraging
the development of secondary schools, and empha
sizing the importance of industrial education as a
basis of cooperation between the sections (and pre
sumably between the races). The resolutions, as well
as the papers and addresses, of the first three Con
ferences deal fully and freely with raany of the inter
esting and appealing phases of negro education.
All the raore irapressive, therefore, are the opening
clauses of the first resolution of the second Confer
ence : " Resolved, that the education of the white
race in the South is the pressing and imperative
need, and the noble achievements of the Southern
Comraonwealths in the creation of common school
systems for both races deserve not raerely the sym
pathetic recognition of the country and of the world
at large, but also give the old and high-spirited col
leges and universities of the South a strong claim
upon a generous share of that stream of private
wealth in the United States that is enriching and
vitalizing the higher education of the North and
West." 1
Such a resolution is an explicit recognition not only
of the iraportance of white education, its iraportance
1 Proceedings of the Second Capon Springs Conference, p. 8.

212 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
to the Nation, to the welfare of the negro, and to the
white population of the South, but also a recognition
of the nature of the claims for endowment which have
often been raade in behalf of certain of the institu
tions of higher learning in the Southern States. The
"wealth" to which reference is raade is not the
wealth of the North, peculiarly, but the wealth "of
the United States," South as well as North. The
appeal to that wealth is not based upon a sense of
unworthy poverty but upon the consciousness that the
Southern institution — like the Western or the East
ern — has the power to serve, — to serve the whole
Nation. Its service is all the more real if it stand
and work where true work is hard, and if it minister,
with inadequate equipment and under difficult condi
tions, to the reality of our culture and to the breadth
and fulness of our national experience.^
When Harvard or Yale or Princeton University
asks or receives a gift from a Southern man, the in-
1 " Within the past five years the benefactions to the institutions of
higher learning in the United States have amounted to a little more
than S6i,ooo,ooo. Out of a total of $157,000,000 of productive funds
held by American colleges the South has but ^15,000,000. Out of
the 8,500,000 books in college libraries the South holds but 1,250,000.
The value of scientific apparatus in the South is a Uttle over $1,000,000
against a total valuation of $17,000,000 in the whole country. The valua
tion of buildings and grounds of Southern colleges is $8,500,000 in a total
of ^ 1 46,000,000. The total annual income available for higher education
in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Missis
sippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky is $19,000 less than the
yearly income of Harvard University.
" Out of forty institutions in the United States with productive funds
amounting to $1,000,000 or over, but five are in the South ; of twenty-
one with productive funds of between $500,000 and $1,000,000 but one
is in the South." From " Educational Endowments of the South '' by
Elizabeth M. Howe ; The Popular Science Monthly, October, 1903.

VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 213
stitution is not said to have asked or received, in any
political or sectional sense, " money from the South."
Nor does a Southern institution, in asking or receiv
ing a gift from a Northern man, ask or receive, in
any political or sectional sense, " raoney from the
North." The South, like the West, is contributing
to the prosperity of the country as a whole; the
South, like the West, raay not improperly share in
that prosperity. The man, however. North or South,
who desires to add to the educational equipment with
which the Nation is meeting anywhere the issues
which involve the clearness of its thinking, the free
dom of its decisions, the wisdom and righteousness
of its life, adds to that equipment, not as to a local or
irrelevant memorial, but as to an expanding asset —
to the informing and liberalizing equipment of his
country and his age.
It was at Winston-Salem, North Carolina, that the
Fourth Conference for Education in the South opened
its sessions on the i8th day of April, 1901. The
death of the kindly and courteous proprietor of the
Capon Springs Hotel had suggested the advisabiUty
of holding the annual gatherings at other points
within the Southern States. The striking develop
ment of educational interest in North Carolina gave
especial appropriateness to the invitations from the
city of Winston-Salem, and this session of the Con
ference marked the beginning of permanent and far-
reaching changes in its policy and method.^ The
1 Addresses of peculiar interest and value were made by the Hon.
Charles B. Aycock, Governor of North Carolina ; Dr. G. S. Diclcer-
man of Connecticut ; Dr. Charles W. Dabney, president of the Univer
sity of Tennessee ; Dr. James E. Russell, dean of the Teachers

214 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
needs for specific work were set forth with such
clearness and fulness, the interest of the representa
tives of the South and the North was so deeply
serious, the method of cooperation, after the past
years of experiment, seemed to possess such genuine
validity, the truly national significance of the whole
subject seemed so increasingly evident, that there
arose within the Conference a spontaneous demand
for more effective organization. The cause seemed
to be too great to be wholly left to the inspirational
force of an annual meeting. There seemed to be a
clear need for an executive body, a body which might
give continuous and more general influence to the
purposes and policies which the Conference had come
to represent. The following resolutions, accorapanied
by their preamble, were unanimously adopted : —
" The Conference for Education in the South, on
the occasion of its fourth annual meeting, reaffirms
its conviction that the overshadowing and supreme
public need of our tirae, as we pass the threshold of
a new century, is the education of the children of all
the people.
"We declare such education to be the foremost
task of our statesmanship, and the most worthy object
of phUanthropy. With the expansion of our popula
tion and the growth of industry and economic re
sources, we recognize in a fitting and universal educa-
CoUege of New York ; Hon. G. R. Glenn, state superintendent of
education for Georgia ; Dr. Truman J. Backus of Brooklyn, New York ;
Dr. Charles D. Mclver, president of the State Normal College of North
Carolina ; Dr. Francis G. Peabody and Dr. John Graham Brooks of
Cambridge, Massachusetts ; Dr. Lyman Abbott of New York ¦ Mr.
Carleton B. Gibson of Georgia ; and Dr. George T. Winston presi
dent of the Agricultural and Mechanical CoUege of North Carolina,

VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 215
tion and training for the home, for the farm and the
workshop, and for the exercise of the duties of citizen
ship, the only salvation for our American standards
of family and social life and the only hope for the
perpetuity of our institutions, founded by our fore
fathers on the four corner-stones of intelligence,
virtue, economic efficiency, and capacity for political
self-control. "We recognize the value of efforts hitherto made
to solve our educational problems, both as respects
the methods to be used, and also as regards the sheer
quantity of work to be done. But we also find in
the facts as presented at the sessions of this Con
ference the imperative need of renewed efforts on a
larger scale ; and we find in the improved financial
outlook of the country and in the advancing state of
public opinion better hopes than ever before of a
larger response to this greater need.
" As the first great need of our people is adequate
elementary instruction, and as this instruction must
come to children so largely through mothers and
women-teachers in their homes and primary schools,
we desire to emphasize our belief in the wisdom of
making the most liberal investments possible in the
education of girls and women.
" Whereas, therefore, the conditions existing in the
Southern States seem now fully ripe for the large
development as well as further improvement of the
schools; and,
"Whereas, This Conference desires to associate
itself actively with the work of organizing better
school systems and extending their advantages to all
the people : —

2i6 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
" Resolved, that this Conference proceed to organ
ize by the appointment of an Executive Board of
seven, who shall be fully authorized and empowered
to conduct : —
"I. A campaign of education for free schools for
all the people, by supplying literature to the news
paper and periodical press, by participation in educa
tional meetings and by general correspondence ; and,
" 2. To conduct a Bureau of Information and
Advice on Legislation and School Organization.
"For these purposes this Board is authorized to
raise funds and disburse them, to employ a secretary or
agent, and to do whatever may be necessary to carry
out effectively these measures and others that may
from time to time be found feasible and desirable." ^
The appointment of this executive body was as
signed as a duty to Mr. Robert C Ogden, of New
York, the presiding officer of the Conference, and —
by special resolution — the president was made the
eighth meraber of the Board. Mr. Ogden's broad
appreciation of Southern educational conditions, his
executive power, and his well-tried capacity for disin
terested and patriotic service, raade his personal rela
tion to the Board an indispensable condition of its
success. The president took no iramediate action. It was
only after several months of extended correspondence
and of careful deUberation that he called together
the following gentleraen : the Hon. J. L. M. Curry,
agent of the Peabody and Slater Boards, Washing
ton, D.C. ; Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, formerly presi-
1 Proceedings of the Fourth Conference for Education in the South,
p. II.

VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 217
dent of the University of North Carolina and now
president of Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisi
ana ; Dr. Wallace Buttrick of Albany, New York ; Dr.
Charles W. Dabney, president of the University of
Tennessee, KnoxvUle, Tennessee; Dr. HoUis Burke
FrisseU, principal of Hampton Institute, Hampton,
Virginia ; Mr. George Foster Peabody, a native of
Georgia, now a citizen of Brooklyn,- New York; and
Dr. Charles D. Mclver, president of the State Nor
mal College of North Carolina. These gentleraen,
five from the South and three from the North, met
for organization in the city of New York on Novem
ber 3, 1 90 1. They added to their number Mr. Will
iam H. Baldwin, Jr., president of the Long Island
R.R. ; Dr. Albert Shaw, editor of the Review of Re
views ; Dr. Walter H. Page, editor of The World's
Work ; and the Hon. H. H. Hanna of Indianapolis,
Indiana. Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy of Montgom
ery, Alabaraa, was appointed as the executive secre
tary, associated with the president, and was later added
to the raembership of the Board as its active executive
officer. Although not merabers of the Board, Dr.
G. S. Dickerman of New Haven, Connecticut, and Dr.
Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee, Alabama, were
associated — as field agents — with its working force.
Dr. Washington has been a wise counsellor in refer
ence to the educational probleras affecting the colored
people of the South, and Dr. Dickerman had served
for two years with great acceptability as the special
agent of the Conference.
The Southern Education Board was organized with
Robert C Ogden as president, Charles D. Mclver
a,s recording secretary, George Foster Peabody as

2i8 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
treasurer, and J. L. M. Curry as supervising direc
tor. The active work at the South was committed to
a campaign committee altogether consisting of South
ern members and acting under the general direction
of Dr. Curry. The Board had no funds to disburse.
Its operating expenses for an experimental period of
two years had been underwritten by one of its
members. These expenses involved the inaugura
tion of a Bureau of Investigation and Publicity, at
Knoxville, under the direction of Dr. Dabney, and
the conduct of a general " campaign " in certain sec
tions of the South, where cooperation might be re
quested for the bettering of the public school facilities
and for the enlargement of school appropriations.
Shortly after the organization of the Southern
Education Board, and largely as an additional result
of the forces which had been called into existence by
the Conference, there was also organized " the Gen
eral Education Board." Its chairman was Mr.
William H. Baldwin, Jr., and among its merabers
were Messrs. Curry, Ogden, Peabody, Buttrick, Shaw,
and Page, of the Southern Board. In addition to
these gentlemen, there were elected Mr. Frederick T.
Gates, Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Mr. Morris
K. Jesup, of New York, and Dr. Daniel C. Gilman,
president of the Carnegie Institution. Dr. Wallace
Buttrick became the secretary and executive officer,
the Board was incorporated by special act of Con
gress, and permanent offices were opened at 54
WilUam St., New York City.
The Southern Education Board, as has been ex
plained, makes no direct gifts to educational institu-

VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 219
tions. It exists to aid in the development and in the
wise direction of educational sentiment. Though
working at the South to secure larger poUcies of local
support for popular education, and though working.
North and South, to encourage larger policies of phi
lanthropy in relation to the educational needs of rural
localities, it does not hold nor distribute funds for
educational purposes.
This is the work of the General Education Board,
a body with three distinctive functions which may be
thus defined : —
(«) The careful investigation and the accurate col
lection and presentation of the facts as to the educa
tional situation at the South. I say the South, and
yet the South is in no final or exclusive sense the
one field of its interest. Wherever public education,
as the chief constructive policy in American life, needs
the support of exact inquiry and of intelligent and sym
pathetic interest, the General Education Board may find
its work. The educational situation at the South, from
causes both preceding and following the Civil War,
claims at present the especial interest not raerely of
the Nation but of the world. To secure not only the
statistics, but the facts back of the statistics, to appre
hend and truly to record the life which lies behind
the forraal phenoraena of schoolhouses and school
administration, to perceive just what the South has,
in order rightly to understand just what the South
needs — this is the work with which the General
Education Board has thus far been primarily con
cerned. So fully has it had the intelligent and appre
ciative cooperation of the educational authorities of
the South that its data from the State of Mississippi

220 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
(for example) form a more comprehensive collection
than any body of reports to be found in Mississippi.
What is true of this State is true of others. Such
results have necessarily been dependent, in large
degree, upon the aid of the officials and teachers of
the South. The Board raay be of service to thera
only because it has been served by thera.
(3) In addition to the work of investigation, the
Board is also coraraitted — subject to the discretion of
its authorities and the lirait of its resources — to a
policy of assistance. This policy represents in its
purpose no mere effort of the wealth of one section
to meet the needs of another section. The Board
was organized under Act of the National Congress in
order that the sources of its support raight becorae
as broadly national as its interests, raight be found in
the wealth of the South as well as in the wealth of
the North and East and West. Nor have the gifts
of the General Education Board represented a sub
stitute for local effort. They have represented an
answer to it. They have not forestalled initiative.
They have asked it. Their gifts have been so tendered
as to awaken and stiraulate those forces of self-help
which forra the amplest security of public invest
ments. The resources of the Board have been too
limited, raoreover, for any policy of general aid. They
have permitted, however, certain small conditional
appropriations to well-accredited institutions of both
races within the South. Especially in Georgia, Ala
bama, North Carolina, and Tennessee, these gifts
have served as an indication of the spirit, and as an
earnest of the sympathetic and inclusive purpose of
the organization. With increasing means, this work

vu A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 221
raay be done with broader power and raore far-reach
ing benefit.
(c) No Umitation of means has served, however, to
arrest the work which many have regarded as of
raore preliminary importance than the gifts of aid.
This has been the conduct of certain phases of coop
erative experiment, in order to determine just how
the influences represented by the Board and the influ
ences represented in the South raay most wisely join
their forces. At one point, a rural county having a
short school term has been enabled to lengthen its
school period at one end of the year upon condition
that the county from its own resources would add a
month at the other end. At another point a model
country school has been estabUshed, with its " teach-
erage " and its school farm ; at a number of the State
Universities of the South, such as the University of
Tennessee, the University of Georgia, the University
of North Carolina, the University of Mississippi, and
the University of Virginia, assistance has been given
in the conduct of " Summer Schools " for teachers.
There is an indication of the moral earnestness of the
teaching force of the South in the mere recital of the
fact that in the summer of 1903 more than ten thou
sand of these young men and women thus gave their
vacation period to the work of securing a broader
and fuller equipment for their profession. For two
sumraers in succession more than two thousand have
gathered at one university alone — the University of
Tennessee. Perhaps, however, the most striking of the cooper
ative experiments of the General Education Board is
to be found in the series of personal conferences

222 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
between the representatives of the Board and the
county superintendents of education. In ten of the
Southern States these conferences have thus far been
held; and the States which have not yet been visited
have taken the initiative in requesting them. Coming
to an accessible coramon point within the State, the
superintendents of education from the several counties
have met with the representatives of the Board in
frank and cordial interchange of information and
ideas. Elaborate buUetins of data from each county
have been filled out, signed, and filed. The vivid
interests and forces which can never be crowded into
"reports" have come naturally and rightly to the
surface; misunderstandings have been adjusted,
misinformation has been corrected, and in the com
raon and supreme concern for the life and training of
the child, the representatives of every phase of feeling
and opinion have found the deep and serious basis of
cooperation. Thus in contact with men coming
directly from the people, the authorities of the Board
have sought that fulness and freedom of information
which raight place its poUcies and its activities in
close and helpful touch with the actual South. The
Board, in every Southern State, has been accorded the
interest and aid of the State Department of Education.
Thus, through the gathering and classifying of
information, through the extension of aid under the
form of conditional appropriations to certain selected
educational institutions, and through the effort to
bring its policies into intelligent and practical relation
with the real working forces of the South, the
General Education Board has attempted, and has
raade, what raay be called a demonstration of method.

vu A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 223
It has established a working basis not only for its own
activities but for the activities of others. The
resources of philanthropy, however large or however
varied, whether representing the wealth of the North
or of the South, raay find in its large experience and
its ample records a helpful if not an authoritative
measure of information and suggestion. Its files are
not for any self-interested or private use. Its facili
ties and its reports are at the service of the public.
The Southern Education Board, as already stated,
has found its distinctive service in the deepening and
quickening of educational sentiraent within the South.
Its work has not been that of employing the resources
of philanthropy. It has been the task of directly
appealing to the resources of taxation, to those local
forces of self-interest and self-development by which
the State expends a Uttle money for a larger life and
through which the community builds the schoolhouse
as the temple of its own consecration to the joy, the
usefulness, and the Uberties of its children.
No work for the future of the South can be con
ducted in forgetfulness of what the South has done.
The nature of her progress, when considered in rela
tion to her difficulties, must bring a sense of gratitude
to the true citizen of the Nation, whether he be
Southerner or Northerner. And yet no true work
for the future can find the goal of its attainment in
the memory of the past or in the raere consideration
of the present. There remains how much to do !
The task of the South must still bring for many a
year a searching test to her patience, her generosity,
her wisdom. To help directly with this task; to

224 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
increase in the treasury of her local heart the South's
best capital of enterprise, — her fund of interest, of
sane and well-measured self-command, of civic hope,
of true yet unstrident confidence ui herself, her
children, her resources, and her future ; to stand for
a patriotism which is not merely retrospective but
constructive, — this, as many have conceived it, is
the broader service of the Southern Education Board.
It is a work to which thousands of raen and woraen
have long given themselves. For this Board does
not assume that it has created the educational revival
at the South. Its work is but a part of that revival
— has advanced it and has been advanced by it.
Within an enlarging confederacy of local interests
and local forces, it has served to coraraend and to
reenforce the responsibility of the people for the
education of all the people, thus taking its vigorous
part in the creation of an educational sentiment which
may answer the gifts of philanthropy with the larger
gifts of taxation, and which — with or without phi
lanthropy — may provide for the children of the State
a longer school term and a better school equipment.
Its bureau of publication has circulated the litera
ture of the subject. Through circulars and special
bulletins the press of the South has been freely in
formed as to educational needs and helpful educa
tional methods. Under the auspices of the Board, or
in cooperation with the local authorities, hundreds of
public meetings have been organized, and eager audi
ences, sometimes in the towns, sometimes in the
country, have been addressed by trusted and effective
speakers. Its Southern representatives have entered
vigorously and untiringly into the definite campaign

VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 225
to secure a larger raeasure of local taxation for the
public schools ; and, in the State of North Carolina,
where, under Dr. Mclver and his associates, this work
has been most successfully conducted, there are now in
one county more " local-tax districts" (school districts
in which the additional tax for schools has been voted
by the people) than existed in the whole State prior to
the activity of the Board. In 1902, North Carolina
had 56 local tax communities ; in January of 1904 there
were 186, with an anticipated additional increase of
nearly 100 within the nejtt half year. In other South
ern States siraUar work has been accorapUshed. It
cannot be said that the results attained are wholly due
to this Board alone. Its part in this work, however,
has been conspicuous, and, at raany points, decisive.
For their popular interpretation, both the General
Education Board and the Southern Education Board
are still much indebted to the Conference for Educa
tion in the South. The existence of the Boards has
not made the Conference obsolete. Its annual ses
sions have grown both in numbers and in popular
authority. It stiU brings together the interested and
representative forces of all sections. It still makes
from its platforra a palpable and inspiring demonstra
tion of cooperative statesmanship, speakers frora the
North and frora the South dealing in candor and fra
ternity, with those industrial, social, or political con
ditions which retard or advance the popular develop
ment of the educated life. The fifth Conference, by
special invitation of the legislature of the State,
gathered at Athens, the home of the University of
Georgia, April 24, 1902. The sixth Conference, by
Q

226 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
invitation of the Governor, the legislature, the Uni
versity of Virginia, and the educational forces of the
State, met at Richmond, Virginia, on April 22, 1903.
Of the deep enthusiasra of the crowded audiences
at both these Conferences one may not write at
length. Nor is it possible to dweU upon any of the
interesting details of what were, in fact, memorable
occasions.^ II
Through these annual Conferences as well as
through the printed issues and the public declara
tions of the merabers of the Southem and General
Education Boards, the educational situation at the
South has been brought raore clearly and raore
1 Among those in attendance at one or the other of these later
meetings, many of the speakers being present at both, were the Gov
ernor of Virginia, the Governor of North Carolina, the State superin
tendents of education from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and
Texas ; John W. Abercrombie, president of the University of Ala
bama ; J. H. Kirkland, president of Vanderbilt University ; F. P.
Venable, president of the University of North Carolina ; B. C. Cald
well, president of the State Normal CoUege of Louisiana ; B. L. Wig
gins, chancellor of the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee ;
Clark Howell, editor of the Atlanta Constitution ; John B. Knox and
Sydney J. Bowie of Alabama ; Hoke Smith of Georgia ; Hamilton
W. Mabie, associate editor of the Outlook, New York ; Richard
Watson Gilder, editor of the Century, New York ; L. H. Bailey, pro
fessor in CorneU University, Ithaca, New York ; Dr. Felix Adler, New
York ; Dr. Richard S. Jesse, president of the University of Missouri ;
R. Fulton Cutting of New York ; Josephus Daniels of North Caro
Una ; Walter B. Hill, chancellor of the University of Georgia ; W.
W. Stetson, state superintendent of public instruction for Maine; R.
Heath Dabney, Paul B. Barringer, and Charles W. Kent, professors in
the University of Vurginia, Dr. W. T. Harris, U. S. Commissioner of
Education, and others who have been named in reference to their
connection with the earlier Conferences.

vn A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 227
fully into the national consciousness. The intelli
gent forces of Araerican opinion have been won
to a fairer appreciation of Southern difficulties. The
revelation of Southern needs has brought into only
raore evident reUef the abundant heroism of those
human forces with which the South is responding to
her task. In proportion to her means the South is
perhaps expending as much for pubUc education, per
capita of her children of school age, as States like
Michigan in the West or New York in the East.^ Yet
those whose burdens are abnormal need the expendi
ture of more than normal power, and those whose edu
cational progress has been so long and so unhappUy
retarded — and yet whose populations are constantly
in competition with the more generally educated
masses of other sections — can equalize the condi
tions of competition only by increasing the volume
of expenditure. The man who is toward the rear in
the march of progress will never get to the front
simply by moving as fast as the others move. If he
is to get to the front, he raust expend sufficient energy
1 The amount raised for public education per capita of the school
population, is $22.37 ''^ Massachusetts and $20.88 in New York, as
contrasted with $2.87 in Tennessee and $2.28 in North Carolina ; but,
according to Dr. Charles W. Dabney, back of each child in Tennessee
there is only $509 of taxable property, and in North CaroUna only
$337, as contrasted with $1996 in Michigan and $2661 in New York.
(See Report of the Sixth Conference for Education in the South, p. 40.)
We may note also that in the Northern and Western States the propor
tion of adult males to the children of school age is from 50 to 100 per
cent greater than at the South. (See the Appendix to this volume,
p. 304, Table VII, columns 8 and 13.) The male producer at the South
may thus be called upon to bear a larger economic burden, under the
system of public education, than a like producer at the North. This
burden is still further distributed at the North by the muct larger num
ber of women engaged in the higher productive employments.

228

THE PRESENT SOUTH

CHAP.

to move as fast as the others move, plus the energy
which must be expended to bring him from the rear
to the front. The South is finding her duty, there
fore, not raerely in the raeasure of her resources but
in the appalling raeasure of her needs.
Let us turn again, therefore, to a brief stateraent
of her educational situation. I quote from Dr. Charles
W. Dabney, president of the University of Tennes
see. " Our Southern problem," says Dr. Dabney,
" is the education of all the people of the South.
First, who are these people ? In 1900 the States
south of the Potomac and east of the Mississippi con
tained, in round nurabers, 1 6,400,000 people, 1 0,400,000
of them white and 6,000,000 black. In these States
there are 3,981,000 white and 2,420,000 colored chil
dren of school age (five to twenty years), a total of
6,401,000. They are distributed among the States as
follows : —

White

Colored

Total

Virginia . .
West Virginia
North Carolina
South Carolina

436,000342,000
491,000 218,000
269,000 15,000
263,000
342,000
705,000357,000754,000 560,000
Georgia . .
Florida . .
458,000 1 10,000
428,000 87,000
886,000 197,000
Alabama . .
Mississippi .
Tennessee .
390,000 253,000 590,000
340,000380,000 191,000
730,000633,000781,000
Kentucky
693,000
3,981,000
105,000
798,000
Totals 1
2,420,000
6,401,000
^ To these totals might well be added the children of school age in
Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. Arkansas has 380,815 white, 148,534
colored ; Louisiana 276,563 white, 261,453 colored ; Texas 955,906
white, 259,491 colored.
VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 229
" What an army of young people to be educated !
How they are marching on ! Many of thera are al
ready beyond our help ; aU will be in less than ten
years; and still they corae marching up from the
cradles into Araerican citizenship.
"The iraportant question is. What are we in the
South doing for these children .? Let us see. Only
60 per cent of them were enrolled in the schools in
1900. The average daily attendance was only 70 per
cent of those enrolled. Only 42 per cent are actually
at school. One-half of the negroes get no schooling
whatever. One white child in five is left wholly
illiterate. Careful analysis of the reports of State
superintendents showing the attendance by grades,
indicates that the average child, whites and blacks
together, who attends school at all stops with the
third grade.
" In North CaroUna the average citizen gets only
2.6 years, in South Carolina, 2.5 years, in Alabama,
2.4 years of schooling, both private and public. In
the whole South the average citizen gets only three
years of schooling of all kinds in his entire life ; and
what schooling it is ! This is the way we are educat
ing these citizens of the RepubUc, the voters who will
have to deterraine the destinies not only of this peo
ple but of millions of others beyond the seas.
" But why is it that the children get so little educa
tion ? Have we no schools in the country .-' Yes,
but what kind of schools } The average value of a
school property in North Carolina is $180, in South
CaroUna, ^178, in Georgia, ^523, and in Alabama,
^512. The average monthly salary of a teacher in
North Carolina is ^23.36, in South Carolina, 1^23.20,

230 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
in Georgia, ^27, and in Alabaraa, ^27.50. The schools
have been open in North Carolina an average of only
70.8 days in the whole year, in South Carolina, 88.4,
in Georgia, 112, and in Alabaraa, 78.3. The average
expenditure per pupil in average attendance has been,
in North Carolina ^4.34, in South Carolina ^4.44, in
Georgia ^6.64, and in Alabama about ^4.00 per an
num. [I am glad to say that these per capita ex
penditures are now a little larger and the school
terras a little longer than when this statement was
made.] In other words, in these States, in school-
houses costing an average of 1^276 each, under teach
ers receiving an average salary of ^25 a month, we
have been giving the children in actual attendance
five cents' worth of education a day for 9,1 days only
in the year. This is the way we have been schooling
the chUdren." 1
The reading of Dr. Dabney's figures is not a cheer
ing diversion. And yet it were folly to assume that
we can aid the South by the exercise of a bUnd affec
tion which would blink or conceal the facts. These
facts are not taken from the tale of an enemy ; they
are taken frora the reports of our own superintend
ents of public instruction, they form a part of our
local as well as our national records. The first duty
of the physician who would apply a remedy Ues in a
sympathetic, but fearless diagnosis. The first duty
of a wise educational statesmanship is a clear and
unflinching perception of the situation. There is no
disgrace in our ilUteracy. It is due to historic and
formidable forces. There would be every disgrace,
1 See also Report of the Proceedings of the Sixth Conference for
Education in the South, 1903, p. 37.

VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 231
however, in a policy which would now perpetuate it
by concealment, and which would feed its indifference
upon the husks of a flattering and senseless optimism.
It has been said that we raust educate. When we
say " we," it is evident that we must count all of our
people within the fellowship of responsibility. Within
the partnership of obligation, the great masses of our
white people should hold the first place of initiative,
dignity, and service. No man can go to them with
" alms." To rouse thera to see their duty, their duty
to their children, to theraselves, and to their country,
and then to help them see how bravely and how well
they themselves can perforra this duty — we have
here the fundaraental and distinctive element in the
policy of the Southern Board.
But the principle of initiative may well be supple
mented by the principle of cooperation. It is an
estabUshed principle in every form of commercial,
religious, or educational effort. No raan, North or
South, shares any privilege of this life for which
he has paid all the cost. How many of us who go
to church have paid our full share of the cost of
what we get .'' How many men in business refuse
to be benefited by policies and facilities of the com
raunity which, in their value, are out of all proportion
to what these raen have paid .' Who goes to a col
lege North or South and really pays there, in full,
for all he gets? He raay pay what is asked or
charged, but what is asked or charged is a sraall
eleraent of the cost of what he gets. The raan
who goes to Yale or Harvard University, the young
woraan who goes to Vassar, is directly the beneficiary
of buildings and endowraents which philanthropy has

232 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
given and which express the enduring truth that
the education of our children, whether the children
of the rich or of the poor, represents a great task
of collective consecration, the task of society and of
humanity. Who shall presume, therefore, to assert that the
principle of cooperation raay be accepted by the
sons of wealth, but that it may not be accepted by
the children of the poor ? Surely, if any children in
our land may lay rightful and honorable claim upon
the generous interest of all our countrymen, these
are the children of our rural South. The children of
a people isolated from the busy Ufe of trade, often
thinly settled upon undeveloped lands, they yet repre
sent an uncorrupted stock, full of native vigor and
native wit. It is a noble wealth which awaits us in
their capacities and faculties. The South's intense
preoccupation with the problem of the negro has
largely shut these people out from the care and the
provisions of the State. For this preoccupation and
for all its unfortunate results, our whole country has
been responsible.
The Federal Governraent freed the slaves, but the
Federal Government spent little indeed in fitting
them to use their freedom well. Hundreds of thou
sands of ignorant negro men were introduced to the
suffrage without any introduction into the capacity
for its exercise, and the South, — defeated, impover
ished, desolate, — was forced to assume the task of
providing for the education of two populations out
of the poverty of one.
The very hypothesis of intervention on behalf of
the negro, as has also been previously suggested.

VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 233
was that the condition of the black raan was the
care and responsibility, not of a section, but of the
whole country. The very essence of the theory
of eraancipation was that the status of the black
raan was the charge of the Nation. Yet the issue
of emancipation left the negro, in his helplessness,
at the threshold of the South. The South, with
peculiar heroism, has risen to that responsibility. For
one dollar contributed for his education by philan
thropy from the North, four dollars have been con
tributed through taxation frora the South. The negro
has shared this burden, but his vast nurabers, his
great needs, and his low productive capacity have
necessarily reduced the araount which the South
could expend upon her white children.
The utter irapossibility, to the irapoverished South,
of speedily securing the negro's educational develop
ment, raade the thought of his political power an all-
absorbing anxiety. Frora this preoccupation of our
public interest (largely caused, as I have said, by the
neglect of the freedmen by the Federal Government)
the chief sufferers were the white children of the
masses of our rural population. That they have so
suffered raay be called the fault of the South ; yet it
is also the fault of that negUgence of all our coun
trymen through which the South with inadequate
resources has been largely left to bear alone a
national burden and to discharge a national responsi
bUity. When, therefore, the wealth of our coramon
country. North or South, generously invests its reve
nues in the education of the chUdren of these Southern
States, I do not call it the extension of " charity " ;
I venture to call it the acceptance of obligation.

234 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
This is the obligation which was so nobly assumed
by the founder of the Peabody Fund, — a fund left
by a Northern man for the educational needs of
white and black, a fund which has for these thirty
years — through the South's glad and faithful use of
it — put forever beyond question not only the accept
ability of educational philanthropy at the South, but
the practical wisdom of the comprehensive policy for
which it stands.
There are many who see, therefore, in this educa
tional situation at the South a challenge to the wisest
and deepest forces of a national patriotism. This,
however, is no mere question of the duty of the
North to the South. A similar situation in New
England or the West should arouse a like response
frora South as well as North. It is a question of the
duty of the Nation to the children of the Nation. Our
conditions, as I have said, are those of a rural popula
tion thinly settled upon undeveloped lands. May I
again recall sorae of the peculiar phenoraena of its
distribution ?
"Let us turn to the figures of the last census.
The one State of Massachusetts, as we have seen,
has 20 cities of over 25,000 inhabitants. The 10
States south of Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri,
with an area 85 tiraes as great have only 19, and the
aggregate population of the Massachusetts cities ex
ceeds that of the latter by 417,000.
"Again, Massachusetts has no coramunities of
over 4000 inhabitants, with an aggregate population
of 2,437,994. Her entire population is 2,805,346, so
that the number in smaller places is but 366,352.
"These 10 Southern States have altogether only

vn A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 235
146 communities of this rank, with an aggregate
population of 2,148,262. But the total population
of these 10 States is 17,121,481, so that the number
dwelUng in places smaller than towns of 4000 inhabit
ants is 14,972,738, as contrasted with 366,352.
"By comparison with the census of 1890 we raay
see the trend of population. During the ten years
frora 1890 to 1900 the population of Massachusetts
increased 566,399, and the increase in her no large
places was 551,555. In the 10 Southern States, the
total increase was 3,071,276, of which only 505,781
vTas in their 146 cities.
" Outside of the larger places Massachusetts in
creased only 14,844; these 10 States of the South
increased their population outside of their cities of
this size, by 2,565,495. Massachusetts people live
in cities and the growth is there. Southern people
live in the country and are to do so in the future.
Only a small part live in C9mmunities of even 1000
inhabitants. The 608 places of this size or larger
contain but 3,029,000, while 14,090,000 remain for
the strictly rural population. This is for the 10
most southern States. If we add Maryland, Vir
ginia, and Kentucky, the nuraber will rise to over
17,000,000. How many people has Massachusetts
or Rhode Island in communities of less than 1000
inhabitants ? So few as to be hardly appreciable as
an influence in their educational poUcy.
" Now it is a serious question in the North, how to
provide good schools for the country. Even in
Massachusetts there are many little places where
educational opportunities are by no raeans of a high
order. Else why has Berkshire County 415 native

236 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
white illiterate men of over twenty-one years of age ?
One county in northern Maine has over 1 5 per cent of
its native white voters who cannot read and write.
New England has not yet answered in her own
domain the question of education for her rural peo
ple. But in the South this is the main question.
Southern cities, like Northern cities, have institutions
which are their pride ; but the cities are few in the
South and play a subordinate part. The multitudes
of people are widely scattered. The neglected few
in Massachusetts or Maine multiply into millions.
To make the situation harder, the South has the two
races to complicate everything, two peoples so unUke
yet bound together in so many of their interests.
" The Nation has yet to open its eyes to the possi
bilities lying dormant in these great Southern States
— 17,000,000 people in these stretches of territory,
none of whom live in a village of 1000 inhabitants !
Ten million whites of our native American stock,
with few exceptions, and having 3,500,000 children
of school age usually unprovided with good schools !
Seven million negroes, with 2,500,000 children, and
these vitally identified in their rise or deterioration
with the whites about them ! Who grasps the scope
of these figures, and comprehends the task of the
men who have to wrestle with these problems ? Do
they deserve no recognition from the Nation .' Can
the Nation in a prudent regard for its own per
manence and future growth afford to go on heedless
of what is done or not done in this great section of
our territorial domain ?
" There is no end of the bounty bestowed on insti
tutions for the common people in Northern cities.

VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 237
Why, as an American, should I be more interested
in the children of Boston or of New Haven than in
those of the Carolinas and Georgia.' Who are the
children of Boston .¦' Sixty-seven per cent of them
are of parentage from beyond the sea. Eighty per
cent of the children of New York are of such parent
age, and the story is the same for other great cities —
Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco. More than three-
quarters of their people are of foreign antecedents :
Irish, Germans, French, ItaUans, Hungarians, Poles,
Russians, Armenians, Chinese.
" Not that I would disparage the beneficent minis
tries of education for any of these. It is all an occa
sion of joy. I only speak of what we are doing for
them to emphasize what we ought to do for those of
our own blood. It was the apostle to the Gentiles,
engaged with all his might in efforts for the people
of other races, who wrote : ' If any provideth not for
his own, and especially his own household, he hath
denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.' And
so, to-day, our interest in other people should deepen
our sense of responsibUity for those who are our near
est of kin.
" Who are these 10,000,000 whites of the South ?
They are the children of the colonial pioneers, of the
soldiers who made the continental army, of the fathers
who estabUshed the Republic. They are many of
them descendants from a New England ancestry as
well as from settlers of Virginia and the Carolinas.
A cursory study of the subject leads me to believe
that in some counties of Georgia a larger proportion
of the people can trace back through some line to a
New England sire than in the city of Boston. The

238 THE PRESENT SOUTH CHAP.
cracker is of the same blood with the merchant prince.
This is to be seen in their very names. The people,
North and South, are one, in features and in native
force, cherishing comraon religious beliefs and con
serving the irameraorial traditions of freedom and
independence. " What is due from the prosperity of the great
cities of New England, New York, and Pennsylvania
to their kinsfolk in the rural South .? This is only a
new direction to a very old question. For a full hun
dred years these cities have generously recognized
their obligations to their own children as they went
to Ohio, Michigan, and all the region beyond to the
Pacific Coast. What academy or college was planted
anywhere in these states during their pioneer days
that was not helped from the older and wealthier
communities of the East ? We see the results to-day
in the whole life of the Northwest." ^
Our Southern States must look vrith "larger and
raore active confidence to the resources of local taxa
tion, and yet the conditions which have been here
outlined possess indeed a national significance and
should challenge a national response. The child in
Alabama is not the child of Alabama alone. Our
children — let me again suggest — are the Nation's
children. In their potential citizenship lie the social
and poUtical forces which are to have a part in the
making of their country's governraent, in the shaping
of their country's destiny. Yet there is reason for
1 Quoted from Georjge S. Dickerman, New Haven, Connecticut, —
one of the wisest and most conservative of the Northern students of
Southern conditions. Further statistics as to the density and the dis
tribution of population will be found in Table VII of the Appendix,
p. 304, columns 2 and 3.

vn A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 239
reflection in a startling contrast to which the records
of our government will point us. The child of Alaska
is the subject of the Nation's considerate provision. .
He is not in any iraraediate sense a potential voter.
Yet in Alaska the expenditure upon the children of
the Nation — though 60 per cent of them are the
children of the Eskimo — is annually ;^I7.78 per
capita of the enrolment. The children of Alabama
are not the subject of a national provision, and the
expenditure in Alabama per capita of the pupils in
average attendance is now annually 1^4.41. For the
child of the Nation in Alaska an annual investment
of $iy.yS, actually paid in part, though indirectly,
by the people of Alabaraa; — for the child of the
Nation in Alabama an annual investment of ^4.41 —
though the child of Alabama represents in his grow
ing and eager life the potential electorate of the
richest and noblest land in history.
We may well be grateful for every dollar that is
being expended upon the children of our territories.
I also know the explanations with which some would
attempt to modify the appalling contrast which I
have cited. But when we see what our great gov
ernment can spend and what this government can
compass when it tries, how insistently and success
fully it can find needs to meet and tasks to accom
plish from the Eskimo to the Filipino, and from Porto
Rico to Guam, has not the time fully corae to look
straight and clear before us to the home acre of our
own undeveloped citizenship .<' It is well to aid and
to bless the governed. We shall not fail to do so if
we have something of a care for those who are going
to do the governing. No rule wUl ever be wiser than

240 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
the rulers, and no republic can be freer than its own
people. To enlarge the lot and to increase the inspira-
• tions of the children of these United States, North
and South and East and West, is, therefore, not a
gratuitous charity : it is not raerely the obligation of
one section to another ; it is the responsibiUty of the
Nation to its world-influence as well as to its citizen
ship ; it is the supreme duty of our national capacities
and of our national self-interest.
There have been objections to any policy of "fed
eral aid." Unquestionably such a policy might take
objectionable forms. With, however, the safeguard
ing of the principle of self-help and with a broad and
satisfactory recognition of the principle of local
adrainistration, such a poUcy would seera to be as
coraraendable as it would be effective. Nor should
such a policy rest upon the merely local or sectional
necessities of the South ; it should be national in
its whole conception. Representing a constructive
policy of the State, it should be available throughout
our country wherever the illiteracy of the individual
county rises beyond a fixed percentage ; — wherever,
in other words, the standard of American citizenship
is threatened by the unusual massing of ignorant or
untutored life.
And yet it should not be a policy of constraint.
Federal assistance should not be forced upon the un
willing, for under such conditions the county would
certainly be averse to the acceptance of the necessary
terms of aid, and the appropriation — when given —
would not receive sympathetic or effective adminis
tration. But where the county, through its own peo
ple or its own authorities, makes request, and where

VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 241
the county meets the conditions of self-help, the gen
eral government should be free to extend its practical
co5peration. The labor of the schools is labor for a
citizenship which is national as well as local. Igno
rance in America cannot be fenced off into negUgible
provinces of life and interest. Though the Nation
neglect its ignorance, ignorance will not neglect the
Nation. It thinks, it hates, it drags down — by crude
and wasteful work — the standard of intelligent and
effective labor ; ignorance helps to make others igno
rant, its poverty helps to raake others poor ; it votes ;
and, because it votes, it creates the perennial oppor
tunity of the demagogue and an ever attendant peril
of the State. There are in the United States to-day
more than 6,000,000 of people who cannot read and
write, among them nearly 2,300,000 of ilUterate men
of voting age, and, sadder still, more than 2,600,000
of ilUterate adult women — possible mothers of our
citizenship. Shall a Nation which waged a tragic war over the
issues involved in the formal emancipation of its
slaves, pause before the problem of that real eraanci
pation which finds its arguraent and its appeal in the
presence of every ignorant and ineffective life ? The
freedora to possess one's self is, for white raen or
for black raen, by no means all the battle. The
freedom to possess one's self holds little of security
or joy till it is followed by at least some measure of
the freedom of knowledge and some share in the free
dom of training. Life without fitness for life is hardly
happiness, and work without fitness for work is almost
slavery. Even if there should first be necessary an
araendraent to the national Constitution, what more

242 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
sacred dograa could stand in the organic law of a
modern deraocracy than a provision according at
least the opportunities of elementary knowledge and
elementary training to every child of the land .''
As for the South, there are those who tell us that
she would object to "outside aid." The apprehen
sion is theoretic. That the South would object — as
other sections and locaUties would object — to a poUcy
of enforced relief, is true. That the South — what
ever the course of her political representatives in the
past — would now oppose such a policy as I have
atterapted to suggest is altogether incredible. In
substance, she has accepted it. The revenues of the
Peabody Fund, a fund given in 1867 by a citizen of
Massachusetts, have been accepted, freely, gladly,
gratefully, and for raore than thirty years, by the pub
lic school authorities of every Southern State. The
educational funds represented by the Slater Board
and the General Education Board have also been
accepted, and — like those of the Peabody Board —
have been wholly inadequate to raeet the cogent and
overwhelming appeals from practically every quarter.
The agricultural and mechanical colleges of the States
are directly the creation of federal appropriations,
appropriations based upon the values of public lands,
and now everywhere cordially accepted and utilized
in the educational policy of the South."
Is it urged that these revenues belong in part to
the States theraselves ? — that they hardly represent
the acceptance of " outside aid " ? It is true. It is
also true that, in the strict analysis of the expression,
there is no such thing within the whole domain of our
national administration as "outside aid" — nor can

VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 243
there be. If the South asks for a federal public
building, it asks no " charity " ; if any section of the
South asks for a special mail-train, it asks no " out
side aid." For the South is not one land and the
Nation another. The South is within the Nation —
may make its legitimate requisitions upon the national
expenditure because toward that expenditure it raakes
its araple contributions. No section of the Nation
receives, proportionately, so little of the national reve- '
nues. The South is predominantly agricultural. In
the vast suras collected in the form of a protective
tariff, but contributed indirectly by American con
sumption — Northern and Southern — to the upbuild
ing of our country's manufacturing interests, the South
has had Uttle share. She has contributed her portion
toward the ;^ 140,000,000 which the country annually
distributes through the national pensions.^ Yet these
revenues are received and expended, for the most
part, within the States of the North and West. I do
not call in question the principle of pension relief. It
is of some economic significance, however, that the
fiscal policies and the relief provisions of the govern
ment should operate chiefly to the advantage of the
sections outside the South. This is not in itself a
reason why pensions should be discontinued or why
the tariff should be readjusted. And yet it is a rea
son why there need be no sensitiveness on the part
of the South if the South should be included in a
poUcy of federal aid in relation to public education.
1 Since 1893 the cost of the pension system per capita of the whole
population has gradually fallen, but in that year this cost was $2.44.
The expenditure for public education, per capita of the whole popula
tion, was in the same year $2.48.

244 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
But even if it were otherwise, no section or State
could well hesitate to receive and use — under a wise
and equitable system — national revenues appropri
ated for national ends. For these revenues are them
selves a contribution from the people of the States.
The South may well receive some portion of what
the South has given. The Nation's resources, I may
repeat, are not the vague revenues of a mysterious
paternalisra outside the Northern or Southern States.
" Outside aid " is an irapossible misnomer. In the
United States of America there is no " outside " : nor
can there be. The land is one land ; and a democ
racy which is everywhere opening to its people an
equality of political obligation raust, in the interest
of governraent itself, provide for a fairer distribution
of educational opportunity.
One of our greatest Presidents has said that it is
" the duty of the people to support the government,
not of the governraent to support the people." Like
many an epigram, its truth is wholly dependent upon
its context and its application. That the expression
should soraetiraes have been quoted in criticism of
the policy of federal appropriations for public edu
cation brings us an explicit perversion of its intended
sense. And yet even here I would not hesitate to
hold the maxim sound. For as thus applied, the
saying raay but enforce the truth that when govern
ment educates it supports itself. What the State
appropriates for the education of its people, it appro
priates not to their support but to the support of
those stabilities of mind and temper, those habits and
efficiencies of the popular life, which make of democ
racy a rational and consistent order, an institution

VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 245
corabining flexibility with permanence and force with
freedom. When the people, through their govern
raent, educate theraselves, they educate themselves
for government. Ill
The movement represented by the Southern and
General Education Boards — as already stated — is in
no sense formally identified with the proposal for
national aid. And yet this movement, however un
consciously, has perhaps contributed to that proposal.
It has brought into the national mind, it has brought
into the national heart, and has laid upon the national
conscience, the needs of the rural child, — the child
not only of the rural South but of the North and West
as well. And, for one, I am glad that it has done so. It
is apparent that while philanthropy raay appropriately
serve to make at certain points its demonstrations of
method, may touch here and there with inspiring
force a locality, an institution, or an individual, and so
raay turn failure into success, yet the task is too
appalling in its coraplexity and its raagnitude for the
resources or the adrainistrations of private bodies.
These organizations must continue — they have
worked out all the essential policies of a wise and
constructive programrae — and their field will reraain
even after the cooperation of the national governraent
is secured. But it is to our national and collective
interest, as found and expressed through our national
legislature, that we raay look henceforth for a clearer
and juster perception of the needs of our rural life.
How long we raay have to wait, no raan can say;
but in this day, not of socialisra, but of vivid social

246 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
obligations, the stars in their courses seem to fight
for those who believe that the function of govern
raent is not raerely the function of a national police,
is not merely negative, corrective, regulative, but posi
tive and affirmative.
In the meanwhile we may rejoice that there are
those who, under the pure impulses of a generous
patriotism, are trying to aid in doing personally what
the Nation has not done officially. While it is true
that the Nation has a duty to its citizenship, these
are also proving that a true citizenship has a duty to
the Nation. Every true gift of a genuine philan
thropy represents the thought of what is due not only
to the child but to our country. Such a gift is the
acceptance of the hoUest and deepest obligation of
the citizen to the State. It is his effort to add to the
forces by which it rebuilds and reconstitutes its life.
And yet, let us suppose that such a gift were made
solely for the child's sake, were indeed that real thing
which the world calls charity, — not the charity of
condescension, but the charity of a reverent and
tender love, the motive of that fine, ennobling, human
grace which puts a raan's strength at the service of
his friend, which puts God's power at the service of
those who pray, which always places and always will
place the whole world's wisdom and goodness and
greatness at the service of a little chUd, — who then
will care to stand, as a forbidding and darkening
barrier, between charity and the children .''
May I close this chapter, therefore, with a story ;
not an " historic Ulustration," but a true story out of
life.? It Ulustrates, as in a simple, human parable,
that truth of a cooperative and cooperating patriotism

VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 247
upon which we have dwelt so long. It is a story of
one of the children of Alabama. ,As its meaning
comes home to us, we may well leave the mood of
argument and abstraction for that mood of tender
and personal affection which makes the deeper nerve
of every civic cause, of every social faith.
Some twenty years ago, in one of the smaller
cities of Alabaraa, there was born to an honored Con
federate soldier and his noble wife, a little daughter.
For a few brief months she dwelt among them as
a little presence of bodily happiness and responsive
charra. Clear eyes, lighted with the strange wisdom
of innocent babyhood; soft prattle, making audible
her rapturous content with the wonder of this great,
kindly, befriending, human world ; and then, within
the bitter fate of a few swift hours, there came the
desolating change.
It was not death ; it was that tragic compromise by
which life comes back from death, leaving its laurels
in death's hands, — life without the seals and sym
bols of our living world, — life without sight or hear
ing or utterance. Through the tender body of the
child there had swept a fever, like a scourge of flame,
that left her foreverraore a child of darkness and of
silence. The fever did not take her from her father, her
mother, her friends, her loved and happy world ; but
frora her it took — all. For seven long years, — deaf,
speechless, blind, she knew no converse with any
huraan or living thing.
You raay teach the deaf through the ministry of
vision ; you may instruct the blind by hearing and by
speech, but when the blind one cannot hear, and

248 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
when the deaf cannot see, how may love find a way ?
DwelUng thus in a sUence without light, in a night
that gave back to her no earthly or heavenly voice,
the child Uved on, her prison darkening as her young
heart grew older in its warfare.
And then on a wonderful and ever memorable day,
there came another change. To this little girl in her
Southern horae there was brought one who found a
clew, one whose patient and unwearied labor, whose
brooding insight, found at last a symbol, a common
term, between her own raind and Helen Keller's im
prisoned life. Following that clew, and by adding
symbol to symbol and term to term, the devoted
teacher built up for the struggling and eager child,
upon the single sense of touch, a language ; and
that language has unlocked for her the whole vast,
radiant world of books and art and hope and truth
and love. Helen Keller, now a successful student of
Radcliffe College in Harvard University, famiUar
with five of the great literatures of our civilization,
shares a life which, though still deaf and still sight
less, is rich in human interests and friendships. Out
of the dark and silent prison-house there was but one
door into the glad provinces of culture, fellowship,
and light, — but one door, and her teacher found for
her its hidden threshold, opened it, led her forth, and
keeps her hand in hers to-day ; — the hand no longer
of a sad, baffled, despairing child, but of a useful and
happy woman.
Was it worth doing.' Was it worth permitting?
That teacher's hand was the hand of a wise, patient,
tender, devoted woman of the North. The means
that have made possible this strange and beautiful

VII A NARRATIVE OF COOPERATION 249
eraancipation have come largely through the consid
erate aid of Northern friends, — friends who forgot
North and South and East and West in the presence
of a great, saddening, appealing calamity of our hu
man life, remembering only that a Uttle child in need
is the rightful heir of all that this world holds.
A Uttle child in need, — the child in its helpless
ness, with its back toward the darkness and the si
lence, with its face toward a day dawning over the
battle-ground of ideas, of institutions, of nations, of
men, of great, naked, furious, relentless destinies, —
clashing, contending, devouring, till the doom of
God ; the child facing the battle ; the child in a de
mocracy, with an outlook frora the chariot of the
King ; the child, — and all humanity within him. There
lies the constraining motive, the fundamental and in
clusive motive, of all the educational policies of Church
or State, of legislation or philanthropy, — the child,
in whose presence sectionalisms becorae meaningless
and humanity becomes supreme.
The policy of education may be, indeed, a policy
of national or local self-interest. But the self of
which we think is the self-hood of our future — the
locality, the State, the Nation, of our children. Their
hands rule us while we work. Toward the threshold
of their enfranchisement they move to-day, through
all our country, out of the valleys of silence and of
darkness — hearts breathing toward the hills, faces
lifted toward the light. Their souls inherit frora us
all things but the strange and fatuous passions that
divide man from man. Their upUfted hands bear
no blood-stains of war. Their waiting and eager lives
know nothing of factions and sections and nations.

250 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.vii
They are here, they are ready, and the world is
theirs. The glory, the largess, of all humanity belongs
to every one of them. Just as no man can prevent
the poetry of our Lanier from speaking to the child
of the North, just as no man can prevent the music
of Longfellow frora blessing the child of the South,
so the wealth and good and truth of all belong for
ever to us all.
Education, all education, is but philanthropy ; and
philanthropy is but huraanity beUeving in itself and
in its God, — humanity, with its hand in the child's
hand, before that door that opens ever Eastward, out
of the world of the helpless and silent night into the
world of the far, free day — the world of voices and
fellowship, of serious, grave, implacable liberties, of
a little happiness, of much duty and struggle and
patience, and — if God will — an honest work inspir
ing, sustaining, contenting.

CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY

CHAPTER VIII
CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY

Culture, in a democracy, is the aspiration of the
many; and a democracy is to culture but the chal
lenge of practical occasions. In the world with
which we have now to do culture is everybody's
creed ; and democracy is everybody's chance to put
the creed to work.
Manifestly, therefore, culture is raore than knowl
edge, just as deraocracy means more than a form
of government. We need not pause for fixed and
ultiraate definitions. We have no sooner fixed thera
than they cease to be ultimate. Our danger Ues not
in the descriptions we should accept so much as in
the possible truth of those we might orait ; for all are
true. Culture — in a broad and liberal sense — is
but the estate of the huraan raind when touched by
the joy of achieveraent, just as democracy is the
rule of human numbers come to their conscious
power. We may find aspects of culture in the
savage, phases of deraocracy in the Russias.
Wherever the achievements of the raind are pleas-
iirably and consciously possessed, we have the begin
nings of those aristocracies of sentiment and of those
distinctions of feeling which have builded the king
dom of ideas. Out of small beginnings has come
253

254

THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.

the reign of truth and the authority of loveliness.
And wherever human multitudes have tasted the
consciousness of power, of power in theu: own right,
we have the vague foreshado wings of a government
of the people. Governraent, however, is the least of
the forras through which the people rule, just as
scholastic knowledge is the least of the offerings of
culture. The power of ideas and the power of nura
bers — through all the range of our human Ufe —
act and react upon each other. Out of this action
and reaction, out of these reciprocities of influence,
what may we say as to the obligation of culture to
deraocracy, and as to the obUgation of democracy to
culture ?
It were perhaps a simple matter to discuss such
questions merely as the abstract and unrelated ques
tions of social criticism. But such inquiries, for an
age dorainated by a certain iraperious sense of actu
ality, possess an inevitable context. They fit into
given scenes and touch upon Uving issues. It would
be interesting to discuss them in relation to the
intellectual habits and the social institutions of
China. But the American must discuss them in
America. It would be interesting to point out their
significance at the North, to trace there the obligations
of the educated life toward the deep huraan issues
that arise in the struggle between labor and capital ;
to indicate the perils there of a crude emotionalisra
upon the one hand, and of an occasional self-
sufficiency upon the other, to show, upon both sides,
the survivals of tyranny and the failure of the fruits
of freedora, the negation of culture by the cultivated
and the rejection of democracy among the multitude ;

VIII CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 255
but the citizen of the South, writing from within the
conditions of Southern thought, must discuss these
questions in their appUcation to the South.
What, then, is the obligation of democracy to cul
ture ? First of all, the right to Uve. The obligation
to accord to the educated life the opportunities of
knowledge, and then in the interest of democracy
itself to permit the founding and extending of the
prerogatives of intellectual freedom. Such Uberties
are far raore faraUiar to the South than the world
has understood. Recent tests of the principle of
academic freedom, at the University of Texas, in
Tennessee, in Virginia, in North Carolina, have indi
cated that the South has not altogether failed to
keep pace with the broader university traditions.
There have been some Southern lapses, and there
have been a few, at least, in the North and at the
West. But the freedom of the intellectual life is
never fully measured by the standard or the prece
dents of the university, nor by the traditions of
journaUstic or poUtical expression ; nor even by the
truer tests of Uterature. Social life is a thing of vast
complexity, and yet a thing of local and individual
character. A civilization has many ways of talking
out its mind. Its way may be wholly different frora
the way which is accepted by other civilizations and
other worlds ; but the fact that its raethod of expres
sion is different does not argue that it is without
expression. The South is not a land of book-raaking ;
it is so essentially and predorainantly rural that it
is not a land of great newspapers ; it has been so
long the land of a fixed political minority that it
knows little of the clash of great and sincere debate ;

256 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
but it is peculiarly a land of conversation. The
North may think it knows something of conversation,
but the North, as compared with the South, raay be
said never to have enjoyed a conversation. About
the village courthouse, within the hospitable doors of
some central store, in the office of the local daily or
weekly paper, or — above all — in the leisurely and
genial intercourse around the fireside in winter or
on the inviting porch in summer, of friend with
friends, there will be heard a conversation which in
wit, in the charra and force of its illustrations, and in
the directness and freedom of its criticism is not sur
passed in Araerican life to-day.
It is the product of leisure, of a world without haste,
without ruthless preoccupations, without those re
sources of expression and of interest which belong to
the crowded and overweighted existence of the com
mercial city. It is, moreover, part of the tradition of
the Cavalier. It is part of the genius of climate, and
soil, and social habit. The Southern speaker who
addresses a Northern audience is often asked where
he gets his "stories." They are stories, usually, not
only with humor but with meaning. He hardly
knows. They are vivid, inherited possessions. They
have come down to him from a land in which conver
sation is an art, and in which it is not mere art alone
but the supreme vehicle of social criticism.
That this vehicle — despite its individuality and
efficiency — is increasingly inadequate must be evi
dent enough. The complexity and the activities of
industrial transformation are making an end of the
old leisure and of the old possibiUties which it in
volved, and are thus making a larger demand for a

VIII CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 257
more explicit and more active leadership in politics,
in the press, the pulpit, the university. This leader
ship is fast appearing. In politics it wUl probably be
longest delayed — through causes as operative in the
North as in the South — and yet there are men in
the poUtical life of the South who, though holding no
longer the centre of the national stage, are truly the
heirs of whatever is noblest and freest in the pubUc
service of their country.
The press, as with the press of the world at large,
is sometimes chargeable with a hysteria and a per
versity which are the despair of a rational hopeful
ness, and yet upon the really vital issues in the Ufe of
the South the press has been a free and patriotic
force. What newspapers of our country have stood
more persistently and effectively for law and order
than the Atlanta Constitution, the Montgoipery Ad
vertiser, the New Orleans Times-Democrat, the Ra
leigh News and Observer, the Charleston News and
Courier — not to mention a score of others whose
course has been as honorable ? The writer has exam
ined nearly two thousand editorials of the American
press on the subject of child labor. No editorials
have been comparable to those of the South in
fulness of knowledge, intensity of interest, or vigor
and directness of expression. The files of the daily
State of Columbia, South Carolina, represent for a
course of two years the ablest handling of a human
industrial issue that our country has known since the
period of emancipation. As for the pulpit of the
South, a popular writer has charged it with a cow
ardly silence in relation to our industrial problems,
and has intiraated, with grotesque inaptness, that the

2S8 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
child-labor abuses of the South were due to the
complicity of the Christian clergy. At the very
time when this criticism was written, the reform
committees in charge of the propaganda for protec
tive legislation in the several Southern States were,
almost without exception, headed by a clergyman of
the Christian Church. The South is the subject of a
general national interest, but it is not the subject,
unfortunately, of a general national information.
There have been clergyraen who frora motives good
or bad have not aided sympathetically in the press
ing of industrial reforms. But, upon the whole, the
clergy of the South rang nobly true upon that es
pecial issue, and they spoke from individual pulpits
and through the action of church assemblies with a
freedom and a vigor which the clergy of the North —
upon Uke issues — have not surpassed.
The universities of the South have shared in the
common national struggle for the freedom of the
teacher, and while much reraains to be accompUshed,
the conflict — as has been suggested — has not been
without its signal triumphs. Another, and yet a
cognate, struggle for the raising of academic stand
ards has been quite as inspiring ; and the leadership
of men like Kirkland of Vanderbilt, Wiggins of Se
wanee, Denny of Washington and Lee, and Alder
man of Tulane, is achieving definite and permanent
results. More important still are those forces of
popular leadership which — through the whole domain
of our Southern States — have issued from our uni
versities for the upbuilding of the common schools.
To the support of popular education, to the enlarge
ment of the life, the training, the freedom, of the

VIII CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 259
masses of the people these men have unselfishly
dedicated capacity and energy and labor, and in an
educational revival which has become one of the
raost significant moveraents of our century they are
helping to make of our deraocracy not raerely a theory
of poUtics but a civic creed.
And yet with explicit appreciation of the vigor and
the freedom of the leadership which now exists — in
politics, the press, the pulpit, the university — it is
obvious that the conditions which have raade its
existence difficult have reduced its volume and will
continually threaten its efficiency. The South pos
sesses a peculiar " problem " — bequeathed to it under
tragic conditions and continued under every circum
stance which might increase its perplexities and its
burdens. The political solution which was attempted
by the North was apparently involved — by those
who undertook it — with a number of unwise and
unsympathetic methods in negro education and with
what was popularly regarded as an experiment in
"social equality." The three proposals — political,
educational, social — thus became identified, how
ever mistakenly, in the popular imagination of the
South, and each phase of Northern activity became
so intimately associated with the other — especially
in the thought of the ignorant — that the task of
clarification has seemed almost impossible. To the
baffling confusion of the situation was added the fact
that the responsible interest of the South was largely
ignored and — upon the assumption that the South's
opposition to the freedman's social and political
assimilation involved the South's opposition to his
every right — the problem was assumed to be wholly

26o THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
a problera of the North. Beneath the North's seri
ous and rightful sense of obligation the South saw
only an intolerant "interference." Beneath the
South's natural suspicion and solicitude the North
saw only an undiscrirainating enmity to herself and
to the negro. Both interpretations were unfounded.
The South, however, passed from a mood of compar
ative indifference to a mood of active and unyielding
criticisra, a criticism which expressed — in one form
or another — the central contention that the problem
had never been the North's and must always remain
the South's ; that having atterapted its solution upon
the basis of universal suffrage, and, in 1876, having
confessed its failure by the withdrawal of its railitary
support of the reconstruction govemraents, the North
was bound to remand the problera to the Southern
States. In the stricter sense, the problem is not the
South's or the North's, but the Nation's ; and yet, as
has been suggested, its local home does lie within the
South, and the ultimate forces of its solution must
therefore be predominantly Southern in their genius
and environraent. In any event, it is evident to-day
that the popular forces of American life are only too
ready to leave the question — in its deepest issues —
with the people of the Southern States ; and there
fore, to-day, as never before, the negro problem is, in
fact, the South's.
In an older period, when the question was within
the physical as well as the moral control of alien and
unsympathetic forces, it was natural that the attitude
of Southern thought should have been an attitude of
protest, and that its criticism should have been chiefly
negative and corrective. That period made men nat-

VIII CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 261
urally resentful of " advice," naturally suspicious and
contemptuous of " theories." It was the period of
reconstruction, — a period of much adrainistrative
sordidness, but also of raeraorable heroism among
nurabers of the raen and woraen who undertook the
freedmen's initiation into the experience of the citi
zen. Its successes, however, were hidden, deep, not
easily observable; its blunders were observable and
conspicuous. It was to have been expected, therefore,
that in the presence of palpable mistakes which it
was powerless to rectify, the raind of the South should
have become reticent or indifferent or occasionally
cynical, and that its tendency to deal with the whole
question negatively rather than positively should have
become an established intellectual habit.
But that period has passed, and with the passing
of that period there arises a larger and clearer need
for the contribution to this question, as to every ques
tion of the South, of a positive and constructive
leadership, — a leadership no longer reactionary or
obstructive, but, while awed by responsibility, equipped
with learning, vital with suggestion, altogether un-
tramraelled in utterance, and therefore consciously
and confidently free.
It is in the interest of the South herself that such
a leadership — not in one profession or one class but
in all — should be raore largely developed and sus
tained. Dark indeed must be the fate of any land if
compelled to approach the solution of any significant
problem of its life with its Ups sealed and its reason
bound. In the interest of her own solution of her
own problems, the South will, of necessity, assume
that her policies are not to be determined from the

262 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
standpoint of the ignorant or from the standpoint
of the crude devices of party tactics, but frora the
standpoint of her best life — desiring the total good.
For the very reason that her probleras are so diffi
cult and so acute, the South is entitled to the larg
est knowledge, and to the freest, clearest thinking of
which her sons are capable. For the reason that the
problem is so largely committed to the South, the life
and thought of the South are under every obligation
to deal with it affirmatively and constructively. In
the leadership which would respond to this obligation
there will be errors, — some of them really serious,
some of them serious only to those who fail to realize
that all progressive movement anywhere must neces
sarily involve a Uttle of that trait of the injudicious
which is the fine infirmity of disinterested courage.
When great issues are at stake the counsels of caution
become sometimes an intolerable and impossible fetich.
Mistakes will, of course, be made,. but the South will
also make a demonstration of capacity and courage
which will accomplish real results. Anything is
better than a situation in which — North and South —
we too often find the ignorant assertive and the edu
cated silent, the ignorant aggressive and the educated
acquiescent, the ignorant recording with a pathetic
but sinister intolerance the decrees of academic or
political policy, and the educated exhausting their
powers only in the farailiar exercises of private lara-
entation. It is true, upon the other hand, that in a
democracy the influence of the best experience is
often limited or defeated by the alUance of the tra
ditional forces of leadership with the very ignorance
which needs correction. The political platform, the

VIII CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 263
pulpit, the university, the journalism of the hour, are
expected to prey — for their existence — -upon the
errors which demand redress. The multitudes of a de
raocracy should insist, however, that in their own in
terest the forces of leadership shall really lead. The
people raust corae to expect service rather than flat
tery — a service which raay involve, in the interest of
its usefulness, the examination and criticisra of popu
lar misconceptions.
For the errors of a democracy are attended with
peculiar and disastrous cost. In a monarchy or
oligarchy, general administrative wrongs are wUled
from above downward upon the raasses of social Ufe.
The people may endure them or approve them, but
the people have never willed them, have never spirit
ually accepted them. When, however, a democracy
goes wrong, the people have done more than go wrong;
they have willed to go wrong. Wrong has entered,
by a certain process of collective participation, into
the national life and the national spirit. Its effect is
not registered in the life of the majority alone. The
consequences of elective action pass back from the
action itself into the wUl ; and multitudes who, before,
were faintly right or at least not convinced of error,
grow in a subtle way to feel that what the majority
has ordered is to be henceforth accepted not only as
an authoritative policy, but as a moral finality. Un
less, therefore, a democracy is to give a spiritual au
thority to occasional majorities which they ought
hardly to possess, and unless there is to be no effec
tive appeal from the tyranny of popular moods, the
conditions of a genuine moral and intellectual leader
ship must ' be consistently sustained. The essential

264 THE PRESENT SOUTH CHAP.
obligation of deraocracy to culture is thus no mere
obligation to the aesthetic arts or to academic science
— sacred as these must be — but an obligation to
accord trust and reverence everywhere to the poUcies
of freedora, an obUgation consistent with the rights
of the majority, but consistent also with that larger
perspective of history in which it has not infrequently
appeared that those who have served democracy most
truly are those who have saved the people from thera
selves. II
Turning thus more directly to the thought of the
obligation of culture toward a democratic order, it
must be obvious that its first duty is in large measure
to itself. Its own Ught — in the Church, in the uni
versity, in the home of the citizen — must be kept
pure and clear. No enthusiasm for the education
of " the masses " should be suffered to obscure the
dignity and the necessity of the scholar's life. But
the law of self-preservation is, after all, but an aspect
of the law of service. And the law of service is but
an aspect of the law of self-preservation. A culture
which holds itself in detachment frora the vital issues
of experience, which has things to say in reference
to the economic heresies of Germany or Russia, but
nothing to say in reference to the economic perils of
its own land, which deals at the North only with the
" problems of the backward South " or at the South
only with the problems of the " materialistic North,"
a culture which ignores its own context, will not long
be taken seriously even by itself. If it be not inter
ested in life, it will soon cease to be interested in any-

VIII CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 265
thing ; and, consuming itself upon itself, it will pass
at length into the dry-rot of a nerveless and unfruitful
cynicism. The quickening of the nerve of culture within the
life of the South has been largely due to the response
which its educated raen, and especially its educated
woraen, are giving to social needs. For example, the
teaching force in the schools and universities of the
South is, in its personnel, as noble a social force as
a democracy has known. It is not surpassed even
by the inspiring standards of early New England.
And yet culture, as a force of citizenship, may not
busy itself exclusively with the traditional interests
of technical education. A rising generation is edu
cated not 9nly by its schools but by the forces of
established custom, by the pressure of traditional
truth or traditional error, by the habits of opinion,
the assumptions of popular feeUng, the dogmas of
collective sentiraent, within which it looks outward
and upward into Ufe. These bear with intimate and
often with decisive pressure upon those who are just
beginning to accept for their own land and time the
larger heritage of woraanhood and manhood. Cul
ture has, therefore, a duty toward the scholastic
training of our democratic life; but it has also a
duty toward that vast body of traditional preposses
sions which form the broader educative forces of
society. It is an obligation of sympathetic, intelli
gent, but unflinching criticism.
If we turn for illustrations to the South, it is not
because I could not find thera at the North, but
because the North — for the purposes of this volume
— is " another story." And the thought of the

266 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
South raust, for the sake of the South, concern itself
supremely with certain confusions of sentiment within
the Southern States. Indeed, a few of these illus
trations are chosen for us ; chosen both by the obtru
sive and persistent form of the errors themselves and
by the gratifying and increasing evidence of Southern
protest. There was a time when one of the most
potent of these prepossessions had reality and author
ity, when the cry of "negro domination" rang through
the heart of the South with an intelligible although an
indescribable terror. Yet for now more than twenty
years, a negro officialism or the preponderance of an
ignorant negro vote has been impossible. The negro
vote raay hold the balance of power at this or that
point where the white vote is evenly divided. That
is true of New York City with its 18,651 negro votes;
or of the city of Philadelphia with its 20,000. The
negro, however, votes nowhere as a unit except at the
South, and the solidity of his vote is largely due to
the force of that external pressure which thus creates
the very " peril " it has atterapted to defeat. If the
negro votes were not driven together in a raass, there
could be no decisive power in the minority which they
represent. And even where they represent a major
ity, — where do they rule ? or where have they ruled
for these twenty years? The South, with all its
millions of negroes, has to-day not a negro congress
man, not a negro governor or senator. A few obscure
justices of the peace, a few negro mayors in sraall
viUages of negro people, and — if we orait the few
federal appointees — we have written the total of all
the negro officials of our Southern States. Every
possibiUty of negro domination vanishes to a raore

vm CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 267
shadowy and more distant point with every year, with
every dollar invested in Southern properties. With every
white raan corae into the South to Uve, with every raile
of railways, telegraphs, and telephones, with every
penny expended for pUbUc education. The peril of
the supremacy of the colored population is the merest
" bogie." It was never possible, except through the
support of miUtary force. That force has been, for
nearly thirty years, withdrawn. It will never enter
the South again. The whole country has so willed
it; and if it could come again, our intelligent and
conservative negroes would be the first to suspect
its raotive and to repudiate its odious compulsion.
Araong all the absurdities of conjecture, and among
all the ridiculous imaginations of theoretic horror,
there is just now no phantom so spectral in its sub
stance or so pitifully trivial in its proportions as this
" peril " of negro domination. And yet in certain
sections of our Southern States it is still an " issue,"
is still the first theme of political oratory and the last
excuse of civic negligence. In counties where there
are hardly enough negroes to forra a docile and
amused " example," and where probably less than a
hundred negro votes have been cast within a decade,
gaping crowds are yet thrilled by stentorian assertion
of " the white man's unalterable vow — in the face of
aU the legions of brutal and insidious conspiracy — to
maintain inviolate the proud dominion of the Cauca
sian," — and so forth. The real interests of party are
forgotten ; the educative power of sincere political
debate, the progressive and wholesome influence of
the division of men and factions upon contemporary
issues and in reference to legitiraate political ideas,

268 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
are all but abandoned, and the political education of
large and potentially efficient masses of American
voters is dominated by a crude frenzy of the hustings
which seldom has either sincerity or validity except
as a party lash. And this, even, is a failing function.
Sober and responsible men throughout the South are
growing very, very tired of it. The red-shirt brigades
of one Southern State were called into existence not
so much to awe the negroes as to " arouse " the white
vote. In another of our Southern States the vote for
the constitutional convention, distinctly solicited on
the old issue of " white supremacy," received the
suffrages of less than a third of the Democratic voters.
Not that anybody was opposed to "white supremacy."
That was precisely the reason why two-thirds of the
voters stayed at home. They knew perfectly well that
no one was opposed to it, and that the cry which called
them to preserve it and to perpetuate it was a strident
but familiar fiction. Those who voted for the con
vention voted for it not because they thought white
supremacy was in danger but because they wished to
put the supremacy of the intelligence and property
of the State under the securities of law.
" Negro domination " as a force of party control,
as a weapon of poUtical constraint, is fast losing its
authority. Great masses of the people are beginning
to " know better." Its passing, as a party cry, will
help both the Democracy and the South. The sooner
the Democratic party comes to understand that, if it
would hold the allegiance of the intelUgent masses
of our Southern States, it raust represent, not a futUe
prograrame of negation, aniraosity, and alarra, but a
policy of simple ideals and of constructive suggestion

VIII CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 269
— a course which has given the party its historic
position in our Ufe — the better it will be both for the
party and for the South. The South can then divide,
and can make its divisions turn upOn thought, fact,
conviction. Every party and every section demands,
in the interest of its broadest welfare, that there shaU
work within its regions, its traditions, and its ideas,
the searching, sifting, divisive, regenerative forces of
truth upon its merits. If this is not to be the privi
lege of the South, and if the masses of our people —
through the wanton provocation of the North, or
through the failure of our own party leadership —
are to be still possessed by the old benumbing and
baffling terror, then we shall have, as we have had in
part already, a form of negro domination which we
have least suspected. The soldier of old who bound
his captive to his wrist bound more than the wretched
captive. If his slave was bound to him, he was
hardly the less in bondage to his slave. If the su
preme apprehension of the South is to be the appre
hension of negro domination, if our intensest effort,
our characteristic and prevailing policies, our deepest
social faiths, are to look no further than the negro,
are to be ever busied with the crude fictions of negro
power, and ever clouded by the outworn demand for
the negro's bondage, then, at either end of this
clanking chain, there is a Ufe bound. If we are
so morbidly afraid of the spectral possibilities of
the negro's freedom that we must keep him ever
in a prison, then let us remember that on both
sides of the prison door there is a raan in duress ;
for he who keeps a jaU is hardly freer than his pris
oner. This is the domination that we have really

270 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
to fear, the doraination wrought upon the mind of
a strong and sensitive people by the presence of a
weaker race ; a domination so possessing the imagi
nation, with an alarm half uncontrollable and half
contemptuous ; so inducing perplexity to thought,
and so constraining into fixed and peculiar forms
the course of its whole experience, that the weaker
race acts upon the social nerve of the stronger race
as the occasion of habitual hysteria, touching even
its saner moments as the all-absorbing preoccupation
of its culture and its life. This indeed would be
negro domination. Its existence upon any wide or
inclusive scale would make impossible the simplest
assumptions of a truly democratic order. To protest
against it, to define its possibility, and yet to destroy
its possibility by the demonstration of its needless-
ness — this, of definite tasks, is among the first of the
obligations of our culture to our democracy.
Ill
The educated life of the South, capable of clear
thinking and of just discriminations, will also deal
with some of the misconceptions which have gathered
about the topic of " social equality " between the
races. But while dealing with misconception it will
be compelled, in order to prevent blunders greater
than those it would correct, to conceive and restate,
in positive forms, the implicit racial passion which
underlies the cruder phases of racial antipathy.
Here, as always, the recognition of truth raay well
precede the correction of error. And this truth is
quite as vital to the interest of the negro as to the

VIII CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 271
interest of the white man. The total abandonment
of the dograa of racial integrity at the South would
raean a land — not white, nor part white and part
black — but a land all black ; with perhaps many of
those reversions of the standards of political and
social Ufe which have been exhibited in Hayti and
San Domingo. The possibUity of racial fusion is
not now repugnant to the instinct of the average
negro, repugnant as it is to the instinct of the aver
age white raan, and this fact — the fact that the in
stinct of the black raan is usually ready to abandon
the individuality of his race — puts the white popula
tion upon its guard and leads it to perceive a sinister
significance in sorae of the most harmless occasions
of racial contact. A number of the wisest leaders of
the negro race are seeking to develop a deeper sense
of racial pride. Until negro feeling and opinion are
generally organized, however, into more tenacious
and more articulate support of negro race integrity,
we may expect that the instinct of racial integrity
among the raasses of our white people will lead
always to apprehension, soraetiraes to suspicion,
and occasionally to unreasonable and uncontrollable
assertion. For, whatever the supreme interest of the negro
race, it is, obvious that the supreme interest of the
white race is the interest of racial purity, a purity
necessarily inconsistent with the slightest compromise
in the direction of racial fusion. That the individual
ity of the white race has been sometimes betrayed by
its own representatives — betrayed in response to the
lowest passions — is conspicuously evident. That pub
lic opinion should have dealt too leniently with such

272 THE PRESENT SOUTH CHAP.
offences is due to two causes — to the fact that those
who are guilty of thera are for the raost part too
ignoble to be amenable to any opinion whatever ; and
to the fact that all social life. Northern or Southern,
European or Araerican, deals inconsistently and in
sincerely with social evils. Explanations, however,
are not excuses ; and with the existence of so much
natural antipathy toward the negro who would trans
gress the barriers of race, there must arise a clearer
perception of the truth that the racial integrity of
the Caucasian is threatened, most seriously and in
sidiously, not by the negro but by the degraded
white man.
The formative assumptions, the ultimate dogmas
of a civilization are to be determined, however, not
from the failures of the few but from the concep
tions, the laws, the habits, of the many. The present
evidences of racial admixture are due not primarily
to the period of slavery (for the old negroes are the
black negroes), nor chiefly to the period of the pres
ent, but rather to the period immediately following
the Civil War, when the presence at the South of
vast numbers of the railitary forces of both sections
— the lower classes of the Northern array deraoralized
by idleness, the lower classes of the Southern array
demoralized by defeat — were thrown into contact
with the negro masses at the moment of their greatest
helplessness. Here and there in specific groups
within selected negro communities racial admixture
may now seera to be increasing, but this increase
is apparent rather than real. It is only the perpetua
tion of an admixture that, once existent, will naturaUy
continue in its own line. Among the great masses

Vin CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 273
of the race, especially through the illimitable stretches
of the rural South, the black people are still black.
Every tendency of the present seems to be making
not toward their disintegration but toward that social
and domestic segregation demanded by their own in
terest as well as by the interest of the stronger race
about them.
And yet it is inconceivable that this segregation of
the race should involve its degradation. That would
be a conclusion as unworthy of logic as it would be
unworthy of life; a conclusion disastrous to every
interest of the South. The perils involved in the
progress of the negro are as nothing compared to the
perils invited by his failure. And yet if any race is
to live it raust have something to live for. It will
hardly cling with pride to its race integrity if its race
world is a world wholly synonymous with deprivation,
and if the world of the white man is the only generous
and honorable world of which it knows. It will hardly
hold with tenacity to its racial standpoint, it will
hardly give any deep spiritual or conscious allegiance
to its racial future if its race life is to be forever bur
dened with contempt, and denied the larger possibili
ties of thought and effort. The true hope, therefore,
of race integrity for the negro lies in establishing for
him, within his own racial life, the possibiUties of
social differentiation.
A race which must ever be tempted to go outside
of itself for any share in the largeness and the free
dom of experience will never be securely anchored in
its racial self-respect, can never achieve any legitimate
racial standpoint, and must be perpetually tempted —
as its members rise — to desert its own distinctive

274 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
life and its own distinctive service to the world.
There is no hope for a race which begins by de
spising itself. The winning of generic confidence,
of a legitimate racial pride, will come with the
larger creation — for the capable — of opportunity
within the race. The clew to racial integrity for
the negro is thus to be found, as stated in an
earlier chapter, not in race suppression but in race
sufficiency. For the very reason that the race, in the
apartness of its social Ufe, is to work out its destiny
as the separate meraber of a larger group, it must
be accorded its own leaders and thinkers, its own
scholars, artists, prophets ; and while the develop
ment of the higher life raay corae slowly, even blun
deringly, it is distinctly to be welcoraed. As the
race coraes to have within itself, within its own social
resources, a world that is worth Uving for, it will gain
that individual foothold among the families of men
which will check the despairing passion of its self-
obUteration; and instead of the teraptation to abandon
its place araong the races of the world it will begin
to claira its own name and its own Ufe. That is the
only real, the only permanent security of race integ
rity for the negro. Its assumption is not degradation,
but opportunity.
Thus understood, I think the educated opinion of
the South has no war with the progress of the negro.
It has feared the consequences of that progress only
when they have seemed to encroach upon the Ufe of
the stronger race.^ It is willing that the negro, within
1 " There is a certain amount of race hatred, of course, and there are
reasons for this, but the best Southern people not only do not hate the
negro, but come nearer to having affection for him than any other peo-

vni CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 275
his own social world, shall become as great, as true, as
really free, as nobly gifted as he has capacity to be. It
has fixed its barriers — in no enmity of temper but in
the interest of itself and its civilization, and not with
out regard to the ultiraate welfare of the negro. It
cannot base its social distinctions on an assertion of
universal " inferiority " — for in that case every
gifted or truly educated negro raight shake the struc
ture of social usage. It bases its distinctions partly
upon the far-reaching consideration that the racial
stock of the two families of men is so unlike that
nothing is to be gained and much is to be lost frora
the interblending of such divergent types ; partly
upon the broad consideration of practical expediency,
in that the atterapt to unite thera actually brings
unhappiness ; partly upon the inevitable persistence
of the odiura of slavery; partly upon a complex,
pie. They are too wise not to realize that posterity vnU judge them
according to the wisdom they use in this great concern. They are too
just not to know that there is but one thing to do with a human being,
and that thing is to give him a chance, and that it is a solemn duty of
the white man to see that the negro gets his chance in everything save
' social equality ' and political control.
" The Southern people believe with their usual intensity that it is
the duty of civiUzation always to protect the higher groups against the
deteriorating influence of the lower groups. This does not mean that
the lower should be prevented from rising, but that it should not be
permitted to break down the higher.
"The improvement and progress ofthe backward nations and races
should all come by improving the conditions of their own group, but
should never be permitted to come at the expense of the higher or
more advanced group, nation, or race. Social equality or political con
trol would mean deterioration of the advanced group, and the South is
serving the Nation when it says it shaU not be so." — Edwin A. Alder
man, LL.D., President of Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana,
before the American Economic Association, December 29, 1903.

276 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
indefinable, but assertive social instinct.^ This instinct
operates almost as remorselessly at the North as at
the South.2 The North is soraetiraes inclined to
think that it exercises a loftier discriraination because
it accords a genial social recognition to this or that
gifted negro visitor frora the South. Such an act
involves little more than a transient courtesy. It is
no test of the real attitude of the North toward the
question of " social equality." That test is found in
the attitude of the social forces of the Northern city
toward the negroes of their community, toward their
own fellow townsmen and townswomen, toward the
whole permanent and complex problem of social reci
procities between farailies as well as between individ
uals. What is the social status of the negro faraily
whose home is in Boston, or Philadelphia, or New
York ? Is it essentially different from its status at
the South ? Are not the few courtesies extended only
the more bitter because through them it feels the
emphasis upon those which are withheld ? Is not the
1 See a selected passage from the Romanes Lecture, by James Bryce,
on page 330, of the Appendix of this volume.
^ In the city of Boston, Massachusetts, for example, in a population
of a half million inhabitants, including twelve thousand negroes, there
is practically no intermarriage of the races. The instances that occur
are usually confined to the lower elements of both races and possess no
serious social significance. " Such couples are usually absorbed by the
negro race, although if they belong to the more educated class they
enter into natural relations with neither race." ... " Barred out from
the society he most admires, his mimicry only excites mirth, and when
he touches the white race on grounds of social equality, it is the meet
ing of outcast vdth outcast." — See "Americans in Process," a settle
ment study of the North and West Ends, Boston, by residents and
associates of the South End House ; edited by Robert A. Woods, pp.
60, 148 ; Boston; Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1902.

vni CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 277
custom of the South, save when pressed to raorbid
and unusual conclusions, happier as a modus vivendi
than the custom of the North ?
But be that as it may, the South in establish
ing the dogma of race integrity has done so, not
in order to enforce a policy of degradation, but sim
ply to express her own faith in a policy of separa
tion. Her desire is not to condemn the negro
forever to a lower place but to accord to him an
other place. She believes that where two great
racial masses, so widely divergent in history and
character, are involved in so much of local and
industrial contact, a clear demarcation of racial life
is in the interest of intelligent cooperation, and — in
spite of occasional hardships — is upon the whole
conservative of the happiness of both. During the
opening of the great Southwest to private settlers
there was an extended period of a ^a«j?-collective
ownership upon the unrestricted prairies. Men grazed
their herds at will. There soon arose, however, the con
fusion of boundaries and a consequent multiplicity of
feuds. Then a number of the settlers, in order to define
their Umits, began to put up fences. Those who first
did so were regarded as the intolerant enemies of
peace. Soon, however, men began to see that peace
is sometimes the result of intelligent divisions, that
the atterapt to maintain a collective policy through
the confusion of individual rights had broken down;
that clear lines, recognized and well-defined, made
mightily for good will ; that the best friends were the
raen who had the best fences. And so there arose
the saying, " Good fences raake good neighbors."
Certainly, however, the educated Ufe of the South

278 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
raust do its utmost to see that racial divisions are in
fact intelligently raade and that the dograa of race
integrity is not subjected to morbid and irrational
applications. In the direct interest of its existence
and its usefulness, it must not be made ridiculous.
To assume that every incident at the North — how
ever unwise — of rumored or actual departure from
Southern customs is an " insult " to the South or an
" attack " upon its life is to assume that the South
may dictate not only for itself but for all the Nation,
and it is to imply that the North must be denied
the very liberty which the South is so rightfully
jealous to assert. The two sections are so largely
different in social feeling and domestic custom
that it will long be difficult, however, for one to
understand the other. In the South, the table,
simple though its fare may be, possesses the sanctity
of an intimate social institution. To break bread
together involves, or may involve, everything. In
the North, especially in its larger cities, the table
of the social dinner or of the general banquet is
often but a useful device for getting together those
who perhaps could not possibly be induced to get
together under any other conceivable conditions.
The social occasion usually involves nothing beyond
itself. In this respect, and in others equally ira
portant, Northern conditions and Southern conditions
are unUke. That this unlikeness in conditions is
becoraing more generally understood by the discrimi
nating public, North and South, is evident. But that
this clearer and broader understanding will obtain in
either section, among every element of the popula
tion, is not iraraediately probable. Here and there

VIII CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 279
at the North the journalisra of moral petulancy,
abandoning the standpoint of the broader representa
tives of the Northern press, will still insist upon read
ing "pro-slavery" designs into the elementary and
raost iraperative poUcies of the South, and will find
" hatred of the negro " in custoras which have pro
tected him frora hatred and have made possible his
existence and his happiness. In recent years nothing
has been more marked, however, than the growing
appreciation of the perplexities and difficulties of the
South upon the part of the press of the North. As
it approaches a truly national standpoint, it will con
tribute to truly national ends.
And at the South we raay also expect to find, here
and there, those who will too readily contribute to
sectional misunderstandings, who will misinterpret
the feeUng of the North, who will continue to seize
upon every pretext which may be twisted into a
sinister significance, and will discover in incidents
to which the North is wholly indifferent a studied
and malignant plot against the life and peace of
the Southern States. Here, too, is the golden oppor
tunity of the politician of the lower type. Dread
ing lest the masses of the people should begin to
think beyond his leading and to divide upon the
varied legitimate issues of principle or policy, he
seizes upon almost any excuse to raise and to
vitalize the fading terror of "negro domination,"
thus to perpetuate stiU further — in order that he
may stiU profit by — the political solidarity which
was created by it. Not only at the North but within
many sections of the South itself, the slightest con
tact with the negro upon the part of white men who

28o THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
may be interested in his welfare is often watched
with a sensitive anxiety, and the fear lest there may
be some possible or shadowy indiscretion is often the
basis of unjust and unreasonable rumor, or the occa
sion, if there be enraity toward the helper or the
helped, for fertUe and mischievous detiraction.
It should be the duty of educated opinion, as
expressed through the pulpit, the press, the univer
sity, to insist calmly but resolutely upon the function
of discrimination. Such an exercise of discrimina
tion is in no sense inconsistent with the opinion that
this or that incident of racial contact. North or South,
is injudicious or unfortunate. Blunders, vicious or
ingenuous, will necessarily be thought about and
talked about. To exaggerate, however, this or that
trivial incident into a vast and ominous peril, to
receive the evidence of an exhibition of questionable
discretion, here or there, in North or South, as though
it involved a legitimate occasion for the frenzy of
multitudes, as though it seriously threatened the fate
of peoples and the very stability of a civilization, is
to take issue with common sense, is to suggest that if
the dogma of race integrity is so easily disturbed, it
cannot be deeply rooted, and is likely to remove that
dogma — in the opinion of the world — from the cate
gory of legitimate social hypotheses — where it
belongs — to the category of malignant and fanci
ful prepossessions, to be opposed in the strong and
to be huraored only in the weak.
A little discriraination, a little poise, a little of that
equable capacity which can note the distinction be
tween incidents great and smaU, a little clear-headed
appreciation of the perspective of events, a due sense

VIII CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 281
of proportion, wUl aid — as nothing else can aid —
in the secure estabUshraent of the doctrine of race
individuaUty and integrity. No doctrine or dogma
can be so injuriously comproraised as by its wanton
and uninteUigent exaggerations. A doctrine is
always held raost strongly when it is held sanely.

IV
The culture of the South will find, however, the
occasions of its suprerae and iraraediate interest, not
in the issues presented by the negro, but in the prob
lems presented by the undeveloped forces of the
stronger race. These must largely constitute the
determining factor, even in the problem presented by
the negro ; for the negro question is not primarily a
question of the negro among negroes, but a question
of the negro surrounded by another and a stronger
people. The negro is in a white environment; the
white man is largely the market for his labor and the
opportunity for his progress, as well as the social and
political model of his imitative spirit. Where we
find the negro in relation to the trained and educated
representatives of the stronger race, we find few of
the evidences of racial friction.
But the white race, in the interest of the efficiency
and the happiness of the masses of its own life, must
bring its culture still more closely into relation with
social needs. That the presence of child labor has
called out strong and wholesome protest, that all the
more helpless factors of our industrial system have
commanded a deep and effective public interest, has

282 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
been recorded. And yet in certain sections and
among certain forces of the South there has been
encountered much indifference or positive opposition
to the bettering of industrial conditions. The causes
for opposition are many, and have been stated in an
earlier chapter. Among these causes, however, the
most serious is one which is not peculiar to the South,
but which is finding, throughout our country, an
increasing power in the, shaping of our social deci
sions. It is the exaggeration of the importance of
the money element as contrasted with the human ele
ment in the world's work. For many years the South
struggled against almost inconceivable odds in order
to regain her place in the coraraercial experience of our
country. She had men, women, children, resources,
but little else. The process of rehabilitation is now
rising to completion. Business is growing. Wealth,
slowly but surely, is coming into her Ufe. How much
is it worth ? There are those who seem to think that
it is worth the exploitation of the ignorant and the
helpless, who regard all " reforms " as the phases of
a Pecksniffian hypocrisy, who not infrequently have
stock in the enterprises affected by the suggestions
of araendraent, but who are "good " people and who
give largely to charitable and serai-charitable institu
tions. There are others, however, who, while sensi
ble of the good which men may accomplish with their
money, are sensible also of the fact that, with money
gotten under false conditions, any blessing which its
giving brings can never equal the curse which its get
ting leaves, — leaves in that region out of sight where
the ignorant and the poor go with a bitter silence to
their fate, and the young, in their tender strength.

VIII CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 283
give life itself when they are only paid for labor. To
those who have seen these things, all that money can
add to a trade, an industry, a civilization, does not
equal what it takes away ; and the zest of action, the
joy of success, the consciousness of increasing power,
the gains of external privilege and comfort, are not
matters of such weight as the sob of the child in the
humid clatter of the mill. The mind of a true culture,
a presence of fine and actual power throughout the
South, will help her people everywhere to understand
that culture of the deepest and broadest type, despite
all sophistries, is never builded in violation of element
ary huraan interests ; that a prosperity which means
the prosperity of the strong at the expense of the
weak, carries at its heart the curse of blunted per
ceptions, intellectual and moral ; that if the material
elements of progress are to outweigh the spiritual,
and if the crude raasses of deraocratic feeling are to
be commerciaUzed before they are moralized, the
South will lose that distinctive sensitiveness of tem
per, that quality of charra, that generous iraagination,
that capacity for reverence, that alert and responsive
heart, which have constituted her peculiar birthright.
Yet the social interests of the educated life wUl not
be negative alone. They cannot rest within the
circle of corrective poUcies. They raust press on
into the reenforcement of those positive and affirma
tive proposals to which the methods of remedy and
prevention are but contributory. What the child
may do is of more importance than what it should
not do. The movement against child labor, the
movement for the relief of degrading penal con
ditions for adults and for children, are but an impera-

284 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap.
tive part of the constructive movement — through the
kindergartens, the schools, the churches — for freer,
more wholesome possibilities. Through all the agen
cies of a positive social progress the South is rousing
herself as never before in order that her children
raay be born into a land — not raerely of greater
wealth — but of raore immediate, raore abundant
opportunity. Upon the raany evidences of this
arousal I have dwelt in previous chapters. That
it will be sustained is clear. Yet there is no proba
bility that — with all its moral resources — it will too
soon overtake its task. The vast stretches of rural
territory (more than seventeen millions of human
beings living in places of less than a thousand in
habitants), the prevailing isolation, the few railways,
the poor roads, the absence of strong centres of social
organization, the remaining poverty, the comparative
lack of diversity in industrial life, the schools, — inade
quate and not effectively distributed, — and last, but
not least, the two races dividing the lands, dividing
the churches, dividing the schools — races to whom
coexistence seems imperative, but between whom
coalescence would be intolerable; here indeed is a
task for stout hearts, a task in the presence of which
men — if they are ever to accomplish anything —
must learn to know, to think clearly, to be patient,
and to love.
Where difficulties are so great, none but the great
and elemental human forces will prevail. It is there
fore of deep and hopeful significance that the power
and influence of religious institutions is so general.
As these come to deal more definitely and explicitly
with the phases of social need, there will enter into

VIII CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 285
social enthusiasms a high and serious confidence, a
touch of authority and yet a touch of tenderness,
which will draw the world to the Church whUe it
draws the Church to the quickening and freeing of
the world. Among civic forces the various organiza
tions of the women of the South are yielding an
inspiring measure of disinterested service. An in
creasing commercial activity is at length touching
almost every section of our life, inaugurating more
varied interests and opening new possibiUties to
thought, energy, ambition. The home — the individ
ual American horae — here, as everywhere, is the
raost intiraate and raost conservative of social forces.
But it is to the school — the school in its every forra,
from the rural " primary " to the university — that our
deraocracy raust look, and raay look, for the more
satisfactory adjustment of the problems which ac
company and affect its progress. The university
touches life less intimately and less deeply than the
home, but raore broadly and more explicitly. The
university raay not be so popular in its appeal as the
civic club or so concrete in its influence as the busi
ness career, but it is raore inforraing than the one
and raore varied, raore emancipating, than the other.
It cannot touch the soul as does the Church, it can
not usurp the spiritual functions or wield the directive
and healing influence of the Christian ministry, but it
can touch the temporal conditions of the soul more
broadly than the Church has touched them, can in
vest and teach the whole body of knowledge with a
fulness which the Church does not assume, and can
give to the specific issues of our civil and industrial
life a clearer, more definite, more explicit criticism

2S6 THE PRESENP SOUTH chap.
than has seemed practically possible to a divided
Christian fellowship. Under the actual conditions of
Southern society, it may be said that the university
may become — if it would meet the measure of its
ideal — not only the best gift of a democracy to cul
ture, but the best gift of culture to our democracy.
That it wUl teach knowledge — knowledge in its
fulness an.d its freedom — goes without saying. But
it raay also bring, through the truth and value of the
scholar's standpoint, the influence of perspective into
the consideration of our Southern tasks — a perspec
tive in which men may see more clearly the world-
position of the problems of Southern Ufe, may
understand that we are laboring with difficulties com
raon, in large raeasure, to every civilization ; that the
South has everywhere soraething to teach and some
thing to learn, whether frora the industrial history of
Lancashire or frora those points — at Ceylon, or
Bagdad, at Johannesburg, or Algiers — where white
men and brown and black are struggling with the
age-long divisive fate of racial cleavage.
The university may not only establish among us a
clearer sense of perspective ; it may help to make the
method of poUtical and social criticisra a raethod of
ideas. It raay contribute to the dethronement of a
method of popular adjudication which in many quar
ters of the South has long made conventions and
conventional traditions unhappily suprerae. Of these,
many have been necessary, raany have been beautiful
and satisfying, raany — just because of tender and
corapelling associations — must long reraain ; and yet
there is need that the suprerae raethod of judgraent,
the supreme process of social and poUtical definition.

VIII CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY 287
shall be more truly a method of ideas ; that fulness
and exactness of knowledge, clearness and veracity of
thought, truth and accuracy of statement, shall —
along with breadth of sympathy and fertility of sug
gestion — take a larger place in the shaping of popu
lar opinion. When a great section gives itself over
to a prolonged and exclusive emphasis upon one or
two ideas, however true, there is danger that it may
at length cease to have ideas.
And yet the collective progress, the social momen
tum, of a huge body of democratic life is not easily
secured except in relation to a few clear, elementary
conceptions. These become, therefore, of such con
trolling and significant importance that it is all the
more needful that they should be intelUgently and
fruitfully possessed. The developments which they
suggest or necessitate, their broader meaning, their
varied applications, should be discussed and inter
preted in an atmosphere of reverence, of syrapathy,
and yet of consistent freedom. In its contribution to
the creation of such an atmosphere the university
may render its most signal service. It may contribute
to our social development not merely a sense of per
spective and a more vital method of social criticisra,
but it raay henceforth becorae in our deraocracy an
effective organ of its self-correction.
If it is to be so, however, it will first becorae inti
raately, supremely huraan, Uke, at least in some
degree, that teaching force which entered into our
civilization nearly twenty centuries ago, as the pro-
foundest social possession of the Western world.
And believing, with Him, in the fertility of every
unreclairaed or isolated province of social need, it

288 THE PRESENT SOUTH chap, vm
will find at length its benediction in the face of One
who taught men democracy by His culture — who, in
the richness and serenity of His spirit and out of that
fulness of His interests which has been rightly called
the fulness of His love, taught the dignity and the
freedora of the individual heart ; who taught raen cul
ture by His democracy — opening the fulness of truth
through the simplicity of His faith in life, opening
the wonder and promise of our earth from the stand
point of a soul giving to all knowledge the perspective
and the dignity of imperishable use. His supreme
gift was personal, but it has revealed an institutional
ideal. The largest service of the university as an
institution of culture, only arises as it comes to touch
the enfolding and educative forces of the familiar
world and assumes, in simplicity and sympathy, its
more human function as supremely an institution of
deraocracy.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A
STATISTICS OF POPULATION, ILLITERACY, ETC.i
The Twelfth Census shows that in June, 1900, there were
inthe United States 2,288,470 men of voting age (twenty-one
years and over) who were unable to read and write. This
was nearly 11 per cent ofthe total number — 21,134,299.
At the last presidential election the total vote was 13,961,-
566 J and the plurality of the successful candidate was
849,790. In the nearly 2,300,000 illiterate voters, there is
thus no small opportunity for those who would appeal to
the class feeling of the ignorant. If the greater number of
this mass of ignorant voters could be thrown to one side in
a closely contested election, involving the national credit or
the national honor, there would be a more vivid appreciation
of the possibilities which they involve.
Who are these illiterates and where are they ? Many are
ofthe negro race, 976,610; but more are white, 1,249,897.
In 1870 the greater number were negroes, 862,243 to
748,970 white, an excess of more than 100,000. But within
the intervening thirty years this has been changed, and now
the white illiterates outnumber the negro by over 273,000.
Ofthe white illiterates a large number are foreign-born,
562,000; but the number of the native-bom is 687,000, or
125,000 more than the foreign-born ilUterates. It appears
1 The matter of this Appendix (A) is largely taken from the Report
of the United States Commissioner of Education for 1902. The tables
of statistics, I, II, III, VIII, were compiled for Chapter XVIII of
Vol. I of that pubUcation by Dr. George S. Dickerman of New Haven,
Conn. Table VII is from p. Ixviii of Vol. I, and Tables IV, V, VI,
IX, are from Vol. II. 291

292 THE PRESENT SOUTH
also that the percentage of illiterates among the native-
born sons of native parents is nearly three times as great as
among the native-born sons of foreign parents. With the
former it is 5.9 per cent, with the latter 2 per cent, indicat
ing that our schools have been reaching the children of the
foreigner more effectively than they have reached the children
of the native-born. Not confining ourselves to the figures
for adult males, but taking into view the whole native white
population ten years of age and over, we find the persistence
of the same tendency. Even in States like New York, Penn
sylvania, and New Jersey the percentage of illiteracy among
the native white population of native parentage is greater
than among the native white population of foreign parentage.^
This is due to a number of causes, — chiefly, perhaps,
to the fact that the children of the foreign-born are being
reared largely within the cities, where schools are accessible
and compulsory education laws enforceable, whereas the
illiteracy among the children of the native-born is due to
the inadequacy of school privileges among the rural popu
lation. And yet, the presence in our national life of
2,288,000 ilUterate men of voting age — 618,000 of whom
are native-born representatives of our native white popu
lation — may well be an occasion for serious reflection.
In the tables which follow. Table I presents the statistics
as to the white males of voting age, with percentage unable
to read and write, classified as native of native parents,
native of foreign parents, and foreign-born.
Table II presents the statistics as to the negro males of
voting age, with percentage unable to read and write, in
1870 and in 1900.
Table III affords a striking illustration of the fact that the
problem of illiteracy, North as well as South, is largely rural.
It presents the statistics as to the white males (twenty-one
years of age and upward) with proportion unable to read
1 See Twelfth Census of the United States, Vol. II, Table LX, p. cvi.

STATISTICS OF POPULATION 293
and write, classified by parentage and by their distribution
within or without the centres of population.
Table IV illustrates the distribution of the three elements
of our national population in the year 1900.
Tables V and VI indicate the progress of the several
States in the reduction of the illiteracy of the native white
population and of the colored population in the twenty years
from 1880 to 1900.
Table VII presents in close juxtaposition certain facts as
to the distribution of population, the per capita value of
manufactures, the relation between the adult male and the
school population, etc. Attention is caUed especially to
columns 3, 8, 12, 13.
Table VIII presents the statistics as to the counties in
the several States in which the proportion of white males of
voting age, native and foreign, who cannot read and write is
20 per cent and upward.
Table IX indicates the rank of each State according to
the percentage ofthe illiteracy of the native white population.
In reprinting the following illustrative material upon the
subject of illiteracy, the author has had no desire to exagger
ate its significance. But, inasmuch as the statistics have
not been easily available in popular form, it has seemed
well to include the data in this volume. Among the many
preoccupations of our national interest, the significance of
our iUiteracy is perhaps more likely to be ignored than to
be exaggerated.

TABLE I
White males of voting age (21 years and upward), with percentage unable to read and write, classi
fied AS (i) native of native parents, (2) native of foreign parents, and (3) foreign-born, by States
AND Territories, arranged geographically, 1900

I. Native White of

2. Native White of

3. Foreign-born

State or Territory

Native Parents

Foreign Parents

White
Total
Illiterate
Per
cent
Total
Illiterate
Per
cent
Total
Illiterate
Per
cent
The United States
10.569.743
618,606
5-9
3,444,684
68,975
2.0
4,904,270
562,316
11-5
North Atlantic Division .
2,760,103
57.767
2.1
1.257.19s
24,083
1.9
2,108,698
320,189
15.2
Maine 
IS7.377
3,420
2.2
20,964
2,089
10 0
38,515
8.223
21.4
New Hampshire .
82,383
1,189
1.4
13,496
706
5.2
34,769
8,333
24-0
Vermont . ...
68,857
1,759
2.6
18,324
1,858
10. 1
20,846
4,862
23.3
Massachusetts ....
320,943
1,927
.6
165,584
2,422
1.5
343,322
47,436
13-8
Rhode Island ....
44,893
550
1.2
25.340
841
3-3
53.768
9.795
18.2
Connecticut 
113,768
1,040
•9
54.955
663
1.2
106,403
16,562
iS-6
New York 
782,487
15,201 6,370
1.9
533,096
8,240
1,5
829,474
100,776
12.1
New Jersey 
224,644
2.8
111,508
1,285
1.2
196,598
26,300
13-4
Pennsylvania ....
964,731
26,311
2.7
313.928
5,981
1.9
484,803
97.902
20. 2
South Atlantic Division .
1,466,826
178,564
12.2
105,484
2,555
2.4
104,183
11,768
"•3
Delaware 
33.270
2,666
8.0
5,575
93
1-7
6,747
1,186
17.6
Maryland 
172,003
10,191
5-9
46,965
1,006
2.1
42,011
4.481
10.7
District of Columbia
39,557
391
l.o
11,161
75
.7
g,6oo
478
5-0
Virginia 
280,881
35,°57
12.5
9,413
270
2.9
11,085
1,166
10.3
West Virginia ....
205^216
23,024
II. 2
15.035
553
3-7
12,878
2,893
22.5
North Carolina ....
284,601
54,208
ig.o
2,211
126
5-7
2,451
140
5-7
South Carolina ....
124,097
15,643
12.6
3,299
68
2.1
2,979
154
5-2
Georgia ......
263,929
31,914
12. 1
6,860
168
2-4
6,707
376
5-6
Florida 
63.272
5.470
8.6
4,965
196
3-9
9,725
892
9.2
wM!^t^
i O w
South Central Division

2,035,858

237,239

11-5

176,686

9,946

5.6

178,376

33,566

18.8

Kentucky

402,244

62,182

IS-S

41.823

1,166

2.8

25,139

2,169

8.6

Tennessee

353.621
51,244
14-5
11,916
444
3-7
9,509
730
7-7
Alabama
216,030
30,680
14.2
8,162
286
3-5
8,082
648
8.0
Mississippi .
140,065
11,613
8.3
5,750
233
4.1
4,715
447
9-5
Louisiana
121,336
24,681
20.3
31,182
I,120
3-6
25,340
6,238
24.6
Texas .
438,863
24,180
5-3
55,325
5,837
10.6
85,773
21,773
254
Indian Territory .
71,736
7,792
10.9
3,186
192
6.0
2.943
493
16.8
Oklahoma . , .
82,936
2,321
2.8
9.990
219
2.2
8,597
540
6.3
Arkansas
208,967
22,546
10.8
9,352
449
4.8
8,278
328
6.4
North Central Division
3,656,293
127,480
3-5
1,640,913
28,67s
1.8
2,074,626
163,161
7-9
Ohio
697,956
25,476
3-7
256,955
4,688
1.8
223,688
21,605
9.6
Indiana .
517.446
24,937
4.8
111,228
2,944
2.6
73,087
7,022
9.6
Illinois .
586,773
20,852
3-6
316,313
4,139
1-3
467,123
36,608
7.8
Michigan
288,293
6,406
2.2
162,537
4,413
2.7
261,415
26,693
10.2
Wisconsin
116,943
1,744
i'5
192,966
4,022
2.1
257,304
23.893
9-3
Minnesota
104.577
737
7
137.054
1,766
1-3
260,733
16,720
6.4
Iowa
321,313
5,944
1.8
131,246
1.791
1.2
137,906
8,246
5-2
Missouri
551,438
34,723
6.3
145,876
3,021
^.1
112,483
7,666
6.8
North Dakota
19,777
153
.8
17,902
220
1.2
55,558
3.3°7
6.3
South Dakota
35,381
219
.6
26,526
259
1.0
45,446
2.215
3-4
Nebraska . .
1,629
I.I
59.384
535 ,
•9
90,925
4.677
5.1
Kansas ...
268;688
4,660
1-7
62,926
877
1.4
66,938
4.309
6.4
Western Division
630,663
17.556
2.8
264,406
3,714
1-4
438,387
33,632
7-7
Montana
35,130
237
•7
19,760
186
.9
39,983
2,675
6.7
Wyoming
.
18,012
166
¦9
7,639
46
.6
10,611
828
7.8
Colorado
•
99,563
2,834
2.8
30,891
361
1.2
31,162
3,652
7-1
New Mexico
39,171
9.589
24-5
4,382
671
15-3
7,251
2,244
30.9
Arizona .
16,183
526
3-3
6,567
491
7-S
12,161
3,759
30.9
Utah .
18,321
290
1.6
22,478
200
•9
24,406
1,129
4.6
Nevada .
5,431
44
.8
3.424
25
¦7
5,797
406
7.0
Idaho .
25,786
289
i.i
11,031
106
1.0
13,491
770
5-7
Washington
92,262
460
•5
29,992
169
.6
61,745
2,413
3-9
Oregon _.
79,220
881
i.l
20,355
198
1.0
31,486
1,081
3-4
California ....
201,584
2,240
i.i
107,667
1,261
1.2
180,294
14,673
8.1
296

THE PRESENT SOUTH

TABLE II
Negro males of voting age, with percentage unable to read
and write, in 1870 AND IN I9OO, BY STATES AND TERRITORIES

Negro Males

OF Voting Age

1900
1870
Total
Illiterate
Per
cent
Total
Illiterate
Per
cent
The United States
2,060,302
976,610
47-4
1,032,475
862,243
835
North Atlantic Division
123,328
18,808
15.3
48,656
14,443
29.7
Maine
445
77
17.3
497
69
13.9
New Hampshire
230
34
14.8
176
38
21.6
Vermont
289
57
19.7
278
45
16.2
Massachusetts
10,456
1,100
10.5
4,073
822
20.1
Rhode Island
2,765
425
15.4
1,404
291
20.7
Connecticut
4,576
598
13.1
2,700
627
New York
31,425
3,541
11-3.
14.586
3,912
26!i
New Jersey
21,474
3,925
18.3
7,870
2,881
36.6
Pennsylvania
31,668
9,051
17-5
17,072
5,758
33-7
South Atlantic Division
817,224
417,400
51.1
456,448
396,437
86.9
Delaware
8,374
3,578
42.7
5,224
3.765
72.1
Maryland
60,406
24,462
40.3
39,120
27,123
69-3
District of Columbia
23,072
6,024
26.1
10,143
7,599
74.9
Virginia
146,122
76,764
52.5
107,691
97,908
90.9
West Virginia
14,786
5,584
37.8
3,972
3,186
80.2
North Carolina
127.114
67.489
53-1
78,019
68,669
88.0
South Carolina
152,860
83,618
54-7
83,475
70,830
82.9
Georgia
223,073
125,710
56.4
107,962
100,331
93-1
Florida
61,417
24,171
39-4
18,842
16,806
89.2
South Central Division
951,724
500,093
52-5
461,478
413,182
895
Kentucky
74.728
36,990
49-5
44,321
37,889
85.5
Tennessee
112,236
53.396
47.6
64,131
55,938
87.2
Alabama
181,471
107,997
59-5
97,823
91.017
93.0
Mississippi
197,936
105,331
532
89,926
80,810
Louisiana
147.348
90,262
61.3
86,913
76,612
88.1
Texas
136,875
61,744
45.1
51,575
47,235
91.6
Indian Territory
9,146
3,776
413
—
Oklahoma
4,827
1,543
32.0
—
—
—
Arkansas
87,157
39,054
44.8
26,789
23,681
88.4
North Central Division
155,701
38,652
24.8
63,166
37,434
59-3
Ohio
51,235
6,813
21.8
15.614
7,531
48.2
Indiana
18,186
5,042
27.7
6,113
3,182
52.0
Illinois
29,762
5,551
18.7
7.694
3,969
51.6
Michigan
5,193
726
14.0
3.130
1,013
32.4
Wisconsin
1,006
128
12.7
642
183
28.8
Minnesota
2,168
150
6.9
246
44
17.9
Iowa
4,441
975
22.0
1.542
635
41.2
Missouri
46,418
14,829
31.9
23,882
18,002
75-4
North Dakota
South Dakota
115
1930
16.3 16.3
\ ^
6
21.4
Nebraska
2,298
267
11.6
93
32.1
Kansas
14,69s
4,122
28.1
3.983
2,772
69.6
Western Division
12,325
1,657
134
2,727
747
27,4
Montana
711
74
10.4
108
34
31-5
Wyoming
481
102
21.2
101
33
32.7
Colorado
3,215
448
139
197
63
32.0
New Mexico
775
126
16.3
85
58
68.2
Arizona
1,084
120
11.1
18
I
5-6
Utah
358
17
4-7
36
8
22.2
Nevada
70
16
22.9
203
15
7'4
Idaho
130
20
15-4
38
4
10. s
Washington
1,230
141
11-5
67
' 15
22.3
Oregon _
California
560
53
9|
143
48
33-6
3.711
540
14.6
1,731
463
27 0
TABLE III
White males (21 years of age and upward), with percentage unable to read and write, classified as (i)
native of native parents, (2) native of foreign parents, (3) foreign-born for the united states, for
THE North and West, and for the South, 1900

Location

II
S'S
13

I. Native of native
parents.

2. Native of foreign
parents

3. Foreign-boen

Total

Illiterate

Per cent

Total

Illiterate

Per cent

Total

Illiterate

Per cent

In all quarters:
The United States .
The North and West .
The South 
In cities of 25,000 and over:
The United States .
The North and West .
The South . ...
In cities of 4,000 and over:
The United States .
The North and West .
The South 
Outside of cities of 23,000 and over:
The United States .
The North and West .
The South 
Outside of cities of 4,000 and over:
The United States .
The North and West .
The South 

160 131 29
1,158 951 207

10,569,743 7.047,0593,522,684 1,863,3671,513,297 350,070
2,683,2482,114,735 568,513
8,706,3765,533.7623,172,6147,886,4954,932,3242,954,171

618,606 202,803415,803 14,520 9,4295,091
20,909 12,642 8,267
604,086 193,374
410,712597,697190,161
407,536

S-9
111 .8
.6
1-5 .8.6
1-56.93-5
12.9 7.6 3-9
13-9

3,444,6843,163.514 281,170
1,425,1491,298,337 126,812
2,052,215 1,846,273 205,942
2,019,5351,863,177 154,358
1,392,469 1,317,241 75,228

68,973 56,47412,30110,022 8,330 1,672
14,43211,717 2,715
58,95348,124 10,829
54,54344,757 9,786

2.0 1.8
4.4 :I
1-3 :l
1-3
2.92-57.0
3-9 3-4
13.0

4,904,2704,621,711 282,559
2,274,8892,170,920 103,969
3,273,840
3,107.59s 168,243
2,629,3812,450,791 178,590
1,628,4301,514,116 114,314

562,316516,982 45,334
222,938213,140 9,798
321,031305,124 15,907
339,378303,842 35,336
241,283211,838 29,427

11.5
11.216.0 9.89.8
9-5 9?
9.89-5
12.512.4
19.9 14.813.9
25-7

>Tl
w2:dI— (
IX

TABLE IV
The three elements of population in 1900

VO 00

State or Territory

Total popula
tion

Native White

Per cent

Foreign-bom White

Per cent

Colored

Per cent

United States
North Atlantic Division .
South Atlantic Division .
South Central Division .
North Central Division .
Western Division
North Atlantic Division:
Maine ....
New Hampshire . .
Vermont . .
Massachusetts Rhode Island . .
Connecticut .
New York .
New Jersey .
Pennsylvania
South Atlantic Division:
DelawareMaryland . . .
District of Columbia .
Virginia . .
West Virginia . .
North Carolina .
South Carolina
GeorgiaFlorida ....

75,994,575

21,046,69s 10,443,48014,080,047
26,333,004 4,091,349

694,466
411,588 343,641
2,803,346 428,556908,420
7,268,894 1,883,669
6,302,113

184,73s
1,188,044 278,718
1,854,184 958,800
1,893,8101,340,316
2,216,331 328,342

56,595,379

74.5

10,213,817

13.4

15,898,900 6,497,17s9,462,220
21,624,468 3,112,616

75-6
62.267.282.176.1

4,738,988 208,883353,692
4,151,402 760,852

22.3 2.02-5
15-818.6

599,291322,830298,077
1,929,630 283,278
655,028
3,267,338 1,382,2675,159,121

140,248
859,280 172,012
1.173,787 892,854
1,259,209 552,436
1,169,273 278,076

S6.378.486.768.866.672.172.373-481.9

75-972.361.763.393.1 66.541.2S2.852.6

92,935 87,961
44,694
840,114133.772237.396
1,889,523 430,030
982,543

13,729
93,144 19,52019,068
22,379 4,394 5,371
12,02119,257

13.4
21-4 13.0
29.931.226.126.022.8 15.6

7-47.97.01.02-3
0.20.40.3 3.6

9,183,379^

408,807
3,737,422
4,264,135 557,134217,881

2,240 797870
35,582 9,506
15,996
112,013 71,352
160,431

30,758
235,620 87,186
661,329 43,567
630,207782,509
1,035,037 231,209

1.9
35-830-3 2.1
5-3

0.30.2
0.3 1.3
2.2 1.81-5
3.8 2.5

16.719.8
31.3
35-7 4.6
33.358.4 46.7
43-8

South Central Division:

Kentucky .

2,147,174
1,812,176
84.4
50,133
2-3
284,863
13.3
Tennessee
2,020,616
1,322,600
75-3
0.9
480,430
23.8
Alabama ,
1,828,697
986,814
S4-0
14^338
0.8
827,545
45.2
Mississippi ,
Louisiana
1,351,270
633,575
40.8
7,625
0.5
910,070
58.7
1,381,625
677,759
49.1
51,853
3-7
652,013
47.2
Texas .
3,048,710
2,249,088
73.8
177,581
58
622,041
20.4
Arkansas
1,311,564
930,394
14,186
I.I
366,984
28.0
Oklahoma .
398,331
351,920
88.4
15,604
3-9
30,807
7.7
Indian Territory
392,060
297,894
76.0
4,786
1.2
89.380
22.8
North Central Division;
Ohio 
4,157,545
3,602,304
86.7
457,900
II.O
97.341
2.3
Indiana
2,516,462
2,316,641
02.1
141,861
5-6
57,960
2.3
Illinois .
4,821,550
3,770,238
78.2
964,633
20 0
86:677
1.8
Michigan
2,420,982
1,838,367
76.8
540,196
22.3
22,419
0.9
Wisconsin .
2,069,042
1,342,206
74-5
515,705
249
11,131
0.6
Minnesota .
1,751,394
1,232,101
70.4
504.935
28.8
14,358
0.8
Iowa
2,231,853
1,912,883
83.7
305,782
13-7
13,186
0.6
Missouri
3,106,665
2,729,068
87.9
213,775
6.9
161,822
5-2
North Dakota
319,146
199,122
62.4
112,590
35-3
7,434
2.3
South Dakota
401,570
292,383
72.8
88,329
22.0
20,856
5-2
Nebraska
1,066,300
879,409
82.5
177,117
16.6
9,774
0.9
Kansas .
•
1,470,495
1,289,742
87.7
126,577
8.6
54,176
3-7
Western Djvision
Montana
......
243,329
163,910
67.4
62,373
23.6
17,046
7.0
Wyoming
92,531
72,469
78.3
16,382
17.9
3,480
3-8
Colorado
539,700
438,571
81.2
90,475
16.8
10,654
2.0
NSw Mexico
195,310
166,946
85.5
13,261
6.8
15.103
7-7
Arizona
122,931
70,508
57-4
22,395
18.2
30,028
24.4
Utah .
276,749
219,661
79-4
52,804
19.1
4,284
1-5
Nevada .
42,335
26,824
63.3
8,581
20.3
6,930
16.4
Idaho .
161,772
132,605
82.0
21,890
13.5
7,277
4-5
Washington .
518,103
394,179
76.1
102,125
19.7
21,799
4.2
Oregon .
413,536
340,721
82.4
53,861
13.0
18,954
4.6
California ....
1,485,053
1,086,222
73.2
316,303
21.3
82,326
5-5
1 The term *• colored " as here used by the U.S. Census includes 237,196 Indians and 114,189 Mongolians.
TABLE V
Illiterates in the native white population io years of age and over, 1880 and 1900

oo

1900

1880

State or Territory

Total native
white
population

Native white
population 10 years of
age and over

Illiterates

Total native
white
population

Native white
population 10 years of
age and over

Illiterates

Number

Per
cent

Number

Per
cent

United States ....

56,595,379

41,236,662

1,913,611

4.6

36,843,291

25,785,789

2,255,460

8.7

North Atlantic Division
South Atlantic Division
South Central Division ....
North Central Division ....
Western Division 

15,898,900 6,497,1759,462,220
21,624,468 3,112,616

11,729,536 4,748,6226,723,766
15,736,473 2,298,263

192,052
541,530754,967
363,672 61,390

1.6
11.4 11.2 2-32.7

11,465,448 4,483,144 5,630,217
14,049,223 1,215,257

8,351,0653,144,7143,806,0639,646,617 837,330

234.576
630,062 836,489482,103 72,230

2.8
20.022.0 3.08.6

North Atlantic Division;
Maine 
New Hampshire 
Vermont 
Massachusetts 
Rhode Island 
Connecticut 
New York 
New Jersey 
Pennsylvania 
South Atlantic Division:
Delaware 
Maryland 
District of Columbia ....
Virginia 
West Virginia 
North Carolina 
South Carolina 
Georgia 
Florida 

599,291
322,830 298,077
1,929,630 283,278655,028
5,267,358 1,382,267
5.159,121 140,248839,280172,012
1,173,787 892,854
1.259.209 552.436
1,169,273 278,076

474,821233,636235,117
1,420,219 207,953483,367
3,861,3711,000,7003,790,352 108,389
649,197 140,114866,293
645,250900,664399,540841,200197,973

11,394 3,8406,934
10,739 3,7143,678
47.350 17.031
87.372 6,072
26,432 1,138
96,11764,281
175,643 54,375
100,431 17,039

2.4I- 5
2.9
0.8 1.8
0.8 X.21-7
2-3
S-6
t:l
II. I
lO.OIUTe

588,193 299.995290,281
1,321,844 196,108
481,060
3.807,317 870,697
3.609,953 110,720
642,163101,026866,248
574,309 863,530
383.631806,373134,902

463.158242,811224,361990,160 144,596361,733
2,742,847 618,941
2,562,458 82,318
462,697 75.025
616,314392,242603,244265,336553,769 91,749

8,7752,710 5,3546,9334,2613,728
59,51620,093
123,206 6,630
36,027 1.950
113,915 72,826
191,913 ^t'*P
128,362 19,024

1-9I.I2.4
0.7 2.9 l-o
2.24.88.12.6
18.518.631-722.4 23.220.7

tqHhd173MUiIHwOd H

South Central Division:

Kentucky '.

1,812,176
1,319,982
169,324
12.8
1,317,72s
914.311
208,796
22.8
Tennessee .
I,S22,6oO
1,108,629
157,396
14.2
1,122,236
774.411
214,994
27.8
Alabama
986,814
700,823
103,570
14.8
632,664
443.327
111,040
25.0
Mississippi .
633.57s
450,952
36,038
8.0
470,403
319.385
52,910
16.6
Louisiana .
677.759
2,249,088
474,621
82,227
17-3
402,177
268,600
53,261
19.8
Texas .
1,554,994
95,006
6.1
1,083,656
701,969
97.498
13.9
Arkansas
930,394
636,438
76,036
11.6
581,356
384,060
97.990
23.5
Oklahoma .
331,920
249,064
6,279
2-5
Indian Territory .
297.894.
208,263
29,091
14.0
North Central Division;
Ohio . . . . . .
3,602,304
2,738,138
67,15s
2.4
2,723,582
1,952,858
83,183
4-3
Indiana
2,316,641
1,780,458
63,800
3-6
1,794,764
1,297,159
87,786
6.8
Illinois .
3.770,238
2,703,296
58,037
2.1
2,448,172
1,666,214
88,519
5-3
Michigan .
1,838,367
1,348,352
22,277
1-7
1,228,127
854,925
19,981
2.3
Wisconsin .
1,342,206
1,042,940
13,989
1.3
904,300
566,745
11,494
2.0
Minnesota .
1,232,101
795,959
6,338
0.8
509,373
300,747
5.671
1-9
Iowa
1,912,883
1,397.581
16,522
1.2
1,353,046
918,723
23,660
2.6
Missouri
2,729,068
2,027,613
96,405
4.8
1,811,467
1,244,738
137.949
II.I
North Dakota
199,122
115,544
1,063
0.90.0
j- 81,770
51,229
933
1.8
South Dakota
292,383
192,240
1,204
Nebraska .
879,409
616,473
4,717
0.8
352,413
224,899
5.102
2-3
Kansas
1,289,742
957,879
12,165
1-3
842,211
568,380
17,825
3-1
Western Division
Montana
¦ ¦ ¦
163,910
116,475
752
0.6
25.898
19,628
272
1.4
Wyoming
72,469
52,816
ol*^
0.7
14,509
10,458
177
1-7
Colorado
438,571
327,143
8,692
2-7
151.978
117.132
8,373
J-^
New Mexico
166,946
117,338
34,525
29.4
100,773
72,219
46,329
64.2
Arizona
70,508
50,122
3,096
6.2
20,809
15,200
1,225
8.1
Utah . .
219,661
141,036
1,108
0.8
98,958
53,944
3,183
5-9
Nevada
26,824
20,621
133
0.6
33,350
22.660
240
I.I
Idaho .
132,605
92,008
862
0.9
22,414
15,011
443
3.0
Washington
394,179
289,007
1,374
0.3
54,896
37,278
895
2-4
OregonCalifornia .
340,721
258,056
2,180
0.8
142,143
99,028
3,433
3-5
1,086,222
833,643
8,320
1.0
549.529
374,772
7,660
2.0
TABLE VI
Illiterates in the colored population id years of age and over, 1880 and 1900

State or Territory

1900

Total colored
population

Colored
population 10 years of
age and over

Illiterates

Nuraber

Per
cent

1880

Total colored
population

Colored
population 10 years of
age and over

Illiterates

Number

Per
cent

HKIT) H
w &

§

United States
North Atlantic Division .
South Atlantic Division .
South Central Division .
North Central Division .
Western Division
North Atlantic Division;
Maine ....
New Hampshire .
VermontMassachusetts .
Rhode Islaiid
Connecticut .
New York .
New Jersey . .
Pennsylvania
South Atlantic Division:
DelawareMaryland . . .
District of Columbia .
Virginia West Virginia
North Carolina .
South Carolina .
Georgia Florida

9.185.379

408,807
3.737.4224.264,135 557,134217,881

2,240 797 870
35,582 9.506
15.996
112,013 71,352
160,451

30,738
233,620 87,186
661,329 ,43,567
630,207782,509
1.035.037 231,209

6,698,906

2,979.323

44-5

6,732,813

4,601,207

341,969
2,662,3283,057,507 450,272 186,830

50,060
1,253,379 1,485,273 110,674 79,937

14.6
47-1 48.624.642,8

233,563
2,943,083
3,018,056 402,688 155,421

183,986
1,973,7252,007,433 294,276141,767

1,823 715 721
30,021 7,970
13,270
95.978 59.033
132.438 23.587
179,909 72,414
479,464 34.371
441.756 537,542
724,303 168,980

471 109108
3,722 1,133 1.S72
12,32710,32020,298 8,983
63,253 17,548
213,960 11,094
210,344283,940379,156 65,101

23,8 15-215.012,414.2 11.812.817.515-3
38.133.224.244.6 32.3
47.6 52.852-3
38.5

2,004 762
1,068
19.303 6,592
11,93166,84939.09985,875

26,448
210,250 59,618
631,707 23,920
532,508604,472725,274 126,888

1,638 594807
15,416 5,3039,523
53,82530,20666,654

19,245
151,278 45,035
428,430 18,446
351,145394,750479,863 85,513

3,220,878

44,332
1,482,7431,523,245 121,216 47,120

412 156
2,322 1,249 1,661
11,425 9,200
18,03311,068
90,17221,790
315,660 10,139
271,943310,071391,482 60,420

70.0

24.275.176.041.233.2

24.8 15.819.315-123.617-4
21.2 30.527.1 59-6
48.4 73-755.0 77-478.5. 81.670.7

South Central Divisioni
Kentucky . . ,
Tennessee .
Alabama . , ,
Mississippi .
Louisiana . . .
Texas ....
Arkansas . . .
Oklahoma . ,
Indian Territory .

North Central Division:
Ohio .
Indiana

Illinois
MichiganWisconsinMinnesota Iowa .
MissouriNorth Dakota
South Dakota
Nebraska Kansas

Western Division;
Montana . .
Wyoming .
Colorado
New Mexico
ArizonaUtah .
NevadaIdaho .
Washington .
Orejgon _ . .
California .

284,865
480,430827,545910,070 632,013622,041366,984 30,80789,380

97,341 37,96086,67722,419 11,13114.35813,186
161,822 7,434
20,856 9,774
54.176

17,046 3,480
10,65413,103
30,028 4,284 6,9307,277
21,799 18,954
82,326

219,843354,980389,820640,424465,611438,883 263,923 22,65161,372

79,66347,355 72,748 18,182 8,576
10,83210,982
130,161 5,450
15,294 8,020
43,009

13,813 2,872
9,123
11,324
22,646 3,5855,7946,191
18,94817,434
75,098

88,186
147,844
338,707 314,617284,594 167,531113,49s 8,227
22,072

14,23110,68013,253 3.8063,3944,4662,219
36,495 3,2247,7931,369
9,744

6,659 1,1811,823
8,049
16,659 1,866
3,8713,3386,820
6,299
23,372

40.141.6 57-449.161. 1
38.2
43.0 36.336.0

17.9
22.6 l3.2
20.9 39-6
41.2^0.228.059.2 51.017.1
22.7

48.241.120.073.652.166.8 53-9
36.036.131.1

271,311
403,528 600,320632,199
484,992 394,512
210,994

80,14239,503 46,720
22,377 5,8793,889
10,015
145.554 2,0302,638
43,941

3,774 1,352
3,201
10,844 5,2801.540
8,7103.5977.917
11.693
97.513

190,223271,386
399.058423.397 328,133255,263 137,971

59,83929,14034,837 16,780 4,2792,7947,578
104,393 1.5011.959
31.176

3.003 1,239
2,7648,199
4,288 1,318
8,071 3,524
6,451
11,083
91,827

133,895 194.495
321,680319,753259,429192,520103,473

16,33610,36312,971 4,791 1,325 1,040
2,272
56,244 664602
14,388

1,076 182
368
7,559 1,018 689
2,154 994
2,460
3,080
27,340

70.471.7
80.675.279.175.4
73.0

27.333.637.228.631.037.230.053-944.246.8

35-814.7
20.592.223.852.326.728.238.127.829.8

TABLE VII
Density of population, urban population, nativity and race classification, value of manufactures,
illiteracy, and relations of the adult male and of the school population
[Note, — The statistics in this table, except those in column 12, are from the United States Census of 1900,]

bJ .§

The total population

Value of
manu
factured
products per
capita
of popu
lation 2

The adult male population
(21 years and over)

Number of chil
dren 5 to 18 years

State or Teekitorv

No. of
persons to a
sq. mile

Per cent
in incor
porated
places of
8000 and
over

Per cent of native and for
eign white and of
colored

No.
to every
100 chil
dren 3 to
18 years
of age

Per cent of illiterates (un
able to write) among
adult males

of age to every
100 persons of the
total population

Native white

Foreign white

Coloredi

Native white

Foreign white

Negro

1870

1900

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

United States .

25.6

32.6

74.4

13.4

12.2

$74-53

98-3

4.9

11-5

47-4

31-3

28.3

North Atlantic Division
South Atlantic Division
South Central Division
North Central Division
Western Division . .

129.8 38.923.134.9 3-5

57-0 17.011.4
30.631.2

75.602.267.2 82.176.1

22.3 2,0
2.3
li'.e

1.9
35.8
30.3 2.15-3

140.22 35-48 20.44
68.0863.96

121.8 73-2
101.6
141. 1

2.0
11.5
11. 1
2.92.4

15.211.318.8 7-97-7

15-3
51.124.8 13-4

28.333-0 33-932-425.6

24.432.828.225-1

North Atlantic Division:
Maine 
New Hampshire
Vermont 
Massachusetts ....
Rhode Island ....
Connecticut ....
New York ....
New Jersey ....
Pennsylvania ....
South Atlan-hc Division;
Delaware 
Maryland 
District of Columbia
Virginia 

23.245-737-6
348-9
407.0 187-5152-6250-3140.1 94.3
120.3
4,643-3 46.2

m 11.2
67.066.1 52.0
68.561.245-5
41.4 46.9
loo.o 14.7

86.3lit68.866.672.172.58ii975-972-361.763-3

13-4
21.4 13-0
29.931.226.126.022.8 13-6 7-57-97.0 1.0

-3
.2¦3
1-3
2,2 1.81-6
3.8 2-S
16.619 8
31-333- 7

84.23
127,22 80.80
171.99
204.60 184.04 141.97
133-15125.73
101.42 82.62
101.33 30.91

135.3147-5134-9135.4126.3134.6
125-7 118.0108.7
110.3 97.0
138.4 76.4

3-12.04-1 .9
2.01.01.82-32.57-15-1 •9
12.2

21.4 24,023.3 13.8
18.215-612.113.420.217.610.7 5.0
10.5

17-314.819-710. 5
iS-4 13-118.317-5
42.7 40.S 26.1
52.5

28.0
24.827.2 25.525-7
25.928.129,030.6 31-8
31-3 27.0
32.4

23.221.623.422.223-522.923.925.0 26.526.5 27.921.731.6

K
MT3HH§

West Virginia ....

38.9

7-7

93-1

2.4

4-5

33.20

83-9

10.7

22.3

37-8

34-1

30-8

North Carolina

39-0

5-1

66.5

.2

33-3

22.10

66.3

18.9

5.7

53-1

33-6

33-3

South Carolina.

44-4

7-5

41.2

. .4

58.4

18.44

61.1

12.3

5-2

54-7

33-2

34-6

Georgia 

37.6

II.O

52.7

.6

46.7

21.83

67.7

11.8

S-6

56-4

34-4

33-4

Florida 

9-7

15.0

52.6

3-7

43.7

40.06

85-4

8.3

9.2

39-4

34-0

30.9

South Central Division;

>4 Kentucky 
53-7
16.9
84.4
2-3
13-i23-f
33.22
81.8
14-3
8.6
49-5
34-4
31.0
Tennessee , * . .
48-4
13-4
75-3
¦%
21.92
75-4
14.1
V
47-6
34-1
32.0
Alabama 
35.5
7-3
53-9
.8
45-3
20.04
67.8
13.8
8.0
59-5
34-4
33-4
Mississippi ....
33-5
2.6
40.8
¦5
58-7
12.08
66.2
8.1
9-1
53-2
33-7
34-0
Louisiana 
30.4
22.8
49.1
3-7
47.2
28.14
72.3
16.9
24.6
61.3.
31-1
32.6
Texas 
11.6
11.3
73.8
S-8
20.4
17.16
72.3
5.8
25.4
45.1
34.8
33.5
Arkansas 
24.7
5.4
70.9
I.I
28.0
16.19
70.8
10.5
6.4
44.8
34-2
33-8
Oklahoma 
10.3
5.0
88.4
3-9
7-7
6.61
87.5
2.7
6.3
32.0
31.3
Indian Territory . .
12.6
0.0
76.0
1.2
22.8
4-25
72.8
10.7
16.8
41-3
34.1
North Central Divisions
Ohio 
102.0
38.S
86.7
II.O
2.3
92.50
110.2
3-2
9.6
21.8
31-7
26.3
Indiana 
70.1
24.2
92.1
5-6
2-3
64.84
103.5
4.4
H
27-7
33-8
27-7
Illinois 
86.1
47-1
78.2
20.0
1.8
107.84
106.2
2.8
7-8
18.7
32.2
27.4
Michigan 
42.2
30.9
76.8
22.3
•9
65.01
109-9
2.4
10.2
14.0
30.3
27,1
Wisconsin ....
38.0
30.7
74.6
24.9
.3
73-45
93-0
1.9
9-3
12.7
33.6
29-7
Minnesota ....
22.1
26.8
. 70.4
28.8
.8
50.95
98.5
I.O
6-4
6.9
32.5
Iowa 
40.2
16.8
8s-7
13-7
.6
28.43
99-9
1.6
H
22.0
33-1
28.5
Missouri . . • • .
45-2
30.8
87-9
6.9
5-2
54.88
93-6
5.4
6.8
31-9
33-6
29-S
North Dakota ....
4-5
3.0
62.4
35.3
2-3
11.18
99-6
1.0
6.3
16.3
I 23,7
J 30,0
1 31-0
South Dakota ....
5-2
2.6
72.8
22.0
5-2
10.97
90.6
.8
4-9
16.3
Nebraska . • . .
13-9
15.8
82.5
16.6
¦9
3919
93.5
1.0
S-l
11.6
28.1
30-1
Kansas . . ^ • .
18.0
14.0
87.7
8.6
3-7
29.00
94.8
1-7
6-4
28.1
29.8
29-7
Western Division:
Montana 
1-7
27.0
67-4
25.6
'S
100.17
188.2
.8
H
10.4
10.2
22.3
Wyoming 
.9
24.1
78-3
17.9
3-8
26.11
171-5
.8
7-8
21.2
9-4
23.9
Colorado 
5-2
38.1
81.2
16,8
2.0
66.60
139-3
2.4
7-1
13-9
22.3
24-7
New Mexico ....
1.6
0.0
ss-s
6.8
7-7
13.78
92-1
23.6
30.9
16.3
31-9
30.6
Arizona 
1.1
0,0
57-4
18.2
24,4
104.54
138.7
4-5
30-9
11. 1
16.8
25.9
Utah 
3-4
25,2
79-4
19-1
5-5
30.00
74-S
1.2
4.6
4-7
35.1
32.6
Nevada 
•4
0.0
63.3
20.3
16,4
19-31
196.3
.8
7,0
22.9
12.6
21.3
Idaho 
1-9
0,0
82.0
13-5
4-5
12.15
116.4
1.1
5.7
15-4
11-3
28.6
Washington ....
7-7
319
76.1
19.7
42
72,76
149-3
¦5
3-9
11-5
27.0
25.3
Oregon 
4-4
239
82.4
13.0
4.6
48.10
132.7
1.1
l-'^
9-5
32.3
26.3
California 
9-5
43-7
73.2
21.3
55
77-27
160.5
I.I
8.1
14.6
24-5
22.8
^ Including Mongolians and Indians.
2 Less cost of raw material.
3o6

THE PRESENT SOUTH

TABLE VIII
Counties in the several States in which the proportion of
white males of voting age, native and foreign, who can
not read and write, is 20 per cent and upward

Total

Illiter ate

Per
cent

Total

Illiter ate

Per
cent

MAINE

N. CA-ROIAN A — con.
Aroostook .
16,271
3,755
23.1
Nash .
3»556
814
22.9
NEW YORK
Clinton .
13,602
3,345
24.6
Duplin .
WUson .
Yadkin .
3.28S3,3062,830
660
23.123.123-3
PENNSYLVANIA
Sampson
3,976
936
23-5
Luzerne
70,171
14.029
20.0
Jolk .
Xlay .
1,284 927
303220
23-6
23-7
VIRGINIA
Cherokee
2,429
579
23-8
Pittsylvania .
5,859
1,183
20.2
Johnston
5,407
1,296
24.0
Smyth .
3.755
770
20.6
Franklin
3,068
746
24.3
Wythe .
4,016
845
21.0
Haywood
3,283
802
24.4
Washington .
5,981
1.275
21.2
Gates .
1,290
319
24-7
Gloucester .
1.524
346
22.7
Swain .
i»553
394
23-4
Carroll .
3.908
9°5
23-2
Greene .
1,507
386
23-6
Franklin
4.119
975
23.6
Jackson
2,360
609
23.8
Lee . . .
961
24.0
Madison
4,074
1,077
26.4
Stafford
1,636
397
24.2
Mitchell
2,980
816
27-4
Scott .
4.787
1.193
24.9
Person .
2,132
603
28.2
Dickenson .
1,521
380
25.0
Surry .
5,019
1,414
28,2
Russell
3,817
1.003
26.2
Yancey
2,29s
707
30.8
Patrick .
2,923
914
31.2
Wilkes .
5,081
1,568
30.9
Greene .
1,058
31-3
Stokes .
3.607
1,174
32.3
Buchanan .
1,957
696
35-6
SOUTH CAROLINA
west VIRGINIA
Horry .
3i553
752
21.2
McDowell .
3,700
747
20-2
Pickens
3,190
689
21.6
Wyoming .
1,710
375
21. g
Chesterfield .
2;68i
702
26.2
Boone .
1,725
449
26-0
Lincoln
3,336
868
26.0
GEORGIA
Mingo .
2,617
698
26.7
Murray
1,733
354
20.4
Logan .
1,475
405
27-5
Twiggs
701
144
20.5
NORTH CAROLINA
Gilmer .
2,104
442
21.0
Hertford
1,441
290
20.1
Miller .
Rahun .
798
1,234
263
21.4 21-5
Rockingham
4,903
988
20.2
Dawson
1,040
227
21.8
Macon . . .
Onslow
2,3282,043
426
20.620.8
PauldingGlascock
2,493 666
S57 149
22-3
22.4
Lenoir .
2,6og
545
20.9
Pickens
1.750
395
22.6
Montgomery
2,412
507
21.0
Fannin
2:268
535
23.6
Dare .
1,072
227
21.2
Union _.
1.665
393
23.6
HarnettAshe .
2,4393,847
ill
21.221.3
Lumpkin
1,544
410
26.6
Davie .
2,184
467
21.4
FLORIDA
Martin .
1,907
409
21.4
Taylor .
776
194
25.0
Davidson
4,515
S'5
21.5
Holmes
1 380
357
25-7
Pitt
3,792
816
21.5
Watauga
i.isg
579
21.5
KENTUCKY
Caldwell .
2,963
646
21.8
Lewis .
4,477
896
20.0
Stanly .
2,716
593
21.8
Grayson
4.471
914
20.4
Camden
808
178
22.0
Menifee
1.478
301
20.4
Cleveland .
4,333
958
22.1
Marion
3.193
653
20.3
Tyrrell .
850
188
22.1
Marshall .
2,382
540
20.9
Burke .
3,341
753
22.5
Allen ,
3,378
720
21.3
Graham
838
191
22.8
Johnson
2,879
614
21-3
APPENDIX A

307

TABLE VIII — Continued

Total

Illiter ate

Per
cent

Total

Illiter ate

Per
cent

KENTUCKY — COH.

ALABAMA
Adair .
3,084
668
21.6
St, Clair . .
3,416
688
20.1
Rockcastle
2,787
609
21.9
Winston
1,905
393
20.6
Rowan .
1.875
415
22.1
Franklin
3,038
639
21.0
Lawrence
4,180
961
23.0
Chilton
2,908
624
21-5
Butler .
3.368
830
23-3
Covington
2,817
612
21.7
Metcalfe
2,178
514
23.6
Cherokee
3,913
867
22,2
Bell .
3,220
764
23-7
Cleburne
2,644
595
22.3
Carter .
4,389
1,046
23.8
Coffee .
3,517
844
24.0
Casey .
3.365
^'1
24.2
MISSISSIPPI
Wayne .
Lee
3.079 1.627
746
24.2
24-3
Hancock
1,892
387
20.4
Knox .
3.530
861
24-4
LOUISIANA
GreenupClinton
i;6i?
859421
24.625.3
West Baton Rouge
63s
136
21.4
Edmonson
2,101
555
26.4
Iberville
='5^'
640
23.2
Estill .
2.491
657
26.4
Livingston .
1,486
377
23.3
Cumberland
1,778
481
27.1
Point Coupee
1,620
442
27.3
Letcher
1,777
493
27-7
Plaquemines
1,678
476
28.4
Owsley
Jackson
1,435
2,119
397
27-728.0
Iberia .
St. John the Baptist
3,416 1,279
1,049 397
30.731.0
Martin .
1,171
338
28.9
St. Bernard .
771
246
31.9
Magoffin
2,387
709
69.7
St. James
2,202
712
32.3
Elliott .
2,038
609
29.9
St. Mary
3,566
1,224
34-3
Harlan .
ilsis
S67
30.0
Ascension
2,755
950
34-3
Floyd .
3,074
939
30.3
Cameron
739
261
35-3
Perry .
Pike .
1,570
4,462
4S3
1,432
31.432.1
Avoyelles St. Charles
3,621 830
1,443 332
39-9
40.0
Breathitt
2,748
890
32.4
Acadia .
4,301
1,786
41-5
Clay .
2,789
983
35.2
Lafayette
2,863
1,192
41.6
Leslie .
1,272
448
33.2
St. Landry
5,268
2,305
43-7
Knott .
1,561
559
35-8
St. Martin
1,109
986
47.1
Assumption
2,776
1,313
47-3
TENNESSEE
Terrebonne
3,282
1,627
49.6
Benton .
2,381
526
20.4
Jefferson
1,511
752
49.8
Meigs .
1,463
307
20.9
Lafourche
4,510
2,277
50.5
Bledsoe
1,377
291
21.1
Vermilion
3,494
1,768
51.2
Polk .
2,583
546
21.1
Campbell
806
21.2
TEXAS
Van Buren
688
147
21.4
Refugio
283
57
20.0
Marion .
3.523
768
21.3
Zavalla
211
/5
21.3
Scott .
2,257
483
21.3
Wilson .
2,889
620
21-5
Union .
2,818
608
21.6
Uvalde
1,113
257
23.1
Clay .
1,837
409
22.2
Dimmit
303
11
23-8
Anderson
3^858
866
22.4
Live Oak
^f.
128
24.3
Perry .
1,816
407
22.4
McMuUen
268
65
24.3
Morgan
2,126
476
22.4
Bee .
1,682
411
24-4
Jackson
3,087
702
22.7
Frio .
941
232
24.6
Sevier .
4,321
980
22.7
Karnes
1,946
525
26.9
Monroe
3,815
871
22.8
Jeif Davis
323
91
28.2
Hancock
2,217
514
23-2
Atascosa
1,319
432
29.8
Grainger
Unicoi .
2,623
804
23-4
El Paso
7,300
2,199
30.1
1,296
314
24.2
Valverde
1,449
470
32.4
Cocke .
3,803
937
24.6
Brewster
699
229
32.8
Pickett
1,132
284
23,1
Kinney
580
193
33-3
Hawkins
4,757
1,212
25.4
Nueces
2,451
898
36.6
Claiborne
4,326
1. 105
25.6
Maverick
1,005
378
37.6
Fentress
1.324
343
25-9
San Patricio
577
227
39-3
Macon .
2,773
719
25,9
Pecos .
914
367
40.1
Johnson Carter .
2,1303,588
PI
26,927.6
Ward .
La Salle
404 587
162236
40.140.2
3o8

THE PRESENT SOUTH

TABLE VIII— Concluded

Total

Illiter ate

Per
cent

Total

Illiter ate

Per
cent

TEXAS — COH.

NEW MEXICO — COM.
Reeves .
513
211
41.1
Grant
4,451
1,098
24.6
Zapata .
1,128
484
42.9
Sierra .
963
247
25.8
Presidio
903
43-3
Socorro
3,411
981
25.8
Duval .
1.883
862
45-7
San Miguel .
5,749
1,749
30.4
Webb .
5,841
2,874
49-2
Valencia
2,712
871
32.1
Cameron
3,423
1,721
50.3
Mora .
2,453
819
33-4
Starr .
2,593
1,369
52.8
Rio Arriba .
3,092
1,113
36.0
Hidalgo
1,522
808
53-1
Donna Ana ,
2,818
1,163
41-3
ARKANSAS
ARIZONA
Randolph .
3,898
780
20.0
Guadalupe .
'•'^
?^
31.8
Newton
2,608
527
20.2
Apache
20.4
4,722
1,084
23.0
Pinal .
1,638
406
24.3
Washington .
3.257
756
23.2
Pima .
3,844
985
23.6
NEW MEXICO
Santa Cruz .
1,347
412
30.6
Union .
1,268
283
22.3
COLORADO
Taos . . .
2,974
555
22.4
Huerfano
2,269
698
30.8
TABLE IX
Showing the rank of each State in percentage of illiteracy
of the native white population io years of age and over:
1900
Rank
State or Tekritory
Per
cent
Rank
State or Territory
Per
cent
WashmgtonSouth Dakota
Montana .
Nevada .
Wyoming .
MassachusettsMinnesota
NebraskaConnecticutOregon
Utah District of Columbia
North Dakota
Idaho .
California .
New York
Iowa
Wisconsin Kansas
New Hampshire
Michigan .
New Jersey
Rhode Island
IllinoisPennsylvania
0.50.60.60.60.7
0.80.80.80.80.8
0.80.80.90.9 1.0 1.2
1.21-31-3i-S1-7
^•71.8
2.12.3
OhioMaineOklahomaColorado .
Vermont .
IndianaMarylandMissouri .
Delaware .
Texas .
Arizona .
MississippiFlorida .
West Virginia
Virginia .
Arkansas .
Georgia .
Kentucky South Carolina
Indian Territory
Tennessee
Alabama .
Louisiana
North CaroUna
New Mexico .
2.42.4
2.52.7
3-64.14.8 5.6
6.16.28.08.6
lO.OII.I
11.611.912.813.614.014.214.817-319.529.4
APPENDIX B
CHILD LABOR IN ALABAMA ^
A CORRESPONDENCE
A Discussion of New England's Part in the Common
Responsibility for the Child-labor Conditions of
THE South
In the summer ofthe year 1901 the Executive Committee
on Child Labor in Alabama observed, in the New England
press, certain criticisms of the child-labor conditions of the
South. Knowing that the South was not alone at fault, and
that Eastern men have been partly responsible for the failure
of child-labor legislation in the Southern States, the Com
mittee addressed a public statement of the facts to the
people and the press of New England.
The object of this statement was to awaken the public
opinion of New England in order that this opinion might
operate to control— not the South — but the New England
man who is doing at the South what he cannot and dare not
do at home. A Reply to the Committee
On Wednesday, October 30, the following communica
tion appeared in the Evening Transcript of Boston, Massa
chusetts.
To the Editor of the Transcript :
My attention has been called to an article in your paper of the
23d inst., signed by gentlemen from Alabama, in reference to
child labor.
1 A reprint of one of the series of pamphlets circulated by the Ala
bama Committee in behalf of factory legislation.
309

3IO THE PRESENT SOUTH
As treasurer of a mill in that State, erected by Northern capi
tal, I am interested in the subject. From the starting of our
mill, I have never been South without protesting to the agent,
and overseer of spinning (the only department in which small
help can be employed), against allowing children under twelve
years of age to come into the raill, as I did not consider them
intelligent enough to do good work. On a visit last June,
annoyed that my instructions were not more carefully observed,
before leaving I wrote the agent a letter of which the following
is a copy : —
"Every time I visit this mill, I am impressed with the feet
that it is a great mistake to employ small help in the spinning
room. Not only is it wrong from a humanitarian standpoint but
it entails an absolute loss to the mill. We prepare the stock and
make it into roving, and, because of the small spinners, send
back to the pickers an excessive amount of roving waste, and
meantime lose the work of the spindles. I again express the
wish that you prevent the overseer, as far as possible, from
employing children under twelve years of age. I know it is
sometimes difficult to get at the real age — and in some cases
the parents may threaten to leave our employ unless we give
work to their small children, but we must take this stand — and
I trust an honest effort will be made to carry out my wishes."
In defence of our officials, it is doubtless true that the trouble
comes largely from the parents, who make every effort to get
their children into the mill, and often because of refusal, take
their families containing needed workers, to other mills, where
no objection is made to the employment of children. The state
ment that twice as many children under twelve years of age are
employed in mills under Northern control as in Southern mills,
if it means, as it should, in proportion to spindles on same num
ber of yarns, is absolutely false so far as relates to our company,
and I have reason to believe the same can be said of other mills
under Northern ownership.
Now in regard to the attempted legislation of last winter:
The labor organizations at the North imported from England a
very bright and skilful female labor agitator and sent her to
Alabama. She held meetings at central points, and when the
Legislature convened appeared at Montgomery with her following,

APPENDIX B 311
and a bill against employing children was promptly introduced.
The manufacturers and other business men of Alabama resented
this outside interference, well knowing the source from which it
came, and they were also aware that manufacturers at the North
were being solicited for funds with which to incite labor troubles
in the South.
As they recognized that this bill was only the entering wedge,
they determined that action must come from within the State,
and not outside. They also felt that the adjoining State of
Georgia, having double the number of spindles, should act first.
With these considerations in mind, the manufacturers selected
among others our agent, a native Alabamian, to appear before the
legislative committee, with the result that the bill was defeated.
I think it may be said with tmth, that the interference of Northern
labor agitators is retarding much needed legislation in all the
manufacturing States ofthe South.
As to our mill and the little town of 2300 people which has
grown up around it, there is nothing within the mill or without,
of which any citizen of Massachusetts need be ashamed. On
the contrary, I challenge either of the gentlemen from Alabama
whose names are attached to the letter referred to, to mention
among the forty mills in the State, of which only four are directly
operated from the North, any one which will compare with ours,
in the expenditure which has been made for the comfortable
housing of the operatives, and the appliances introduced for their
comfort and uplift. From the inception of this enterprise, the
purpose has been to build up a model town that should be an
object lesson to the South, and we are assured that its influences
have been helpful. In addition to a school supported by public
tax, the company has always carried on a school of its own, with
an experienced and devoted teacher, who has been instructed to
make special effort to get in the young children, and thus allure
them from the mill. We have built and have in operation a
beautiful library — the first erected for this special purpose in the
State of Alabama, and we have a church building which would
be an ornament in any village of New England, and is in itself
an education to our people. We are now building a modern
schoolhouse from plans by Boston architects which will accom
modate all the children of our community. These are a few of

312 THE PRESENT SOUTH
the things we have done and are doing, in our effort to meet the
responsibility we have assumed, in dealing with a class of people
who have some most excellent traits, and who appeal to us strongly,
because many of them have hitherto been deprived of needed
comforts and largely of elementary advantages.
What we are attempting to do for our operatives may seem to
the gentlemen who signed the appeal in your columns as " spec
tacular philanthropy " and a " heartless policy " ; but this is not
the opinion of our employees, nor of visitors who have acquainted
themselves with the facts, nor of the communities adjacent to us.
J. Howard Nichols,
Treasurer Alabama City Mill, Alabama.
A Rejoinder from Alabama
On the afternoon of November zd, Mr. Edgar Gardner
Murphy, of Montgomery, Alabama, the chairman of the
Alabama Child-labor Committee, received a copy of the
above letter. Mr. Murphy at once wrote and forwarded
the following rejoinder : —
Tp the Editor of the Transcript :
I note in your issue of October 30th a reply to a statement to
the press and the people of New England, on the subject of child
labor in Alabama. Our statement bore the signatures of six^
representative citizens of Alabama, among them the Superin
tendent of Public Schools of Birmingham and ex-Governor
Thomas G. Jones, of Montgomery. The reply to the address
of the committee is signed, not by a disinterested citizen of the
State, but by Mr. J. Howard Nichols, Treasurer of the Alabama
City Mill, at Alabama City.
1 The full membership of the Alabama Committee was, at a later
date, as follows : Judge J. B. Gaston, Dr. B. J. Baldwin, Rev. Neal L.
Anderson, Judge Thos. G. Jones, S. B. Marks, Jr., Judge W. H. Thomas,
Father O'Brien, and Edgar Gardner Murphy, of Montgomery ; John
Craft, Erwin Craighead, Jos. E. Rich, of Mobile ; (the Hon. Richard
H. Clarke was a member of the local committee at Mobile) ; and A. J.
Reilly, Rev. John G. Murray, Hon. A. T. London, and Dr. J. H.
Phillips, Superintendent of Schools, of Birmingham.

APPENDIX B 313
I thank you for publishing Mr. Nichols's letter. The well-
known citizens of Alabama with whom I have the honor to be
associated, have welcomed the discussion of this subject, and they
desire the frankest and fullest showing of the facts.
I note, however, with some amazement, that the Treasurer of
the Alabama City Mill begins his argument by conceding the
two fundamental principles for which we are contending — the
social wrong and the economic error of child labor under twelve.
He declares that from the starting of that mill he has repeatedly
protested against the use of children under this age and that last
June he wrote to his local agent that the employment of such
help " is not only wrong from a humanitarian standpoint, but it
entails an absolute loss to the mill." Now this is substantially,
and in admirable form, the whole case of our committee.
Yet what must be our added amazement when, in the next
paragraph but one, we read the further admission that, in order
to continue this economic and social wrong and in order to defeat
a simple and effective remedy for this wrong, the salaried repre
sentative of his own mill, during the preceding February, had
appeared in this city before our Legislature, in aggressive and
persistent antagonism to the protection of little children under
twelve ! This, in the teeth of protests which Mr. Nichols declares
he has made since " the starting " of his mill. Who, then, is the
responsible representative of the actual policy of the Alabama
City Mill — its Treasurer or its representative before the Legis
lature? Or is the policy of the mill a policy which concedes the
principle, only to deny the principle its fruit ? If this be the true
interpretation of the conditions, what are we to say to the explana
tions which are suggested ; explanations offered " in defence of
our [Mr. Nichols's] officials."
Mr. Nichols assures us that the officials have been put under
grave pressure from the parents. Let us concede that this is
true. Yet Mr. Nichols himself is not satisfied with this " defence,"
and he declares wisely and bravely that his officials must take
their stand against the pressure of unscrupulous and idle parents.
His agents must resist the threat of such parents to leave the
Alabama City Mill for mills having a lower standard of employ
ment. Does not Mr. Nichols see that our legislation was pre
cisely directed toward ending this pressure, toward breaking up

314 THE PRESENT SOUTH
this ignoble competition, and toward the preservation of the
standard of eraployment which he professes ? There could be
no pressure to withdraw the children and to enter them in other
mills, if such labor were everywhere prohibited by statute. But
we are grateful to Mr.' Nichols for his declaration. And yet, is he
ignorant of the need of legislation in the State at large ? His
very argument is a confession of knowledge. If the Alabama
City Mill is fairly represented by the profession of Mr. Nichols,
why should the paid and delegated agent of that mill labor here
for weeks to thwart a simple legislative remedy for the abuses he
deplores ?
Is it sufficient for your correspondent to declare that this leg
islation met with local opposition simply because such reforms
should come "from within the State and not fi^om outside"?
This is a strange objection upon the part of one who represents
investments from outside. The evils may be supported from the
East, but the remedies (sic) must be indigenous ! Nor is there
the slightest ground for the suggestion that the initiative for our
moveraent of reform came from " a skilful female labor agitator
imported from England." We yield sincere gratitude to the
American Federation of Labor for their earnest, creditable, and
effective cooperation. Their interest in the situation is entirely
intelligible. When the younger children are thrust into the labor
market in competition with the adult, they contend that the adult
wage is everywhere affected. But the agent of the Federation of
Labor — earnest and devoted woman that she is — did her work,
not in the spirit of interference, but in the spirit of helpfulness.
She was not responsible for the beginning of the agitation. The
demand for this legislative protection of our children was made
by the Ministers' Union of Montgomery and by the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union of Alabama, before she was ever
heard of in the South.
Nothing could be more baseless than the assumption that our
local effort for reforms is due to outside forces. But if it were
— what of it ? There is at stake here to-day the welfare of our
little children, the happiness and efficiency of our future opera
tives, the moral standard of our economic life ; and this committee
frankly proposes, in every honorable way, to secure all the aid,
from every quarter of our common country, which we can possibly

APPENDIX B 315
command. The criticism of such a policy is a little out of place
from the representative of a mill here operated upon investments
from Massachusetts.
Mr. Nichols then informs us that the reform legislation was
defeated because " the adjoining State of Georgia, having double
the number of spindles, should act first." This, we have con
tended, is to miss the very essence of the statesmanship of the
situation. The very fact that Georgia has twice as many spindles
as Alabama, makes it twice as hard for Georgia to precede us.
The cost of such an economic readjustment must be obviously
twice as great in Georgia as in Alabama. That Alabama is not
so deeply involved in the system of child labor as some other
Southern States is clearly the reason why Alabama should take
the lead.
It has been conservatively estimated that in some of the South
ern States more than twenty per cent of the mill operatives are
under fourteen years of age. Does Mr. Nichols wish Alabama
to delay until that becomes the condition of the industry in this
State? According to the logical demand of his argument, the
State having the raost spindles, the State most deeply and inex
tricably involved, must be the first to face the delicate and difficult
problem of readjustment !
Mr. Nichols also declares that our reform measure was defeated
because it was believed to be " the entering .wedge " of other
troublesome labor legislation. We must not protect our little
children under twelve, we must not do a compassionate and
reasonable thing, because, forsooth, somebody raight then de
mand an inconsiderate and unreasonable thing ! Do the corpo
rate interests in Alabama wish to predicate their liberties upon
such an argument ?
Yet, says Mr. Nichols, " with these considerations in mind, the
manufacturers selected, among others, our agent, a native Ala
bamian, to appear before the Legislative Committee, with the re
sult that the bill was defeated." Mr. Nichols neglects to state
that on the second hearing of the bill, his agent appeared alone
as the chosen spokesman of all the opponents of reform. He, too,
made much of this hoary scare about " the entering wedge."
What iniquities of reaction^ what bitter stultification of human
progress has that argument not supported ! In such a case as

3i6 THE PRESENT SOUTH
this, it is not an argument, it is a provocation. It is a challenge
to the comraon sense and the coraraon humanity of our people.
If the corporate interests of this State, whether operated by North
erners or Southerners, are to rest the great cause of their unre
stricted development upon the cruel refusal of protection to our
younger children, then let them beware lest, having rejected " the
entering wedge," they invite the cyclone. What greater folly,
viewed fi"om the strictly selfish standpoint of certain corporate
interests, than to involve their fate in the issues of so odious an
argument? Such a course must gradually invite the hatred of the people,
must inevitably goad the great masses of our population into the
fixed belief that the corporation desires to live, not by production,
but through destruction ; that it is a force to be feared and bound
rather than a force to be trusted and liberated. The course of
humanity is always the course of wisdom. If the corporate in
terests of this State desire a long and prosperous career, untram
melled by restrictive legislation, let them disabuse the people of
the impression that their liberties represent the refusal of com
passion to our children ; let them persuade the people of Alabaraa
that they wish to grow, not out of the soil of ignorance and
wretchedness, but out of the rich and human fertilities of social
justice and the social welfare. Let them go to the popular heart,
and base themselves there, not upon the negation, but upon the
extension of privilege.
I concur in the claim that the Alabama City Mill is in some
respects wholly exceptional. Says Mr. Nichols : " I challenge
either of the gentlemen from Alabama to mention among the
mills of the State . . . any one which compares with ours in
the expenditure which has been made for the comfortable housing
ofthe operatives and the appliances introduced for their comfort
and uplift." In one breath the friends of this mill ask us to be
lieve it exceptional, and yet in the next breath they ask that the
need for reform legislation in relation to all the mills of the State,
shall be determined from the conditions it presents ! If the Ala
bama City Mill is so unique, then it is not representative or typi
cal. If it is not representative of the average conditions of child
labor in Alabama, it has nothing to do with this argument.
As to the proportionate number of little chUdren in our South-

APPENDIX B 317
ern and Northern mills, the facts have been accurately stated by
the committee. The statement of Mr. Nichols that there are
only four mills in the State " directly operated from the North "
is unintelligible to me. Upon my desk, as I write, there are the
figures from eleven Alabama mills which, upon the word of their
own managers, are controlled by Northern' capital.
It seems to have grieved Mr. Nichols that we should have
characterized certain unique philanthropies in connection with
one or two of our Eastern mills as " spectacular." The gentle
men of this committee have no desire to express themselves
in the language of impulsive epithet. We are sincerely grateful
for every motive and for every work which touches and blesses
the lot of the unprivileged. But when large photographs of the
exceptional philanthropies of a single mill are seriously brought
before the committee of our Legislature as an argument for the
perpetuation of the general conditions of child labor in this State,
when the advertisements of a unique establishment are used to
cloak the wretched lot of the average factory ; when, upon the
basis of the representations of Alabama City, men are taught to
ignore the essential cruelty of the whole miserable system, and
are made blind to the misery of hundreds whom that factory can
never touch, then I frankly declare that such philanthropies are
indeed "spectacular," for they have actually cursed more than
they have ever blessed. They have become a mockery of love.
They may have benefited the employees of one mill; but they
have served to rivet the chains of a heart-breaking and wretched
slavery upon hundreds of our httle children in the State at large.
And no philanthropy, however exceptional, and no institutional
compassion, however effective, can ever justify the refiisal, at the
door of the factory, of legislative protection to the little child
under twelve years of age. That is the sole contention of this
committee. Is that asking too much? If Massachusetts protects at four
teen years, may not Alabama protect at twelve? Is this too
drastic a demand upon the exceptional philanthropy of the mill
at Alabama City? I hope not. I do not mean to write with the
slightest personal unkindness, but I do write with an intense
earnestness of concern in behalf of the sad and unnatural fate of
the little people of our factories. We, for their sakes, do not

3i8 THE PRESENT SOUTH
want enemies anywhere. We want friends everywhere. It is
with pleasure therefore that I recur to the instructions forwarded
by Mr. Nichols to his agent. Speaking of the employment of
little children, he said, " Not only is it wrong from a humanita
rian standpoint, but it entails an absolute loss to the mill." There
speaks the man of wisdom and the man of heart. Does Mr.
Nichols mean it? Does the mill at Alabama City mean it? Will
Massachusetts join hands with Alabama?
That mill, with its great influences, has led the fight in this
State against the protection of our factory children. Will it con
tinue to represent a policy of opposition and reaction? Or, will
it represent a pohcy of cooperation and of progress? Will it
send its representative, with this committee, before our next
Legislature and there declare that the cotton industry of the
South, as here undertaken by Massachusetts, is too important in
its dignity and its value to be longer involved in the odium and
the horror of an industrial system which all the world has cast
off? If so, that representative may indeed find himself in the
company of some of the nobler forces from "outside." The
whole world has a way of taking the little child to its heart. But
he will also find himself in the company — the increasingly teso-
lute company — of thousands of the people of Alabama.
Edgar Gardner Murphy.
Montgomery, Ala., November 2, igoi.
Another Reply to the Committee
The following letter, in reply to the stateraent of Ala
bama's Executive Committee, is from Mr. Horace Sears, of
Boston. The communication first appeared in the Evening
Transcript, of Boston, and was reprinted in the December
issue of the Monthly Leader — the organ of the Christian
Social Union. It appeared as follows in the Leader: —
Editor the Leader :
It would be difficult to think that such misleading statements
as those which appeared under the communication entitled,
" Child Labor in Alabama," were intended seriously, were it not
for the importance of the subject and the evident stress of feeling

APPENDIX B 319
under which its authors labored. Such appeals do far more
to hinder than to help the welfare of the children, which many
manufacturers have more truly at heart than have the professional
labor agitator and the well-meaning but ill-advised humanitarian.
But I have read with interest, and wish to indorse throughout,
the thoughtful and dispassionate reply to this appeal in your issue
of October 30 by Mr. J. Howard Nichols, treasurer of the Ala
baraa City Mill. In the light of his statement, a statement with
which I, in common with most manufacturers, agree, that the
employment of child labor is not only " wrong from a humani
tarian standpoint, but entails absolute loss to the mill," the fervid
rhetoric of the executive comraittee " of the exploitation of child
hood for the creation of dividends " seems just a little strained.
If, instead of giving utterance to sentimental heroics and berat
ing those who are in no wise responsible for, but are trying to
better, these conditions (which conditions are not nearly as de
plorable as this over-wrought appeal would indicate), the execu
tive committee would join the manufacturers in trying to obtain
remedial legislation that would strike at the root of the trouble,
and to awaken a deeper sense of parental responsibility, much
would be gained towards improving the industrial system as far
as it affects the employment of children in the cotton mills of the
South. At the hearing before the'legislative committee at Montgomery
last winter (which I am constrained to believe none of this execu
tive committee attended or they would have a more intelligent
conception of the situation to-day), the president of our mill
joined with other manufacturers in urging that the Legislature
pass a compulsory education law. If such a law were passed and
then adequately enforced after enactment, it would be impossible
for the children to work in the mills for a large part of the year,
a condition which raost raanufacturers would welcorae as gladly
as the executive committee. As it is, no mill can afford, as
Mr. Nichols states, to lose some of its raost desirable and skil
ful operatives, through the parents' insisting that their children
be given employment to swell the family revenues, and removing
to a mill that will grant such employment, if the raill where they
are located refuses to do so. At our raill the superintendent has
sometimes taken this risk, and refused to allow children to work

320 THE PRESENT SOUTH
unless the parents would first agree to have them attend school
for a part of the term at least. All possible pressure is brought
to bear to get the children into school, but many will not go at
all of their own volition, neither will their parents always require
it. And without a compulsory education law we know they are
better off in the mill than running wild in the streets and fields,
exposed to the danger of growing up into an ignorant, idle, and
vicious citizenship.
Any compulsory education law which is passed, however, should
be made operative only upon the passage of similar laws by the
States of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Other
wise it would be prejudicial to the interests of Alabama as a cotton
manufacturing State and make it very difficult for the mills to
retain some of their best and most skilful hands. While I
doubt not that the people of New England would be glad, as
always, to do anything in their power for the elevation of the
toiling masses, especially of the children, and for the amelioration
of any adverse conditions that surround them, yet there is little
in this instance that they can do, except to advise our friends in
Alabama, who have interested themselves in the matter, to culti
vate a calm and judicial mind, study the situation with intelligence
and wise discrimination, and then act under the responsibility
which they state that they feel rests upon them. Nor can they do
better than to follow the lead of Massachusetts, which long ago
successfully grappled with the problem, by
1st — Awakening a sense of parental responsibility, so that
parents will deny themselves and make any reasonable sacrifice to
win an education for their children.
2d — The enactment of a compulsory education law.
3d — Its energetic enforcement.
The statement that the actual number of children employed in
mills representing Northern investments is twice as great as in the
mills controlled by Southern capital is unworthy of attention. I
challenge its accuracy, and deplore the partisan spirit which leads
to such an unfounded accusation.
The executive committee appears to include representatives of
the Church, the school, and the State. Let me call their attention
to the fact that many of the families who are now happy in their
work and growing into finer manhood and womanhood at the

APPENDIX B 321
mills, came from isolated and distant homes where the Church and
the school never reached them, and where the State was felt only
through its unsympathetic and restraining, although necessary,
laws. Through the opportunity which the mills have offered, and
under their watchful and sympathetic care, many a community has
been built up and surrounded with Christianizing, educational, and
civilizing influences, that the Church, the school, and the State
would never have been able to throw around them.
Although our mill village is provided with a church which was
built at the expense of the mill in its very inception, with schools
supported in part by the State, in part by the parents, and in part
by the mill, whose superintendent is instructed to see that the tuition
of every child desiring to attend school is paid by the mill if not
otherwise provided for, with an asserably hall, a library, and a
reading room, it did not occur to us that this was " spectacular
philanthropy," for we neither knew nor cared whether it came to
the notice of the outside world, save as it would influence other
corporations to do likewise. Indeed, we do not consider it philan
thropy at all, but simply rendering willing service in our turn to
those who are faithfully serving us.
The neighboring factory village at Lanett, Ala., is similarly pro
vided for at the expense and under the fostering care of the Lanett
Cotton Mill, and my personal observation and knowledge lead me
to believe that instead of one or two mills of a "spectacular
philanthropy," the majority of the mills throughout the South, and
especially those under Northern management, have, without any
appeal to the galleries, quietly and gladly given their operatives
and their families all desired privileges of church and school and
social and literary life, that were not already offered by the town
in which they were located.
Turning from the appeal of the executive committee, a picture
arises before me of the peaceful, happy mill settlement at Lang-
dale, with its pretty church filled to the doors on Sundays with an
attentive. God-fearing congregation, with its large and enthusiastic
Sunday-school, with its fine school and kindergarten department,
with its well-selected library of over 1000 volumes, with its pleas
ant reading room open every week-day evening, with its assembly
hall often filled with an audience attracted by a programme of the
debating club, or the literary society, or the entertainment com-
Y

322 THE PRESENT SOUTH
mittee, with its streets lighted by electricity, and with the mill
agent and his beloved wife going in and out among the homes of
the people, participating in all their joys and sorrows ; and know
ing that this is typical of many another manufacturing village in
the South, especiaUy of those under Northern management or con
trolled by Northern capital, I rub my eyes and wonder whether
the animus of this appeal of the executive committee is that of
ignorance, or of mischievous labor agitation, or of sectional hatred,
which we had hoped was long since deservedly laid away in its
grave-clothes. Horace S. Sears,
Treasurer of the West Point Manufacturing
Company, Langdale, Ala.
On reading the above communication, Mr. Murphy, the
Chairman of the Alabama Executive Committee, replied as
follows : — A Rejoinder to Mr. Sears
To the Editor of the Monthly Leader :
A number of the considerations presented by Mr. Horace S.
Sears I have dealt with in ray reply to Mr. J. Howard Nichols.
This reply was published in the Evening Transcript of Boston,
and I will gladly forward a copy of it to any of your readers upon
receipt of a postal card request.
There are, however, a few additional suggestions in the letter
of Mr. Sears.
He contends that, while " the employment of little children is
not only wrong from a humanitarian standpoint, but entaUs abso
lute loss to the mill," yet Alabama should not provide any legis
lative protection for her chUdren under twelve, until the State
can be won to the acceptance of a compulsory education law. In
other words, we are not to attempt a possible reform until we
have first secured another reform which every practical man in
Alabama knows is just now impossible.
But granting that Mr. Sears is right, and admitting that Massa
chusetts may fairly labor to defeat one method of reform because
Alabama wiU not adopt another, is Mr. Sears reaUy ready for
his remedy? Not by any means. If our Executive Committee
should adopt his advice, should abandon its own conception of

APPENDIX B 323
the statesmanship of the situation, and should "join the manu
facturers " in first assisting upon a comprehensive scheme of com
pulsory education, would the forces represented by Mr. Sears
stand by the compact ? Not for a moment ! He is quite frank
in his disavowal of any such intention. Says Mr. Sears, " any
compulsory education law which is passed, however, should be
operative only upon the passage of similar laws by the States of
Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina."
This enthusiasm for reform, only on condition that aU the
rest of the world wiU reform too, is very famUiar to the students
of economic progress. Over in Georgia and the CaroUnas, some
of the mill men are claiming that they " are only waiting upon
Alabama." And there you are !
The suggestion from Mr. Sears that the members of our Com
mittee were not present at the legislative hearings last winter is,
I think, unworthy of this discussion. If Mr. Sears was there
himself, he knows that one of the raembers of our Committee
was Chairman of the Legislative Committee of the lower House
which had the ChUd-labor Bill under consideration, that he pre
sided at the public hearing on this bUl given by the joint Com
mittee of both Houses, and that he was personally in charge of
the compulsory education biU (which Mr. Sears claims to have
favored) ; that the writer of these lines appeared in behalf of
the Child-labor Bill at both hearings ; that those who fought
our Child-labor law selected, as the most prominent man in
Alabama whom they could get to oppose us, the State's most
conspicuous opponent of compulsory education ; and that the
representative of Massachusetts investments who so vigorously
fought the proposed legislative protection of our children, took
no part whatever in the public discussion of the bill for compul
sory education.
Moreover, Mr. Sears neglects to state that the compulsory edu
cation law, which he declares the president of his mill supported,
owed its origin not to Massachusetts, nor to the mUls, but to the
same devoted woman whom Mr. Nichols condemns aS " a skilful
female labor agitator imported from England," which description
Mr. Sears approves! In other words, the very remedy which
Mr. Sears suggests with such commendable unction was offered
to Alabama, not by the forces of Massachusetts, nor by the mills,

324 THE PRESENT SOUTH
but by the forces which Mr. Sears has so persistently opposed
and which he ventures to charge with " sentimental heroics."
At the hearings upon the compulsory education bill I was not
personally present, for, realizing the utter futility of then placing
our dependence upon the practical cooperation of the mill men, I
knew the bill was doomed. But other members of our Commit
tee were untiring in its support, and had the mill forces expended
one-fifth of the energy in favor of this bill that they expended in
opposition to our Child-labor BUl, the compulsory education
measure might at least have been put upon its passage.
In the face of such facts and in the face of all the convenient
conditions suggested, under which "any compulsory education
law should be made operative only upon the passage of simUar
laws by the States of Georgia, South CaroUna, and North Caro
lina," it is not strange that suspicion should be abroad, and that
some of our reform forces should have adopted the opinion that
all this strenuous talk about compulsory education is but part of
an atterapt to block a reform which is possible, by the safe pro
posal of a reform which is impossible — that the effort is simply
a neat and effective element in the diplomacy of estoppel.
Is the suspicion totally unfounded? I do not doubt that, in
the hearts of some, the proposal is sincere. Those who are not
face to face with our local conditions, may think compulsory edu
cation a practical alternative. But that the representative of the
cotton raill, the representative of the system of chUd labor in
this State, should sincerely advocate a policy of compulsory edu
cation, is something which many of our hard-headed, sensible
people cannot understand. These people are confronted, not
merely by a few exceptional mUls, but by the average conditions
of the child-labor system. They see Uttle children under
twelve, sometimes as young as six, working eight and twelve and
thirteen hours a day — sometimes sent into the mills at night;
they see the burden and the wretchedness of this system ; and
they cannot see how a man who is identified with such conditions
can be sincerely an advocate of the systera of compulsory edu
cation — and for the very obvious reason that he himself, in
supporting the child-labor system of Alabama, is manifestly
supporting a systera of compulsory ignorance.
" But," Mr. Sears may say, " it is not true that I am identified

APPENDIX B 325
with such conditions. Our miU is a good miU." The claim can
not stand. I am not prepared to charge the darkest conditions
upon the mills controUed by Massachusetts, but I do contend
that when the representatives of the Massachusetts raills, upon
their own published confession, unite in public opposition to
legislative reform for our abuses, when they themselves continue
to oppose the legislative protection of children under twelve, and
when they are actually employing hundreds of such chUdren,
then they are morally responsible for the general evils which
they have labored to continue. We raust have the aid of the
law, not primarily for the good mill, but for the bad mUl, just as
every community needs a law against theft, not to protect it from
the honest, but from the dishonest. In urging this suggestion
upon our many friends in New England, I ask them to realize
that any factory here, whatever its advantages, stands intimately
related to the whole industrial systera of the State. There are
true raen and true women associated with some of these factories.
But the effort of the good raill to prevent the legislative protection
of children under twelve, means, in its effect, the continuation of
the present conditions in the worst mills of the State. Kindness
may modify the evils of child labor in one raill without legisla
tion, yet nothing but legislation will enable us to protect the
child which has fallen into the hands of the unkind.
I ara personally of the opinion that there is no mill on earth
good enough to be permitted to work a little child under twelve
years of age, but, if there be such a raill and if that mill be con
troUed by brave and good men, it will make its sacrifices and will
put forth its labors, not only to continue the supposed good for
tune of the few, but to avert the pitiable misfortunes of the many.
New England might find analogies in our situation. Was
New England soUcitous for the policy of "non-interference"
from outside the State, in relation to the evils of slavery ? Yet
Mr. Nichols and Mr. Sears do not wish anybody outside of Ala
bama to take an interest in the local question of child labor !
More than a generation ago it was argued, for the system of slav
ery, that there were good plantations upon which the slaves were
well treated. The statement was true, but the argument was
weak. The presence of the good plantation could not offset the
perils and evils of the system in itself, any more than the "good

326 THE PRESENT SOUTH
factory " can justify the system of child labor. The need for any
social or economic reform raay never be determined from the
conditions presented by the best phases of a system, but from
the essential genius of the system, and from the average condi
tions which it presents. The very idea of enforced labor for the
child under twelve is monstrous, both from a moral and an eco
nomic standpoint. The very essence of the system, as with the
system of slavery, is an error. There can be no " good " child
labor. And this system is monstrous, not only in principle, but
in results.Mr. Sears is sure that we have exaggerated the evil of these re
sults. I would respectfully ask, who are the more likely to make
accurate report of the results — Mr. Sears and Mr. Nichols, living
in Boston and directly interested in the system they defend, or a
representative committee of seven men who are passing their lives
in Alabama and who have no financial connection whatever, direct
or indirect, with the system they attack ? Among these men are
Dr. Phillips, the Superintendent of Public Schools at Birming
ham, and ex-Governor Thos. G. Jones, lately selected by Presi
dent Roosevelt for the Federal bench (although a Deraocrat)
upon the ground of his breadth of learning, his sterling integ
rity, and his judicial capacity and temper. It is hardly neces
sary for Mr. Sears to accuse such raen of " sentimental heroics "
or to exhort such men "to cultivate a calm and judicial mind
and to study the situation with intelligence and wise discrimina
tion." Let us take another of the issues of fact. Mr. Sears, in urging
a compulsory education law and in opposition to a chUd-labor
law, declares in support of his mill, that " all possible pressure is
brought to bear to get the children into school, but raany wUl
not go at all of their own volition, neither will their parents
always require it." The impression is created even upon the
mind of the editor of the Leader (in whose large-heartedness I
have every confidence) that present conditions are possibly better
than they would be under the law proposed by the Committee.
This rather ignores the fact that the law proposed by the Com
mittee had an admirable educational provision — as good a pro
vision as we thought it possible to pass. But, is it true that these
children are stubbornly opposed to education? Conditions vary.

APPENDIX B 327
No man can speak for the children of every mill in Alabama.
Yet, as Mr. Sears has told about the chUdren in one factory, I
will tell of those in another. The mill is less than twenty miles
from my study. There are about seventy-five chUdren in it.
They are worked twelve hours out of twenty-four, from 6 A.m. to
6.30 P.M., aUowing a half-hour for dinner. Last year they were
refused a holiday, even on Thanksgiving. A night school, taught
by volunteers, has been opened near them, through those whom
Mr. Sears has called "well-meaning but Ul-advised humani
tarians." I have watched the experiment with some hesitation,
because the teaching is real teaching and I am not sure that any
chUd, after twelve hours of work, should be wearied with much
of an effort at education. But fifty children out of the seventy-
five are flocking into this school voluntarily, eager to learn, and
disappointed when the crowded session is brought to its early
end. Now, which law is the more needed by these chUdren — a
provision for compulsory education, or a provision which will
strike at the system of compulsory ignorance surrounding them ;
which will close for them the door of the mill, and open to them
the opportunities of knowledge by daylight?
Says Mr. Sears, "We know that they are better off in the mill
than running wUd in the streets and fields, exposed to the dangers
of growing up into an ignorant, idle, and vicious citizenship." Mr.
Sears seems to miss the point. He seems to forget that our legis
lation is directed simply toward the protection of the freedom of
children under twelve. In view of this cardinal fact, I may sug
gest, in the words of Mr. Sears himself, that his language " seems
just a little strained." What are the perils of vice " in the fields,"
or even in the streets of our rural South (or even in the streets of
the model villages of Mr. Nichols and Mr. Sears), for the little
child under twelve?
In attempting to arrive at the " animus " of the appeal of our
Committee, Mr. Sears seems incUned to attribute our statement to
" ignorance," or to " mischievous labor agitation,'' or to " sectional
hatred." Sectional hatred! And which is the more likely to
induce that malignant and excuseless passion — the spectacle of
the attitude of the South toward the capital of Massachusetts, or
the attitude of the capital of Massachusetts toward the little chil
dren of the South ? The fact that these are white children, and

328 THE PRESENT SOUTH
that Massachusetts — always solicitous for the negro — should
be largely indifferent to the fate of our white children, does not
relieve the situation. Suppose tbe conditions were reversed, and
that the mills of Southern men were full of negro children under
twelve — how quickly and how justly New England would ring
with denunciation!
The fundamental principle of our appeal is not that Alabama
is guiltless, or that gentlemen like Mr. Nichols and Mr. Sears
are intentionally brutal. That would be unjust to thera and un
just to our own sense of right and truth. Our elementary conten
tion is, simply, that the common conscience will hold, and should
hold, the capital of Massachusetts to the moral and economic
standards of Massachusetts. Both Mr. Nichols and Mr. Sears
have admitted that the employraent of little children is "wrong"
frora an econoraic and a humanitarian standpoint. Neither
gentleman has told us, and no single representative of New
England investments in Alabama has yet told us, that he is
ready to join with us to right this wrong by direct and effective
legislation. But the appeal of our Committee has not been without response.
We care to indulge in no recriminations for the past. We have
prayed that, in our approaching struggle, New England wiU stand
with us and not against us, for we have no intention whatever of
seeing her investments here embarrassed by complex and oppres
sive labor legislation. Our motives cannot long be misunder-.
stood. For such response as has come to us from the New
England press, and from many of the people of New England,
we are sincerely grateful. I close this letter with an expression
which has just reached me. It is a telegram from Seth Low, the
Mayor-elect of Greater New York, in reference to our bill now
pending before the Legislature ofthe State of Georgia. It reflects
what we beUeve will be the real, the ultimate, response of the
North to the situation at the South. It is as follows : —
" I am heartUy glad to throw whatever influence I can exert, in
favor of protective legislation for the children of Georgia, strictly
defining the perraitted age and hours of labor in factories, on
lines of similar legislation in Massachusetts and New York.
Georgia ought to profit by the experience of other States. She

APPENDIX B 329
ought not to pay for her own experience with the lives of her
children. I say this as one having indirectly an interest in the ¦
Massachusetts mills in Georgia.
"Seth Low."
That is statesmanship, that is religion, that is intersectional
fraternity, and that is "Education." Edgar Gardner Murphy.
Montgomery, Ala., December 15, a.d. igoi.
The above consespondence is included in this Appendix
in order to illustrate the truth that the influence of that sec
tion of the country which has the broadest industrial experi
ence and the highest industrial standards should be felt —
within the newer regions of manufacturing enterprise — upon
the side of humane and wholesome policies.
A Child-labor Law is now upon the statute books of Ala
bama. The bill, as originally proposed, prohibited night
work for children under sixteen. This bill — at the demand
of a committee of the manufacturers representing the facto
ries of the State — had to be so amended as to permit night
labor for all children of thirteen years and upward.
The South has no disposition to evade her own primary re
sponsibility for her industrial conditions. She must face, and
deal with, the problem of her own guilt. But, for the grow
ing number of New England stockholders — drawing divi
dends from Southem industrial properties — the press and
pulpit of New England might have, perhaps, a more frequent
word of eamest ^nd explicit suggestion. One Southern
State — Georgia — is still without any direct factory legisla
tion. In the States in which legislation has been secured
there is still the task of adequate enforcement.

APPENDIX C
JAMES BRYCE, ON THE RELATIONS OF THE
ADVANCED AND THE BACKWARD RACES
" Where contact already exists, a further question arises :
Can the evils incident to it be mitigated through leading the
Advanced and the Backward races to blend by intermarriage,
a method slow but sure, and one by which many nations have
been brought to unity and strength out of elements originally
hostile ? This is a question which Nature usually answers,
settling the matter by the attractions or repulsions she im
plants. Yet legislation may so far affect it as to make it
deserve to be pondered by those who are confronted by
such a problem.
" We have already noted that races which are near one
another in physical aspect and structure tend to mix, and
that the race produced by their mixture is equal or superior
to either of the progenitors.
" We have also noted that where races are dissimilar in
aspect, and especially in colour, one at least is generally
repelled by the other, so that there is little admixture by
intermarriage. This is more plainly the case as regards
whites (especially North European whites) and blacks than
it is as regards other races.
"We have been fiirther led to conclude, though more
doubtfully, for the data are imperfect, that the mixture of
races very dissimilar, and especially of European whites
with blacks, tends rather to lower than to improve the
330

APPENDIX C 331
resultant stock. That it should be lower than the higher
progenitor seems natural. But does it show a marked im
provement upon the inferior progenitor ? May not the
new mixed race stand, not halfway between the two parent
stocks, but nearer the lower than the higher ?
" Should this view be correct, it dissuades any attempt to
mix races so diverse as are the white Europeans and the
negroes. The wisest men among the coloured people of the
Southern States of America do not desire the intermarriage
of their race with the whites. They prefer to develop it as
a separate people, on its own hnes, though of course with
the help of the whites. The negro race in America is
not wanting in inteUigence. It is fond of learning. It has
already made a considerable advance. It will cultivate self-
respect better by standing on its own feet than by seeking
blood alliances with whites, who would usually be of the
meaner sort.
" In India, some sections of the native population are equal
in intellectual aptitude to their European rulers, and may
pride themselves upon even longer traditions of intellectual
culture. One cannot call this part of the population a
Backward race. Yet it does not seem desirable that they
and the whites should become fused by intermarriage ; nor
do they themselves appear to desire that result.
" The matter ought to be regarded from the side neither
of the white nor of the black, but of the future of mankind
at large. Now for the future of mankind nothing is more
vital than that some races should be maintained at the
highest level of efficiency, because the work they can do for
thought and art and letters, for scientific discovery, and for
raising the standard of conduct, wiU determine the general
progress of humanity. If therefore we were to suppose the
blood of the races which are now most advanced to be
diluted, so to speak, by that of those most backward, not
only would more be lost to the former than would be gained

332 THE PRESENT SOUTH
to the latter, but there would be a loss, possibly an irrepara
ble loss, to the world at large.
" It may therefore be doubted whether any further mixture
of Advanced and Backward races is to be desired. In some
regions, however, that mixture seems probable. Brazil may
see the Portuguese whites and the blacks blent into one
after some centuries. The Spaniards of Central and South
America (except perhaps Uruguay and Argentina, where
there are very few natives, and Chile) may be absorbed into
the Indian population, who will have then become a sort of
Spaniards. In the Far East there may be a great mixing
of Chinese and Malays, and in Central Africa a further mix
ture of the Sudanese Arabs with the negroes. But the
Teutonic races, as well as the French, seem likely to keep
their blood quite distinct from aU the coloured races, whether
in Asia, in Africa, or in America.
"It remains to consider what can be done to minimize
the evils and reduce the friction which are incident to the
contact of an Advanced and a Backward race, and which
may sometimes become more troublesome with the forward
movement of the latter.
" On the legal side of this question, one thing is clear. The
Backward race ought to receive all such private civil rights
as it can use for its own benefit. It ought to have as full a
protection in person and property, as complete an access to
all professions and occupations, as wide a power of entering
into contracts, as ready an access to the courts, as the more
advanced race enjoys. The only distinctions should be
those which may be needed for its own defence against
fraud, or to permit the continuance of the old customs (so
far as harmless) to which it clings. This is the policy which
the Romans followed in extending citizenship over their
dominions. It has been followed with admirable consistency
and success by the English in India, as well as by the French
in Algeria, and by the Americans when they liberated tbe

APPENDIX C 333
slaves during and after the Civil War. It has the two great
merits of creating a respect for the lower race among the
higher one, and of soothing the lower one by the feeling that
in all that touches the rights of private life they are treated
with strict justice.
" When we pass to the sphere of politics, more debatable
questions emerge. EquaUty of rights might seem to be
here also that which is fairest and most Ukely to make for
unity and peace. But the Backward race may be really
unfit to exercise political power, whether from ignorance,
or from an indifference that would dispose it to sell its votes,
or firom a propensity to sudden and unreasoning impulses.
The familiar illustration of the boy put to drive a locomotive
engine might in some communities be no extreme way of
describing the risks a democracy runs when the suffrage is
granted to a large mass of half-civilized men.
" Those who rule subject races on despotic methods, as
the Russians rule Transcaucasia and the English India, or
as the Hispano-American minorities virtually rule the native
Indians in most of the so-called republics of Central and
South America, do not realize all the difficulties that arise in
a democracy. The capital instance is afforded by the his
tory of the Southern States since the Civil War. . . .
..." The moral to be drawn from the case of the South
ern States seems to be that you must not, however excellent
your intentions and however admirable your sentiments,
legislate in the teeth of facts. The great bulk of the negroes
were not fit for the suffrage ; nor under the American Fed
eral system was it possible (without incurring other grave
evils) to give them effective protection in the exercise of
the suffrage. It would, therefore, have been better to post
pone the bestowal of this dangerous boon. True it is that
rocks and shoals were set thick round every course : true
that it is easier to perceive the evils of a course actually
taken than to realize other evils that might have followed

334 THE PRESENT SOUTH
some other course. Nevertheless, the general opinion of
dispassionate men has come to deem the action taken in
a.d. 1870 a mistake.
" The social relations of two races which cannot be fused
raise problems even more difficult, because incapable of
being regulated by law. Law may attempt to secure equal
admission to public conveyances or public entertainments.
But the look of scorn, the casual blow, the brutal oath
thrown at one who dare not resent it — these are injuries
which cannot be prevented where the sentiment of the
dominant race aUows them. Impunity corrapts the ordi
nary man ; and even the better sort suffer from the con
sciousness of their own superiority, not merely in rank, but
also in strength and voUtion. One must have lived among
a weaker race in order to realize the kind of irritation which
its defects produce in those who deal with it, and how temper
and self-control are strained in resisting temptations to harsh
or arbitrary action. It needs something more than the virtue
of a philosopher — it needs the tenderness of a saint to pre
serve the same courtesy and respect towards the members
of a backward race as are naturally extended to equals.
. . . "The tremendous problem presented by the Southem
States of America, and the likelihood that similar problems
will have to be solved elsewhere, as, for instance, in South
Africa and the Philippine Isles, bid us ask. What should be
the duty and the policy of a dominant race where it cannot
fuse with a backward race? Duty and poUcy are one, for
it is equally to the interest of both races that their relations
should be friendly.
" The answer seems to be that as regards poUtical rights,
race and blood should not be made the ground of discrimi
nation. Where the bulk of the coloured race are obviously
unfit for political power, a qualification based on property
and education might be established which should permit
the upper section of that race to enjoy the suffrage. Such

APPENDIX C 33S
a qualification would doubtless exclude some of the poorest
and most ignorant whites, and might on that ground be re
sisted. But it is better to face this difficulty than to wound
and alienate the whole of the coloured race by placing them
without the pale of civic functions and duties."
See the Romanes Lecture, igo2 : The Relations of the
Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind. By James
Bryce, D. C.L., Honorary Fellow of Oriel and Trinity Col
leges. Delivered in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, fune
7, ig02. Oxford; The Clarendon Press, igo2.

3 9002 01346 2495

vf') ,

-ft^

^i^

^Js^i^'^
*tl#"
^jy^^y...^-.