Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

Pale faces, working in terror, peered from the café of the Boule d’Or. Tuck-of-Drum burst open the door. On the little tables glasses of bock, tiny glasses of spirits, stood half emptied. The men had all risen; the tawdry, gilded mirrors, cracked and dusty, distorted their faces, showing them more pallid, more unhealthy even than in life. Three or four old men—not so old as the veterans by many years—three or four washed-out-looking lads, rejected even by the army that had dragged men in from the very highways and hedges to resist the invaders—turned startled looks on the newcomers.

“The enemy is coming!” said Tuck-of-Drum. “Comrades, let us march against them, like the men of Dreux, of Châteauneuf! Look—the sun of Austerlitz is going down! Today, all France must help——”

They exchanged glances; they huddled together like sheep.

“What is the use?” one muttered.

“Aye, what is the use?”

A youth sniggered vacuously. “You are sixty years too late, Monsieur Tuck-of-Drum. If the great Emperor could come back now, if France had a man—” The speaker shrugged his shoulders, spread out his hands with a gesture of helplessness and looked round for assent.

“If—if—if!” cried Dominique Laplume. “_We_ will lead you—we, of the Grand Army! Today all France must rise. All must help. It is the great effort. Today France conquers—or is conquered. ‘If’ never won a battle. Come, I say! Jules Brienne, your grandfather carried an eagle at Marengo. Monsieur Grenier, your uncle fell by our side, fighting bravely, on the field of Austerlitz.”

He argued, ordered, entreated; in vain.

“Bah! Poltroons!” he muttered, and turned on his heel.

Again the drum sounded.

“Yes, go out and play with your toy, Papa Tuck-of-Drum,” cried young Brienne after him. Laplume did not hear. They marched next to the Café de l’Ecu. The village postmaster, shaking still and casting nervous looks round him like a frightened horse, was telling his story to a similar assembly.

“Pah!” muttered old Dufour, twirling his thin mustache, “these villages are the rubbish heaps of France. The men are all away.” Again the appeal was made. A fat man, with fishy eyes and yellow, pendulous cheeks, shrugged his shoulders and raised protesting hands. “What can we do? What can we do?”

“They would finish us all with a volley. We should be killed,” whined another man.

“Killed? And what then?” Laplume snorted with fierce contempt.

“Let us be killed then!” broke in Dufour, crashing his stick down on the sanded floor. “It would be worth it. A thousand times worth it! Let each village in France raise a wall of dead against the invaders!”

Bergeret nodded his foolish head again and again with emphasis. The fat man began to talk fast, volubly, excitedly, pouring torrents of abuse on the Emperor, generals, government, the enemy, waving his fat hands, shrugging his fat shoulders. The curtained door of the café opened. He stopped suddenly and lamely. A countryman burst in.

“They are coming—they are coming!” he shrieked. “I have seen them in the road. I ran through the woods. Hundreds of them! I have seen their lances—the sun on their lances!”

“Come!” cried Dominique Laplume in a voice of thunder. “In the name of France!”

No one stirred. He looked round, scorn in his old eyes. “We will go, then—Bergeret, Dufour—my old comrades.” His voice choked with bewilderment, disappointment, anger.

* * * * *

They went out. The air was sharp with frost. It was very still in the village. The sun, a red ball of fire, still glowed on the frosted trees; on the white and yellow walls of the cottages; on the white fields and white-cowled windmills; on the powdered cobbles of the street. A segment of moon, strangely like a pierrot head, thrust through curtains of cloud, its mouth whimsically awry, peered down sideways at the earth—at the white earth, where legions of tiny men, like ants, hurried to kill or be killed in their bewildering quarrels. The distances were blue—the shimmering steel-blue of winter distances. Here and there a column of black smoke, shot through again and again with tongues of fire, went up to heaven; the smoke of burning villages; little sacrifices France offered for her folly to gods not yet appeased.

“To the bridge,” said Tuck-of-Drum. They marched in silence. The drum was silent. At the end of the long, straggling street a tiny bridge spanned a frozen stream which the enemy must cross. By the side of it was a clump of bushes, so thick that, even leafless, they formed a screen behind which the veterans and the boy crouched down.

“They might have broken down the bridge at least,” grumbled Dufour. “Menitz was frozen, and the Emperor——”

“They are coming!” whispered Pierre.

His sharp ears, close to the ground, had caught the _clip-clop_ of approaching hoofs.

Tuck-of-Drum drew his sword and rested its hilt on the rough wooden parapet of the bridge. “Fix bayonets!” he growled.

Sergeant Bergeret should have given the word, but he carried out the order placidly, drawing the sword from its scabbard and fixing it with his fumbling fingers. “Put it in for me,” muttered Dufour, handing his bayonet to Pierre. “Now give me the musket—so—and run home, good lad. Embrace me and then run home.”

He sat on the ground, his wooden leg stiff and straight in front of him, and clutched the bayonet. Pierre’s lips tightened; he did not move. “Go home, I say!”

“Hush, they come!” whispered Tuck-of-Drum.

Peering through the brushwood, they could see, on the road ahead, the pennoned lances of German Uhlans, rising and falling with the jolting of the horses. The hoofs clicked louder and louder on the frozen road.

Suddenly Tuck-of-Drum sprang up.

“The Guard will advance,” he growled, with a little hoarse laugh, the faint echo of one that men now dead had heard and talked of, long since. Joy, fierce, savage joy of fighting, dormant so long but not extinct, flared up and flashed in his faded eyes. And yet, with the joy, a rage terrible and righteous shook him as he saw the glitter of the steel, the fluttering pennons, the casques and foreign uniforms—the foes of France, violating the sacred soil of which the dust of his race had made.

His trembling hands clutching the drumsticks, he advanced to the centre of the bridge. Bergeret stood on his right, his bayonet extended. Dufour grasped the parapet, dragged himself up, groaning in spite of clenched teeth, planted his wooden leg firmly, and, leaning against the woodwork of the bridge, rested the butt of his weapon on the ground, the tremulous steel pointed toward the enemy. Pierre came to help him. “Go back! go back!” he growled, pushing the boy aside with all his feeble strength. Pierre slipped on the frozen earth and fell, clutching at the bushes. Suddenly Dominique Laplume sounded the _pas de charge_.

A strange, pitiful defiance this, echoing back through the deserted village street, floating mournfully out to the white, empty fields, sending its arrogant, useless challenge to the ribbon of white road ahead. “_Rat-a-plan! rat-a-plan!_” The old drum, that had sent a hundred men flocking like sheep before it—the old drum that Jules, who fell at Solferino, that Dominique, who fell at Gravelotte, had beaten on winter mornings of their boyhood—answered nobly to this last great effort, and seemed a living, sentient thing, entering into the brave spirit of the challenge.

There was a startled shout, a clatter of stones, as the Uhlans reined in their horses.

“They fly!” shrieked Tuck-of-Drum; “they—ah!”

Half a dozen carbines shot up and flashed fire. There was a hoarse cry in German; an officer struck aside the stock of a man’s weapon.

Dufour’s bayonet clattered down; he slid into the thicket, his wooden leg scoring a long, jagged line in the frosty road. Bergeret was on his knees, a light of strange intelligence dawning in his smooth, foolish face; quite suddenly he fell sideways on to his fallen bearskin, matted already with his blood.

Tuck-of-Drum still stood in the centre of the bridge. The drumsticks descended on a drum pierced and soundless—then dropped, one after the other, slowly, from his nerveless grasp. The world swung around him. The poplars down the roadway on which his glazing eyes were fixed marched, doubled, moved into echelon and square. “_La Grande Armée! La Grande Armée!_”

Was it the cry of the Germans, in wonder, in derision, in pity? Or did his quivering lips frame the words? Ghosts formed round him; the ghosts of the old battalions who had marched, long back, into silence. They swayed, they heaved, in countless numbers; file after file, rank after rank, regiment after regiment, formed up, doubled into place, and passed him by. He saw the flash of breastplates, the crimson fronts of the Polish lancers, the red plumes of the line, the bearskins of the Guards, the glittering eagles of France.

“My comrades—O my comrades!” He staggered forward, with stretched-out hands. A confused murmur buzzed in his ears; it swelled into a tumult—“_and the shout of a king was among them_.”

One hand sought the bearskin. Suddenly he fell face forward.

* * * * *

Under the wide sky, in the uniform of their dead Emperor, the three veterans lay together; a young boy crouched near them, bleeding from an unnoticed wound, and sobbing.

A night wind crept over the frozen fields; a little wind, like a sigh from France for her ruined homes, her smoking villages, her slain children, her lost cause and faded glories.

The sun of Austerlitz sank down behind the poplars.

_The Royal Road to Learning_

FREDDIE—What’s an honorary degree, dad?

JOHNSON—That’s a title a college confers on a man who would never be able to get it if he had to pass an examination.

* * * * *

The hardest kind of work is looking for it.

_The Southern Negro as a Property-Owner_

BY LEONORA BECK ELLIS

Between the Southern negro as property and the Southern negro as a property-owner worthy of account, American progress has set its milestones thick and strongly marked. Yet, as mere years go, the time has been short indeed for a transition of meanings so vast.

The act of emancipation brought in its train several very serious problems, and more than one of these must be acknowledged to have grown graver with further-reaching complexities and involutions as the decades have passed. But in the present article these are not under consideration.

The point we desire to emphasize is that one of the most difficult questions brought to issue in the emancipation of the negro has already solved itself by what we are accustomed to call natural processes.

When the epochal pen-stroke fell and $3,000,000,000 worth of Southern property was suddenly obliterated as property, yet stood there in plain world’s view, like the metamorphosed dragon’s teeth, as men with the rights of men, there were masters of statecraft everywhere who faced one another blankly, asking how such a situation was to resolve itself. Not even the most sanguine saw any reason to hope that so complex an issue as that involved in the relation of the freedmen to the land could be brought to satisfactory or righteous solution until at least three or four generations had mingled dust with dust.

The relation of the freedmen to the soil! Here was the problem that must have given pause to an older state, a European nation, say, upon the eve of liberating at one stroke four millions of serfs.

But young nations, like young individuals, often let their deep convictions sweep them unprepared into strange conditions and perils, from which only the magnificent vitality of youth rescues them without disaster.

The United States Government has, for half a dozen years past, recognized it as a duty to compile and offer for public reading certain facts and figures relating to the progress of the negro in acquiring education, following different pursuits and trades, and accumulating property. Out of the various reports upon these subjects issued from the Department of Labor since 1897 it is probably the information set forth regarding the property-holdings of the former slaves and slaves’ children in three or four Southern states that will strike the greatest number of people with surprise, even with that form of astonishment which borders on unbelief. Yet this surprise is of the healthful type, and the unbelief passes when a closer investigation is made into the matter.

The closer investigation is undoubtedly worth while, and it will prove profitable for a little while to exchange general statements and sweeping surveys for definite figures, well verified data and typical cases within a limited territory.

Therefore, to illustrate clearly that particular phase of the negro’s progress, the adjustment of his relations to the land and his steadily advancing gains in real estate and other property-holdings, it will serve best to take the state of Georgia and present certain comparative data relating to the situation here.

Our choice of the commonwealth of Georgia for the setting forth of this matter, instead of some sister state, can be easily justified. Although the youngest of the original thirteen states, and the only one whose early constitution barred slavery from its boundaries, yet, when the Civil War came on Georgia had long been a slave state of great importance, and at once took a leading part in the struggle. Her people suffered heavier losses from the war, it is authoritatively claimed, than those of any other state except Virginia, the old order of things being more utterly wrecked and old landmarks more completely effaced here than elsewhere.

There are other reasons for our choice less disputable even than these. Georgia has the largest area of any state east of the Mississippi River, and, in her great sweep of 59,475 square miles, from the Appalachian Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean, exhibits the greatest diversity of soil, climate and physical features, all of which must be conceded to affect negro life and industry. Lying largely in the so-called “Black Belt,” the state still presents quite as marked a diversity of social conditions as of physical, nor have any of the former slave-holding states been more strongly affected than this by the industrial and educational movements which have stirred the South within the last few years. It is only fair to call attention, likewise, to the fact that, while Georgia is recognized as the centre of some of the most radical thought and action upon the negro question, yet this condition is counterbalanced by the existence within its borders of a mass of white voters who seem more than ordinarily swayed by an intense sense of justice to the black. Witness the manner in which all bills tending toward negro disfranchisement meet summary defeat before the Georgia Legislature, and, again, the defeat of the last year’s movement to divide the state’s educational funds in such a way as to allow to colored schools only the pro rata share representing taxes on the property of the negro.

Furthermore, it may be added here, that while the state has no Hampton or Tuskeegee within her borders, still she has most excellent public schools for negroes, and in several cities she is now giving them admirable training in manual and industrial arts along with the academic studies, as, notably, at Columbus; and she also has an important branch of her state university devoted to the industrial, technical and manual training of colored youths—that is, the Industrial College for Negroes at Savannah, a high-grade institution wholly supported by public funds.

If the selection of Georgia for a local study of the negro’s material progress does not yet appear justified, then the last, and in itself wholly adequate, reason may now be assigned, namely, that the state has the largest negro population of any in the Union, her colored people numbering 1,034,998, or a bare trifle under 50 per cent. of the entire population. Observe that in this state are congregated more than one-eighth as many blacks as are scattered throughout the remaining half a hundred states and territories of the Union.

New Year’s Day of 1863 saw 470,000 freedmen in Georgia, these in the main having been ushered into liberty in quite as destitute a condition, regarding land and other worldly possessions, as that in which they were ushered into existence. The exceptions to this generally prevalent destitution were favored slaves here and there whose former masters and mistresses, too often nearly destitute themselves, had deeded them little homesteads, or in some other way given them a start in independence. Or, again, there were exceptions in the case of the few thousands upon whom General Sherman and his associates had bestowed certain donatives in the shape of wages, usually unearned, and bounty money or lands, all distributed with the injudiciousness expected in such a situation.

Today, barely one generation’s space removed from that hour of strange and sorrowful conditions, these freedmen and their children pay taxes on more than a million acres of Georgia land, not to mention houses, household goods, stock, agricultural implements, merchandise and other taxable properties. If the situation speaks well for American life and opportunities, it also speaks well for the black man, and more eloquently still for his chances in the South.

The toilsome processes by which the Georgia negro has climbed from destitution to his present state of comparative prosperity deserve more than a passing glance. Do not think it was the same as if you or your neighbor, or even Mr. Riis’s European, who is to be refashioned into an American, should start today without money or lands, without friends except those destitute as yourselves. We should know where to turn, what work to take up, how to apply whatever of skill or energy or special aptitudes might exist within us. Failing of skill or marked aptitudes of our own, failing even of an ordinarily good education, we should at least have within us inherited instincts to help us out of the difficult situation. Above all, we should know what was in the world, what was worth striving for, where to set our aims.

But what of skill did the negro have, save in the rudimentary forms of agriculture? Whither, save for restraining influences, would his inherited instincts have led him? What did he know of life experientially beyond the log square of a slave’s cabin, or by observation and hearsay beyond the compass of the plantation lord’s domain?

No; set it down that the new freedman was poorer than the poorest, and, except in rare cases, more ignorant than can now be readily conceived of. In such condition, with no higher aims to impel him to work than the bare instinct of self-preservation, his work must of necessity be for many years only a bread-meat-and-shelter matter.

Yet, somehow—who can tell by what strange evolution?—working on blindly, gropingly, toilsomely, he has still contrived to press forward, until today, with a generation scarcely gone, he stands on a plane no one counted on his reaching under a hundred years. And the best of all his gains is that the most intelligent of his race have come to comprehend what true progress means, and to compare the slight space traversed by their people with the vast upward stretch reaching away in front of them.

During one of the large conventions which recently met in a Georgia city, a visitor from New England asked me, with genuine concern: “But where do your better class negroes live? Or are there no blacks decently housed, no places at least approximately clean and comfortable that they can claim as homes? In various cities through your section I have found only swarming and fetid negro quarters, the worst of slums, a menace to municipal health, both physical and moral. Is there nothing more hopeful than this to show for the race?”

Admitting the general truth of his imputation, I was still able to point out to him a few streets, or sections of streets, where the most intelligent and prosperous of the blacks of the city had made themselves real homes. Yet even these, he demurred, bordered too close upon those same slums he had been fretting over. For in Southern cities the people of this race keep together, it will be noted.

But I told my guest to come with me to the country if he would see the negro at his racial best. Agriculture, I assured him, had come very near to spelling out salvation for this people. Instance the state conference of colored farmers convening not so very long ago in Savannah. Nearly two hundred delegates were present, and everyone owned his own home, many being comparatively wealthy. One in particular was pointed out as worth $50,000, made entirely from agriculture.

In the country, then, we must still look for the best average of the negro’s home, his domestic life and virtues, as well as his industry and thrift. A brief investigation of conditions brought our New England friend to the same conclusion, and he went away much better satisfied as to the prospects of the race.

Certain facts and figures which interested this intelligent student of racial conditions will doubtless interest scores of others, and they are, therefore, offered in the present paper.

Georgia has 137 counties, each constituting a small commonwealth in itself. Being settled at irregular periods and under diverse circumstances, varying, moreover, in topography and character of the soil and climate, these counties exhibit each a different ratio of the negroes to the whites.

A glance at the maps may aid in forming a clear idea of the movements and growth of the black population in Georgia. In 1790, it will be observed, the counties near the coast were the only ones settled, and if the black folk were inconsiderable in numbers, so were the white.

But by 1800 the slaves were showing a rapid increase, and were being moved up the Savannah River, while from that time to 1840 the population, both white and black, exhibited a marked tendency to seek the rich lands of the interior, pushing westward and, a little later, southwestward.

At the close of the year 1900 the blacks of the state had increased from the few thousands of slaves of a century back, held chiefly on the coast, to more than a million free people, fairly well dispersed through all but the extreme mountain counties and paying taxes on many million dollars of Georgia property.

From the office of the comptroller-general of the state there is issued annually a full report of the property-holdings of both blacks and whites, set forth with exactness of detail county by county. From the file of these reports it is easy to make a comparative study, in brief or at length, of past changes, progress or retrogression, and the present status in any or all of the Georgia counties. But the general reader will be able to draw his conclusions from a glance at a few of these.

Chatham County, the original seat of settlement, is perhaps the best starting-point. It is located in Southeastern Georgia, washed by the Savannah River and the tides of the Atlantic, has for its county seat Savannah, the second city of the state, and comprises mainly a stretch of marshland, low islands and flat, sandy tracts. In early days a brisk slave trade brought many negroes to this county, and since the war the city of Savannah has attracted the freedmen in great numbers. The relations between whites and blacks have been more uniformly cordial here than elsewhere, the former being in the main of the original slave-holding class, and the latter largely house servants. The situation is thus in direct contrast to that in Atlanta, for instance. By the year 1790 there were already 8,313 blacks in Chatham County, as against 2,456 whites; while the census of a hundred years later shows an increase to 54,757 negroes and 22,966 whites.

Sherman’s celebrated field order, issued immediately after his investment of Savannah, gave hundreds of former slaves temporary possession of valuable lands on the coast and sea islands of this county, as it did to a lesser extent in certain other sections of the state. This tenure was in some cases brief, but in many others became permanent. Hence, even as early as 1875, we find the freedmen owning 1,491 acres of Chatham’s land, valued at upward of $70,000, besides town and city realty worth $152,760. Twenty-five years later they had multiplied these figures by four, approximately. No bad showing, when all things are taken into consideration.

Another coast county, Liberty, is beyond doubt the most interesting in its history of all the so-called “black counties.” This, too, is located in the southeastern portion of Georgia, a neighbor of Chatham’s, with much the same climate and topographical features, and was laid out in 1777. But the history of its first settlers deserves to be traced much further back, for, in 1695, there had come to South Carolina a little colony of New England Puritans, breaking off from the parent church at Dorchester, Mass., and led by Joseph Soul, a Harvard graduate and teacher. Their location in South Carolina having proved unhealthful, they were attracted by Oglethorpe’s little Georgia settlement, and, having secured a grant of 32,000 acres on the present site of Liberty County, they removed thither in 1752, their colony then numbering 280 whites and 536 negro slaves! The county was laid off as Midway, but later changed its name to Liberty. It should be remarked that when secession from the Union became an issue this county voted solidly against it.

After the Civil War the land here was thrown largely on the market, and at several places, notably Woodville, Ogeechee and Belmont, numbers of negroes united themselves into colonies and bought extensive tracts. There are now in the county nearly ten thousand negroes, with half that number of whites; and the former own more than 50,000 acres of land.

Appling is a county also in the southeastern portion of the state, but presenting a very different showing. It is a level county, inland, with poor soil, and the tide of slaves poured around it without touching it. In 1820 there were just eighty-six negroes within its borders. When manumission came there were only about seven hundred Appling County slaves to be set free. At the present time it is estimated that there are 3,000 negroes in the county, with more than twice that number of whites. But from the comptroller-general’s latest report it appears that the former own 17,946 acres of land, such land as it is!

Now run up to Central Georgia. Here is found the flourishing city of Macon, in the county of Bibb. The census of 1890 gave Macon a population of 22,746, of whom one-half were negroes. The land in this section is hilly, with soil mixed, good and bad. Twenty-five years ago there were something over 11,000 negroes in the county, outnumbering the whites by nearly two thousand, and they owned 2,611 acres of land. Now the blacks have a trifle more than doubled in numbers, as well as in property-holdings. Observe, too, the higher value of the negro’s farm lands in this section. His 4,500 acres of Bibb County land is now assessed at $413,300, which amount, added to his town and city realty and other taxable properties, makes an aggregate value of $719,380 in this county alone.

A little to the northeast of Bibb County lies Baldwin, of which Milledgeville, the former state capital, is the chief town. This was a very wealthy ante-bellum section, with large holdings in slaves as well as lands. When the Civil War began Baldwin County could muster 5,000 slaves, although of the whites, rich and poor, there were only 4,000. When the census of 1890 was taken the negroes had increased to 9,343, the whites only to 5,262. Last year the negroes were paying taxes on 6,501 acres of Baldwin County land, valued at $26,599, besides a large amount of city and town property and other possessions, the whole aggregating $104,592.

Take another county in Middle Georgia, a county of good lands but without a town of any size in it, therefore representing more nearly a plain agricultural average. Any one of a score might be selected. Let us say Butts, a small but prosperous county which was laid out in 1825 and at the outbreak of the war had 3,082 slaves and 3,375 whites. A quarter of a century ago its freedmen, numbering approximately 4,000 people, owned but ninety-seven acres of land in the entire county and $350 worth of town property. Have they climbed since 1875? In numbers they are now estimated at 7,000, against a like number of whites, and last year these negroes paid taxes on 1,613 acres of good average farming land, and on other property which ran the total valuation in Butts up to $49,941.

In the mountain counties of Georgia it has been different, the increase in number of negroes as well as their possessions being slow and uncertain, while the whites have maintained a steady progress in such sections. This, however, is clearly accounted for by the lesser ratio the agricultural interests bear to others in mountainous districts, and the dependence of the negroes upon the former. Glance at Gilmer County, with its sixty-nine blacks and almost 10,000 whites, the former paying taxes on a few hundred acres of rocky hillsides, and their whole county property aggregating, by the most recent returns, only $957, while the latter show taxable possessions valued at $728,000. In Rabun, Towns, Flannin and neighboring counties the situation shows much the same.

This brief study of typical counties may be closed with certain comparative data from Fulton, which contains the state’s capital, Atlanta, a progressive and rapidly growing city distinctly of the “New South” type. Fulton was not laid out until 1853, hence is relatively young in the sisterhood of counties. Only about 2,000 slaves were set free in this county. Compare the number with the 16,000 manumitted in Chatham. But today there are more than 50,000 negroes in Fulton, and, although they own but a thousand acres of land in the county, yet the aggregate value of their whole property is a bare trifle below one million dollars!

To extract the most important meanings from such figures is not difficult. In connection with them several facts should be kept in mind, the first of which is that the negro’s land-holdings in Georgia as well as in adjoining states are usually parceled out in very small individual lots. In a canvass of fifty-six typical counties of the state, the following table was established to show the average size of the farm lots among negro proprietors:

CLASSIFIED SIZE PER CENT. OF
TOTAL OWNERS

Under 10 acres 30.50
10 or under 40 acres 27.00
40 or under 100 acres 21.85
100 or under 200 acres 12.80
200 or under 500 acres 6.89
500 acres or over .93

The fifty-six counties canvassed represent the majority of negro holdings in the state, and the average here established may fairly be taken as that of the state at large, or, indeed, of the agricultural South. The fact that a very large proportion of the farms are so limited in size as to amount only to gardens, or, in negro parlance, “patches,” augurs well rather than ill, for it means many small proprietors instead of merely a few large ones and the rest all renters or day laborers. Since out of 369,265 black people in the state ten years of age or over who are engaged in gainful occupations, almost two-thirds are employed in some line of agricultural work, is it not well that the million acres owned by negroes should be distributed in small holdings? It is easy to deduce from this the manifest decline of the metayer, or tenant system of farming. To be sure, these one-acre, or even ten-acre farms will seldom support the owner, though he may have the smallest family, or none at all. Such farms are largely instances of what may be called, in the German phrase, _Parzellenbetriebe_—that is, farms not large enough to occupy the labor of a family, but serving as sources of partial support to those with supplementary occupations. Yet, in many cases, these little plots of ground will grow to goodly farms within a few years. The same story has been traced a thousand times in the past quarter of a century.

It will be remarked, also, that the negro’s town and city property is increasing greatly. In 1880 the assessed value of such property was only $1,201,992, or 20 per cent. of their entire state property; while in 1902 it is $4,389,422, which is close to 29 per cent. of the state’s aggregate. Thus, while agriculture gave the freedman his start in self-maintenance, and is still his chief dependence, yet paths of employment and sources of revenue in cities are being discovered by him more and more as the years go by and his education progresses.

Before passing to the close, another point is worthy of especial note, interesting both the economist and the sociologist. In 1875 the assessed value of the household and kitchen furniture owned by all the negroes in the state, then numbering between six and seven million souls, was only $21,186, or something like three cents’ worth to each individual. But in 1902 the assessed value of the same class of property was $1,688,541, or a trifle over the value of a dollar and a half to each colored man, woman and child in the state. Upon this phase of development and progress no comment is needed.

In brief, then, the black people of Georgia paid taxes for 1902 on 1,175,291 acres of land, and upon an entire property aggregating $15,188,069 in assessed value. This means, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the negroes of Georgia, or, broadly speaking, the South, are accumulating property and acquiring homes. And since the negro with a home is almost sure to stand for law, order and civic faithfulness, it means, moreover, a reaching out toward higher standards of living, not material living alone, but social life, mental and moral striving and achievements.

Comprehending the situation in its fulness, no man can deny that the race is actually _started_ on the road to better things than their past might have indicated that they were capable of attaining.

_A Japanese Populist_

BY THOMAS C. HUTTEN
_Author of “National Characteristics,” “The Farthest East”_

Two years ago a prominent Russian patriot admitted a misgiving that nothing but a miracle could shake the strongholds of Czarish despotism. It does not impeach the correctness of his view that the miracle has been accomplished.

A giant has entered the political arena; a new world power has risen from the dust of a Buddhist serf-kennel, and it is about time to recognize the fact that the marvel of evolution has been effected by progress in the direction of popular democracy.

The memorable vote of the daimios was a renunciation of class privileges. Of the forty amendments in the new constitution of the Japanese Empire, twenty-six tend to reform the abuses of class legislation. The nation controls two-thirds of its mines. Stockholders of a telegraph monopoly have been forced to accept a time limit of their contract. Six hundred and twenty miles of railroads are managed—and successfully managed—by a national board of administration. The Government, in the name of the nation, builds its own warships and welds its own armor-plates, instead of farming out jobs to the highest briber. The Ways and Means Committee of 1901 reduced direct taxation almost on the exact plan of the system recommended by the reformer Bakunin—reserving building lots in new cities and granting tenures from two to ten years at gradually increasing rates of rent.

Populist reforms have rendered the Government popular enough to make the nation invincible.

And the world-wide need of those reforms has been repeatedly urged by Japanese travelers, and with the emphasis of strong personal conviction, especially by a keen observer who visited Europe and North America in the summer of 1903.

Professor Yashinto Korioky, agent of a Tokio reform club, explored the United States without the assistance of the guides trained by our Star-spangled Uncle and with often remarkable results.

“Surprises,” he says, “indeed, began before we had set foot on the soil of the great moral Republic. Above the sea mist and above the gathering clouds a fire gleamed like a meteor on the western horizon, and one of the Chinese steerage passengers, venturing to inquire, ascertained that it was a statue of liberty, furnishing light to the world. The next moment a sailor struck him between the eyes, and he admitted that he saw several starlike, luminous objects.”

A TEST OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

“The next morning,” he continues, “I got my traveling scrip, but was informed that our boat was moored on the wharf of an island, where immigrants are assorted according to the degree of their rectitude. Some pass the ordeal of scrutiny with ease, others with difficulty, for reasons which I was not always able to discern. I noticed, however, that the Government has coined shekels of silver with inscriptions expressing sentiments of virtue—“In God we trust,” or similar words—and whenever a traveler came provided with a goodly number of these tokens, his righteousness seemed to be taken for granted.”

PATERNAL SOLICITUDE

“The investigations of the learned officials in some cases extended to articles of wearing apparel. One Canton trader had underlined his tunic with eighty yards of fine silk, which, being discovered, were unwound and confiscated to enforce a lesson of modesty in the matter of dress.”

WORLDLINESS SUPPRESSED

“He was, however, allowed to proceed, more fortunate than two of his countrymen who had crossed the ocean for the first time, and were sent back at the expense of the Chinese contractors. Forty years ago these worldly toilers were admitted as freely as other foreigners; but it was noticed that they worked sixteen hours a day and seven days in the week, thus disregarding the duty of providing leisure for spiritual exercises. And as their lack of repentance was, moreover, aggravated by the rapid accumulation of coin, it was finally decided to remove them for the promotion of their higher interests.”

A SCHOOL OF PATIENCE

“Animals that are most carefully excluded from the residence quarters of Japanese towns enjoy the freedom of many American cities. Cats roam at large and dogs are permitted to defile public monuments.... After dark their clamor exceeds the vociferations of the East Indian jackals and robs thousands of sleep; but it is perhaps necessary that taxpaying citizens should be trained in lessons of self-denial.”

GOVERNMENT MAN-TRAPS

“Knowing my reputation for veracity, be prompt, my brother, to intercede if the unregenerate of your neighborhood should question the following facts: In the course of each year some 80,000,000 ox-loads of grain are manufactured into a health-destroying poison; ... coal stoves, pretty as the vases of Nagasaki, radiate warmth in winter; fans, operated by unseen forces, mitigate the heat of the summer season. Singers often warble with the skill of the sirens. In the neighborhood of these seductive traps the Government then posts its man-catchers and awaits results. It may seem incredible. But I have been informed that in Southern China monkeys are often captured by similar devices. When the poison begins to operate they fall bewildered, and their awakening in a cage the next morning must tend to mitigate the frivolity of their disposition.”

A THOUGHTFUL LANDLORD

“The owner of the estate, we ascertained, was a timber merchant, as well as a pillar of virtue, and a large number of trees in the rear of the building had recently been felled—probably to give the neighborhood a more unobstructed view of heaven.”

COMPENSATING LEGISLATION

“Those stock gamblers, whose conspiracies had ruined thousands, were not mistaken in their expectation that the law would protect them against the risk of a riot. Children, gambling for peanuts, are promptly arrested. The advantages of magisterial virtue cannot be overrated.”

FOUR-HANDED FILIPINOS

“Apes, almost as dissolute as sparrows, are exhibited in the parks of several American cities.... In the Philippine Islands a large number of these animals has recently been captured and caged—probably to limit their opportunity for worldly enjoyments.”

NEMESIS

“But we learned that the steam launch scudding along the west shore of the bay was a smuggler, and its pursuer a Government revenue tug. For weeks—perhaps for months—the contrabandists, of Canadian origin, had been selling meat at frivolous rates, and the avengers of sacrilege were now at their heels.”

JUVENILE DEPRAVITY

“From the window of one of these air-trains, a package came clattering down on the sidewalk, scattering a shower of biscuits and hard-boiled eggs which were seized and devoured by the children of poverty before the guardians of law and order could interfere. One youngster of five or six years captured a piece of fruit cake and took to his heels with whoops of unregenerate glee, whereupon two older boys raced him down and deprived him of his prize—probably to restrain his penchant for dietetic luxuries.”

MENDICANCY LIMITED

“Two constables dragged along a shrieking girl, who every now and then resisted progress by throwing herself on the ground.... Of what crime could a child of her age possibly have been guilty? ... It appeared that she had been begging in support of an invalid mother, thus tempting taxpaying citizens to an expenditure of coin that should have been reserved for other purposes....

“Begging, however, is not wholly prohibited. Politicians often solicit millions in behalf of candidates who pledge themselves to protect the associations of wealth and suppress the holiday amusements of the poor.”

WINGED REFUGEES

“... saw nothing but a few crows and two kingfishers, flitting up and down the rocky banks of the brook. Experience had made them unapproachably shy, perhaps much to the regret of the neighboring saints, since they had probably been guilty of fishing on Sunday.”

A FASTING-CURE VICTORY

“Some forty families had been evicted to make room for a trainload of meek immigrants, who agreed to subsist on potatoes and the promise of a better hereafter.”

SKY LADDERS

“Seclusion in the upper cavities of these brick mountains must entail incredible hardships, ... but the landlords seem to hold that all these discomforts are compensated by the advantage of dwelling nearer heaven.”

A CHEERING PROSPECT

“In Oriental cities, with rare exceptions, everything suggesting the thought of death is hidden out of view; no sculptor would venture to exhibit an assortment of gravestones; but people to whom life brings nothing but a roundabout of toil and tedium may find solace in contemplating mementoes of the hour that will witness the end of their doom.”

* * * * *

The philanthropic traveler left his native land with ideals presaging a universal brotherhood of nations—perhaps under the leadership of our great Republic—but admits that, under present circumstances, our popular policy of expansion is, at best, only an attempt to widen the ring-walls of our slave-pen, before its gates are closed by a syndicate of bloodsuckers and boodle legislators.

_The King’s Image_

BY WALTER E. GROGAN
_Author of “The Dregs of Wrath,” “The King’s Sceptre,” “The
Curse of the Fultons,” etc._

I knew him at once. He was grayer, he was grimmer, he was more than ever like a man of granite, hard and immobile, but I knew him. The sight of him gravely unfolding his table napkin and covering his thin knees at luncheon in the little hotel set my thoughts back over ten years. I was then a lad of sixteen. I had seen him constantly in the queer medieval streets of Tsalburg, the little capital of Ertaria in the Balkans. Gray and grim, he was then the General Commandant of the army, the iron right hand of the Wolf King Peter XII. He was grayer and grimmer now, but undoubtedly the man. For a while I racked my memory for his name. It came suddenly. General Hartzel! Undoubtedly the man.

The _Times_ supplied me with many conjectures. The senile old King was dead; his heir, the Prince Paul, had lived his own life in Europe incognito, and the heir was not forthcoming. Rumor said he was in Paris.

For three days I watched the General. He knew no one at the hotel, he spoke to no one, but I saw him more than once in earnest conversation with a young man about my own age, about my own height, about my own color, but—for the sake of my own vanity—alike in no other particular. This was—the information was easily come by—the Comte de Troisétoilles, a young Frenchman of position, now considerably taken with the beautiful singer, Mlle. Aimée Bergeaux. That was the story noised about, and in proof thereof her little steam yacht rode in the harbor, he was constantly with her, and a rumor was essential to the place. A companion, large, fat, unmistakably German and delightfully placid, cast a broad, complacent smile of propriety over the romance.

My General, I noted, snarled at the soprano for whose smiles princes competed. He was thorough, was my General, dear man of stone. Venus herself would have been baffled by him. But he spoke earnestly and vehemently to the Count, he who was so taciturn.

On the evening of the third day I met my General on the south cliff by the absurd little fort. There was a streak of smoke on the horizon. He was shaking a fist at it, a violent, tempestuous fist.

I have been a prey to sudden impulses all my life. I had maintained an Englishman’s reserve for three days. I broke it suddenly on the cliff. I accosted the General in Ertarian.

“You are disturbed, General Hartzel,” I said.

He wheeled round surprisingly. His astonishment grew when he saw me, the silent companion of his luncheons.

“Monsieur speaks Ertarian,” he said.

“A little,” I answered modestly, yet with inward elation. To surprise a man of granite! Elation was surely pardonable.

“As a native,” he continued. I bowed. “It is wonderful! Are you Ertarian?”

“No,” I replied.

“No,” he echoed with regret. “You are English. I saw you smoke a pipe. But you know my real name? I am Captain Schneidlitz here.”

I laughed. “Pardon me, General, I have been amusing myself with your surprise. My father was British Minister at Tsalburg for many years. As a boy I spent my holidays there. Hence my accent.”

“Your name is—?” he demanded.

“Havensea,” I answered.

“Then your father is ——?”

“Exactly. I am now the head of my family. It is a large family, General. I have tens of aunts; my cousins are limitless. I pass an uneasy life trying to evade them and my unnecessary title. It is difficult—please respect my incognito as I respect yours, Captain Schneidlitz.”

“You dislike your title?” he asked eagerly.

“The coronet has given me a headache of the soul. You don’t know how terrible a British title is. It is a mere lever for opening bazaars, a free ticket to everybody’s dinners.”

“You object to yourself?” His question, the question of the man of granite, was tremulous with excitement.

“Pardon me,” I answered; “not to myself—but to the impossibility of being myself. I am an English peer. I have not even the picturesqueness of poverty. You do not understand. In Ertaria they do not hold flower shows. I do not object to myself—I object to Lord Havensea.”

The General looked round anxiously. A wide-breeched soldier was walking toward the fort; a white-stringed bonnet was going home. Seaward the streak of smoke blackened the eye of the sun. The sight of that caused the man of granite to swear solemnly in Ertarian—a language admitting a wide choice of expression to a man oppressed with a sense of wrong.

“I will reply to your first question,” he said. He spoke in a low voice. He was under some strong emotion. “I am disturbed. That little streak of smoke dissolving out there represents my hopes dissipated, evaporated. My hopes are the hopes of Ertaria. We are a small country, but we are proud.”

“A country’s pride invariably compensates for lack of acres.”

“It is a jest to you,” he said sadly. I had expected him to be angry at my flippant remark. The sadness of his voice slipped past my guard. Here at last I had found a man who could feel.

“Your pardon, General,” I said more soberly than I had previously spoken. “The pride of Ertaria I know rests upon an unstained national honor.”

“If you believed that!” he cried.

“I do,” I answered stoutly. “Frankly, you are all absurd, but it is a glorious absurdity. Small, hemmed in by enemies, you have kept an independence, noble and untainted, for seven hundred years.”

“You believe it! Why not?” he cried excitedly. “Your father, the dear Lord Havensea, loved us. He was our friend. His representations at St. James’s saved us once. You inherited his love. We are in peril now.”

“Ah,” said I, “the lost heir.”

“He is out there under that streak of smoke.”

“He was the Comte de Troisétoilles?”

“Yes. The French singer is Russian. You understand?”

“Kidnapped! Scratch a French soprano and you will find a Russian. My General!” I was indeed sorry for him. He was honest, was this man of granite. He loved his country. And Prince Paul—“Royal robes should cover men, not flattered fools.”

“You understand. The great game is lost. I love Ertaria as I love nothing else. I would pour out my blood willingly for her. That would be nothing. I have been the guardian of her honor. That was everything. And now the hand of the greedy Bear is stretched out for it. And it is lost. At least five minutes ago I said it was lost. But now you—you can save it—the great game, the honor of Ertaria, the independence, the life-blood!”

“I! My dear General, I am a tired English peer recovering from a surfeit of municipal and parochial addresses.”

“You—only you. You are an Englishman, you speak Ertarian, you resemble the Prince Paul somewhat; he is unknown in Ertaria. You are out of love with your own identity; you long for something else, for some other life——”

“My dear General, speak out the whole of your madness.”

“Come, Lord Havensea, and hold the throne!”

I was staggered, astounded. For a moment I watched the smoke becoming thinner and thinner. Suddenly it seemed to pop out. It was of course a trick of the imagination.

“You are an Englishman—therefore you have courage.”

It was transcendent flattery. A throne!

“It is madness, my General,” I said. His eyes sparkled.

“It is the madness we love,” he said softly. “And it is for the country, my country. The poor fool will come back. Don’t let it be too late. Keep the throne for him—and for us, for the Ertarian children unborn that they be not born the slaves of the Muscovite. You have read the history of Poland?”

“It is folly, but—” I commenced.

“The train starts tonight, my Prince, at eleven. The West Station. I will make all things ready.” The General looked out at the winking sun. The real Prince was kidnapped, but in his dire need Fate had tossed him a pseudo one.

It was the wildest of folly, of course, but once seriously embarked upon, it was remarkable how smoothly it ran. I returned to the hotel, paid my bill, sent my valet home to England, and met the General at the station. I entered the first-class compartment a private English gentleman—even my poor little title left in the custody of my lawyers in Ely Place—and across the Ertarian frontier I stepped out Paul V.

We alighted at a small station. There were three or four anxious-looking men on its slender platform. They were dressed in the frock coat of ceremony. One man only was conspicuous in a gorgeous uniform. It reminded me of my own Havensea livery. I was preparing to be royally gracious to him when Hartzel whispered he was the station-master. It was a brilliant morning; the sun lay on the white caps of the mountain pass and glistened; big butterflies painted the field; the air was clear, rarified. I was in excellent spirits.

The General watched the absurd little engine puff its way onward. Then he turned to me, took off his hat, knelt and kissed my hand. The spectacle of my man of granite kneeling, his honest, ugly face figured by emotion, struck me strangely.

“To my God, my Country and my King are my life and my honor dedicated,” he said, the quaint old formula of allegiance in Ertaria. The frock coats went through the same performance. It lacked the earnestness of the General and had a note of anxiety. They looked as though they were expecting a troop of Cossacks over the edge of the pass and were nervous. But the ceremony marked a step in the game. Until then I was in a transition state. I was no longer Lord Havensea, but I had not yet become King until I had stepped out of my uncomfortable compartment into a kingdom.

“Gentlemen,” I said in their own picturesque tongue, “you are the first of my subjects to welcome me. Not as King will I speak to you now, but as a fellow-worker, for my heart also is dedicated to God and Ertaria.”

That struck some spark into their dull faces.