Chapter III (4)

The fifth day after parting from the brig we encountered a tropical storm. The sun rose red and angry, and owing to the great refraction appeared three times its natural size. It climbed lazily to the zenith, and at noon we were shadowless. The sky was as calm as a vault, and the surface of the water was like burnished steel. The heat became so stifling that even the Africans were gasping for breath, and we envied them their freedom from all impediments. The least exertion was irksome, and attended with extreme lassitude. During the afternoon thin cirri clouds, flying very high, spread out over the western heavens like a fan. As the day lengthened they thickened to resemble the scales of a fish, bringing to mind the old saying, "A mackerel sky and a mare's tail," etc. The signs were all unmistakable, and even the gulls recognized a change, and, screaming, sought shelter on our spars. Mr. Block was ordered to send down all the light yards and sails; to take in and furl everything, using storm gaskets, except on the fore and main storm staysails; to lash everything on deck; to batten down the hatches, except one square of the main; see all the shifting boards in place, so that our living cargo would not be thrown to leeward higgledy-piggledy, and to take four or five of the worst cases of the sick into the cabin and lay them on the floor.

The sun disappeared behind a mountainous mass of leaden-colored clouds which rose rapidly in the southern and western quarters. To the eastward, also, the signs were threatening. Night came on suddenly as it does in the tropics. Soon the darkness enveloped us, a palpable veil. A noise like the march of a mighty host was heard, which proved to be the approach of a tropical flood, heralded by drops as large as marbles. It churned the still waters into a phosphorescent foam which rendered the darkness only more oppressive. The rain came down as it can come only in the Bight of Benin. The avalanche cooled us, reducing the temperature ten or fifteen degrees, giving us new life, and relieving our fevered blood. I told Mr. Block to throw back the tarpaulin over the main hatch and let our dusky friends get some benefit of it. In half an hour the rain ceased, but it was as calm and ominous as ever.

I knew this was but the forerunner of something worse to follow, and we had not long to wait, for suddenly a blinding flash of lightning darted through the gloom from east to west, followed by one in the opposite direction. Without intermission, one blaze after another and thunder crashing until our eyes were blinded and our ears deafened, a thousand times ten thousand pieces of artillery thundered away. We seemed utterly helpless and insignificant. "How wonderful are Thy works," came to my mind. Still no wind; the brig lay helpless.

Suddenly, as a slap in the face, the wind struck us,--on the starboard quarter, fortunately. "Hard-a-starboard." "Hanl aft port fore staysail sheet," I called. But before she could gather way she was thrown down by the wind like a reed. She was "coming to" instead of "going off," and I tried to get the main storm staysail down but could not make myself heard. She was lying on her broadside. Luckily the water was smooth as yet. The main staysail shot out of the boltropes with a report like a twelve-pounder, and this eased her so that if the fore staysail would only hold she would go off. For a few minutes all we could do was to hold on, our lee rail in the water; but the plucky little brig rallied a little, her head went off inch by inch, and as she gathered way she righted, and catching the wind on our quarter we were off like a shot out of a gun. I knew we were too near the vortex of the disturbance for the wind to hang long in one quarter, so watched anxiously for a change. The sea rose rapidly while we were running to the northward on her course, and after a lull of a few minutes the wind opened from the eastward, butt end foremost, a change of eight points. Nothing was to be done but heave to, and this in a cross sea where pitch, weather roll, lee lurch, followed one another in such earnest that it was a wonder her masts were not switched out of her.

I passed an anxious night, most concerned about the poor creatures under hatches, whose sufferings must have been terrible. To prevent their suffocating I kept two men at the main hatch with orders to lift one corner of the tarpaulin whenever possible, even if some water did go below. Toward morning the wind and the sea went down rapidly, and as the sun rose it chased the clouds off, giving us the promise of a fine day. When the cook brought me a cup of coffee, I do not know that I ever enjoyed anything more. Hatches off, I jumped down into the hold to look after my prisoners. Battered and bruised they lay around in heaps. Only the shifting boards had kept them from being beaten into an indistinguishable mass. As fast as possible they were sent on deck, and the sun's rays, with a few buckets of water that were thrown over them, accomplished wonders in bringing them to life and starting them to care for their sore limbs and bruises.

One boy, when I motioned for him to go on deck, pointed quietly to his leg, and upon examination I found a fracture just above the knee. Swelling had already commenced. I had seen limbs set, and had some rough idea how it should be done. So while getting some splints of keg staves and bandages ready, I kept a stream of water pouring on the fracture, and then ordered two men to pull the limb in place, and it took all their strength. That done I put on the splints and wrapped the bandages tightly. Three weeks later I landed him in a fair way of recovery.

Gradually I allowed a larger number of the blacks to remain on deck, a privilege which they greatly enjoyed. To lie basking in the sun like saurians, half sleeping, half waking, appeared to satisfy all their wishes. They were perfectly docile and obedient, and not by word, gesture, or look did they express any dissatisfaction with orders given them. But again for any little acts of kindness they expressed no kind of appreciation or gratitude. Physically they were men and women, but otherwise as far removed from the Anglo-Saxon as the oyster from the baboon, or the mole from the horse.

On the fourteenth day from parting with the brig we made the palms on Cape Mesurado, the entrance to Monrovia Harbor. A light sea breath wafted us to the anchorage, a mile from the town, and when the anchor dropped from the bows and the chain ran through the hawse pipe, it was sweet music to my ears; for the strain had been great, and I felt years older than when I parted from my messmates. A great responsibility seemed lifted from my shoulders, and I enjoyed a long and refreshing sleep for the first time in a fortnight. At nine the next morning I went on shore and reported to the authorities, the officials of Liberia, of which Monrovia is the capital.

This part of the African coast had been selected by the United States government as the home of emancipated slaves; for prior to the abolition excitement which culminated in the war, numbers of slaves in the South had been manumitted by their masters with the understanding that they should be deported to Liberia, and the Colonization Society, an influential body, comprising some of the leading men, like Madison, Webster, and Clay, had assisted in the same work. The passages of the negroes were paid; each family was given a tract of land and sufficient means to build a house. Several thousand had been sent out, most of whom had settled at Monrovia, and a few at other places on the coast. They had made no impression on the natives. On the contrary, many of them had intermarried with the natives, and the off-spring of these unions had lost the use of the English tongue, and had even gone back to the life and customs of their ancestors, sans clothing, sans habitations, and worship of a fetich.

Of course there were some notable exceptions, especially President Roberts, who proved himself a safe and prudent ruler, taking into consideration his surroundings and the material with which he had to work. The form of government was modeled after that of the United States, but it was top-heavy. Honorables, colonels, and judges were thicker than in Georgia. Only privates were scarce; for nothing delights a negro more than a little show or a gaudy uniform. On landing I was met by a dark mulatto, dressed in a straw hat, blue tail coat, silver epaulettes, linen trousers, with bare feet, and a heavy cavalry sabre hanging by his side. With him were three or four others in the same rig, except the epaulettes. He introduced himself as Colonel Harrison, chief of police. I asked to be directed to the custom house.

The collector proved to be an old negro from Raleigh, N. C., gray as a badger, spectacled, with manners of Lord Grandison and language of Mrs. Malaprop. I reported my arrival, and asked permission to land my cargo as soon as possible. He replied that in a matter of so much importance, devolving questions of momentous interest, it would be obligatory on him to consult the Secretary of the Treasury. I said I trusted he would so facilitate affairs that I might at an early hour disembarrass myself of my involuntary prisoners. I returned on board, and the day passed without any answer. The next morning I determined to go at once to headquarters and find out the cause of the delay by calling on the President.

He received me without any formality. I made my case as strong as possible, and pressed for an immediate answer. In reply he assured me he would consult with other members of his cabinet, and give me a final answer the next morning. That evening I dined with him en famille, and recognized some old Virginia dishes on the table. The next morning I waited impatiently for his decision, having made up my mind however, if it was unfavorable, to land my poor captives, be the consequences what they might.

About eleven o'clock a boat came off with an officer in full uniform, who introduced himself as Colonel Royal, bearer of dispatches from his Excellency the President. He handed me a letter couched in diplomatic language, as long as some of his brother presidents' messages on this side of the Atlantic. I had hardly patience to read it. The gist of it was, I might not land the captives at Monrovia, but might land them at Grand Bassa, about a hundred and fifty miles to the eastward; that Colonel Royal would accompany me with orders to the governor there to receive them. This was something I had not anticipated, and outside of my instructions. However, I thought it best to comply with the wishes of the government of our only colony.

Getting under way we stood to the southward and eastward, taking advantage of the light land and sea breeze, keeping the coast close aboard. The colonel had come on board without any impediments, and I wondered if he intended to make the voyage in his cocked hat, epaulettes, sword, etc. But soon after we had started he disappeared and emerged from the cabin bareheaded, barefooted, and without clothing except a blue dungaree shirt and trousers. Like a provident negro, having stowed away all his trappings, he appeared as a roustabout on a Western steamer. But he had not laid aside with his toggery any of his important and consequential airs. He ran foul of Mr. Block, who called him Mr. Cuffy, and ordered him to give him a pull with the main sheet. The colonel complained to me that he was not addressed by his name or title, and that he was not treated as a representative of his government should be. I reprimanded Mr. Block, and told him to give the visitor all his title. "All right, sir, but the colonel must keep off the weather side of the deck," growled the officer. The cook, the crew, and even the Kroomen, all took their cue from the first officer, and the colonel's lot was made most unhappy.

On the third day we reached Grand Bassa, and anchored off the beach about two miles, along which the surf was breaking so high that any attempt to land would be hazardous. Toward evening it moderated, and a canoe with three naked natives came off. One I found could speak a little English. I told him to say to the governor that I would come on shore in the morning and see him, and land my cargo at the same time.

The next morning at sunrise we were boarded by a party of natives headed by one wearing a black hat half covered with a tarnished silver band, an old navy frock coat, much too small, between the buttons of which his well-oiled skin showed clearly. A pair of blue flannel trousers completed his outfit. An interpreter introduced him as King George of Grand Bassa. With him were about a dozen followers, each one wearing a different sort of garment--and seldom more than a single one--representing old uniforms of many countries. Two coats I noticed were buttoned up the back.

The king began by saying that he was and always had been a friend of the Americans; that he was a big man, had plenty of men and five wives, etc. While he was speaking, a white-bearded old colored gentleman came over the gangway, dressed in a linen roundabout and trousers, with a wide-brimmed straw hat. At the same time Colonel Royal came up from the cabin in grande tenue and introduced us to the Hon. Mr. Marshall, governor of Bassa, formerly of Kentucky.

In a few minutes he explained the situation. With a few settlers he was located at this place, on the frontier of the colony, and they were there on sufferance only from the natives. I told him Colonel Royal would explain my mission to him and the king. The colonel, bowing low to the king, the governor, and myself, and bringing his sword down with a thud on the deck, drew from between the bursting buttons of his coat the formidable document I had seen at Monrovia, and with most impressive voice and gesture commenced to read it. The king listened for a few minutes, and then interrupted him. I asked the interpreter what he said. He replied, "King say he fool nigger; if he comes on shore he give him to Voodoo women." Then turning his back he walked forward. The colonel dropped his paper, and drawing his sword, in the most dramatic manner claimed protection in the name of the government, declaring that he had been insulted. I told him to keep cool, since he was certainly safe as long as he was on board my ship. He grumbled and muttered terrible things, but subsided gradually like the departing thunder of a summer storm.

I arranged the landing of the passengers with Governor Marshall, whom I found a sensible, clear-headed old man, ready to cooperate in every way. But he suggested that I had better consult the king before doing anything. I did so, and he at once said they could not land. I told the interpreter to say they would be landed at once and put under the protection of the governor; that if the king or his people hurt them or ran them off I would report it to our commodore, who would certainly punish him severely. Finding me determined, he began to temporize, and asked that the landing be put off until the next day, that he might consult with his head people, for if I sent them on shore before he had done so they would kill them. "If that is the case," I replied, "I will hold you on board as a hostage for their good behavior." This threat surprised him, and he changed his tactics. After a little powwow with some of his followers, he said that if I would give him fifty muskets, twenty pounds of powder, the colonel's sword, and some red cloth for his wives, I might land them. I replied that I had not a musket to spare nor an ounce of powder, that the colonel was a high officer of his government, and that he of course would not give up his uniform. Fortunately the colonel had retired to the cabin and did not hear this modest demand, or he would have been as much outraged as if his sable Majesty had asked for him to be served "roti a l'Ashantee." However, I told the king I would send his wives some cloth and buttons. He grunted his approval but returned again to the charge, and asked that he might choose a few of the captives for his own use, before landing. "Certainly not," I answered, "neither on board nor on shore," and added that he would be held accountable for their good treatment as free men and women. He left thoroughly disappointed and bent on mischief.

In the meantime Mr. Block had made all preparations for landing, and had the boats lowered and ranged alongside, with sufficient rice to last the blacks a week or ten days. The men and boys were sent first. When they were called up from the hold and ordered into the boats not one of them moved. They evidently divined what had been going on and dreaded leaving the vessel, though our Kroomen tried to explain that they would be safe and free on shore. The explanation was without effect, however, and they refused to move. The could only understand that they were changing masters, and they preferred the present ones. Sending three or four men down, I told them to pass up the negroes one at a time. Only a passive resistance was offered, such as one often sees exhibited by cattle being loaded on the cars or on a steamer, and were silent, not uttering a word of complaint. By noon the men were all on shore, and then we began with the girls. They were more demonstrative than the men, and by their looks and gestures begged not to be taken out of the vessel. I was much moved, for it was a painful duty, and I had become interested in these beings, so utterly helpless, so childlike in their dependence on those around them. And I could not help thinking what their fate would be, thrown upon the shore hundreds of miles from their homes, and among a people strange to them in language.

Even Mr. Block was deeply stirred. "He had not shipped," he said, "for such work." I went to my cabin and left him in charge. In the course of an hour he reported, "All ashore, sir." I told him to have the gig manned and I would go on shore with Colonel Royal, and get a receipt from Governor Marshall for my late cargo. The colonel declined to accompany me, alleging sickness and requesting me to get the necessary papers signed. No doubt he felt safer on board than within reach of King George.

We landed through the surf on a sandy beach, on which the waves of the Atlantic were fretting. Near by was a thick grove of cocoanut trees, under which in groups of four and five were those who had just been landed. They were seated on the ground, their heads resting on their knees, in a position of utter abnegation, surrounded by three or four hundred chattering savages of all ages, headed by the king. With the exception of him and a few of his head men, the clothing of the company would not have covered a rag baby. They were no doubt discussing the appearance of the strangers and making their selections.

I found the governor's house and the houses of the few settlers some distance back on a slight elevation. The governor was comfortably, though plainly situated, with a large family around him. He gave me a receipt for the number of blacks landed, but said it would be impossible for him to prevent the natives from taking and enslaving them. I agreed with him, and said he must repeat to the king what I had told him. Then bidding him good-by I returned on board, sad and weary as one often feels after being relieved of a great burden. At the same time I wondered whether the fate of these people would have been any worse if the captain of the slaver had succeeded in landing them in the Brazils or the West Indies. Sierra Leone being a crown colony, the English could land all their captives there and provide for them until they were able to work for themselves. In this respect they had a great advantage over us.

Getting under way, I proceeded to Monrovia to land Colonel Royal, and then to Porto Praya, our squadron's headquarters. There I found Commodore Gregory in the flagship corvette Portsmouth, and reported to him. Soon after the Porpoise came in, and I joined my old craft, giving up my command of the captured slaver rather reluctantly.

MR. CHARLES W. CHESNUTT'S STORIES by W. D. Howells

The critical reader of the story called The Wife of his Youth, which appeared in these pages two years ago, must have noticed uncommon traits in what was altogether a remarkable piece of work. The first was the novelty of the material; for the writer dealt not only with people who were not white, but with people who were not black enough to contrast grotesquely with white people,--who in fact were of that near approach to the ordinary American in race and color which leaves, at the last degree, every one but the connoisseur in doubt whether they are Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-African. Quite as striking as this novelty of the material was the author's thorough mastery of it, and his unerring knowledge of the life he had chosen in its peculiar racial characteristics. But above all, the story was notable for the passionless handling of a phase of our common life which is tense with potential tragedy; for the attitude, almost ironical, in which the artist observes the play of contesting emotions in the drama under his eyes; and for his apparently reluctant, apparently helpless consent to let the spectator know his real feeling in the matter. Any one accustomed to study methods in fiction, to distinguish between good and bad art, to feel the joy which the delicate skill possible only from a love of truth can give, must have known a high pleasure in the quiet self-restraint of the performance; and such a reader would probably have decided that the social situation in the piece was studied wholly from the outside, by an observer with special opportunities for knowing it, who was, as it were, surprised into final sympathy.

Now, however, it is known that the author of this story is of negro blood,--diluted, indeed, in such measure that if he did not admit this descent few would imagine it, but still quite of that middle world which lies next, though wholly outside, our own. Since his first story appeared he has contributed several others to these pages, and he now makes a showing palpable to criticism in a volume called The Wife of his Youth, and Other Stories of the Color Line; a volume of Southern sketches called The Conjure Woman; and a short life of Frederick Douglass, in the Beacon Series of biographies. The last is a simple, solid, straight piece of work, not remarkable above many other biographical studies by people entirely white, and yet important as the work of a man not entirely white treating of a great man of his inalienable race. But the volumes of fiction ARE remarkable above many, above most short stories by people entirely white, and would be worthy of unusual notice if they were not the work of a man not entirely white.

It is not from their racial interest that we could first wish to speak of them, though that must have a very great and very just claim upon the critic. It is much more simply and directly, as works of art, that they make their appeal, and we must allow the force of this quite independently of the other interest. Yet it cannot always be allowed. There are times in each of the stories of the first volume when the simplicity lapses, and the effect is as of a weak and uninstructed touch. There are other times when the attitude, severely impartial and studiously aloof, accuses itself of a little pompousness. There are still other times when the literature is a little too ornate for beauty, and the diction is journalistic, reporteristic. But it is right to add that these are the exceptional times, and that for far the greatest part Mr. Chesnutt seems to know quite as well what he wants to do in a given case as Maupassant, or Tourguenief, or Mr. James, or Miss Jewett, or Miss Wilkins, in other given cases, and has done it with an art of kindred quiet and force. He belongs, in other words, to the good school, the only school, all aberrations from nature being so much truancy and anarchy. He sees his people very clearly, very justly, and he shows them as he sees them, leaving the reader to divine the depth of his feeling for them. He touches all the stops, and with equal delicacy in stories of real tragedy and comedy and pathos, so that it would be hard to say which is the finest in such admirably rendered effects as The Web of Circumstance, The Bouquet, and Uncle Wellington's Wives. In some others the comedy degenerates into satire, with a look in the reader's direction which the author's friend must deplore.

As these stories are of our own time and country, and as there is not a swashbuckler of the seventeenth century, or a sentimentalist of this, or a princess of an imaginary kingdom, in any of them, they will possibly not reach half a million readers in six months, but in twelve months possibly more readers will remember them than if they had reached the half million. They are new and fresh and strong, as life always is, and fable never is; and the stories of The Conjure Woman have a wild, indigenous poetry, the creation of sincere and original imagination, which is imparted with a tender humorousness and a very artistic reticence. As far as his race is concerned, or his sixteenth part of a race, it does not greatly matter whether Mr. Chesnutt invented their motives, or found them, as he feigns, among his distant cousins of the Southern cabins. In either case, the wonder of their beauty is the same; and whatever is primitive and sylvan or campestral in the reader's heart is touched by the spells thrown on the simple black lives in these enchanting tales. Character, the most precious thing in fiction, is as faithfully portrayed against the poetic background as in the setting of the Stories of the Color Line.

Yet these stories, after all, are Mr. Chesnutt's most important work, whether we consider them merely as realistic fiction, apart from their author, or as studies of that middle world of which he is naturally and voluntarily a citizen. We had known the nethermost world of the grotesque and comical negro and the terrible and tragic negro through the white observer on the outside, and black character in its lyrical moods we had known from such an inside witness as Mr. Paul Dunbar; but it had remained for Mr. Chesnutt to acquaint us with those regions where the paler shades dwell as hopelessly, with relation to ourselves, as the blackest negro. He has not shown the dwellers there as very different from ourselves. They have within their own circles the same social ambitions and prejudices; they intrigue and truckle and crawl, and are snobs, like ourselves, both of the snobs that snub and the snobs that are snubbed. We may choose to think them droll in their parody of pure white society, but perhaps it would be wiser to recognize that they are like us because they are of our blood by more than a half, or three quarters, or nine tenths. It is not, in such cases, their negro blood that characterizes them; but it is their negro blood that excludes them, and that will imaginably fortify them and exalt them. Bound in that sad solidarity from which there is no hope of entrance into polite white society for them, they may create a civilization of their own, which need not lack the highest quality. They need not be ashamed of the race from which they have sprung, and whose exile they share; for in many of the arts it has already shown, during a single generation of freedom, gifts which slavery apparently only obscured. With Mr. Booker Washington the first American orator of our time, fresh upon the time of Frederick Douglass; with Mr. Dunbar among the truest of our poets; with Mr. Tanner, a black American, among the only three Americans from whom the French government ever bought a picture, Mr. Chesnutt may well be willing to own his color.

But that is his personal affair. Our own more universal interest in him arises from the more than promise he has given in a department of literature where Americans hold the foremost place. In this there is, happily, no color line; and if he has it in him to go forward on the way which he has traced for himself, to be true to life as he has known it, to deny himself the glories of the cheap success which awaits the charlatan in fiction, one of the places at the top is open to him. He has sounded a fresh note, boldly, not blatantly, and he has won the ear of the more intelligent public.

PATHS OF HOPE FOR THE NEGRO by Jerome Dowd

PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS OF A SOUTHERNER

It is too late in the day to discuss whether it would have been better had the Negro never been brought into the Southern States. If his presence here has been beneficial, or is ever to prove so, the price of the benefit has already been dearly paid for. He was the occasion of the deadliest and most expensive war in modern times. In the next place, his presence has corrupted politics and has limited statesmanship to a mere question of race supremacy. Great problems concerning the political, industrial, and moral life of the people have been subordinated or overshadowed, so that, while important strides have been made elsewhere in the investigation of social conditions and in the administration of State and municipal affairs, in civil-service reform, in the management of penal and charitable institutions, and in the field of education, the South has lagged behind.

On the charts of illiteracy and crime the South is represented by an immense black spot. Such are a few items of the account. It will require millions more of dollars and generations more of earnest work before the total cost is met of bringing the black man to this side of the globe. But the debt has been incurred and must be liquidated.

The welfare of the Negro is bound up with that of the white man in many important particulars:

First, the low standard of living among the blacks keeps down the wages of all classes of whites. So long as the Negroes are content to live in miserable huts, wear rags, and subsist upon hog fat and cow-pease, so long must the wages of white people in the same kind of work be pressed toward the same level. The higher we raise the standard of living among the Negroes, the higher will be the wages of the white people in the same occupations. The low standard of the Negroes is the result of low productive power. The less intelligent and skilled the Negroes are, the less they can produce, whether working for themselves or others, and hence, the less will be the total wealth of the country.

But it may be asked, When the standard of living of the Negroes is raised, will not wages go up, and will not that be a drawback? Certainly wages will go up, because the income of all classes will be increased. High wages generally indicate high productive power and general wealth, while low wages indicate the opposite. Only benefits can arise from better wages.

In the next place, the Negro's propensity to crime tends to excite the criminal tendencies of the white man. The South enjoys the distinction of having the highest percentage of crime in all the civilized world, and the reason is that the crimes of the one race provoke counter-crimes in the other.

The physical well-being of the one race has such a conspicuous influence upon that of the other that the subject requires no elaboration. The uncleanliness of person and habits of the Negroes in their homes and in the homes of their employers tends to propagate diseases, and thus impairs the health and increases the death-rate of the whole population.

Again, the lack of refinement in intellect, manners, and dress among the Negroes is an obstacle to the cultivated life of the whites. Ignorance and the absence of taste and self-respect in servants result in badly kept homes and yards, destruction of furniture and ware, ill-prepared food, poor table service, and a general lowering of the standard of living. Furthermore, the corrupt, coarse, and vulgar language of the Negroes is largely responsible for the jumbled and distorted English spoken by many of the Southern whites.

Seeing that the degradation of the Negro is an impediment to the progress and civilization of the white man, how may we effect an improvement in his condition?

First, municipalities should give more attention to the streets and alleys that traverse Negro settlements. In almost every town in the South there are settlements, known by such names as "New Africa," "Haiti," "Log Town," "Smoky Hollow," or "Snow Hill," exclusively inhabited by Negroes. These settlements are often outside the corporate limits. The houses are built along narrow, crooked, and dirty lanes, and the community is without sanitary regulations or oversight. These quarters should be brought under municipal control, the lanes widened into streets and cleaned, and provision made to guard against the opening of similar ones in the future.

In the next place, property-owners should build better houses for the Negroes to live in. The weakness in the civilization of the Negroes is most pronounced in their family life. But improvement in this respect is not possible without an improvement in the character and the comforts of the houses they live in. Bad houses breed bad people and bad neighborhoods. There is no more distinctive form of crime than the building and renting of houses unfit for human habitation.

Scarcely second in importance to improvements in house architecture is the need among Negroes of more time to spend with their families. Employers of Negro labor should be less exacting in the number of hours required for a day's work. Many domestic servants now work from six in the morning until nine and ten o'clock at night. The Southern habit of keeping open shopping-places until late at night encourages late suppers, retains cooks, butlers, and nurses until bedtime, and robs them of all home life. If the merchants would close their shops at six o'clock, as is the custom in the North, the welfare of both races would be greatly promoted.

Again, a revolution is needed in the character of the Negro's religion. At present it is too largely an affair of the emotions. He needs to be taught that the religious life is something to grow into by the perfection of personality, and not to be jumped into or sweated into at camp-meetings. The theological seminaries and the graduate preachers should assume the task of grafting upon the religion of the Negro that much sanity at least.

A reform is as much needed in the methods and aims of Negro education. Up to the present Negro education has shared with that of the white man the fault of being top-heavy. Colleges and universities have developed out of proportion to, and at the expense of, common schools. Then, the kind of education afforded the Negro has not been fitted to his capacities and needs. He has been made to pursue courses of study parallel to those prescribed for the whites, as though the individuals of both races had to fill the same positions in life. Much of the Negro's education has had nothing to do with his real life-work. It has only made him discontented and disinclined to unfold his arms. The survival of the Negroes in the race for existence depends upon their retaining possession of the few bread-winning occupations now open to them. But instead of better qualifying themselves for these occupations they have been poring over dead languages and working problems in mathematics. In the meantime the Chinaman and the steam-laundry have abolished the Negro's wash-tub, trained white "tonsorial artists" have taken away his barber's chair, and skilled painters and plasterers and mechanics have taken away his paint-brushes and tool-chests. Every year the number of occupations open to him becomes fewer because of his lack of progress in them. Unless a radical change takes place in the scope of his education, so that he may learn better how to do his work, a tide of white immigration will set in and force him out of his last stronghold, domestic service, and limit his sphere to the farm.

All primary schools for the Negroes should be equipped for industrial training in such work as sewing, cooking, laundering, carpentry, and house-cleaning, and, in rural districts, in elementary agriculture.

Secondary schools should add to the literary courses a more advanced course in industrial training, so as to approach as nearly as possible the objects and methods of the Tuskegee and Hampton Industrial and Normal Schools. Too much cannot be said in behalf of the revolution in the life of the Negro which the work of these schools promises and, in part, has already wrought. The writer is fully aware that education has a value aside from and above its bread-winning results, and he would not dissuade the Negro from seeking the highest culture that he may be capable of; but it is folly for him to wing his way through the higher realms of the intellect without some acquaintance with the requirements and duties of life.

Changes are needed in the methods of Negro education as well as in its scope. Educators should take into account, more than they have yet done, the differences in the mental characteristics of the two races. It is a well-established fact that, while the lower races possess marked capacity to deal with simple, concrete ideas, they lack power of generalization, and soon fatigue in the realm of the abstract. It is also well known that the inferior races, being deficient in generalization, which is a subjective process, are absorbed almost entirely in the things that are objective. They have strong and alert eyesight, and are susceptible to impressions through the medium of the eye to an extent that is impossible to any of the white races. This fact is evidenced in the great number of pictures found in the homes of the Negroes. In default of anything better, they will paper their walls with advertisements of the theater and the circus, and even with pictures from vicious newspapers. They delight in street pageantry, fancy costumes, theatrical performances, and similar spectacles. Factories employing Negroes generally find it necessary to suspend operations on "circus day." They love stories of adventure and any fiction that gives play to their imaginations. All their tastes lie in the realm of the objective and the concrete.

Hence, in the school-room stress should be laid on those studies that appeal to the eye and the imagination. Lessons should be given in sketching, painting, drawing, and casting. Reprints of the popular works of art should be placed before the Negroes, that their love for art may be gratified and their taste cultivated at the same time. Fancy needlework, dress-making, and home decorations should also have an important place. These studies, while not contributing directly to bread-winning, have a refining and softening influence upon character, and inspire efforts to make the home more attractive. The more interest we can make the Negro take in his personal appearance and in the comforts of his home, the more we shall strengthen and promote his family life and raise the level of his civilization.

The literary education of the Negro should consist of carefully selected poems and novels that appeal to his imagination and produce clear images upon his mind, excluding such literature as is in the nature of psychological or moral research. Recitations and dialogues should be more generally and more frequently required. In history emphasis should be given to what is picturesque, dramatic, and biographical.

Coming to the political phase of the Negro problem, there is a general agreement among white men that the Southern States cannot keep pace with the progress of the world as long as they are menaced by Negro domination, and that, therefore, it is necessary to eliminate the Negro vote from politics. When the Negroes become intelligent factors in society, when they become thrifty and accumulate wealth, they will find the way to larger exercise of citizenship. They can never sit upon juries to pass upon life and property until they are property-owners themselves, and they can never hold the reins of government by reason of mere superiority of numbers. Before they can take on larger political responsibilities they must demonstrate their ability to meet them.

The Negroes will never be allowed to control State governments so long as they vote at every election upon the basis of color, without regard whatever to political issues or private convictions. If the Negroes would divide their votes according to their individual opinions, as the lamented Charles Price, one of their best leaders, advised, there would be no danger of Negro domination and no objection to their holding offices which they might be competent to fill. But as there is no present prospect of their voting upon any other basis than that of color, the white people are forced to accept the situation and protect themselves accordingly. Years of bitter and costly experience have demonstrated over and over again that Negro rule is not only incompetent and corrupt, but a menace to civilization. Some people imagine that there is something anomalous, peculiar, or local in the race prejudice that binds all Negroes together; but this clan spirit is a characteristic of all savage and semi-civilized peoples.

It should be well understood by this time that no foreign race inhabiting this country and acting together politically can dominate the native whites. To permit an inferior race, holding less than one tenth of the property of the community, to take the reins of government in its hands, by reason of mere numerical strength, would be to renounce civilization. Our national government, in making laws for Hawaii, has carefully provided for white supremacy by an educational qualification for suffrage that excludes the semi-civilized natives. No sane man, let us hope, would think of placing Manila under the control of a government of the Philippine Islands based upon universal suffrage. Yet the problem in the South and the problem in the Philippines and in Hawaii differ only in degree.

The only proper safeguard against Negro rule in States where the blacks outnumber or approximate in number the whites lies in constitutional provisions establishing an educational test for suffrage applicable to black and white alike. If the suffrage is not thus limited it is necessary for the whites to resort to technicalities and ballot laws, to bribery or intimidation. To set up an educational test with a "grandfather clause," making the test apply for a certain time to the blacks only, seems to an outsider unnecessary, arbitrary, and unjust. The reason for such a clause arises from the belief that no constitutional amendment could ever carry if it immediately disfranchised the illiterate whites, as many property-holding whites belong to that class. But the writer does not believe in the principle nor in the necessity for a "grandfather clause." If constitutional amendments were to be submitted in North Carolina and Virginia applying the educational test to both races alike after 1908, the question would be lifted above the level of party gain, and would receive the support of white men of all parties and the approbation of the moral sentiment of the American people. A white man who would disfranchise a Negro because of his color or for mere party advantage is himself unworthy of the suffrage. With the suffrage question adjusted upon an educational basis the Negroes would have the power to work out their political emancipation, the white people having made education necessary and provided the means for attaining it.

When the question of Negro domination is settled the path of progress of both races will be very much cleared. Race conflicts will then be less frequent and race feeling less bitter. With more friendly relations growing up, and with more concentration of energy on the part of the Negroes in industrial lines, the opportunities for them will be widened and the task of finding industrial adjustment in the struggle for life made easier. The wisest and best leaders among the Negroes, such as Booker Washington and the late Charles Price, have tried to turn the attention of the Negroes from politics to the more profitable pursuits of industry, and if the professional politician would cease inspiring the Negroes to seek salvation in political domination over the whites, the race issue would soon cease to exist.

The field is broad enough in the South for both races to attain all that is possible to them. In spite of the periodic political conflicts and occasional local riots and acts of individual violence, the relations between the races, in respect to nine tenths of the population, are very friendly. The general condition has been too often judged by the acts of a small minority. The Southern people understand the Negroes, and feel a real fondness for those that are thrifty and well behaved. When fairly treated the Negro has a strong affection for his employer. He seldom forgets a kindness, and is quick to forget a wrong. If he does not stay long at one place, it is not that he dislikes his employer so much as that he has a restless temperament and craves change. His disposition is full of mirth and sunshine, and not a little of the fine flavor of Southern wit and humor is due to his influence. His nature is plastic, and while he is easily molded into a monster, he is also capable of a high degree of culture. Many Negroes are thoroughly honest, notwithstanding their bad environment and hereditary disposition to steal. Negro servants are trusted with the keys to households to an extent that, probably, is not the case among domestics elsewhere in the civilized world.

It is strange that two races working side by side should possess so many opposite traits of character. The white man has strong will and convictions and is set in his ways. He lives an indoor, monotonous life, restrains himself like a Puritan, and is inclined to melancholy. The prevalence of Populism throughout the South is nothing but the outcome of this morbid tendency. Farmers and merchants are entirely absorbed in their business, and the women, especially the married women, contrast with the women of France, Germany, and even England, in their indoor life and disinclination to mingle with the world outside. Public parks and public concerts, such as are found in Europe, which call out husband, wife, and children for a few hours of rest and communion with their friends, are almost unknown in the South. The few entertainments that receive sanction generally exclude all but the well-to-do by the cost of admission. The life of the poor in town and country is bleak and bare to the last degree.

Contrasting with this tendency is the free-and-easy life of the blacks. The burdens of the present and the future weigh lightly upon their shoulders. They love all the worldly amusements; in their homes they are free entertainers, and in their fondness for conversation and love of street life they are equal to the French or Italians.

May we not hope that the conflict of these two opposite races is working out some advantages to both, and that the final result will justify all that the conflict has cost?

SIGNS OF PROGRESS AMONG THE NEGROES by Booker T. Washington

In addition to the problem of educating eight million negroes in our Southern States and ingrafting them into American citizenship, we now have the additional responsibility, either directly or indirectly, of educating and elevating about eight hundred thousand others of African descent in Cuba and Porto Rico, to say nothing of the white people of these islands, many of whom are in a condition about as deplorable as that of the negroes. We have, however, one advantage in approaching the question of the education of our new neighbors.

The experience that we have passed through in the Southern States during the last thirty years in the education of my race, whose history and needs are not very different from the history and needs of the Cubans and Porto Ricans, will prove most valuable in elevating the blacks of the West Indian Islands. To tell what has already been accomplished in the South under most difficult circumstances is to tell what may be done in Cuba and Porto Rico.

To this end let me tell a story.

In what is known as the black belt of the South--that is, where the negroes outnumber the whites--there lived before the Civil War a white man who owned some two hundred slaves, and was prosperous. At the close of the war he found his fortune gone, except that which was represented in land, of which he owned several thousand acres. Of the two hundred slaves a large proportion decided, after their freedom, to continue on the plantation of their former owner.

Some years after the war a young black boy, who seemed to have "rained down," was discovered on the plantation by Mr. S-----, the owner. In daily rides through the plantation Mr. S----- saw this boy sitting by the roadside, and his condition awakened his pity, for, from want of care, he was covered from head to foot with sores, and Mr. S----- soon grew into the habit of tossing him a nickel or a dime as he rode by. In some way this boy heard of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama, and of the advantages which it offered poor but deserving colored men and women to secure an education through their own labor while taking the course of study. This boy, whose name was William, made known to the plantation hands his wish to go to the Tuskegee school. By each one "chipping in," and through the efforts of the boy himself, a few decent pieces of clothing were secured, and a little money, but not enough to pay his railroad fare, so the boy resolved to walk to Tuskegee, a distance of about one hundred and fifty miles. Strange to say, he made the long distance with an expenditure of only twenty cents in cash. He frankly told every one with whom he came in contact where he was going and what he was seeking. Both white and colored people along the route gave him food and a place to sleep free of cost, and even the usually exacting ferrymen were so impressed with the young negro's desire for an education that, except in one case, he was given free ferriage across the creeks and rivers.

One can easily imagine his appearance when he first arrived at Tuskegee, with his blistered feet and small white bundle, which contained all the clothing he possessed.

On being shown into my office his first words were: "I's come. S'pose you been lookin' for me, but I didn't come on de railroad." Looking up the records, it was found that this young man had been given permission to come several months ago, but the correspondence had long since been forgotten.