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182 THE CRISIS and there will be great need of labor-a need as acute, if not more so, than now, when the Negro exodus is proving economically serious. But it is not clear whether a higher degree of education among the Negroes will find the latter willing to accept a continuance of the present sharp line drawn in the South between the races in all activities of life. Increase a man's education and, no matter what his color, he will be less content to be held down to a low social and business status and to a sharp definition of relationship with others of the human race. This is, of course, not an argument against the education of the Negro; it is simply calling attention to a situation which may possibly arise. It is our belief that in education lies the solution of the Negro problem, but the solution of the problem for the South will not likely come through increased contentment to the Negro because of better local educational advantages. It will come for the South rather through an infiltration of foreign labor into that region which will have the effect of making the South more independent of Negro labor and tend, together with the spirit of ambition promoted by education, to distribute the Negro population throughout the country. We end the story of the Negroes Hegira with a pleasant, if patronizing, picture from the Atlanta Constitution of a good Negro community in the South: "The Early County fair has accomplished big things for the entire section of the state, but perhaps the very biggest thing it has done was to show the Negroes what great opportunities are theirs right here at their very doors." This is from a news article appearing elsewhere in the Constitution. It is the story of progress as shown in the industrial prosperity of the worthy, law-abiding Negroes of that section; it is a story of self-help and co-operation of the white citizens of that country in the movement for the uplift of the Negro population. The county fair is thrown open to them; what they have done and are doing, educationally and industrially, is given hearty home recognition and more than state-wide advertisement; this, as their due, and for their encouragement in every effort to attain a higher plane of citizenship. There is where their white friends stand by them and lend the helping hand. These Negroes, with their own schools, on the most practical lines; with their local farmers' conferences; their women's organization to study cooking and canning problems, realize that they must live out their lives in that section; that their homes and best interests are there, and that their prosperity goes hand in hand with good citizenship. They know that these are inseparable. So they work for the uplift of the community and in that work they are receiving the cordial co-operation of their white neighbors. This is not only highly creditable to all concerned within the borders of a county, but it is a far-reaching lesson--a text which preaches its own sermon as to the settlement of the "Negro problem" in the South. In short, it does away with problems; for there can be none where such a mutually helpful state of affairs exists. "The white people of the county are almost as proud of the Negroes' exhibit as are the Negroes themselves." The sentiment of these Early County Negroes is: "We not have to go away from home and ask for entrance at alien industrial gates: The land of Promise and Plenty is here 'at home' among the people who know and understand us best, and here we are content to toil, doing what we can for own advancement and that of the community whose industrial interests are identical with ours. We do not need to go away from home!" They try to help themselves and their hands are upheld; their interests protected; they read aright the signs on the road to better citizenship; the fact that they respect themselves commands respect. They are prosperous and happy! POLITICS SENATOR PENROSE'S bill to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, the Pittsburgh Courier, a northern colored paper, fears is a hoax: United States Senator Boies Penrose introduced in the Senate the other day a bill which, according to his statements, is intended to put into force the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution and to secure to the Negro his full political rights in the southern states. The bill, if enacted into law, is a good thing. But coming as it does at this time when the Republican party is practically "down and out" sounds like a hoax. We have been without our rights in the South for many years, and we have been urging some relief for many years, but no Penrose has come to the rescue. We are slow now to believe that the senior senator from Pennsylvania has us so much at heart as he has the rejuvination [[rejuvenation]] of the Republican part. We hope he is actuated by motives which have no color of suspicion, but our past experiences with the South and the United States Senate make us hesitate to believe that Mr. Penrose is championing our cause with any degree of sincerity. . . . If the senator is teasing his black constituents in Pennsylvania, he need not go to such extremes. He knows that he owes his political beginning to the black voters of Philadelphia. Has he waited all these THE LOOKING GLASS 183 years to offer them reward? Or can he imagine that by his belated bill he may yet hold them in line to accomplish his designs on future control of Pennsylvania? In either case, he must know he is mistaken. We know as well as does the senator that he may introduce any bill he pleases, but unless he can summons a majority in the Congress, his efforts are futile. Finally, if the Republican party has at last seen the necessity of giving back to the Negro his political rights, so long withheld, and things that this is the session most suited to the accomplishment of such a task, we hope the party all the success in the world. God knows we have been sufficiently loyal to warrant anything the party can do in the way of making the Federal amendments effective. Our fear is that the whole thing is a hoax. The Newark, N. J., Evening Star says: With the submission to Congress of the bill to insure legal voting in the South, President Wilson and his newspaper supports are to be given a notable opportunity for striking proof of the sincerity of their vociferous declarations for the "new freedom" and "equal rights and equal justice for all men." There will, perhaps, be vigorous partisan effort to evade the issue, but it has been raised and it must be faced. No man in all the nation can shut his eyes to the rank injustice that has been the share of the colored voters of the South since the days of the reconstruction. Every one knows that the southern states have made Negro suffrage a mockery and an empty phrase. And every one must know, before the present "force" bill is disposed of, whether the President's "new freedom" is to apply only where his party may secure votes and whether the "equal justice" for which his newspaper partisans have screamed is to be dealt out only to those who can spend pennies for daily editions. . . . It is high time that the administration redeem its pledges of sainted devotion to the cause of equal rights and equal opportunity for all men. And if it is to refuse so to redeem them, it is indeed high time that the mask of pretense be stripped from the President and the press which vouches for him. There isn't any color line in the Constitution of the United States. There was none in the gentle philosophy of Abraham Lincoln. And there can be none in the doctrine of the "new freedom" and equal rights for every man if that doctrine is anything but partisan buncombe and yellow journalistic chatter. The Times, Glens Falls, New York, tells us: You can make a campaign in Dakota or Nebraska or in Montana or Kansas, but you cannot make a campaign in the old South, in the Confederate states as they were. One of two things out to be done. These southern states out to be deprived of a large number of electoral votes. They have disfranchised the Negro by one process or another; yet the Negro is counted as a voter and a man in the distribution of members of congress and members of the electoral college. The South ought not to have the benefit of the Negro in making up their representation in congress, or else they ought not have power to disfranchise him. The entire civilized world knows of these conditions and knows that the American people have not had the courage to straighten the matter out by doing justice. If the South disfranchises the Negro, the South ought to bear the consequence of his loss in representation. Every injustice which is tolerated and not settled as soon as it is discovered becomes a danger the republic. The South, however, is not distributed and gives us the following account of how easy it would be for the Negro to enter southern politics. The Macon, Ga., Telegraph says: Every year for election of President the ultra Republican papers get insane over the electoral vote of the South, which goes into the electoral college with 132 vote. . . . Any Negro who can read the Constitution--not construe--but just read it, can vote. Any one owning forty acres of land whether he can read or not, can vote; any one owning $500 worth of real estate can vote, whether he can read or not, and there is that omnibus clause--any one of good character can vote whether he can read or not. The trouble in the way is this: the Republican party dropped the Negro, and the Negro lacked leadership and organization. Negroes can have a primary of their own, but they have not organized. The white voters organized under a white primary and this eliminated the Negro. And that same white primary is now our only protection. So, since the decision of the United States Supreme Court, and the State laws, even constitutional, are so loose and so liberal that almost any Negro can vote, the threat to cut down southern representation on account of the Negro's indifference to politics, is entirely out of order. NEGRO ACHIEVEMENT THE December Modern Review, printed at Calcutta, India, has an article on "Fifty Years of Negro-American Achievement." The writer, St. Nihal Singh, compares the progress of the Negro with the progress of the Hindoo, to the advantage of the former: The rise in the percentage of literacy among the Negro-Americans during the last
