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24     The Crisis

equator. Today we find a critical situation. The Europeans are not holding their own. The blacks are slowly pushing them out. The Europeans are not in danger in Cape Colony, but farther north it is an open question what will become of them. The blacks not only work more cheaply than is possible for the whites, but also more industriously. The result is that today about ten per cent of the white European population is reckoned as 'poor whites'-a shiftless set of people, living from hand to mouth, untrustworthy, and a danger to the whole community....

"A more striking case than that of South Africa is found in the Bahamas. ... From the beginning the Bahamas have always suffered from 'hard luck.' Part of the luck is due to isolation and part to natural disasters, but lack of energy on the part of the people appears to be a still more important factor. I have talked about it with scores of persons, both islanders of the more intelligent sort and Europeans who have lived there a term of years. Almost without exception they say, 'This climate is very beautiful and healthful, and we like it, but somehow we can't work as you people do in the States. Even in Florida it is better than it is here. Don't you believe it? Try living here a year or two, and you'll be as lazy as we are.'" -Professor Ellsworth Huntington in Popular Science Monthly.

"THE announcement that a Negro has enlisted in the Welsh Guards recalls the days when many of our regiments had black bandsmen. These were first attached to the army in 1783, owing to one of the Guard's bands having refused in a body to play at an entertainment organized by the officers. As none of the men was attested they could not be punished for insubordination, so the officers petitioned the Duke of York, then Commander-in-Chief, that bandsmen should in future be made subject to military law. The Duke would not agree to this, but he brought over from Hanover for the Guards a complete German military band, which included Negro players for the bass drum, cymbals, and triangles. Nearly every regiment in the service hastened to reorganize its band, engaging colored performers for all percussion instruments. Down to 1841 the band of the Scots Guards included a Negro musician."-London Chronicle.

"PLANS are being laid for the introduction of legislation at the next session of Congress which will provide for the limiting of the right of franchise. The real object of the bill is the simplification of the handling of the Negro question throughout the country. It is hoped to make this the opening wedge for disfranchisement of most Negroes, the uneducated element of foreign extraction and illiterates in general. 

"There are several agencies in Washington working on the Negro problem. The more radical faction hopes to perfect a plan whereby all Negroes in America may be returned to Africa. Others are convinced that such a plan is entirely impracticable and refuse to give their support to the movement having this objective."-Paul Wooten in New Orleans Times-Picayune.

"THE first day's inquiry by the Federal Industrial Commission disclosed interesting details about the wages of Pullman porters and the regulations of the company touching their relation to the public. It must seem rather like piling it on to insist that employes paid only $27.50 a month must look pleasant, but since 'we can get all the men we want' at that rate perhaps the wearer of the uniform should perhaps consider himself lucky. The warning against treating the passengers with haughty condecension, however, shows an intimate acquaintance with the service. Not less interesting is the revelation that porters are forbidden to quote the company's rules for refusing certain forbidden services, but are instructed to explain more euphoniously that such matters are out of their 'jurisdiction.'

"The manager refused to say that the wages were estimated with the expectation that the traveling public would make up the deficiency but admitted that in practice a few more dollars were paid to less experienced porters on cars where there were less perquisites."-Pittsburgh Despatch. 


EDITORIAL

WE COME OF AGE

FIVE years ago this month the first number of THE CRISIS was issued. It was a very modest little edition consisting of one thousand copies with twenty pages each. The total cost was fifty dollars. This issue of THE CRISIS consists of 35,000 copies of fifty-two pages each and will cost about two thousand dollars. Between these two boundaries lies, as one may well believe, a history of struggle, of hope and fear, of apprehension and triumph. From the beginning THE CRISIS has borne all of its expenses of publication and paid all salaries except that the editor. Last year, when the stringency due to the war put the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in serious difficulties, THE CRISIS assumed half the salary of the editor who had hitherto been paid wholly by the Association. Today, on our Fifth Birthday, we are able to announce with some pride and with genuine satisfaction that at the beginning of our fiscal year, January 1, 1916, THE CRISIS will become a self-supporting business institution, paying not only all expenses of publication but the full salary of the editor. This is no small accomplishment for the comparatively short period of time and we have to thank first of all not ourselves, but our readers in every state in this Union and in the lands oversea. 

THE CRISIS AND THE N.A.A.C.P.

MUCH misapprehension has existed in the public mind as to the relation between THE CRISIS and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. This ought not to exist for that relation is and always has been quite clear. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the legal owner of THE CRISIS and THE CRISIS is its official organ. The circumstances, however, surrounding the founding of this magazine make certain explanations periodically necessary.  Most people assume that a rich and powerful association furnished the funds to publish a magazine and that consequently THE CRISIS is a sort of subsidized organ which is independent of the ordinary commercial chances of a periodical. This is far from the truth. The National Association is not rich and has never expended a single cent for the publication of THE CRISIS. This is through no fault of its own. It would have been glad to do so but it has had no funds for this purpose. It did, however, from the very beginning recognize that publicity was necessary for its propaganda; publicity in the first place among colored people in order that its work and ideals might not be persistently misunderstood and misrepresented as was the case with the Niagara Movement; publicity also among the general citizenship of the