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180    THE CRISIS 

hunger among some of the Negroes on the plantations. The heads of Negro families have been with out present resources and without future prospects. The wise planter and farmer has said to his Negro employees and tenants:

"You never made anything this year. I never made anything this year. But we will do our best and I will see what resources I can get together to keep you until next year, when we can all make a fresh start."

Another class of farmers, and we suspect that their number is too large, has said :
"You never made anything this year. I cannot afford to feed you and your family until the beginning of the next crop year. You must go out and shift for yourselves."

This cold-blooded business view of the situation, we suspect, has been the best assistant that the labor agent has received. It is not difficult to know what a Negro farm hand will do when he and his family are facing hunger, when a labor agent offers him a railroad ticket and a promise of two dollars and a half a day in the industrial works of the North and East. That many of these Negro emigrants, form one section to the other, are destined to suffer, and to regret their leaving the South is certain: it is equally certain that a few of the more progressive and determined will do well financially as compared with their previous experience. 

The exodus, considered from the standpoint of the white man, will for the time being depress land values, generally speaking. Land will be in less demand than it has been since the war. There simply will not be enough labor to work the land heretofore devoted to farming purposes. Of course, there is to be no revolution of farming conditions; affairs will go on much the same. But land will be worth less and labor will be worth more in the future.

In Georgia they do not feel so sure that nature alone is at fault. The Atlanta 
Independent says:

Like in the life of the individual, there comes a time in the life of a nation, a people or a section when it must face the truth and the time is fast approaching when the South must arrive at the truth and confess it with reference to the black folk who are a part of the life, character and thought of our own section. It is as our white neighbor says, a shame that the South has not been awakened by moral suasion for the sake of right and is now being aroused only because it realizes it is about to lose a dollar. The  Constitution remarks that it is unfortunate for the people of Georgia that an appeal to the pocketbook should be necessary to bring back the enthronement of the law; and the  Independent adds that while we regret that conscience and the love of humanity could not bring the South to its senses, we are proud to observe the trend of public opinion, even if it is obtained by an appeal to the pocketbook.

The South, in common with our own beloved state, finds itself up against this proposition-that it is about to swap the much-talked-of race problem for a labor problem, and it realized that while the race problem might have pinched many of their consciences, the labor problem will affect all of their pocketbooks. And the hopeful sign about it is that leading journals like the Atlanta Constitution, the Savannah  Morning News, and thousands of weeklies, like the Ocilla Star and Tifton [[italicized]] Gazette, are admitting the facts and confessing to the plain truth.

Our esteemed contemporary, the Constitution, admits that mob law is largely responsible for the unrest among Negroes; that inadequate school facilities and a lack of justice to the Negro in the administration of the law is largely responsible for the unrest and the movement North and East; that it is in the hands of the white man to stop the exodus and the remedy lies in the ample protection of life, ample school facilities, proper encouragement and protection of life and liberty to the black folk in common with the white folk. There should be no question why the Negro would leave Georgia or other southern states to hunt for a place where he can educate his children; where he can worship God without having his temple burned down; where he can assemble in his lodge room without being accused of plotting against his neighbors and having the torch stuck to his lodge room; where his women will be safe from the noose of the mob and where he can expect justice when tried in the courts.

Lack of colored public schools is dwelt upon by the Atlanta Constitution :

Georgia, as well as other southern states, is undoubtedly behind in the matter of NEgro education; unfair in the matter of facilities, in the quality of teachers and instructors, and in the pay of those expected to impart proper instruction to Negro children.

We have proceeded upon the theory that education would, in his own mind at least, carry the Negro beyond his sphere; that is would give him higher ideas of himself and make of him a poorer and less satisfactory workman. That is nonsense. 

If we look over the list of the most outrageous crimes committed by Negroes, we find that they are generally the work of illiterate Negro brutes. Crimes of educated Negroes are fewer and of a minor nature compared to those committed by Negroes in whom the brutal instinct predominates. Education minimizes or removes that instinct, and, morally, the properly educated Negro is the better citizen, just as is the educated white.

The right sort of education makes a better workman, no matter what his sphere. A trained horse, a trained dog, make better




THE LOOKING GLASS    181

animals. A ditch digger who can read and write makes a better ditch digger. An illiterate cook or washerwoman must fall short in service of one who possesses the fundamentals of an education.

There are two very good reasons why it is not only due the Negroes, but it is an important safeguard to the whites themselves, to provide a thorough and efficient educational system for the Negroes.

In the quotation published today from the Fort Valley Uplift, it is declared an acknowledged fact that schools for Negroes, "especially in the country districts where the great masses of the Negroes live, with very rare exception, amount to practically nothing."

This should not be. Education will make a better cotton picker and a more efficient plowman. It would mean both a better type of citizen and a better farm laborer.

It is not only a question of duty to the Negro race, but of duty to the whites, to ourselves, that there should be improvement of a material sort in the system of education provided for them.

Georgia will do herself an important and a lasting service when she supplies it. 

From the Newark, N. J., News come the following stirring words:

How futile is force in human relations is being shown anew by the efforts of the South to keep Negroes from emigrating North. By force the colored people were brought here, and Civil War, which ravaged the South even as Belgium has not been ravaged, was the penalty. By force the South would keep them and the immigration movement continues, causing the Southerners to fear a serious shortage of labor in their cotton fields. Possessed of the most abundant supply of labor in the country, their methods of holding and profiting by it are likely to defeat themselves.

A dispatch from Atlanta tells of the cooperation of Negro leaders and white economists to check the emigration. Persuasion is used in part; the Negro is told that no permanent gain awaits him in the North where he will find the colder climate a hardship. But, this failing, resort is made to force. Municipalities have passed ordinances to hamper northern recruiting agents. Prohibitive license fees have been imposed upon them. Old laws are scanned in the effort to keep the Negro for the services of the South. So far only trivial and local success has resulted.

Cannot the South see that there are more than material rewards that draw the colored people North? Is it blind to the effect of its own treatment of the Negro? Does it not understand the desire of the enfranchised men for the right to be free men with a voice in the conduct of their own affairs? Can it not appreciate the feeling aroused by the unjustifiable lynchings and other discriminations against the colored people? 

That the South has a problem to solve nobody can deny, but force has never yet helped in its solution and there is no chance that it ever will. What does it offer the Negro except a warm climate, a familiar habitat and an indolent life? Has it given him a chance to get ahead? If he gets ahead by his own efforts, does it offer him a man's place in his town or state? Or does it discourage him by holding constantly before his eyes an assertion of his hopeless inferiority?

It is not to be denied that there are scattered manifestations of the spirit of helpfulness that display real progress. The feeling in the South against effective enfranchisement of the Negro race comes back, of course, to the preponderance of colored blood that would control the government. On the other hand, a race is only a menace in so far as it is compelled to act and think like a race and as a unit rather than as independent individuals. With all that has gone before, the possibility for the South of the Negro getting into such a position, or being permitted to get into it, is hopeful only through a slow evolution in which prejudice may die down. That is, if the Negro is to stay there in bulk. But if he is to emigrate and spread himself over the country he may disappear as a race problem. As a minority in different places neither race solidarity nor race prejudice might be a factor in preventing either enfranchisement or development. Of course, if this happened the South might have to look for white emigrants to make up the resulting deficiency in labor supply, but it is at least arguable that by its present attitude the South is both creating a race problem which it dreads, and trying to hold on to it.

Financial America believes:

Whether Negroes will be more likely to remain in the South if better educational facilities are provided them is a question apart from the undoubted wisdom of providing these facilities. President Edward T. Ware, of Atlanta University, who is seeking to raise an endowment fund of five hundred thousand dollars for this institution, is reported as saying that if the Negroes are to remain in the South they must be educated.
It is certain that as the idea of the advantages of education grows among the Negroes the tendency will be to leave the South if educational facilities are more nearly adequate and more readily available elsewhere. But it is also to be remembered that as the education of the blacks progresses there will also be an increasing inclination to gain larger advantages of occupation. The South is developing rapidly in the magnitude and range of its industries