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32  THE CRISIS

customs has not proved a cure-all for revolutions. The constant stream of American merchants, school teachers and office holders returning to the United States from Puerto Rico in the summer has given an air of prosperity to that island, but has not stilled the cry of woe of the peasant who bears the yoke of the rich absentee landlord and capitalist. Neither Santo Domingo nor Puerto Rico is distinctively a black man's country. Can the Haitians accept with equanimity the prospect of paying the salary of some "deserving democrat" who may have come from the Texas town where all the inhabitants turned out last month to make a holiday spectacle of the burning alive of a black man merely accused of murder?

Whatever may be the solution of Haiti's difficulties, it is certain that the people will not give their support to a government which even thinks of selling the Haitian's birthright of liberty, licentious as it may be, for the promise of a mess of American pottage. To one who sees the Black Republic with eyes other than those of Spenser St, John and the incorrigibly negrophobe editors of some of the American papers, foreign assistance in financial and other governmental problems could best be assured by the formation of a commission comprising nationals of the European powers having interests in Haiti and, as a matter of courtesy rather than necessity, delegates of the A. B. C. powers. If the United States could call into being such a commission and appoint a qualified representative to that body, some arrangement might be reached for the security of an orderly development of the Haitian people. But if they must accept enforced subjection to some foreign power, rather than submit to a nation controlled by a press which remains callous in the presence of horrors in Texas and Georgia while vociferously condemning German atrocities and Haitian savagery, the Haitians would sooner trust to the tender mercies of Count Reventlow, the Kaiser and Kultur. J.C.

TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE
May I venture earnestly to raise a question over the action of our government in Hayti, already unfortunately attended with bloodshed? I am one of those who were never satisfied that the Roosevelt administration had any right to establish a financial protectorate, with its attendant responsibilities, in Santo Domingo. I am surprised that a Democratic administration should follow Mr. Roosevelt's autocratic example, and seek to confirm another precedent of the same seriously questionable character. In neither case had the enterprise had any constitutional sanction, even of a previous vote by the Senate. Neither has there been opportunity for suitable discussion so as to determine the will of the people. It looks now as if the United States were not welcome to the Haytian people. We are actually engaged in war with them compelling our soldiers to lose their lives in subduing those who doubtless seem to themselves to be defending their liberties. Is not this course similar to German or Russian, or British 'Order in Council' by which Empire has been arbitrarily extended, without the honest consent of either party in the transaction? You know how easily 'in the case of protectorates over uncivilized or half-civilized countries a development is inevitable: control quickly hardens into conquest.' Does the United States meditate the conquest of Hayti?
"Yours with high respect 
"Charles F. Dole."


NATIONAL ASS'N FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE
THE JIM CROW CAR
Some time ago the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People took up the question of Jim Crow cars with Mr. Louis Brandeis of Interstate Commerce Commission and was advised by him that the Commission would not consider a general statement of conditions but only specific cases of discrimination brought in proper legal form. They would, however, review in conjunction with these cases, evidence gathered by a reliable investigator.

Since then the Association has practically perfected a case which will be described in later issues of The Crisis and is now prepared to publish the material collected by its investigator, Prof. Montgomery Gregory of Howard University who generously volunteered his services. Prof. Gregory's itinerary included Columbia and Sumter, S. C.; Augusta, Tennille, Savannah, Waycross, Columbus, La Grange and Atlanta, Ga; Birmingham, Opelika, Tuskegee, Montgomery, Selma and Uniontown, Ala; Meriden, Miss.; New Orleans, La.; and Chattanooga Tenn.; and his investigations covered the following railroads: The Southern, Seaboard, Atlantic Coast Line, Augusta Southern, Central of Georgia, Louisville and Nashville, Queen and Crescent, West Point, Alabama and Great Southern, and a number of smaller lines. A full report of his trip is now being prepared by Prof. Gregory and will be published in succeeding issues of The Crisis. He has summarized his report as follows: 
The laws provided for equal accommodations for the passengers of both races, but the following conditions demonstrate that they are dead letters on the statute books:
1. Accommodations are not equal. The colored coaches are antiquated wooden cars which are often discarded white coaches.
2. Reservations for colored passengers are inadequate, the coaches often being dangerously overcrowded.
3. Sanitary conditions on colored coaches are indecent. The coaches are generally filthy. In some cases there is but one toilet for both men and women and that often in a foul condition.
4. White officials (conductors and brakemen) are often objectionable and insulting to colored passengers. They use the colored coach as dressing and lounging room and in some cases as a smoking room. 
5. "Butchers" or vendors use the Jim Crow coach as a storeroom for their cases of fruit, candy, cigars, soft drinks and magazines. They are frequently familiar and insulting in their manner to colored passengers.
6. White passengers have free access to the colored coach. They pass through it at will, lounge in it, and in many cases smoke in the presence of women and insult them.
7. Accommodations for long-distance colored passengers are disgraceful. Berths in Pullman cars cannot be secured except in rare cases so that the colored passenger must sit up all night in the unsanitary and uncomfortable Jim Crow coach. He may not even wash his face, for washing accommodations are rarely found. If he is hungry he must starve for he cannot enter the diner or eat at the counters of railway restaurants. Often he cannot even purchase food there to take away and eat because there is no time to serve him as white folks must come first. 

These are the conditions that the colored man in this country is forced to meet daily while he pays the same fare as the white man. None of the many injustices inflicted upon the color man is as harsh and as cruel as that of the Jim Crow car system. Other phases of race prejudice and hostility he may evade