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282 THE CRISIS ...Southern States were admitted back into the Union, the firs thing necessary was good government-one that would redeem the public credit, establish free schools, and bring about law and order generally. To do this, it was necessary to keep that class of sorry white men out of office. This could not be in those districts where the Negroes were largely in the majority, and their votes counted. Hence in those districts riots and bloodshed on election days were too often common, and race antagonism was being engendered. Such a condition had to be changed, or it is hard to tell where we would have drifted to. This disfranchisement of the Negroes was the only solution to the problem." This is history with a vengeance. Every child knows that free public schools were forced on the bourbon South by Negro votes. As B.G. Brawley writes to the Dail: "Is it not about time that a stop should be put to these old slurs and slanders on Negro? Simple historical accuracy to-day demands that the facts of Reconstruction be studied without prejudice and with a reasonable amount of care. No situation that has ever arisen in American history has received more gross exaggeration than the tale of the ex-salve's shortcomings when he was given a chance in the political life of the nation. Why? Because it is the popular thing to give the Negro a kick. As a matter of fact the Negro was for the most part simply the victim of the greed of men far more criminal and at the time more capable than himself. Major John R. Lynch has recently show us in 'The Facts of Reconstruction' (issued by the Neale Publishing Co., New York) that in Mississippi, where the Negroes reached the highest political power, they at no time had more than thirty-four out of the 140 members of the Legislature; but that they took part in those governments which put the southern States in harmony with the nation and that they helped to plan and organize the present southern common school system. In view of such fats as these, current and popular exaggeration would at least seem to be in need of modification." SOCIAL EQUALITY Intermarriage The Public of June 19 was a sort of symposium on the Negro. In a review of Mecklin's "Democracy and Race Friction": "There is nothing particularly original in the book, either in idea or expression. The basis of social solidarity, he explains, is the common instincts given rational interpretation and direction in group life. Different races through separation and natural selection have educated different instincts. So the Negro is debarred by the white man from complete social solidarity-which carried out must mean intermarriage. 'To what extent this is based upon unreasoning prejudice and what extent it is due to an instinctive and justifiable effort to safeguard the social heritage of the white,' the author is 'not concerned to say' in his first chapter. Chapters II and III discuss 'race traits' at great length. The Negro is a child, a member of a backward race and should not be left just to 'grow'; he should be tutelage. But... [[photo]] Alabama 282 OPINION ...this chance he lost when emancipation separated him from the white man's affection and civilizing influence. The Social Heritage of Negro, described in Chapter IV, is a very black background indeed, as a matter of fact so wholly unsympathetic as to make it essentially untrue. To quote as authority, for instance, the assertion that among savages there is 'no such thing as love, merely sex instinct,' is to fling an insulting untruth into the face of humanity." Unity, of Chicago, says of the proposed intermarriage bill in Congress: "The law that is needed in the District of Columbia and throughout the South is one that would hold a white man responsible for his child, whether the mother be black or white. Intermarriage between the races, sanctified by religion and enforced by the law, is a thousand times less degrading and dehumanizing than the present situation, which results in the continuous and, according to some good authorities, increasing stream of mulatto children born into the world." [[photo]] OHIO "SCIENCE" AND RACE A CHANGE OF FRONT Robert H. Lowie, the anthropologist, reviews "Some Recent Expressions on Racial Inferiority" in the September New Review and especially takes up the writings of Professor Eugene Fischer, of Germany: "The question remains, whether it is not quite enough for any race to be able to do average work in this workaday world of ours. Granting, for the sake of argument, that Caucasians will have a monopoly of exceptional achievement, the greater part of all labor must still devolve on the men of medium ability, and if it be admitted, as Fischer does admit, that the average ability of whites and of colored races is about on a level, it will make no practical difference to civilization whether the laborers are white or colored. In other words, on rational grounds, based on the needs of humanity, there would be no reason for the artificial restriction of the activities of any race. It may be well to add that the greater native variability of the white race is not an established fact, but an hypothesis offered to account for differences in achievement. Such differences, however, are in so many cases due to specific historical conditions that they hypothesis is far from convincing. We should like to have further data, based on objective investigations, that shall not ignore such elementary statistical considerations as the relative numbers of the populations compared. "In conclusion, we may call attention to an interesting parallel. Not long ago anti-feminists asserted an inferior average endowment of women as compared with men; now the emphasis is rather on the alleged difference in variability. Race-theorists are apparently undergoing a similar transformation. Instead of denying to the colored races the possession of an approximately equal degree of average intelligence, they are entrenching themselves behind the convenient dogma of greater Caucasian variability."
