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THE NEGRO 
 
 AND 
 
 THE NATION 
 
 BY 
 
 «& 
 
 HUBERT H. HARRISON 
 
 Cosmo- Advocate Publishing Co. 
 
 2305 Seventh Avenue 
 
 New York 
 
 ♦ •* 
 

 PREFACE 
 
 .6 I 
 
 ./yz 2 
 
 This little book is made up of articles contributed 
 several years ago to radical newspapers and magazines 
 like The Call, The Truth-Seeker, Zukunft, and The Inter- 
 national Socialist Review. They are re-published in this 
 form, partly to preserve a portion of the author's early 
 work, but mainly because they help to throw into strong 
 relief the present situation of the Negro in present day 
 America, and to show how that situation re-acts upon the 
 mind of the Negro. That is the great need of the Negro 
 at this time. 
 
 Some time in the near future I hope to write a little 
 book on the New Negro which will set forth the aims and 
 ideals of the new Manhood Movement among American 
 Negroes rich has grown out of the international crusade 
 "for democracy — for the right of those* who submit to 
 authority to have A VOICE in their own government" — 
 as President Wilson so sincerely puts it. 
 
 Because I wish this Utile book to have as large a 
 circulation as possible among Negroes and white people, 
 I have preferred publication at a popular price to the 
 doubtful advantage of having a prominent publisher's 
 name at the foot of the title-page. The present edition 
 consists of five thousand copies^ When it is sold off a 
 second edition Avill be issued. & 
 
 HUBERT H. HARRISON 
 New York, August, 1917. 
 
 A- AUG 1? «» 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 Providence, according to Mr. Kipling, has been 
 pleased to place upon the white man's shoulders 
 the tremendous burden of regulating the atiairs ot 
 men of all other colors, who, for the purpose of his 
 argument, are backward and undeveloped— halt 
 devil and half child." When one considers that of the 
 sixteen hundred million people living upon this 
 earth, more than twelve hundred million are col- 
 ored, this seems a truly staggering burden. 
 
 But it does not seem to have ocurred to the 
 proponents of this pleasant doctrine that the shoe 
 may be upon the other foot so far as the other 
 twelve hundred million are concerned. It is easy to 
 maintain an ex parte argument, and as long as we 
 do not ask the other side to state their case our 
 own arguments will appear not only convincing but 
 conclusive. But in the court of common sense this 
 method is not generally allowed .ind a case is not 
 considered closed until both parties have been heard 
 from. 
 
 I have no doubt but that the colored peoples of 
 
 NOTE: This article and the next were contributed 
 to the International Socialist Review in 1912 while the 
 author was a member of the Socialist Party. He has since 
 left it (but has joined no other party) partly because, 
 holding as he does by the American doctrine of "Race 
 First," he wished to put himself in a position to wont 
 among his people along lines of hi3 own choosing. 
 
 n 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 the world will have a word or two to say in their 
 own defense. In this article I propose to put the 
 case of the black man in America, not by any elab- 
 orate arguments, but by the presentation of certain 
 facts which will probably speak for themselves. 
 
 I am not speaking here of the evidences of Ne- 
 gro advancement, nor even making a plea for 
 justice. I wish merely to draw attention to certain 
 pitiful facts. This is all that is necessary — at pres- 
 ent. For I believe that those facts will furnish such 
 a damning indictment of the Negro's American 
 over-lord as must open the eyes of the world. The 
 sum total of these facts and of what they suggest 
 constitute a portion of the black man's burden in 
 America. Not all of it, to be sure, but quite enough 
 to make one understand what the Negro problem 
 is. For the sake of clarity I shall arrange them in 
 four groups : political, economic, educational and 
 social. 
 
 I— Political. 
 
 In a republic all the adult male natives are citi- 
 zens. If in a given community some are citizens 
 and others subjects, then your community is not a 
 republic. It may call itself so. But that is another 
 matter. Now, the essence of citizenship is the ex- 
 ercise of political rights ; the right to a voice in 
 government, to say what shall be done with your 
 taxes, and the right to express your own needs. If 
 you are denied these rights you are not a citizen. 
 Well, in sixteen southern states there are over 
 eight million Negroes in this anomalous position. 
 
 4 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 Of course, many good people contend that they 
 may be unfit to exercise the right of suffrage. If 
 that is so, then who is fit to exercise it for them? 
 This argument covers a fundamental fallacy in our 
 prevailing conception of the function of the ballot. 
 We think that it is a privilege to be conferred for 
 "fitness." But it isn't. It is an instrument by which 
 the people of a community express their will, their 
 wants and their needs. And all those are entitled 
 to use it who have wants, needs and desires that 
 are worth consideration by society. If they are 
 not worth considering, then be brutally frank about 
 it; say so, and establish a protectorate over them. 
 But have done with the silly cant of "fitness." Peo- 
 ple vote to express their wants. Of course, they 
 will make mistakes. They are not gods. But they 
 have a right to make their own mistakes — the Ne- 
 groes. All other Americans have. That is why 
 they had Ruef in San Francisco, and still have 
 Murphy in New York. 
 
 But the American republic says, in effect, 
 that eight million Americans shall be political 
 serfs. Now, this might be effected with 
 decency by putting it into the national constitution. 
 But it isn't there. The national constitution has 
 two provisions expressly penalizing this very thing. 
 Yet the government — the President, Congress, the 
 Supreme Court — wink at it. This is not what we 
 call political decency. But, just the same, it is 
 done. How is it done? By fraud and force. Till- 
 man of South Carolina has told in the United States 
 
 5 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 Senate how the ballot was taken from Negroes by 
 shooting them— that is, by murder. But murder is 
 not necessary now. In certain southern states in 
 order to vote a man must have had a grandfather 
 who voted before Negroes were freed. In others, 
 he must be able to interpret and understand any 
 clause in the Constitution, and a white registration 
 official decides whether he does understand. And 
 the colored men of states like Virginia, North Car- 
 olina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississsippi and Louisi- 
 ana who meet such tests as those states provide 
 are disfranchised by the "white primary" system. 
 According to this system only those who vote at 
 the primaries can vote at the general elections. 
 But the South Carolina law provides that : "At this 
 election only white voters. . . and such Negroes 
 as voted the Democratic ticket in 1876 and have 
 voted the Democratic ticket continuously since. . 
 may vote." Of course, they know that none of 
 them voted that ticket in 1876 or have done so con- 
 tinuously since. In Georgia the law says that : "All 
 white electors who have duly registered . 
 irrespective of past political affiliations 
 are hereby declared qualified and are invited to par- 
 ticipate in said primary election. 
 
 Under the new suffrage law of Mr. 
 Booker T. Washington's state of Alabama. 
 Montgomery county, which has 53.000 Negroes, 
 disfranchises all but one hundred of them. 
 In 1908 the Democrats of West Virginia declared in 
 their platform that the United States Constitution 
 should be so amended so as to disfranchise all the 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 Negroes of the country. In December, 1910, the lower 
 house of the Texas legislature, by a vote of 51 to 
 34, instructed its federal Senators and Congress- 
 men to work for the repeal of the two amendments 
 to the national constitution which confer the right 
 of suffrage upon Negroes. But the funniest pro- 
 posal in that direction came from Georgia, where J. 
 J. Slade proposed an amendment to the state con- 
 situation to the effect that colored men should be 
 allowed to vote only if two chaste white women 
 would swear that they would trust them in the 
 dark. But, however it has been effected, whether 
 by force or fraud, by methods wise or otherwise, 
 the great bulk of the Negroes of America are po- 
 litical pariahs to-day. When it is remembered that 
 they once had the right of suffrage, that it was giv- 
 en them, not upon any principle of abstract right, 
 but as a means of protection from the organised 
 ill-will of their white neighbors, that that ill-will is 
 now more effectively organized and in possession 
 of all the powers of the state,— it can be seen at a 
 glance that this spells subjection certain and com- 
 plete. 
 
 Political rights are the only sure protection 
 and guarantee of economic rights. Everv fool 
 knows this. And yet, here in America to-day we 
 have people who tell Negroes that they ought not 
 to agitate for the ballot so long as they stilfhave a 
 chance to get work in the south. And Negro lead- 
 ers, hired by white capitalists who want cheap la- 
 
 7 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 bor-power, still continue to mislead both their own 
 and other people. The following facts will demon- 
 strate the economic insecurity of the Negro in the 
 South. 
 
 Up to a few years ago systematic peonage was 
 wide-spread in the South. Now, peonage is slavery 
 unsanctioned by law. In its essence it is more de- 
 grading than mere chattel slavery. Any one who 
 doubts this may look to modern Mexico for proofs. 
 This peonage in the South had reduced many black 
 men to slavery. And it isn't stamped out yet. It 
 was on January 3, 191 1, that the Supreme Court, in 
 the case of Alonzo Bailey, declared unconstitutional 
 the Alabama peonage law, which had been upheld 
 by the state Supreme Bench. About the same time 
 W. S. Harlan, a nephew of the late Justice Harlan 
 of the United States Supreme Court, andmanagerof 
 a great lumber and turpentine trust, doing business 
 in Florida and Alabama, was sentenced to eighteen 
 months' imprisonment and fined $5,000 for peon- 
 age. He has since been pardoned and had his fine 
 remitted by President Taft. 
 
 One of the forms of this second slavery is the 
 proprietary system, according to which the Negro 
 laborer or tenant farmer must get his supply at the 
 proprietor's store — and he gets it on credit. The 
 accounts are cooked so that the Negro is always in 
 debt to the modern slave-holder. Some of them 
 spend a life-time working out an original debt of 
 five or ten dollars. 
 
 But peonage isn't all. The professional south- 
 
 8 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 erner is always declaring that whatever else the 
 south may not do for the Negro it supplies him 
 with work. It does — when he works for some one 
 else. When he works for himself it is very often 
 different. For instance, there was the Georgia 
 Railroad strike of May, 1909. The Negro firemen 
 were getting from fifty cents to a dollar a day less 
 than the white firemen, they had to do menial work, 
 and could not be promoted to be engineers. They 
 could be promoted, however, to the best runs by 
 the rule of seniority. But the white firemen, who 
 had fixed the economic status of the black firemen, 
 objected to even this. They went on strike and 
 published a ukase to the people of the state in 
 which they said: "The white people of this state 
 refuse to accept social equality." 
 
 On the eighth of March, 1911, the firemen of the 
 Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific Railroad 
 did the same thing. In the attacks made on the 
 trains by them and their sympathizers many Negro 
 firemen were killed. Occurences of this sort are 
 increasing in frequency and they have a certain 
 tragic significance. It means that the Negro, 
 stripped of the ballot's protection, holds the right 
 to earn his bread at the mere sufferance of the 
 whites. It means that no black man shall hold a 
 job that any white man wants. And that, not in 
 the South alone. There is the case of the Pavers' 
 Union of New York City. The colored pavers, dur- 
 ing the panic of 1907, got behind in their dues. The 
 usual period granted expired on Friday. On Mon- 
 
 9 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 day they sent in their dues in full to the national 
 organization. The treasurer refused to receive the 
 dues and at once got out an injunction against 
 them. This injunction estopped them from ap- 
 pealing to the National Executive Committee or to 
 the national convention. They are still fighting 
 the case. 
 
 In January 191 1 the several walking del- 
 egates of the Painters' Plumbers', Masons,' Car- 
 penters', Steam Fitters', Plasterers' and Tinsmiths' 
 Unions compelled the Thompson & Starrett Con- 
 struction Co., the second largest firm of contract- 
 ors in New York, to get,, rid of the colored cold 
 painters who were engaged on the annex to 
 Stearns' department store. They would not admit 
 them to membership in the union ; they merely de- 
 clared that colored men would not be allowed to do 
 this work. And these are the same men who de- 
 nounce Negro strik-breakers. They want them 
 out of the unions and also want them to fight for 
 the unions. Presumably they would have them 
 eating air-balls in the meanwhile. 
 
 In February 191 1 the New York Cab Company 
 was dropping its Negro cab drivers, because, it said, 
 its patrons demanded it. In November 191 1 the 
 white chauffeurs of New York were trying to ter- 
 rorize the colored chauffeurs by a system of sabot- 
 age in the garage, because they, too, believed that 
 these jobs were white men's jobs. 
 
 It is but a short step from the denial of the 
 right to work to the denial of the right to own. In 
 
 10 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 fact, the two are often linked together, as in the 
 next ease. In the latter part of 1910, land specula- 
 tors in Hominy Okla., sold some land for cotton 
 rms to Negroes. The Negroes paid for this land, 
 took possession, and were getting along splendidly 
 when— "the local whites protested." "Night-rid- 
 ers (i. e., Ku Klux) around Hominy, several days 
 before, served notice that all Negroes must leave 
 the town at once, and to emphasize the warning 
 they exploded dynamite in the neighborhood of 
 Negro houses." So the Negroes fled, fearing for 
 their lives. At Baxterville, Miss., the same thing 
 happened in March 1912. In November 1910, a 
 colored man named Matthew Anderson in Kansas 
 City was having a fine $5,000 house built. But the 
 jealousy of the white neighbors prevented its com- 
 pletion. It was blown up by dynamite when it had 
 been almost finished. In Warrenton, Ga., notice 
 was sent to three colored men and one widow, who 
 had prospered greatly in business, to the effect that 
 they must leave immediately because the white 
 people of Warrenton "were not a-goin' to stand for 
 rich niggers." One of them has been forced to sell 
 out his business at a loss. Another never answers 
 a knock and never leaves his house by the front 
 door. ^ All through these things Mr. Washington 
 told his race that if it would work hard, get proper- 
 ty and be useful to a community it would not need 
 to strive for a share in the government ! 
 
 Ill— EDUCATIONAL. 
 EDUCATION is the name which we give to 
 
 11 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 that process of equipment and training which, in 
 our day, society gives the individual to prepare him 
 for fighting the battle of life. We do not confer it 
 as a privilege, but it is given on behalf of society 
 for society's own protection from the perils of ig- 
 norance and incompetence. It is a privilege to 
 which ever}' member of society is entitled. For 
 without some equipment of this sort the individual 
 is but half a man, handicapped in the endeavor to 
 make a living. Here in America, we subscribe to 
 the dangerous doctrine that twelve million of the 
 people should receive the minimum of education. 
 And in order to reconcile ourselves to this doctrine, 
 we deck it in the garments of wisdom. Because of 
 the serf idea in American life, we say that the Ne- 
 gro shall have a serf's equipment and no more. It 
 is the same idea that the aristocracy of Europe 
 evolved when the workers demanded that their 
 children should be trained better than they them- 
 selves had been. "Why", said the masters, "if we 
 give your children schooling they will be educated 
 out of their station in life. What should the son 
 of a carpenter need to know of Euclid or Virgil? 
 He should learn his father's vocation that he may 
 be well equipped to serve in that station of life 
 into which it has pleased God to call him. We 
 need more plowmen than priests, more servants 
 than savants." 
 
 In our own land, when Negroes demand educa- 
 tion, we say, "Why, surely, give them industrial 
 education. Your race has a great opportunity — 
 
 12 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 to make itself useful. It needs trained craftsmen 
 and workers and, perhaps, a few parsons. Teach 
 your sons and daughters to work. That is enough." 
 And we dexterously select leaders for them who 
 will administer the soothing syrup of this old idea 
 with deftness and dispatch. The General Educa- 
 tion Board which disburses millions of dollars an- 
 nually in the South for education has, so far, given 
 to forty-one Negro schools the sum of $464,015. 
 Only in two instances has any money been given 
 to a real college. Practically all of it went to the 
 labor-caste schools. Why? Because the dark 
 degradation of the Negro must be lightened by no 
 \ray of learning. That would never do. We need 
 them as "hewers of wood and drawers of water." 
 And in the meanwhile, this is what the richest 
 country on earth offers to ruthlessly exploited peo- 
 ple as a training for life : 
 
 Before the Twelfth Annual Conference for Ed- 
 ucation in the South (1910) Mr. Charles L. Coon, 
 superintendent of schools in North Carolina, read 
 a paper on Negro Education in the South. His in- 
 vestigation extended over eleven states : Virginia, 
 \North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, 
 Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas 
 and Tennessee. In these states the Negroes make 
 up 40.1 per cent of the population, but receive only 
 14.8 per cent of the school fund. He showed that 
 even if the school fund as disbursed were appor- 
 tioned to each race according to taxes paid the col- 
 ored people of Virginia should receive $507,305 in- 
 
 13 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 stead of the $482,228 which they now receive ; in 
 North Carolina they should get $429,127 instead of 
 $402,658, and in Georgia $647,852 instead of $506,- 
 170. So that these three states expend for Negro 
 education $93,278 less than what the Negroes them- 
 selves pay for — and that sum is contributed by Ne- 
 )groes to the white children of the state ! 
 
 But, as a matter of fact, in no modern country 
 is education made to depend upon the tax-paying 
 power of the parents. If that were so, the children 
 of 40,000,000 American proletarians would live and 
 die without schooling. So that the case is really 
 much worse than it seems. 
 
 South Carolina spent in 1910 $10.34 for the ed- 
 ucation of each white child and $1.70 for the educa- 
 tion of each colored child. In Lawrence county 
 the state gave to each colored child 97 cents worth 
 of education that year ; in Lexington county, 90 
 cents ; in Bamberg, 89 cents ; in Saluda, 68 cents, 
 and in Calhoun, 58 cents worth. The smallest sum 
 spent on a white child for education that year was 
 $4.03. In Georgia it was quite as bad. One county 
 of this state owned 19 of the 27 school houses for 
 Negroes. The valuation of the entire 19 was 
 $2,500; that is, $131.58 for each school house for 
 Negroes !The annual cost of the education of a Ne- 
 gro child in six counties of this civilised ste ^s 
 39 cents, Meanwhile the whites of Baltimore were 
 protesting against the building of a new Negro 
 school ! In Louisiana the report of the Depart- 
 ment of Education shows that the average monthly 
 
 14 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 salary of white male teachers is 75.29, while that of 
 colored male teachers is $34.25. The average 
 monthly salary of white female teachers is $50.80 
 and that of the colored female teachers is $28.67. 
 The average length of the annual school term for 
 white children is eight months and a quarter; for 
 icolored children, four months and a half. 
 
 In Wilcox County, Alabama, where there are 
 2,000 white children and 10,758 colored children, 
 $32, 660.48 is devoted to education. Of this amount 
 the 10,758 colored children receive one-fourth — $6,- 
 532.09, or sixty cents each per annum — while the 
 2,000 white children receive the remaining four- 
 fifths— $26,128.13, or about $13 each per annum. 
 Mr. Booker Washington, who lives in this state 
 sends his own children to the best colleges and to 
 Europe while advising the rest of his people to 
 "make your condition known to the white people 
 of the state." Now, if education— of any sort— is 
 a training for life, is it not evident here that black 
 children are being robbed of their chance in life? 
 W r hy? Is it to be supposed that their fathers are 
 so stupid as to allow this if they could vote 
 their own needs? Yet Mr. Washington decries the 
 agitation for the ballot as unwise and never loses 
 an opportunity . of sneering at these who see 
 something of value in it. But to continue 
 The number of white children of schooi 
 age in Alabama is 364,266; the number 
 ot colored children of school age is 311,552. But 
 the teachers of the white children receive in sala- 
 
 15 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 ries 82404,062.54, while the teachers of the colored 
 children receive $202,251.13. The value of all 
 schoolhouses, sites and furniture for white children 
 is $6,503,019.57; for colored children, $273,147.50. 
 
 In South Carolina there are 316,007 Negro 
 childen of school age and 201,868 white children; 
 but the state spends on its Negro children $368,802, 
 and on its white children Si. 684,976. Thus does 
 America keep knowledge from Negroes. She is 
 afraid of the educated black man. Of such are the 
 people who taunt Negroes with ignorance. 
 
 IV. — Social. 
 
 When a group has been reduced to serfdom, 
 political and economic, its social status become 
 fixed by that fact. And so we find that in " the home 
 of the' free and the land of the brave" Negroes 
 must not ride in the same cars in a train as white 
 people. On street-cars, certain sections are set 
 apart for them. They may not eat in public places 
 where white people eat nor drink at the same bar. 
 They may not go to the same church (although 
 they are foolish enough to worship the same god) 
 as white people ; they may not die in the same hos- 
 pital nor be buried in the same grave-yard. So far 
 as we know, the segregation ends here. 
 
 But why is segregation necessary? Because 
 white Americans are afraid that their inherent su- 
 periority may not. after all, be so very evident 
 either to the Negro or to other people. They, 
 therefore, find it necessary to enact it into law. So 
 we had the first Ghetto legislation in an American 
 
 16 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 nation last year, in Baltimore. Hard on the heels 
 of this followed legislative proposals along the 
 same line in Richmond Va., Kansas City, Mo., St. 
 Louis, Mo., and Birmingham, Ala. In Memphis, 
 L-iiii. i\egroes pay taxes ior public parks which 
 they are not allowed to enter. A year ago they 
 petitioned for a Negro park and were about to get 
 'it when 500 white citizens protested against it. 
 That settled it with the park. 
 
 But discrimination goes even further and de- 
 clares that Negroes shall not possess even their 
 lives if any white perons should want them. And 
 so we have the institution called the lynching-bee. 
 The professional southerner seems to love a lie 
 dearly and continues to assert that Negroes are 
 lynched for rape committed upon white women. 
 Why not? It is perfectly American. If you want 
 to kill a dog, call it mad; if you want to silence a 
 man, call him an Anarchist, and if you want to kill 
 a black man, call him a rapist. But let us see what 
 the facts actually are. 
 
 In the two decades from 1884 to 1904 there 
 were 2,875 lynchings in the United States. Of 
 these 87 per cent, or 2,499 occurred in the South. 
 The national total was grouped as follows : 
 
 1. For alleged and attempted criminal assault, 
 
 i. e., rape 564 
 
 2. For assault and murder and for complicity 138 
 
 3. For murder 1,277 
 
 4. For theft, burglary and robbery 326 
 
 5. For arson < . . . 106 
 
 17 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 6. For race-prejudice (?) 94 
 
 7. For unknown reasons 134 
 
 8. For simple assault 18 
 
 9. For insulting whites 18 
 
 10. For making threats 16 
 
 The causes for the remainder wer : slander, 
 miscegenation, informing, drunkenness, fraud, 
 voodooism, violation of contract, resisting arrest, 
 elopement, train wrecking, poisoning stock, refusing 
 to give evidence, testifying against whites, politi- 
 cal animosity, disobedience of quarantine regula- 
 tions, passing counterfeit money, introducing 
 smallpox, concealing criminals, cutting levees, kid- 
 napping, gambling, riots, seduction, incest, and 
 forcing a child to steal. 
 
 Yes, there are courts in the South; but 
 not for black people — n ot when the mob 
 chooses to relieve civilization of the onus of 
 law and order. At Honeapath, S. G, a Negro was 
 lynched in November 191 1, charged, of course, with 
 "the usual crime." The charge had not been prov- 
 en, or invetsigated ; but the man was lynched. The 
 howling mob which did him to death was composed 
 of "prominent citizens'' who had made up automo- 
 bile parties to ride to the affair. Among those 
 present was the dis-honorable Joshua Ashley, a 
 member of the state legislature. He and his friends 
 cut off the man's fingers as souvenirs and were 
 proud of their work. Why shouldn't they? You 
 see, it helps to keep "niggers" in their place. And 
 then, besides, isn't this a white man's country? 
 
 18 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 Gov. Blease of South Carolina was also proud of 
 the event and said that instead of stopping the 
 horrible work of the mob he would have resigned 
 ms office to lead it. In Okemeah, Oklahoma, last 
 June, a band of white beasts raped a Negro woman 
 and then lynched her and her fourteen-year-old son 
 Nothing has been done to them. And it is not that 
 the facts are unknown. At Durant, Okla., and else- 
 where, tne savages have posed around their victim 
 to nave their pictures taken. One man, from Ala- 
 bama sent to the Rev. John Haynes Holmes, of 
 Brooklyn, N. Y., a post-card (by mail) bearing a 
 photograph of such a group. "This is the way we 
 treat them down here," he writes, and, after prom- 
 ising to put Mr. Holmes' name on his mailing list 
 declares that they will have one, at least, each 
 month. 
 
 In Washington, Ga., Charles S. Holinshead, a 
 wealthy white planter, raped the wife of T B 
 r, a decent, respectable Negro. As his wife 
 returned to him dishevelled and bleeding from the 
 outrage perpetrated on her, Walker went to Hol- 
 mshead's store and shot him dead. For this he 
 as tried and condemned and, while the judge was 
 pronouncing sentence, Holinshead's brother 
 shot Walker m the court-room. They held his 
 ■id up while the judge finished the sentence, 
 inen he was taken out and lynched— not executed 
 ►thing was done to the other Holinshead. 
 
 The New York Evening Post, on Octoer 23rd 
 said in an editorial that "there has hardly been a 
 
 19 
 
THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 
 
 single authenticated case in a decade of the Ne- 
 groes rising against the whites, despite the grow- 
 ing feeling, among them that there should be some 
 retaliation since no tribunal will punish lynchers or 
 enforce the law." I am glad that the Post noticed 
 this. I had begun to notice it myself. When 
 President Roosevelt discussed lynching some 
 years ago, he severely reprobated the Negro for 
 their tendency to shield their "criminals" and or- 
 dered them to go out and help hunt them down. 
 So was insult added to injury. 
 
 But, putting my own opinion aside, here are 
 the facts as I have seen them. In the face of 
 these facts, the phrase, "the white man's burden," 
 soui.ds like a horrid mockery. 
 
 :o : 
 
 20 
 
SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 
 
 1. Economic Status Of The Negro 
 
 The ten million Negroes of America form a 
 group that is more essentially proletarian than any 
 other American group. In the first place the an- 
 cestors of this group were brought here with the 
 very definite understanding that they were to be 
 ruthlessly exploited. And they were not allowed 
 any choice in the matter. Since they were brought 
 here as chattels their social status was fixed by 
 that fact. In every case that we know of where a 
 group has lived by exploiting another group, it has 
 despised that group which it has put under subjec- 
 tion. And the degree of contempt has always been 
 in direct proportion to the degree of exploitation- 
 
 Inasmuch then, as the Negro was at one peri- 
 od the most thoroughly exploited of the American 
 proletariat, he was the most thoroughly despised. 
 That group which exploited and despised him, be- 
 ing the most powerful section of the ruling class, 
 was able to diffuse its own necessary contempt of 
 the Negro first among the other sections of the 
 ruling class, and afterwards among all other class- 
 es of Americans. For the ruling class has always de- 
 termined what the social ideals and moral ideas of 
 society should be ; and this explains how race pre- 
 judice was disseminated until all Americans are 
 supposed to be saturated with it. Race prejudice, 
 
 21 
 
SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 
 
 then, is the fruit of economic subjection and a fixed 
 inferior economic status. It is the reflex of a so- 
 cial caste system. That caste system in America 
 today is what we roughly refer to as the Race 
 Problem, and it is thus seen that the Negro prob- 
 lem is essentiallly an economic problem with its 
 roots in slavery past and present. 
 
 Notwithstanding the fact that it is usually kept 
 out of public discussion, the bread-and-butter side 
 of this problem is easily the most important. The 
 Negro worker gets less for his work — thanks to 
 exclusion from the craft unions — than any other 
 worker ; he works longer hours as a rule and under 
 worse conditions than any other worker, and his 
 rent in any large city is much higher than that 
 which the white worker pays for the same tene- 
 ment- In short, the exploitation of the Negro 
 worker is keener than that of any group of white 
 workers in America. Now, the mission of the So- 
 cialist Party is to free the working class from ex- 
 ploitation, and since the Negro is the most ruth- 
 lessly exploited working class group in America, 
 the duty of the party to champion his cause is as 
 clear as day. This is the crucial test of Socialism's 
 sincerity and therein lies the value of this point of 
 view — Socialism and the Negro- 
 
 2. The Need of Socialist Propaganda. 
 
 So far, no particular effort has been made to 
 carry the message of Socialism to these people. 
 All the rest of the poor have had the gospel preach- 
 ed to them, for the party has carried on special 
 
 22 
 
SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 
 
 propaganda work among the Poles, Slovaks, Finns, 
 Hungarians and Lithuanians. Here are ten million 
 Americans, all proletarians, hanging on the ragged 
 edge of the impending class conflict. Left to them- 
 selves they may become as great a menace to our 
 advancing army as is the army of the unemployed, 
 and for precisely the same reason: they can be 
 used against us, as the craft unions have begun to 
 find out- Surely we should make some effort to 
 enlist them under our banner that they may swell 
 our ranks and help to make us invincible. And we 
 must do this for the same reason that is impelling 
 organized labor to adopt an all-inclusive policy; 
 because the other policy results in the artificial 
 breeding of scabs. On grounds of common sense 
 and enlightened self-interest it would be well for 
 the Socialist party to begin to organize the Ne- 
 groes of America in reference to the class struggle- 
 The capitalists of America are not waiting. Al- 
 ready they have subsidized Negro leaders, Negro 
 editors, preachers and politicians to build up in the 
 breasts of the black people those sentiments which 
 will make them subservient to their will. For they 
 recognize the value (to them) of cheap labor power 
 and they know that if they can succeed in keeping 
 one section of the working class down they can 
 use that section to keep other sections down too. 
 
 3. The Negro's Attitude Toward Socialism. 
 
 If the Socialist propaganda among Negroes is 
 be effectively carried on, the members and lead- 
 
 23 
 
SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 
 
 ers of the party must first understand the Negro's 
 attitude toward Socialism- That attitude finds its 
 first expression in ignorance. The mass of the 
 Negro people in America are ignorant of what So- 
 cialism means. For this they are not much to 
 blame- Behind the veil of the color line none of 
 the great world-movements for social betterment 
 have been able to penetrate. Sine j it is not yet the 
 easiest task to get the white American worker — 
 with all his superior intellect — to see Socialism, it 
 (is but natural to expect that these darker workers 
 to whom America denies knowledge should still be 
 in ignorance as to its aims and objects. 
 
 Besides, the Negroes of America — those of 
 them who think — are suspicious of Socialism as of 
 everything that comes from the white people of 
 America. They have seen that every movement 
 ffor the extension of democracy here has broken 
 down as soon as it reached the color line. Political 
 democracy declared that "all men are created 
 equal," meant only all white men. The Christian 
 church found that the brotherhood of man did not 
 include God's bastard children. The public school 
 system proclaimed that the school house was the 
 backbone of democracy — "for white people only," 
 and the civil service says that Negroes must keep 
 their place — at the bottom. So that they can hard- 
 ly be blamed for looking askance at any new gospel 
 of freedom- Freedom to them has been like one of 
 "those juggling fiends. 
 
 24 
 
SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 
 
 (That palter with us in a double sense ; 
 That keep the word of promise to our ear, 
 And break it to our hope." 
 
 In this connection, some explanation of the 
 former political solidarity of those Negroes who 
 were voters may be of service- Up to six years 
 ago the one great obstacle to the political progress 
 of the colored people was their sheep-like alle- 
 giance to the Republican party. They were 
 taught to believe that God had raised up a peculiar 
 race of men called Republicans who had loved the 
 slaves so tenderly that they had taken guns in their 
 hands and rushed on the ranks of the southern 
 slaveholders to free the slaves; that this race of 
 men was still in existence, marching under the ban- 
 ner of the Republican party and showing their 
 great love for Negroes by appointing from six to 
 sixteen near-Negroes to soft political snaps. Today 
 that great political superstition is falling to pieces 
 before the advance of intelligence among Negroes. 
 They begin to realize that they were sold out by 
 the Republican party in 1876; that in the last 
 twenty-five years lynchings have increased, dis- 
 franchisement has spread all over the south and 
 "jim-crow" cars run even into the national capital 
 1 with the continuing consent of a Republican con- 
 gress, a Republican Supreme Court and Republican 
 presidents. 
 
 Ever since the Brownsville affair, but more 
 clearly since Taft declared and put in force the pol- 
 icy of pushing out the few near-Negro officehold- 
 
 25 
 
SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 
 
 ers, the rank and file have come to see that the 
 Republican party is a great big sham. Many went 
 over to the Democratic party because, as the Am- 
 sterdam News puts it, "they had nowhere else to 
 go." Twenty years ago the colored men who 
 joined that party were ostracized as scalawags and 
 crooks — which they probably were. But today, 
 the defection to the Democrats of such men as 
 Bishop Waiters, Wood, Carr and Langston — whose 
 uncle was a colored Republican congressman from 
 Virginia — has made the colored democracy respect- 
 able and given quite a tone to political heterodoxy- 
 All this loosens the bonds of their allegiance 
 and breaks the bigotry of the last forty years. But 
 of this change in their political view-point the 
 white world knows nothing- The two leading 
 
 Negro newspapers are subsidized by the same po- 
 litical pirates who hold the title-deeds to the hand- 
 ful of hirelings holding office in the name of the 
 Negro race. One of these papers is an organ of 
 Mr. Washington, the other pretends to be inde- 
 pendent — that is, it must be "bought" on the in- 
 stallment plan, and both of them are in New York. 
 Despite this "conspiracy of silence" the Negroes 
 are waking up ; are beginning to think for them- 
 selves ; to look with more favor on "new doctrines." 
 
 And herein lies the open opportunity of the Social- 
 ist party. If the work of spreading Socialist prop- 
 aganda is taken to them now, their ignorance of it 
 can be enlightened and their suspicions removed. 
 
 26 
 
SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 
 
 The Duty of The Socialist Party. 
 
 I think that we might embrace the opportunity 
 of taking the matter up at the coming national con- 
 vention- The time is ripe for taking a stand 
 against the extensive disfranchisement of the Ne- 
 gro in violation of the plain provisions of the na- 
 tional constitution. In view of the fact that the 
 last three amendments to the constitution contain 
 the clause, "Congress shall have power to enforce 
 this article by appropriate legislation," the party 
 will not be guilty of proposing anything worse 
 than asking the government to enforce its own 
 "law and order." If the Negroes, or any other 
 section of the working class in America, is to be 
 deprived of the ballot, how can they participate 
 with us in the class struggle? How can we pre- 
 tend to be a political party if we fail to see the 
 significance of this fact? 
 
 Besides, the recent dirty diatribes against the 
 Negro in a Texas paper, which is still on our na- 
 tional list of Socialist papers ; the experiences of 
 Mrs. Theresa Malkiel in Tennessee where she was 
 prevented by certain people from addressing a 
 meeting of Negroes on the subject of Socialism, 
 and certain other exhibitions of the thing called 
 southernism, constitute the challenge of caste. Can 
 we ignore this challenge? I think not. We could 
 hardly afford to have the taint of "trimming" on 
 the garments of the Socialist party. It is danger- 
 ous — doubly dangerous now, when the temper of 
 the times is against such "trimming." Besides it 
 
 27 
 
SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 
 
 would be futile. If it is not met now it must be 
 met later when it shall have grown stronger. Now, 
 when we can cope with it, we have the issue squar- 
 ly presented: Southernism or Socialism — which? 
 Is it to be the white half of the working class 
 against the black half, or all the working class? 
 Can we hope to triumph over capitalism with one- 
 half of the working class against us? Let us set- 
 tle these questions now — for settled they must be. 
 
 The Negro and Political Socialism. 
 \ The power of the voting proletariat can be 
 made to express itself through the ballot- To do 
 this they must have a political organization of 
 their own to give form to their will. The direct 
 object of such an organization is to help them to 
 secure control of the powers of government by 
 electing members of the working class to office 
 and so secure legislation in the interests of the 
 working class until such time as the workers may, 
 by being in overwhelming control of the govern- 
 ment, be able "to alter or abolish it, and to insti- 
 tute a new government, laying its foundation on 
 such principles, and organizing its power in such 
 form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect 
 their safety and happiness" — in short, to work for 
 the abolition of capitalism, by legislation — if that be 
 permitted. And in all this, the Negro, who feels 
 most fiercely the deep damnation of the capitalist 
 system, can help- 
 
 The Negro and Industrial Socialism. 
 But even the voteless proletarian can in a 
 
 28 
 
SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 
 
 measure help toward the final abolition of the cap- 
 italist system. For they too have labor power— 
 which they can be taught to withhold. They can 
 do this by organizing themselves at the point of 
 production. By means of such organization they 
 can work to shorten the hours of labor, to raise 
 wages, to secure an ever-increasing share of the 
 product of their toil. They can enact and enforce 
 laws for the protection of labor and they can do 
 this at the point of production, as was done by the 
 Western Federation of Miners in the matter of the 
 eight-hour law, which they established without the 
 aid of the legislatures or the courts. All this in- 
 volves a progressive control of the tools of produc- 
 tion and a progressive expropriation of the capita- 
 list class. And in all this the Negro can help- So 
 far, they are unorganized on the industrial field, 
 but industrial unionism beckons to them as _ to 
 others, and the consequent program of the Social- 
 ist party for the Negro in the south can be based 
 upon this fact. 
 
 o 
 
 29 
 
THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 
 
 The African slave-trade was born of the de- 
 sire of certain Europeans to acquire wealth without 
 working. It was to fill the need for a cheap labor 
 supply in developing new territory that Negro 
 slaves were first brought to the western world by 
 the Spanish, Dutch, and English during the 16th 
 and 17th centuries. Contact of white with black 
 was thus established on the basis of the economic 
 subjection of the one to the other. This subjection 
 extended to every sphere of life, physical, mental 
 and social. Out of this contact there arose certain 
 definite relations and consequent problems of ad- 
 justment. It is the sum of these relations which 
 we (rightly or wrongly) describe as the Negro 
 Problem. 
 
 Unfortunately, the spell of mere words is still 
 very strong, and when people speak of the Negro 
 Problem they carry over into the discussion a cer- 
 tain mental attitude derived from the original 
 meaning of the word, Problem. In arithmetic, a 
 sum to be worked out ; in chemistry, to find by 
 experiment a certain re-agent ; in geography, to 
 chart a puzzling current — all these are problems 
 in the primary sense, and all these involve the idea 
 of solution by him who approaches them. That is 
 to say, they can be solved by thinking. And those 
 who think loosely call up this idea of solution by 
 thinking whenever they see the word "problem"- 
 So we have been pestered with this, that, and the 
 
 30 
 
THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 
 
 other "solution" of the Negro problem. Therefore, 
 it is well to bear in mind that a race problem is 
 always the sum of the relations between two or 
 more races in a state of friction. 
 
 Because when we understand this we are in a 
 fair way to find that these relations are not to be 
 explained on the basis of the thinking or feeling 
 of either party. They must be interpreted in terms 
 of human relations and in the order in which human 
 relations are established: (i) economic, (2) social, 
 (3) political and (4) civic. So understood, a know- 
 ledge of the historical conditions under which these 
 relations developed is seen to be of the greatest 
 value in understanding the problem. For this is all 
 that our intellects can do in the case of a racial 
 problem — to help us to understand. The actual 
 work of adjustment must be fought out or worked 
 out ; becomes, that is to say, a struggle to be set- 
 tled by the contending races with forces more com- 
 plex than the purely intellectual ones of argument 
 and proof. Let us first consider, then, the condi- 
 tions under which the relations between the black 
 and white races were established in America- 
 
 During the period of colonization the land of 
 America was granted by European kings to cer- 
 tain gentlemen who had no intention of working 
 with the hands. Nevertheless working with the 
 hands was the only method of extracting that 
 wealth which was the object of their ownership, 
 it was necessary, then, to obtain a supply of those 
 persons who could do this work for them ; and to 
 
 31 
 
THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 
 
 insure this, it was imperative that these persons 
 should not own land themselves : they must be a 
 
 permanently landless class ; since it was unthink- 
 able then as now that one should work the land of 
 others for a part of the fruits if he could work 
 his own land for all of the fruits- So there was 
 begun in America the process of establishing such 
 a class. Confining ourselves to the territory which 
 became the United States, we may say that the 
 first attempt was made to enslave the Indians, and 
 when this failed to work, white people were im- 
 ported from Europe as chattel slaves. All through 
 the colonial period this importation continued with 
 its consequent effects on the social and political 
 life of the colonies. Most people will be surprised 
 to learn that the first Fugitive Slave Law was 
 framed, not in the south, but in the north, and was 
 made not for black but for white laborers. 
 This was the Massachusetts act of 1630 "Respect- 
 ing Masters, Servants and Laborers". A reading 
 of this one act would destroy all those pretty illu- 
 sions about "our fathers and Freedom" which we 
 get from the official fairy tales — I mean the school 
 histories. 
 
 Side by side with the economic subjection of 
 white men there grew up the economic subjection 
 of black men, and for the same reason. These were 
 of alien blood — and cheaper. Therefore, the Afri- 
 can slave trade outgrew the European slave trade, 
 although the latter continued, in a lessening de- 
 gree, down to the third or fourth decade of the 
 
 32 
 
THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 
 
 19th century- Negroes were brought here to work, 
 to be exploited ; and they were allowed no illusions 
 as to the reason for their being here. Those white 
 men who owned the land brought them here to ex- 
 tract the wealth which was in the land. The white 
 aristocrat did not buy black slaves because he had 
 a special hatred or contempt for anything black, 
 nor because he believed that Negroes were inferior 
 to white people- On the contrary he bought them 
 precisely because, as working cattle, they were 
 superior to whites. 
 
 Being of alien blood, these black people were 
 outside of the social and political system to which 
 they were introduced and, quite naturally, beyond 
 the range of such sympathies as helped to soften 
 the hard brutalities of the system. They were, 
 from the beginning, more ruthlessly exploited than 
 the white workers. Thus they had their place 
 made for them — at the bottom. 
 
 Now it is a social law — not yet proclaimed by 
 our college sociologists — that whenever a certain 
 social arrangement is beneficial to any class in a 
 society, that class soon develops the pyschology of 
 its own advantage and creates insensibly the ethics 
 which will justify that social arrangement. Men 
 to whom the vicarious labor of slaves meant cul- 
 ture and refinement, wealth, leisure and education, 
 naturally came — without any self-deception, to see 
 that slavery was right. As Professor Loria points 
 out, there is an economic basis to moral transfor- 
 mations in any society which is built on vicarious 
 
 33 
 
THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 
 
 production- 
 
 We turn now to the resulting conditions of the 
 slaves. They were at the bottom, the most brut- 
 ally exploited and, therefore, the most despised 
 section of the laboring class. For it is a conse- 
 quent of the law stated above that those who are 
 exploited must needs be despised by those who ex- 
 ploit them- This mental attitude of the superior 
 class (which makes the laws of that society in 
 which it is dominant) will naturally find its expres- 
 sion in those actions by which they esablish their 
 relations to the inferior class. And whenever any- 
 one is to be kicked it is usually the man farthest 
 down who gets it, because he is most contiguous 
 to the foot. So the Negro having been given a 
 place at the bottom in the economic life of the na- 
 tion, came to occupy naturally the place at the bot- 
 tom in the nation's thinking. I say, the nation's 
 advisedly ; because the dominant ideas of any so- 
 ciety which is already divided into classes are as a 
 rule the ideas preservative of the existing arrange- 
 ments. But since those arrangements include a 
 class on top, the dominant ideas will generally co- 
 incide with the interest of that class. The ethics 
 of its own advantage, then, will be diffused by that 
 class throughout that society — will be, if need arise 
 imposed upon the other classes, since every ruling 
 class has always controlled the public instruments 
 for the diffusion of ideas. 
 
 In this way the slave-holding section of the 
 dominant class in America first diffused its own 
 
 34 
 
THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 
 
 necessary contempt for the Negro among the other 
 (Sections of the ruling class, and the ideas of this 
 •class as a whole became through the agency of 
 press, pulpit and platform, the ideas of "the Ameri- 
 can People" on the Negro- 
 
 In further application of the materialistic 
 methed to this subject, it is curious and interesting 
 to note how the southern attitude toward the Negro 
 changed with the changing industrial system. 
 When the wasteful agricultural methods of chattel 
 slavery had exhausted the soil of the south and no 
 new land loomed up on the horizon of the system, 
 slavery began to decay. The planters of that section 
 settled down into the patriarchal type of family 
 relations with their slaves, who were then simply 
 a means of keeping the master's hands free from 
 the contamination of work and not a means of 
 ever-increasing profits- Slavery was then in a fair 
 way to die of its own weight. But with the inven- 
 tion of Whitney's cotton-gin, which enabled one 
 man to do the work of three hundred, cotton came 
 to the front as the chief agricultural staple in 
 America. The black slave became a source of in- 
 creasing revenue as a fertilizer of capital. The 
 idyllic relations of the preceding forty years came 
 to a sudden end. Increased profits demanded in- 
 creased exploitation and the ethics of advantage 
 dictated the despising of the Negro. 
 
 De Bow's Review, the great organ of southern 
 opinion, appeared, and in serious scientific articles 
 maintained the proposition that the Negro was not 
 
 35 
 
THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 
 
 a man but a beast. About that time (and conform- 
 ably to that opinion) the practice was begun of 
 spelling the word, Negro, with a small "n" — a prac- 
 tice still current in America, even in the socialist 
 press. 
 
 In the meanwhile, the system of industrial pro- 
 duction known as the machine system developed in 
 the north-The factory proletariat whose condition 
 determined that of the other northern workers 
 could fertilize capital more rapidly and cheaply 
 than the slaves. This form of production (and its 
 products) came into competition with the slave 
 system and the tremendous conflict reflected itself 
 upon the political field as a struggle for the re- 
 striction of slavery within its original bounds. The 
 Louisiana Purchase, the annexation of Texas, the 
 Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scot Decision, the 
 Kansas-Nebraska Bill, — all these were political ep- 
 isodes in the competition between the two main 
 sections of the dominant class ; and in the conflict 
 each used the army, the navy, the executive, the 
 courts and the legislature to strengthen its own 
 position- 
 When the business interests of the north had 
 definitely captured the powers of government in 
 the general election of i860, the southerners se- 
 ceeded because they knew too well what govern- 
 mental power was generally used for. They want- 
 ed a government which would be the political re- 
 flex of their own economic dominance. One can 
 
 36 
 
THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 
 
 see now why the northern statesmen like Lincoln 
 insisted that the preservation of the Union was the 
 paramount issue and not the freedom of slaves. 
 Indeed, Lincoln punished those officers of the army 
 who in the early days of the war dared to act upon 
 that assumption. And not all the arguments of 
 Greeley, Conway and Governor Andrews could 
 make any change in his attitude. Not until he 
 saw that it was expedient "as a war measure" did 
 he issue the "Emancipation Proclamation" which 
 brought 187,000 Negro soldiers into the northern 
 army. 
 
 Emancipation gave to the Negroes a new ec- 
 onomic status — the status of free wage-laborers, 
 competing with other wage-laborers for work. 
 They who had worked to create wealth for others 
 were now turned loose without wealth or land to 
 shift for themeselves in a world already hostile to 
 them- The mental attitude of the white south ha<^ 
 been shaped by three centuries of slavery and was 
 hard to get rid of. It was difficult for them to 
 think of black labor under any form but that of 
 slavery and they naturally turned to compulsion as 
 the proper mode of obtaining work from their for- 
 mer slaves. This attitude was well expressed in 
 the Black Codes of the southern states during the 
 fall and winter of 1865-66. As soon as the end of 
 the hostilities gave them a free hand at home they 
 began to give legislative expression to the new con- 
 ditions. They framed new constitutions and new 
 laws. "But it was seen that the Negro had no 
 
 37 
 
THE REAL NEGRO PROB LEM 
 
 privilege of voting in the first instance, and it was 
 not to be expected that the right would be accord- 
 ed him under the new state constitutions ; no guar- 
 antee that justice should be done him was exacted. 
 These new constitutions were formed, the legisla- 
 tures met, laws were made, senators and represent- 
 atives to Congress were chosen; but the Negro was 
 not only not admitted to any participation in the 
 government, but the new legislatures shocked the 
 northern sence of justice by the cruel and revenge- 
 ful laws which they enacted. The barbarity of the 
 most odious slave-code was, under various dis- 
 guises, applied to the Negro in his new condition 
 of freedom". Even before the resentment of the 
 national legislature had taken form, the Ku-Klux 
 Klan, the Knights of the White Camelias, the So- 
 ciety of the Pale Faces, and other bands of organ- 
 ized representatives of culture had begun to do 
 their bloody work of terrorizing Negroes into ec- 
 onomic and social subjection. And all this before 
 any steps had been taken to extend the suffrage to 
 Negroes. 
 
 When the northerners investigated these con- 
 ditions they met with such fierce and unreasoning 
 hostility on the part of the south that they found 
 it necessary to arm the Negro with the ballot in 
 his own defense- And yet, professional southern- 
 ers like Tom Dixon, Tom Watson, Ben Tillman 
 Vardaman and Blease pretend to their ignorant or 
 forgetful countrymen that the present attitude of 
 the south was caused in the first instance by a re- 
 action against "Negro domination", social and po- 
 
 38 
 
THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 
 
 litical which the north had forced upon it. 
 
 The subsequent developments can not be ex- 
 plained by those amiable enthusiasts who see in 
 the ''freedom" of Negroes an act of genuine hu- 
 manitarianism on the part of the north. For, a f tex- 
 tile northern business-men had secured the govern- 
 ment — and their thousands of miles of railroad- 
 grants — they promptly dropped the mask of hu- 
 manitarian hypocrisy, and left the Negroes to shift 
 for themselves- During the disputed count of the 
 votes in the Hayes-Tilden electoral contest in 1877 
 a deal was arranged by which the northerners 
 agreed to withdraw the army which protected the 
 Negroes, newly-granted franchise in the south, on 
 condition that the southerners should concede the 
 election to Hayes. The new industrial order want- 
 ed above all things to retain control of the govern- 
 iment which it had captured during the war, and 
 upon the altar of this necessity it sacrificed the 
 Negro in the south, just as Lincoln had done in the 
 early days of the war. From that time the sup- 
 pression of the Negro vote, the growth of "Jim 
 Crow" legislation, lynching and segregation have 
 continued with the continuing consent of Repub- 
 lican congressman, presidents and supreme courts. 
 And through it all, Negro "leaders" like Mr. Wash- 
 ington have found it very much worth their while 
 to administer anodynes both to the Negro and the 
 -'■•' Lion, to reconcile the one to a bastard democ- 
 racy and the other to a mutilated manhood. 
 
 It would be well to trace here the nature of 
 
 39 
 
THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 
 
 the economic changes which have given certain 
 new and malignant features to the relations be- 
 tween black and white in Amercia. The effect up- 
 on the free laborers of the sudden influx of black 
 competitors in the labor-market ; the consequent 
 attitude of the labor-unions ; the political and so- 
 cial reflex of all this, with the vestiges of the old, 
 re-developing under the new conditions — all these 
 (are parts of the problem. But space will not permit, 
 and these considerations will be taken up in a sec- 
 ond paper. Yet I may indicate here the gist of my 
 conclusions by quoting the words of a well-known 
 Southerner, the Rev. Quincy Ewing- "The race 
 problem — is not that the Negro is what he is in 
 relation to the white man — the white man's infer- 
 ior — but this, rather : How to keep him what he is 
 jn relation to the white man ; how to prevent his 
 lever achieving or becoming that which would just- 
 ify the belief on his part, or on the part of other 
 people, that he and the white man stand on com- 
 mon human ground." 
 
 The economic necessities of a system of vic- 
 arious production led to the creation of a racial 
 h.bor-caste ; the social adjustment consequent upon 
 this and upon its development created a social 
 sentiment inimical to this class, and its continuance 
 requires a continuance of this sentiment in our so- 
 ciety ; this is the pivotal fact. And the unavoid- 
 able conclusion is, that when this system of vic- 
 arious production disappears, the problem which is 
 its consequence will disappear also — and not till 
 then, in spite of all the culture, individual or col- 
 lective, which that class may achieve. 
 
 40 
 
ON A CERTAIN 
 
 CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES 
 
 It would be a difficult task to name one line of 
 intellectual endeavor among white men in America, 
 in which the American Negro has not taken his 
 part. Yet it is a striking fact that the racial attitude 
 has been dominantly conservative. Radicalism does 
 not yet register to any noticeable extent the contri- 
 butions of our race in this country. In theological 
 criticism, religious dissent, social and political 
 heresies such as Single Tax, Socialism, Anarchism 
 — in most of the movements arising from the re- 
 construction made necessary by the great body of 
 that new knowledge which the last two centuries 
 gave us — the Negro in America has taken no part. 
 And today our sociologists and economists still re- 
 strict themselves to the compilation of tables of 
 statistics in proof of Negro progress. Our scholars 
 are still expressing the intellectual viewpoints of 
 the eighteenth century. The glimmer of a change is 
 perceptible only in some of the younger men like 
 Locke of Howard University and James C. Waters, 
 
 It is easy to account for this. Christian Amer- 
 ica created the color line ; and all the great cur- 
 rents of critical opinion, from the eighteenth cen- 
 tury to our time, have found the great barrier 
 impassible and well-nigh impervious. Behind the 
 color line one has to think perpetually of the color 
 line, and most of those who grow up behind it 
 can think of nothing else. Even when one essays 
 to think of other things, that thinking is tinged 
 with the shades of the surrounding atmosphere. 
 
 41 
 
CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES 
 
 Besides, when we consider what Negro educa- 
 tion is to-day when we remember that in certain 
 southern counties the munificent sum of 58 cents 
 is spent for the annual education of a Negro child; 
 that the "great leader" of his race decries "higher" 
 education for them ; that Negro boys who get as 
 far as "college" must first surmount tremendous 
 special obstacles — we will cease to wonder at the 
 dearth of thinkers who are radical on other than 
 racial matters. 
 
 Yet, it should seem that Negroes, of all Ameri- 
 cans, would be found in the Freethought fold, 
 since they have suffered more than any other class 
 of Americans from the dubious blessings of Chris- 
 tianity. It has been well said that the two great 
 instruments for the propagation of race prejudice 
 in America are the Associated Press and the Chris- 
 tian Church. This is quite true. Historically, it 
 was the name of religion that cloaked the begin- 
 nings of slavery on the soil of America, and but- 
 tressed its continuance. The church saw to it that 
 the religion taught to slaves should stress the ser- 
 vile virtues of subservience and content, and these 
 things have bitten deeply into the souls of black 
 folk. True, the treasured music of these darker 
 millions preserves, here and there, the note of 
 stifled rebellion; but this was in spite of religion — 
 not because of it. Besides, such of their "sorrow- 
 songs" as have this note in them were brutally 
 banned by their masters, and driven to the pur- 
 lieus of the plantation, there to be sung in secret, 
 
 42 
 
CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES 
 
 And all through the dark days of slavery, it was 
 the Bible that constituted the divine sanction of 
 this "peculiar institution." "Cursed be Canaan," 
 "Servants obey your masters" and similar texts 
 were the best that the slaveholders'" Bible could 
 give of consolation to the brothers in black, while, 
 for the rest, teaching them to read was made a 
 crime so that whatever of social dynamite there 
 might be in certain parts of the book, might not 
 come near their minds. 
 
 Lowell, in his "Biglow Papers," has given a 
 caustic but correct summary of the Christian slave- 
 holders' theology in regard to the slavery of black 
 working-people : 
 "All things wuz gin to man for's use, his sarvice an' de- 
 
 An' don't the Greek an' Hebrew words that mean a man 
 mean white? 
 
 Ain't it belittlin' the good book in all its proudes' features 
 
 To think 't wuz wrote for black an' brown an' 'lasses-col- 
 ored creatures, 
 
 Thet couldn' read it ef they would — nor ain't by lor allowed 
 to, 
 
 But ought to take v/ut we think suits their naturs, an' be 
 
 proud to? 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Where'd their soles go ter, I'd like to know, ef we should 
 
 let 'em ketch 
 Freeknowledgism an' Fourierism an' Speritoolism an' 
 
 sech?" 
 
 When the fight for the abolition of slavery was 
 on, the Christian church, not content with quot- 
 ing scripture, gagged the mouths of such of their 
 adherents as dared to protest against the accursed 
 
 43 
 
CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES 
 
 thing, penalized their open advocacy of abolition, 
 and opposed all the men like Garrison, Lovejoy, 
 Phillips and John Brown, who fought on behalf of 
 the Negro slave. The detailed instances and proofs 
 are given in the last chapter of "A Short History 
 of the Inquisition," wherein the work shows the 
 relation of the church and slavery. 
 
 Yet the church among the Negroes today ex- 
 erts a more powerful influence than anything else 
 in the sphere of ideas. Nietzsche's contention that 
 the ethics of Christianity are the slave's ethics 
 would seem to be justified in this instance. Show me 
 a population that is deeply religious, and I will 
 show you a servile population, content with whips 
 and chains, contumely and the gibbet, content to 
 eat the bread of sorrow and drink the waters of 
 affliction. 
 
 The present condition of the Negroes of 
 America is a touching bit of testimony to the truth 
 of this assertion. Here in America the spirit of 
 the Negro has been transformed by three centuries 
 of subjection, physical and mental, so that they 
 have even glorified the fact of subjection and 
 subservience. How many Negro speakers have I 
 not heard vaunting the fact that when in the dark 
 days of the South the Northern armies had the 
 Southern aristocracy by the throat, there was no 
 Negro uprising to make their masters pay for the 
 systematic raping of Negro women and the inhu- 
 man cruelties perpetrated on Negro men. And yet 
 the sole reason for this "forbearance" is to be 
 
 44 
 
CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES 
 
 found in the fact that their spirits had been com- 
 pletely crushed by the system of slavery. And to 
 accomplish this, Christianity— the Christianity of 
 their masters — was the most effective instrument. 
 
 A recent writer, Mr. E. B. Putnam-Weale, in his 
 book, "The Conflict of Color," has quite naively 
 disclosed the fact that white people are well aware 
 of this aspect of Christianity and use it for their 
 own ends. Mr. Putnam-Weale makes no pretense 
 of believing in the Christian myth himself, but 
 he wants it taught to the Negroes ; and comparing it 
 with Islam, he finds it a more efficient instrument 
 of racial subjugation. The Mohammedan, he finds, 
 preaches the equality of all true believers — and 
 lives up to it. The white Christian preaches the 
 brotherhood of man, but wants "niggers" to sit in 
 the rear pews, to ride in "Jim Crow" cars, and 
 generally to "keep in their place." He presents 
 this aspect of the case under the caption of "The 
 Black Samson and the White Delilah," and, with 
 less fear than an angel, frankly advises the whit^ 
 Lords of Empire not so much to civilize as to 
 christianize Africa, so that Deliah's work may be 
 well done. 
 
 Here in America her work has been well done ; 
 and I fear that many years must pass before the 
 leaders of thought among my people in this coun- 
 try contribute many representatives to the cause o : 
 Freethought. Just now, there are a few Negro 
 Agnostics in New York and Boston, but these are 
 generally found to be West Indians from the 
 
 45 
 
CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES 
 
 French, Spanish, and English islands. The Cuban 
 and Porto Rican cigar-makers are notorious In- 
 fidels, due to their acquaintance with the bigotry, 
 ignorance and immorality of the Catholic priest- 
 hood in their native islands. Here and there one 
 finds a Negro-American who is reputed to have Ag- 
 nostic tendencies ; but these are seldom, if ever, 
 openly avowed. I can hardly find it in my heart to 
 blame them, for I know the tremendous weight of 
 the social proscription which it is possible to bring 
 to bear upon those who dare defy the idols of our 
 tribe. For those who live by the people must needs 
 be careful of the people's gods ; and 
 
 "An up-to-date statesmen has to be on his guard, 
 
 If he must have beliefs not to b'lieve 'em too hard." 
 
 Myself, I am inclined to believe that freedom 
 of thought must come from freedom of circum- 
 stance; and so long as our "leaders" are dependent 
 on the favor of our masses for their livelihood, just 
 so long will they express the thought of the masses, 
 which of itself may be a good thing or a bad ac- 
 cording to the circumstances of the particular case 
 Still there is a terrible truth in Kipling's modern 
 version of Job's sarcastic bit of criticism : 
 
 "No doubt but ye are the people — your throne is above the 
 
 King's, 
 Whoso speaks in your presence must say acceptable 
 
 things ; 
 Bowing the head in worship, bending the knee in fear — 
 Bringing the word well-smoothen — such as a King should 
 
 hear.'' 
 
 And until this rising generation of Negroes can 
 shake off the trammels of such time-serving lead- 
 
 46 
 
CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES 
 
 ers as Mr. Washington, and attain the level of that 
 "higher education" against which he solidly sets 
 his "face; until they, too, shall have entered into the 
 •intellectual heritage of the last two hundred years, 
 there can be little hope of a change in this respect. 
 
 • r> 
 
 47 
 
WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 
 
 In the good old days "when cotton was king", 
 chattel-slavery was a flourishing institution. Not 
 only the people who profited by the system, but 
 most others — even those who were the sufferers — 
 thought that this was really a "law of nature", that 
 it couldn't be otherwise. Nevertheless, chattel 
 slavery has gone. But while it lasted this was its 
 essence : Certain human beings were compelled to 
 labor and the wealth which their labor produced 
 went, not to them, but to certain other human be- 
 ings who did not labor at all but lolled in luxury on 
 the labor of their slaves. 
 
 To-day, fellow-sufferers, they tell us that 
 we are free. But are we? If you will think 
 for a moment you will see that we are not 
 free at all. We have simply changed one form 
 of slavery for another. Then it was chattel-slav- 
 ery, now it is wage-slavery. For that which was 
 the essence of chattel-slavery is the essence of 
 wage slavery. It is only a difference in form. 
 The chattel-slave was compelled to work by physi- 
 cal force ; the wage-slave is compelled to work by 
 starvation. The product of the chattel-slave's la- 
 bor was taken by his master; the product of the 
 wage-slave's labor is taken by the employer. 
 
 The United StatesGovernmenthasmadeastudy 
 of the wealth producing power of the wage-slaves, 
 and has shown that the average worker produces 
 $2,451 a year. The government has also made a 
 study of wages in the U. S. which shows that the 
 average worker gets $437 a year. This means that 
 
 48 
 
WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 
 
 the average employer takes away from the average 
 wage-slave $2,014 a year. In the good old days the 
 master took away the wealth produced by the slave 
 in the simplest form ; today he takes it away in the 
 form of profits. But in one respect the wage-slave 
 is worse off than the chattel slave. Under chattel 
 slavery the master owned the man and the land ; he 
 had to feed and clothe the man. Under wage- 
 slavery the man feeds and clothes himself. Under 
 chattel slavery it was to the interest of the owner 
 to give the slave work and to keep him from starv- 
 ing to death. Under wage-slavery, if the man goes 
 out of work the employer doesn't care ; that is no 
 loss to him ; and if the man dies there are millions 
 of others eager to take his place, because, as I said 
 before, they must either work for him or starve. 
 There is one very striking parallel between the two 
 cases. To-day there are many people who say that 
 this system is divinely appointed — is a law of nature 
 — just as they said the same thing of chattel slavery. 
 Well, there are millions of workers who say that it 
 is wrong. Under chattle-slavery black workers 
 were robbed; under wage-slavery all the workers 
 are robbed. The Socialist Party says that this 
 robbing shall cease ; that no worker black or white 
 shall be exploited for profit. And it says, further, 
 that there is one sure and certain way of putting an 
 end to the system and that is by working for the 
 success of Socialism. 
 
 But, before I tell you just how Socialism pro- 
 poses to do this, let me say a word about the Civil 
 
 49 
 
WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 
 
 War which put an end to chattel-slavery. Now, I 
 know that certain people have taught you to believe 
 that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves. 
 But it isn't true, at all, and only very ignorant peo- 
 ple hold that opinion nowadays. If you will read 
 the Emancipation Proclamation carefully you will 
 see that it wasn't for love of the slave that the 
 slaves were freed. You will see that this was done, 
 '"as a fit and neccesary war-measure for suitress- 
 <ing said rebellion." If you will read Lincoln's let- 
 ter to Horrace Greeley (August 22 nd 1862) you 
 will find this sentence: My paramount object in this 
 struggle is to save the Union and is not either to 
 save or destroy slavery." Now I will tell you 
 briefly how "this struggle" came about. I konw 
 that my explanation is not the one which you have 
 been taught. But, no matter; it happens to be 
 true. This was the way of it: In the South there 
 had grown up one system of exploiting the laborer. 
 That was chattel-slavery. The money-Kings of 
 that section whom we will call capitalists, for short, 
 were naturally fond of their own system. In the 
 North the capitalists had another system of which 
 they were equally., fond. That was wage-slavery. 
 The Southern capitalists found that it was neces- 
 sary to extend their system ; so we had the Mexican 
 War, and they got Texas. Then, as fast as new ter- 
 ritory was opened they would rush to occupy it 
 with the*ir system and so shut out the Northern 
 system. Of course, the Northern capitalists would 
 itry to. get their system into the new territory also ; 
 ■so we had the long struggle over Kansas and Ne- 
 
 50 
 
WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 
 
 braska. These two systems were then in open 
 co .ition and it came to be seen that one or the 
 
 her had to give in; that both of them couldn't 
 exist in the same country; that "a house divided 
 list itself cannot stand"; that "this nation can- 
 .not exisl half-slave and half-free." Then people 
 began to talk of "the impending crisis" ; of "the ir- 
 repressible conflict." Then, when Lincoln was 
 elected in 1859, the southern capitalists saw that 
 their system was doomed. They wished to pre- 
 serve it ; so they seceded and tried to make of 
 
 emselves a separate nation in which their system 
 of robbing the worker shold be the only one. But 
 the Northern capitalists said, "Nix! Our system 
 Isb be the only system." So they went to war 
 "to save the Union" — for their system of robbing 
 the workers. And that's the gist of the whole 
 story. 
 
 "But", you will say, "didn't they go to war 
 on account of John Brown and Wendell Phillips 
 and William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Sumner?" 
 Not on your life, they didn't. If you will read the 
 newspapers of that time you will see that they 
 tried to lynch Garrison in Boston ; they ostracized 
 Wendell Phillips ; they sneered at Sumner and 
 damned John Brown. Why, nice, good, Christian 
 people told them they were crazy — just as some of 
 them tell Socialists now — and the anti-slavery or- 
 to s couldn't get the use of a church in New York 
 either for love or for money. No, indeed. These 
 men were grand old heroes — but no war was fought 
 
 51 
 
WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 
 
 on their account. The older system of chattle- 
 slavery simply broke down to make way for the 
 present system of wage-slavery, which pays better. 
 Pays the capitalist, I mean. 
 
 Under the old system the capitalist owned the 
 man ; today he own the tools with which the man 
 must work. These tools are the factories, the 
 mines, and the machines. The system that owns 
 them owns you and me and all the rest of us, black, 
 white, brown, red, and yellow. We can't live un- 
 less we have access to these tools, and our masters, 
 the capitalists, see to it that we are separated from 
 what we make by using these things, except so 
 much as is necessary to keep us alive that we may 
 be able to make more — for them. This little bit is 
 called wages. They wouldn't give us even that if 
 they thought that we could live without it. In the 
 good old days the chattel-slave would be fastened 
 with a chain if they thougt that he might escape. 
 Today no chain is neccesary to bind us to the tools. 
 We are as free as air. Of course. We are free to 
 starve. And that chain of the-fear-of-starvation 
 binds us to the tools owned by the capitalist as 
 firmly as any iron chain ever did. And this system 
 doesn't care whether the slaves who are bound in 
 this new way are white or black. To the capitalist 
 system all workers are equal — in so far as they have 
 a stomach. 
 
 Now the one great fact for the Negro in Amer- 
 ica today is Race Prejudice. The great labor prob- 
 lem with which all working-people are faced is 
 
 52 
 
WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 
 
 made harder for black working.-people by the ad- 
 dition of a race problem. I want to show you how 
 one grows out of the other and how, at bottom, 
 they are both the same thing. In other words, I 
 want you to see the economic reason for race- 
 prejudice. 
 
 In the first place, do you know that the 
 most rabid, Negro-hating, southern aristocrat has 
 not the slightest objection to sleeping in the same 
 house with a Negro — if that Negro sleeps there as 
 his servant? He doesn't care if his food is pre- 
 pared by a Negro cook and handled by a Negro 
 waiter before it gets to him ; he will eat it. But if 
 a Negro comes into the same public restaurant to 
 buy and eat food, then, Oh my!, he gets all het up 
 about it. But why? What's the difference? I 
 twill tell you. The aristocrat wants the black man 
 to feel that he is on a lower level. When he is on 
 that level he is "in his place". When he is "in his 
 place" he is liked. But he must not be allowed to 
 do anything to make him forget that he is on this 
 •lower level ; he must be kept " in his place", which 
 means the place which the aristocrat wants him to 
 keep. You see, the black man carries the memory 
 of slavery with him. Everybody knows that the 
 slaves were the exploited working-class of the 
 South. That put them in a class by themselves, 
 down at the bottom, downtrodden, despised, "in- 
 ferior." 
 
 Do you begin to see now that Race Prej- 
 udice is only another name for Caste Prejudice? 
 
 S3 
 
WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 
 
 If our people had never been slaves ; had never been 
 exploited workrs, and so, at the bottom of the lad- 
 der, there would be no prejudice against them now. 
 In every case where there has been a downtrodden 
 class of workers at the bottom, that class has been 
 despised by the class that lived by their labor. Do 
 you doubt it ? Then look at the facts. If you had 
 picked up a daily paper in New York in 1848 you 
 would have found at the end of many an advertise- 
 ment for butler, coachman, lady's maid, clerk or 
 book-keeper these words : "No Irish need apply." 
 There was a race-prejudice aginst the Irish then, 
 because most of the manual unskilled laborers were 
 Irish. They were at the bottom, exploited and de- 
 spised. But they have changed things since. Be- 
 ginning in the seventies when Jewish laborers be- 
 gan to come here from Russia, Austria and Ger- 
 many, and lasting even to our own day, there has 
 been race-prejudice against the Jews. And today 
 when the Italian has taken the place which the 
 Irish laborer vacated — at the bottoh — he, too, comes 
 in for his share of this prejudice. In every one of 
 these cases it was the condition of the people — at 
 the bottom as despised, exploited, wage-slaves — 
 that was responsible for the race-prejudice. And it 
 is just so in the black man's case, with this differ- 
 ence : that his color marks what he once was, and 
 even though he should wear a dress suit every eve- 
 ning and own an automobile or a farm he can al- 
 ways be picked out and reminded. 
 
 Now, under the present system, exploiting the 
 wage-slave is respectable. I have already shown 
 
 54 
 
WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 
 
 you that wherever the worker is exploited he is 
 despised. So you will see that despising the wage- 
 slave is quite fashionable. You may recall the 
 name of the great capitalist who said, "the public 
 be damned." He was only a little more outspoken 
 than the rest of his class. As long as the present 
 system continues, the workers will be despised; as 
 long as the workers are despised, the black men 
 will be despised, robbed and murdered, because 
 they are least able to defend themselves. Now ask 
 yourself whether you haven't a very special inter- 
 est in changing the present system. 
 
 Of course, you will ask : "But haven't white 
 working people race-prejudice too?" Sure, they 
 have. Do you konw why? It pays the capitalist 
 to keep the workers divided. So he creates and 
 keeps alive these prejudices. He gets them to be- 
 lieve that their interests are different. Then he 
 uses one half of them to club the other half with. 
 In Russia when the workingmen demand reform 
 the capitalists sic them on the Jews. In America 
 they sic them on the Negroes. That makes them 
 forget their own condition : as long as they can be 
 made to look down upon another class. "Rut, 
 then", you will say, " the average wage-slave must 
 be a chump." Sure, he is. That's what the capi- 
 talist counts on. And Socialism is working to 
 educate the workers to see this and to unite them 
 in doing away with the present system. 
 
 Socialism stands for the emancipation of the 
 wage-slaves. Are you a wage-slave? Do you want 
 
 55 
 
WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 
 
 to be emancipated? Then join hands with the 
 Socialists. Hear what they have to say. Read 
 some of their literature. Get a Socialist leaflet, a 
 pamphlet, or, better still, a book. You will be con- 
 vinced of two things : that Socialism is right, and 
 that it is inevitable. It is right because any order 
 of things in which those who work have least while 
 those who work them have most, is wrong. It is 
 inevitable because a system under which the wealth 
 produced by the labor of human hands amounts to 
 more than two hundred and twenty billions a year 
 while many millions live on the verge of starvation, 
 is bound to break down. ' Therefore, if you wish to 
 join with the other class — conscious, intelligent 
 wage-earners — in putting an end to such a system ; 
 if you want to better living conditions for black 
 men as well as for white men ; to make this woful 
 world of ours a little better for your children and 
 your children's children, study Socialism — and 
 think and work your way out. 
 
 Twelve years ago Mark Hanna, the Big Boss 
 of the Republican Party, made a statement which 
 you would do well to consider. After he had made 
 McKinley president, he noticed something that 
 you may not have noticed yourself. He saw that 
 there was no essential difference between the Re- 
 publican party and the Democratic party. He 
 knew that the same big Wall Street companies 
 supplied the campaign funds for each of them. He 
 knew that the same money power was buying out 
 the men whom you elected, whether you elected 
 
 56 
 
WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 
 
 Republicans or Democrats. He saw that very soon 
 you and I and the rest of us, black as well as white, 
 would come to see it too. And he opened his 
 mouth and spake these words: 'The next great 
 political battle in this country will be fought, not 
 between the Republican and the Democratic parties, 
 but between the Republican party and Socialism." 
 I will tell you later what that implies. But just 
 now, what I should like you to see is this: that 
 Senator Hanna realized that Socialism was a seri- 
 ous issue. He couldn't afford to pooh-pooh it. 
 Neither can any sensible person. The Socialist 
 party is the third in point of numbers. It is im- 
 portant. What do you know of this party? Have 
 you ever read its platform? Read it once, just for 
 the sake of fair play — just to show that_ you are 
 not afraid to give it a hearing — and you will realize 
 why Mark Hanna paid it such a tribute of respect. 
 
 Don't be a baby any longer and listen to the 
 stale lies which other people tell you about Social- 
 ism. Read the Socialist platform and you will un- 
 derstand why some politicians have to tell lies about 
 it just the same as they have to tell lies about you. 
 They lie about it because they don't want you to 
 know what it really is, just as they lie about you 
 because they don't want people to know what you 
 really are. Every year they feed you with the same 
 soft mush around election time to help them to ride 
 into power on your votes ; then after election they 
 give you Brownsville and lynching bees. Do you 
 wonder that General Clarkson, a grandson of the 
 
 57 
 
WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 
 
 great abolitionist, when he gave up his job as col- 
 lector of the Port of New York, said that he was 
 rick of the way in which the Republican party was 
 selling you out? The Republican party is always 
 engaged in selling you out — or in selling out the 
 working people of this country. Do you doubt it ? 
 Then ask yourselves why is it that a Republican 
 Congress has never said a word or done anything 
 about the disfranchisement of nearly three million 
 Negro voters in the South? Read the Fourteenth 
 and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitu- 
 tion and you will see that the Republican party has 
 always had the power to stop it. But just now I 
 want to get you interested in the one party that 
 strikes at the very root of your trouble and that 
 of every workingman in the country — white and 
 black alike. I want you to see what is the attitude 
 of the Socialist Party toward the American Negro. 
 And for that reason I am introducing to you 
 the following declarations of the attitude 
 made by Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate 
 for President, and by other members of the party. 
 Compare its straight-forward, uncompromising ut- 
 terances with what the other two parties have said 
 and done; then look yourself in the face and say 
 > h ether it is worth you while to sell your birth- 
 right and your future freedom — yes, and that of 
 your children and your . children's children — for a 
 in ess of political pottage. 
 
 c 
 
 8 
 
THE NEGRO AND THE NEWSPAPERS 
 
 It is not an easy task to plead in the courts of 
 the oppressor against oppression and wrong. It is 
 not easy to get the judgement of the white men of 
 the world against the white man's injustice to the 
 black. But nevertheless the attempt must be made 
 and made again until the seared conscience of the 
 civilized world's hall throbs with righteous' indigna- 
 tion at such outrage. "To sin by silence when we 
 should protest makes cowards out of men. The hu- 
 man race has climbed on protest. Had no voice 
 been raised against injustice, ignorance and lust, 
 the Inquisition yet would serve the law and guillo- 
 tines decide our least disputes. The few who dare 
 must speak and speak again to right the wrongs of 
 
 many." 
 
 The urgent need of speaking out is shown^ by 
 the following communication from Mr. J. Ellis 
 •Barker of London in an interview given to 
 a correspondent of The New York Age and pub- 
 lished in that paper on December 291I1 1910. 
 
 "We people in Europe," says Mr. Barker, "do 
 not understand the race problem, and we do not 
 know the colored people, for the simple reason that 
 there are not any colored people in Europe. In 
 London, where I live, there are only a few hundred 
 colored students whom one does not meet. Before 
 J came to the United States my prejudice against 
 the colored people was as great as that of any 
 Southern planter. My prejudice against your race, 
 p.s I believe the prejudice of most white people, was 
 due rather to ignorance than to ill-will. I had been 
 told in the books and papers published in Europe 
 that the colored people were a race of barbarians 
 
 59 
 
THE NEGRO AND THE NEWSPAPERS 
 
 and savages. I had been told that the colored peo- 
 ple were a worthless set of people, dressed in rags, 
 working a day or two during the week, and loafing 
 during the rest of the time. I was told that the 
 colored people were idle, diseased and vicious. So 
 I imagined that all of them lived in slums and alleys 
 and that the aristocracy of the race consisted of 
 the waiters and railway porters. 
 
 I had been told that the colored people only 
 played at science; that their doctors and lawyers 
 were charlatems. I had been told that the people 
 of a mixed race were even worse than pure Ne- 
 groes ; that the mulattoes had lost the primitive 
 virtues of the Negroes and had acquired all of the 
 vices of the whites. A chance encounter with a 
 cultured man of color induced me to look into the 
 race problem and I was perfectly amazed when I 
 discovered how greatly the colored people have 
 been libelled and traduced. I have spent a con- 
 siderable amount of time with colored people and 
 have met many who are highly cultivated. I have 
 found that among your race you have excellent 
 lawyers, and some of the foremost physicians and 
 surgeons. I have been over a large number of 
 your elementary and higher grade schools and col- 
 leges and over Howard University, and I have ad- 
 mired the earnest and resolute determination with 
 which your children try to improve their minds and 
 to raise themselves. In your night schools I have 
 found old men and women, former slaves, who are 
 anxious to learn writing and reading. I have been 
 to the homes of many colored people and I have 
 
 60 
 
THE NEGRO AND THE NEWSPAPERS 
 
 found them cosy, comfortable, elegant, and peopled 
 by happy and harmonious families. I have come 
 to the conclusion that the race is oppressed and 
 persecuted and very largely because it is not 
 l known." 
 
 But it is not in Europe alone that these bane- 
 ful effects of calumny appear. Here in America, 
 and even in the south where the bulk of the Ne- 
 groes live in the midst of a people who resentfully 
 declare that they should be left to deal with the 
 Negro because they alone know him — even there 
 the notion of the Negro, fostered by the press and 
 other agencies of public opinion is as wide of the 
 truth as it can be. To illustrate : 
 
 In the March number of Van Norden's Maga- 
 zine in 1907 there appeared a symposium on The 
 Negro Question. It was composed of expressions 
 of opinion from twelve intelligent southerners, and 
 was followed by an article by Mr. Booker T. Wash- 
 ington. The humor of the think lay in this, that 
 these men were Southern college presidents and 
 heads of banks, had lived all their lives among Ne- 
 groes, and were, by their own words, proved to be 
 either woefully or willfully ignorant of what the 
 Negro had done and was doing. The mordant ir- 
 ony of fate decreed that Mr. Washington should be 
 the one to present the facts that changed their 
 seeming sapience to Falstaffian farce. The presi- 
 dent of Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Va. set 
 forth that the Negro will not work regularly, that 
 he needs but three dollars a week and, therefore, 
 works but three days to get it and "quits work to 
 
 61 
 
THE NEGRO AND THE NEWSPAPARS 
 
 spend it." The president of Howard College, Ala- 
 bama declared that, "My deliberate opinion is that 
 the days of the Negro as a fair, honest laborer are 
 numbered, and are few at that. He is becoming 
 daily more shiftless, more unreliable, more restless, 
 less inclined to work steadily." The president of 
 the University of South Carolina and the president 
 of the North Carolina College of Agriculture and 
 Mechanic Arts re-echoed the same doleful dictum 
 while the president of the First National Bank of 
 Birmingham, Ala. and the president of the Bank of 
 Lexington, N. C. declared that it was a mistake to 
 grant the rights of citizenship to the Negro and 
 that education was a curse to him. The president 
 of Guilford College repeated the "lazy, shiftless" 
 argument while the president of Randolph-Macon 
 College, Va. said, "Reduce their wages so that they 
 shall have to work all the time to make a living 
 and they will become better workmen or disappear 
 in the struggle for existence," repeating in sub- 
 stance, the argument of his brother-president of 
 the Woman's college. 
 
 Mr. Washington's article did not show any 
 sign that it had been written as a reply of any sort. 
 But it did show among other things, that the cen- 
 sus of 1900 proved that the Negro people owned 
 in the very states of these college presidents, "23,- 
 383 square miles of territory, an area nearly as 
 as that of Holland and Belgium combined"; 
 that this represented only a quarter of the farms 
 worked by them; that, "after a searching investi- 
 gation, I have not been able to find that a single 
 graduate of Tuskegee, Hampton or any of the Ne- 
 
 62 
 
 1. 0. a. 
 
 P D 
 
THE NEGRO AND THE NEWSPAPER 
 
 gro colleges can now be found in the prisons of the 
 South ;" that in a single county of Virginia-Glou- 
 cester Co. — Negroes were paying taxes on land 
 valued at 88 million dollars and on buildings as- 
 sessed at 80 millions, and all this on the soil whei e 
 they had been slaves forty years before. 
 
 Is not this eloquent of the value of American 
 opinion on the American Negro as given in the 
 American press? And the question suggested is, 
 whether such statements are published in ignorance 
 or ill-will ? In either case it is equally damnatory. 
 
 In December 1907 Professor R. R. Wright, Jr., 
 an eminent Negro sociologist, published in McGirt's 
 Magazine an article on ''The Newspapers and the 
 Negro", showing how the Negro is being "done" 
 by headlines and other newspaper devices. The 
 Horizon, at that time the most brilliant Negro 
 prodical, dealt with the subject in its issue for 
 April 1908. Under the caption, "The Color Line in 
 the Press Dispatches", it quoted approvingly these 
 words of a Socialist paper — The Appeal to Reason 
 — "The hand that fakes the Associated Press is the 
 hand that rules the world." European readers who 
 are acquainted with the occasional diversions of 
 Reuter's Hong Kong and Shanghai correspondents 
 will appreciate the point. 
 
 The Horizon was constrained to refer to the 
 matter again in its August issue. In both in- 
 stances specific cases were cited and proof given. 
 Since that time the need of some formal protest 
 has been growing in the minds of all those thinking 
 Negroes who are not compelled to "crook the preg- 
 
 63 
 
THE NEGRO AND THE NEWSPAPERS 
 
 nant hinges of the Knee" ; and it has grown largely 
 because the practices complained of have grown to 
 ialarming proportions. 
 
 The newspapers of this country have many 
 crimes to answer for. They feature our 
 criminals in bold head lines : our sub- 
 stantial men when noticed at all are relegated to 
 the agate type division. Their methods, whether 
 they obtain through set purpose or through care- 
 lessness, constantly appeal to the putrid passion of 
 race hatred. They cause rapine to break loose by 
 nurturing rancor. They help create untold sorrow. 
 They are week-kneed and apologizing when the 
 hour is bloody. 
 
 But how can such a protest be effectively put? 
 Though Truth come hot on the heels of Falsehood 
 it could not quite undo its devil's work. And the 
 detractors of the weak and helpless are well aware 
 of this. 
 
 But Truth in the Negro's case is not even un- 
 leashed. Truth, in fact, is chained up and well 
 guarded, and it is this terrible task of setting 
 Truth free that the Negro must essay in the very 
 teeth of the American press. It is not an easy task 
 to voice an adequate protest, for it needs the wid- 
 est publicity. And since prejudice will oppose, it 
 needs prestige also. Any such effort must feel it- 
 self feeble, and yet it must be made. 
 
 64 
 
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