welcome that negro into his family or hold out to him the tiniest tip of social amalgamation, for he believes that the mingling of a higher race with a lower one to be an abomination unto the Lord. Around this pitiful point future wars and causes of war must lie.'

Mrs. Murphy only repeats what Mr. A. H. Stephens said forty-four years ago and Governor Blanchard said this year. Mr. Stephens, speaking as Vice-President of the Confederate States, declared that the Confederacy 'rested upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the 'white man... that subordination to the superior race is his 'natural and moral condition.' These words, spoken more than forty years ago, express the faith of the white Southerner of to-day. Mr. Blanchard, the newly-elected Governor of Louisiana, a man whose culture and charm of manner would render him an ornament of any society, in his inaugural address of last May strongly denounced lynching. He then proceeded to say that a negro is a man and a citizen,' and advocated his education, mainly agricultural and industrial.' He continues: 'No approach towards social equality or social ' recognition will ever be tolerated in Louisiana. Separate schools, separate churches, separate cars, separate places of ' entertainment will be enforced. Racial distinction in its 'integrity must be preserved.'

6

Even Socialists cannot afford to run counter to the overwhelming sentiment of the South on this question. Socialism demands absolute equality in politics and in the enjoyment of public benefits. Yet Socialists in their State Convention, held in September 1903 in New Orleans, demanded complete separation of whites and blacks into distinct and different communities. It is needless to say that such a concession to caste feeling is incompatible with the fundamental idea of equality, but even a theorist cannot stand outside or aloof from his environment.

The Southern white has lost all powers of discrimination between black and black. He only discriminates between white and black. In that way he loses the services of many an excellent negro, and many a negro, who in happier surroundings would have done well, goes to the bad. It is not so in the North. Recently on New York docks an English traveller employed three porters, one of whom was black and two white. He of a purpose handed a dollar to the black porter and told him to divide it with his white colleagues. The white porters saw what was being done, and assented. This little incident would be almost impossible down South. A Southern employer of labour wished to start a base-ball

club for all his employees, black and white. His white workmen would not hear of it. At play, when the white is his own master, he rejects all companionship with the coloured man; at work he avoids meeting him, so far as is possible. In all parts of the States trade-unionism endeavours to prevent the negro working alongside the white man. The caste barometer rises higher every year. Before emancipation the careful separation of white and coloured men did not exist, because it was not then thought necessary. Nearly all the blacks were slaves, and if they travelled at all, they accompanied their masters. Now, if you are travelling South and a respectable coloured man is in your carriage, when you enter a Southern State, he must descend and mount another car specially set apart for negroes. In the tramcars of the South two seats are reserved for our coloured patrons.' However crowded may be the portion of the car allotted to whites, and however empty the coloured benches, no white man will sit down by the side of a negro, or even on a bench where a negro is entitled to sit. This is not due to respect for the law, but to a feeling not quite so laudable. A chemist will refuse to supply-say an ice-cream-to a respectable man, simply and solely because he fears that he would lose his white customers if he were seen supplying a coloured man. Would that the black boycot were confined to the sale of ice-creams!

The minority which in each of the Confederate States remained during the war faithful to the Union and opposed to Secession was composed of white men only. After the war this minority joined hands with the majority in each State in their determination to keep the Government in the hands of the whites. There can be no question that the whites of the Southern States would by a unanimous vote take the direct and straightforward course of passing a law which required every elector to be white. The only obstacle to such a course is the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments of the Constitution. Senator Carmack of Tennessee gave notice in 1903 of his intention to bring in a bill to repeal these amendments. Nothing came of the proposed bill, but Senator Carmack was acclaimed as a statesman by the unanimous voice of the white South. As the Picayune,' the ably edited paper of New Orleans, expressed it: the enfranchisement of the negro has been the cause probably of ' as much loss of life and property and as much suffering as 'the war itself.' While a large proportion of the people of

the North admit that the enfranchisement of the former slave immediately after the war was a mistake, they are not prepared to repeal the amendments and thus stultify themselves in the eyes of the civilised world.

According to the Constitution of the United States representation of each State in Congress is to depend on the number of electors of each State. Thus Montana, though it has the same representation in the Senate as New York, in Congress is represented by one member, while New York has thirty-seven members. Were a Southern State, by refusing the franchise to the negro to reduce its electorate by one half, the fourteenth amendment authorises a proportionate reduction of its representation in Congress. The Southern States would regard any such reduction of their votes as an infringement of their State rights.

After the war the representation of the Southern States in Congress and in Presidential elections was raised by the Republican party, but every Southern State now uses this increase of votes against that party. Therefore the representation increased by the Republicans to cover the negroes is by the suppression of the coloured vote monopolised by the Democrats or whites of the South. Never in politics has an engineer been more completely hoisted by his own petard.

The Southerner remembers the time when (in negro phrase) the bottom rail was on top.' He can never forget the days of carpet-bag rule. Imagine a County Council chamber filled with negroes, unable to read or write, with their feet on their desks and cigars in their mouths, raising questions of privilege, at the rate of forty per day, and voting up the taxes which whites had to pay, and running up State debts, which in many cases had almost of necessity to be subsequently repudiated. If you add to this that everything worn, used, or smoked by these legislators probably came out of the pockets of the taxpayer, you have a picture neither pleasant to contemplate nor likely to fade from the memory. Senator Sumner (who represented Lincoln's idea of a bishop, and Lincoln did not mean this as praise) declared in the debate upon the suffrage for the district of Columbia, It will not be enough if you give the 'suffrage to negroes who read and write; you will not in this way acquire the voting force which you need there for the protection of Unionists whether black or white.'

6

The coloured man has now been free for forty years, and in the opinion of the average Southern white has made

no progress whatsoever. This statement of the case is absolutely incorrect. It is true that the number of negroes who have risen to any eminence in public affairs is small. The following names might be mentioned. William Lewis of Louisiana, an officer in a coloured regiment; the late Blanche K. Bruce, United States Senator and afterwards the Registrar of the Treasury, a man of intelligence and integrity; Hiram R. Revels and J. R. Lynch, both Senators for Mississippi; Joseph F. Rainey, the first coloured member of the United States House of Representatives; among men of letters, Mr. P. Laurence Dunbar, Mr. Chesnutt, and Professor Du Bois; Mr. Booker T. Washington, the great educationist, and the late Frederick Douglass, United States Minister at Hayti. This famous orator fell into disfavour with his own race after his marriage to a white lady. Douglass married his second wife in the district of Columbia at a time when such a marriage was not legally criminal. The fact that a negro, who marries a white, instantly loses caste with his own community shows how groundless are the fears of the Southerners, who talk of the amalgamation of the white and black races as an awful possibility. Those who judge the condition of the negro solely by his political status are blind to the great progress made by many of that race commercially. In Georgia and Tennessee many negroes are accumulating property. It would be well if this were the case in every State.

In ante-bellum days the teaching of the blacks, whether they be 'bond or free,' was forbidden by law in the South. Negro education was begun in 1865 by the Freedman's Bureau. In 1900 the sum of six millions of dollars was expended on the separate coloured schools of the South. All attempts to eject the negro from his schools have hitherto failed, but the fact that such attempts should have been made is not creditable. In 1903 a Bill appropriating 3,500l. to a negro school was passed in the House of Representatives for Alabama by 41 to 39, after a sharp debate on the colour question. Mr. Booker Washington's school at Tuskegee was bitterly denounced by one member, but Mr. Verner had the courage to say, 'There is 'not a man upon the floor of this House that has not got 'money from the sweat of the negro's brow, who worked ' and toiled for him.'

The truth is the South needs the negro, and must retain him. The United States is a country of almost boundless wealth, and if the public mind were really satisfied of two

things, first, that the negro was willing to go, and that the South wished him to go, the transportation of six millions or more of negroes to Africa, Porto Rico, and the Philippines would only be a matter of time and finance. But the negro does not wish to go, and the South does not wish him to go. There is no doubt that the refusal of white men in the South to work with coloured men is a very real difficulty, but this difficulty is not lessened but magnified by appeals to colour-passion. Our own wish is that the whites of the Southern States were a little colour-blind. Southern gentlemen often speak of how during the war their fathers would join the Confederate army and leave their wives and daughters on their plantations alone in the midst of negroes and without white men. They refer with gratitude to the manner in which their slaves proved worthy of the trust reposed in them. The two following stories taken down from the mouths of eye-witnesses throw light on the negro character, and as they have not yet appeared in print, they may be given here.

In ante-bellum days a slave was equal to three fifths of a man from an electoral point of view. A white with five hundred blacks had three hundred votes in addition to his own. He also had to pay all fines incurred by his slaves. A slave of a Southern lady was continually being fined, the fines being paid by his mistress. If you make me pay another 'fine, I shall have to sell you,' she said to her slave. He did get into another scrape and the mistress told him she was going to sell him, but to a master who would be kind to him. The slave replied that if sold he would run away. He was sold and ran away. The mistress naturally thought that she would never see the runaway again. He enlisted in the Federal army, marched south, reached the town where his former mistress lived, stood as sentinel over her house, and so long as his regiment remained in that town guarded her from all harm.

Here is another story which proves that, even under the rule of the carpet-bagger, the negro (if not misled by white men) has good instincts. Two young Democrats, who have since reached the United States Senate and the State Bench, were prosecuting a negro for perjury. There was no doubt about the prisoner's guilt, but he was to be tried by a jury of negroes and by a judge who was a tool of the carpet-baggers. The jury followed the evidence and found their fellow-colour-man guilty. 'What!' exclaimed the white judge, 'you find the defendant guilty!' He then