American Academy of Political and Social Science The Industrial Condition of the Negro in the North 'Reprinted from 1906 YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Gift of Ray Stannard Baker ^ -. \ : , , f UBUCftTIONS 0F / >. ' The American Agademy of Political ai^d SoCial Science ' - - vng, 498 .; ' K The Industrial (Sj6n4ition<>f the Negro in the North The EconomiVJlandicap;cii the Hegro, in th'fe^T^Jorth Prrf. Kelly Miller, Howard Univeiiitjj WasI^tigton.D.C'..^^^ The Negro in the T'rades Ufiiattari, New Ypj-k > ' ' J . ::^., The Three Amehdmefits ¦ .¦ , John Ba9CoraVPrQt«^soii>.(Jf'Ppiitical Science, .Williams College, Williamstown, \fas;«r ', ' ReprintQil j Itpv^ THE A.NNA:t:S of the .^riieriean Acadeniy ¦ of Political and Social Scierice, for ilV^ - ":.?¦;¦ . /• PHILADELPHIA •. r^' : J- - - '""'-\ THE iAiireBlCAN ACADMY OF fOtlTICAt AND S04b^ rJ 'England:! P.S. jCiftg & Soil, 2 Great Smith Streeti Westminstef, Luodon, S. ^.k K " ;:.:?=-- ' ^ Trfiiice ! L^ JUro4e;^;Enp Soiiinpt'BS Pstis : J'- ; :"'.- \\ prifelj- .-.- :':.'' - Spain : Capdeyille,' 9 Plaza de Sama Ini, M^dilii >\ , .- ^ Prici, 50 Cts. The Industrial Condition of the Negro in the North THE ECONOMIC HANDICAP OF THE NEGRO IN THE NORTH By Prof. Kelly Miller, Howard University, Washington, D. C. The economic problem growing out of the negro's presence in the North borrows importance from the prevailing dread of an overwhelming influx from the South. This conclusion is founded on fear rather than on careful consideration of the facts and factors entering into the premises. Although during the last forty years there has been a thin stream of movement towards the North, yet it has not been sufficient in volume to alter the course of the general current which is moving steadily towards the Gulf of Mexico. The total number of negroes in the thirty-one free States of the North and West does not equal the negro population of the single State of AlaBama. 'ine last census decade was one of~great unrest among the negroes of the South, and yet during that interval the increment in the Northern element was but slightly in excess of the natural in crease in the State of Georgia. If we make the slightest marginal allowance for the increase of the negroes who were in the North in 1900, it will be seen that the entire Northern influx which occasions so much frantic discussion would be less than the growth in a single Southern State. The negro population at large arose from 4,880,009 in i860 to 8,840,789 in 1900. In the meantime the Northern con tingent had grown from 227,216 to 759,788, or from 5 per cent, to 8J4 per cent, of the entire race. If the first generation after emanci pation which violently upset established order shows such slight dis persive tendency, we are surely not justified in the fear that in times of comparative quiet there will be a mad hejira to the northern tier of States. We must also take into account that the negro in the North does not seem to be a self-sustaining quantity, and unless constantly re- enforced from without would probably dwindle to the vanishing point. This failure of the race to thrive in the higher latitudes is " (543) §2 The Annals of the American Academy not, in my judgment, due so much to geographical reasons as to the benumbing effect of an unfriendly environment. An isolated class imprisoned in the midst of a more powerful and populous people is apt to be affected in its reproductiveness in some such way as ani mals which fail to multiply under captivity. But, however we may speculate as to the cause, the effect remains the same. The growth of the negro element in the North has been due almost or quite wholly tQ^jmrnigration^^ajid not_to and it seems entirely safe to rely upon the continuance of this tendency. When this Northern movement is checked the Northern negro will become a stationary or a diminishing quantity. Seven-tenths of the Northern negroes are found in the cities. The Northern influx during the last decade was mainly to the large cities of that section. Outside of these centers the tendency is to diminish rather than to increase. From 1890 to 1900 there was an actual decrease of the negro population in seven Northern States. The city influx is subject to self limitation. We cannot safely base general conclusions upon the happenings of a single decade. Each city will hold just so many of this elemgnt in^^lution before reaching the point of saturation, beyond which it cannot go. Such cities as Charleston, Richmond, Nashville and Washington have well nigh reached that point, and the last census shows only a slight ten dency of growth, and fell far short of the general increment of the negro population at large. All of this goes to show that the economic and general problems growing out of the situation of the Northern negro are rather inci dental and temporary, and form but a fragmentary part of the great race problem whose situs is in the South. Surprise is sometimes expressed that this race does not in larger numbers remove itself from the political and civil restrictions of the South to the more liberal regime of the freer States. But it is economic rather than political motives that influence the movement nf mnrlern poulation. A conservative tendency disposes all people to endure political ills at home rather than fly to industrial conditions they know not of. If we except the more restless and ambitious spirit, the twenty million foreigners who have come to this country since 1820 have not been attracted by an asylum from political op pression, but have come in quest of better economic opportunity and outlook. The gates of Ellis Island swing inward towards better in- (544) The Economic Handicap of the Negro in the North 83 dustrial conditions. Should conditions be reversed, and should European countries ofl^er higher wages and better conditions of living, there would be a reflux tide at once and the gate of Ellis Island would swing outward. In the North it is true that the negro enjoys the fullest politi cal prerogative, his educational facilities are the best that the world affords, and yet these things attract not the mass of the race, simply because they do not carry with them corresponding industrial oppor tunity. The negro may for a time drift about blindly, but in the long run he will be controlled by this great Economic motive which governs other people, and no amount of moralizing on our part can affect this result. The Northern movement will continue only so long as the North seems to offer the better economic advantage. When an industrial and economic equilibrium, so far as the negro is concerned, is established between the two sections the further Northern movement will be merely as flying fragments leaving the mass of the race unaffected. As inevitably as water when unre strained flows from a higher to a lower level, so work people, white or black, move from lower to higher economic opportunity. In dealing with the economic handicap of the negro in the North, we may as well limit our attention to the larger cities of that sec tion and include in this category such border cities as Washington, Baltimore, St. Louis and Louisville, where the colored workman meets with much the same industrial disadvantages as in the higher latitude. Indeed the industrial status of the negro is not determined so much by the geography of his position as by the relative number of white men with whom he must enter into industrial rivalry. The broad distinction between the negro workman in the North and in the South is that in one section he is confined generally to agricultural pursuits, whereas in the other he is shut in to personal and domestic service. It is also true that in the South, especially in the lower and hotter tier of Southern States, where white competi tion is not energetic, he is largely engaged in mechanical pursuits, a calling from which he is all but absolutely excluded in the North. When Jacksonville, Fla., was destroyed by fire several years ago it was rebuilt largely by negro mechanics ; but no skilled negro work man lifted a hammer or wielded a saw in restoring the city of Balti more from that awful deluge of fire two years ago. Great indeed is the handicap of that class which is shut in to a (545) 84 The Annals of the American Academy single line of occupation, and that, too, the one which is regarded as least remunerative and most benumbing to the just aspiration of an American citizen. The trades unions, either by the letter of the law or by the spirit in which it is executed, effectually bar the negro from the more remunerative pursuits of trade and transportation. The negro workman is thus compelled to loiter around the outer edge ofindustry and to pick up such menial work or odds-and-ends pur suits as white men do not care to undertake. The negro is being driven even from the domain of domestic and semi-domestic service as fast as white men fill up the higher fields of mechanical skill and press downwards into the lower stratum of occupation. Pursuits once monopolized by the negro in the North are rapidly passing from him. The white waiter, barber, and coachman poaches defiantly upon the black man's indus trial preserves. The industrial rivalry among men is almost as brutal as the struggle for existence among beasts of the forest. The attitude of the trade union towards the negro is that of intolerance and exclusion. They say to the black workman, "We fear lest there be not enough for you and us." I cannot agree with Dr. Booker T. Washington that these pur suits are passing from the black man because of his shiftlessness and inefficiency. It is rather the case of the stronger competitor push ing the weak to the wall. The strong man enters into the house of the weak, binds him and takes his possessions, and heeds not his wail of entreaty. The smallness of his numbers is the negro's indus trial weakness in the North. The white man in the union has noth ing to fear from the black man's competition outside the union. Whereas in the South the trades unions must reckon with the black workman who forms a sufficiently numerous class to threaten their industrial supremacy by a flank movement. The negro waiter is polite and good-natured, and a more skillful manipulator of dishes can hardly be imagined. The negro coachman when carefully trained in his duties is keenly alive to the amenities of his position, and is a good enough disciple of Jehu for all practical purposes. The whole world acknowledges that the negro is an expert with the razor. And yet the white man supplants him by sheer virtue of the fact that he belongs to the more numerous and preferred class. These are griev ous conditions and seriously must they be dealt with. As meager as are his earning opportunities, when it comes to (546) The Economic Handicap of the Negro in the North 85 renting a house, which in the nature of the case must absorb a large part of his earnings, he is often forced to pay a higher rate of rental than his white competitor for like accommodations. There is a dou ble diminution of the fraction, both by decreasing the numerator and by increasing the denominator. The destruction of the poor is his poverty. The excess of negro females over males is a most striking feature of the negro population in most of the large centers. In Washington and Baltimore this ex cess reaches the startling disproportion of 126 females to every 100 males. This enormous disproportion is both an effect and a fresh cause of economic adversity. It complicates every factor in the life of the race, and no plan can be proposed for the general betterment of this class that does take this serious factor into account. The negro in the North, by reason of his hard industrial lot, is forced to live in the alleys and shady places, the breeders of vice and crime, of disease and death, and the feeders of jails, hospitals and penitentiaries. When these cities are threatened with such frightful death rate and crime rate among this neglected class they should remember that it is but the logical outcome of the hard industrial lot. But I suppose that I am desired to point out remedies, rather than dilate upon evil conditions which all recognize and deplore. To propose solutions for insoluble problems is an easy and agreeable exercise of the mind. Every other American has a solution of the race problem which is relied upon with as much assurance as a patent nostrum to cure a chronic or constitutional disease. Solutions of the race problem remind us of the patient who declared that all remedies for the rheumatism were equally effective ; for he had tried them all, with the result that his aches and pains were in no wise abated. I beg to present the following suggestions with the hope that their value will be revealed upon analysis : I. Should the negro laborer receive more just and equitable treatment in the South there would be less migratory disposition and dissatisfaction on his part. The cases of peonage and chain gang abuses recently brought to light are but extreme instances of the many ways in which the black man forcibly or guilefully is deprived of the just fruits of his labor. There is too much of the traditional bias of the slave regime which regards the negro as an inferior order of nature placed in the world to be exploited by his white lord and master. It seems to be a (547) 86 The Annals of the Am,encan Academy hard lesson for the employing class to learn that the laborer is en titled to the same human considerations as himself. This ruthless disregard of the manhood side of the workman breeds restlessness and discontent. Those who employ labor should be most concerned in making the laborer satisfied and contented, thus insuring his high est efficiency. The South is the natural habitat of the negro on this continent, and there would be a lessening tendency to drift north ward if he were assured of the full fruits of his labor and of a square deal as a workman and as an American citizen. 2. The negro in the North must make himself efficient, accord ing to the highest standard of service in whatever field he may be en gaged. He must be doubly fortified against the prevailing tendency to supplant him with workmen of the preferred class on the score of superior efficiency. 3. There should be organized under competent auspices a bureau of information which should furnish to the masses of the race through the negro press, pulpit and other agencies of reaching and influencing public opinion and action, accurate knowledge of the evil of indiscriminate influx to the North as well as the advantages of judicious migration of selected individuals. Any proposition looking towards restriction upon the freedom of movement of any class of citizens is of course repugnant to the principles of our institutions. It is not the individual who intelligently concludes that he can better his condition by moving to the North whom it is desirable to restrain, but the blind, indiscriminate tendency impelling the thoughtless to drift about without plan or purpose. If industrially inclined and well disposed negroes in limited numbers could be directed to the smaller towns and rural communities of the North they could find remunerative work and kindly treatment. The negro needs to come in close contact with the Northern habit and method of work. The whole North might thus be made to serve as a vast training school for young negroes of both sexes who might acquire the North ern secret and method with the hope of finding opportunity of ex ploiting it among their own people in the South. Under the slave regime the Northern mechanic was brought South in order that negro apprentices might learn the different mechanical trades. This was the origin of the slave mechanic who is now passing off the stage without leaving a successor. Just as the negro youth go to Harvard and Yale and carry their acquired knowledge to the South (548) The Economic Handicap of the Negro in the North 87 to be exploited among their own constituency, so in the common household economy and in the ordinary workaday pursuits the negro may learn much by contact with the North. 4. Where there is to be found a considerable number of negroes they must create opportunity by catering to the needs and necessities of their own class. The number of negro stores and small business places that are springing up in all of the large cities constitutes the most hopeful indication above the gloomy economic horizon. 5. It may not be too much to hope that the Golden Rule will be applied to the economical domain. An able-bodied beggar in a democracy is a monstrosity. There is only one form of begging that is justifiable, and that is begging the opportunity to work upon the highest level of one's skill and efficiency. Too much stress is wont to be laid upon the antipathy of the white workman to affiliate with his black co-laborer. In the South frotn time immemorial the two races have worked side by side on terms of industrial equality without prejudice to the personal claims or pretensions of either. The Northern employer is too prone to turn off the colored applicant with the bland assurance that he himself would have no objection, but his white workmen would disrupt the business if a black competitor were forced upon them. This intoler ant attitude against the negro workman is largely a matter of fad and fancy. Upon the show of firmness on the part of the employer it would soon vanish away. The public becomes accustomed to a scheme of things from which the negro is excluded and soon comes to look upon it as a fixed, natural order. In Washington City we have colored members of the police force, and have become un conscious of their presence ; but in Baltimore a colored officer of the law would be regarded as a serious menace to the supremacy of the white race. Philadelphia has become so accustomed to colored policemen that their presence no longer occasions remark or curious comment, but in New York, a city ninety miles further North, this would at first be regarded as an intolerable innovation. A colored motorman on the electric cars in the streets of Philadelphia would at first tie up street car traffic. The other brakemen, native and foreign- born, intelligent and illiterate, would enter upon a strike, and would remain out as long as they felt sure that they were not imperiling the permanence of their position. But if the corporation, backed up by a just public sentiment, should insist upon the right to employ (549) 88 The Annals of the American Academy men according to their fitness alone, the recalcitrant brakemen would one by one sneak back into their old positions, and the good old City of Brotherly Love would forthwith sink into its accustomed quietness, and would think no more of the color of the man who manipulates the car cranks than of the color of his hair or the curvature of his eyebrows. So long as the North treats the negro workman with blighting discrimination it is left little moral ground for complaint against the South where a like spirit assumes a different form of manifesta tion. "Ye take my life when ye do take the means whereby I live." (550) THE NEGRO IN THE TRADES UNIONS IN NEW YORK By Mary White Ovington, —Fellow, Greenwich House Committee on Social Investigations, New York City. To ascertain the exact number of colored men in organized labor in New York city is a difficult matter. No record is kept by the secretaries of the various organizations as to the nationality of the members, and the Negro's name does not designate his race, as do many of the names of our foreigners. Locals containing large numbers of Negroes sometimes know the correct figures for their colored members, but where few of the race are in a trade complete information is hard to secure. I cannot be confident, therefore, that the list which I give is entirely correct. It has, however, been compiled after months of inquiry and probably has only a small percentage of error. What error there is is likely to be one of under-, not of over-, statement. The following is a list of Negro union men in New York city. With the exception of some of the building trades, only organiza tions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor are counted: Asphalt workers, 320; teamsters, 300; rockdrillers and tool- sharpeners, 250; cigar makers, 121; bricklayers, 90; waiters, 90; carpenters, 60 ; plasterers, 45 ; double drum bolsters, 30 ; safety and portable engineers, 26; eccentric firemen, 15; letter carriers, 10 ; pressmen, 10 ; printers, 6 ; butchers, 3 ; lathers, 3 ; painters, 3 ; coopers, 2 ; sheet metal workers, i ; rockmen, i. This makes a total of 1,388 men. The census of 1900 gives the number of Negro males engaged in gainful occupations in New York city at 19,314. This popula tion in the last five years has, I believe, from a study I have made of the Negro tenements, increased not less than 40 per cent. We then have to-day a working male population of 27,039 Negroes; 1,386 of these, a little over 5 per cent., being union men. This is not a large number, but it shows an increase over former times, if we can trust the opinion of unionists, for there are no figures with which to make comparison. One colored laborer (551) go The Annals of the American Academy says, "The number of Negroes in the unions has doubled in the last five )ears." "There are three times as many as there were for- merl)'," says another. "I am confident that there are many more colored men in organized labor than there were five years ago," says the recording secretary of the Central Federated Union. These are only guesses, but from them it appears probably that the Negro has not lost but has gained in organized labor. Are the Negroes in feeble unions or in powerful bodies? For the most part they are in unions of the latter character. The engineers and firemen are old and strong organizations ; so are the bricklayers, who in New York get seventy cents an hour for an eight hour day. The rock drillers were able to hold their price with their employers during the whole of the building of the subway. The carpenters, though a divided body, command four dollars a day. The cigar makers are an old union. The asphalt workers are a well organized body and able to enforce their demands. The Negroes, therefore, seem to be in strong labor groups. How do they serve in these organizations? The answer is in their favor. The official of the teamsters writes that they are satis factory and rarely scab on them. The cigar makers say "satisfac tory." A number of locals report "as good as the average." Their record in New York is creditable. One union owes its large mem bership and its strong organization to a colored man. The asphalt ^vorkers have for their agent, or walking delegate, ]Mr. James L. Wallace, a Negro from Virginia, who helped to organize his union and has worked for it with much ability. Mr. Wallace has increased the membership from 250 in 1903, when he assumed control of it, to 850 in 1906. The colored men of this union constitute a little over a third of the members, the other workers being chiefly Ital ians. Wages have been advanced twice since ^Ir. Wallace has been at the head of his local, for he has acted as its president as well as delegate, and his men now make two dollars and a half as rollers working ten hours a day, and four dollars as wood-pavers working eight hours a day, an increase in the last three years from forty-three to sixty-eight cents a day. Mr. Wallace is his local's representative at the Central Federated Union, and is spoken of by its best workers as a man of intelligence and discretion. But while ^^¦e find the proportion of union Negroes in strong- organizations gratifying, we also see that there are numerous (552) The Negro in the Trades Unions in New York g i omissions, aridthat £olored men are _irLi£w_skilled trades. There are no machinists, no structural iron workers, no plumbers, no garment makers. I find 102 different trades, or divisions of trades, on the list of the Central Federated Union which, as far as I have been able to ascertain, have no Negroes in their member ship. Why is this the case? In the first place, compared with other races, there are not many Negroes in New York, and few of those that are here are skilled workmen. There are, moreover, tens of thousands of foreigners and of American-born white men who come here to get employment. The city gathers in multitudes of workers, and, while labor is always in demand, many artisans have to turn to unskilled tasks. When the few Negroes who are skilled enter this labor market, they compete with the best of the world. The struggle is severe, and they with others feel it. Then the trades union, endeavoring to maintain a high standard of living for its members, may decide for a time to adopt a policy of restric tion of membership. Excessive entrance dues will be charged, or friends of the men inside the organization will be given the first chance at admission. All of the city's new comers are likely to be subjected to this policy; the Jew, who is now in nearly every union in New York, has suffered, and still suffers from it; the Italian feels it ; btit it is upon the Negro that it bears hardest. He is not sufficiently strong in numbers to be a menace unorganized, and he finds himself pushed aside while another man is admitted to the place he hoped might be his. This discrimination is primarily economic, not racial ; but it is hard to determine where economic motive ends and race or caste discrimination begins. Undoubtedly men are debarred from unions in New York solely because of their color. This is contrary to the ideals of organized labor, to the constitution of the American Federation, and I believe to the sense of the best men in the move ment in New York. "No man shall be debarred because of his creed or color," unionists say again and again ; and they rarely go against this principle openly as did the locomotive engineers when they denied their democracy and put the word "white" in their constitution. But the admission of a member is usually left to the local to which he applies, and there are various means by which a colored man may be refused admittance. I have been unable to determine how many Negroes in a given (553) ga The Annals of the American Academy time have been denied membership to organizations in New York because of their color; for it is difficult not only to learn of those refused admittance, but also to ascertain the real cause when a man does not get in. Sometimes he is discouraged at the outset and hardly tries; again he is debarred because he applies at an inopportune time. I have recently had experience in attempting to get a carpenter into a certain local. At the date I asked a man to vouch for him the local was taking in no men, black or white; they had shut down on admitting members for a few months. The colored carpenter in question, had he applied alone, might have believed that this answer was intended especially for him, and would have made no further effort to get inside the organization, whereas I have every reason to hope that when the restriction is removed he will be elected to membership. Our Negro population comes to us chiefly from the Southern States, and it has been taught that labor organization is its enemy. It is timid, too, in attempting to gain its rights. Colored men have heard that white men lay down their tools rather than work with them, and they sometimes give up their trade without a trial. Still, there are Negroes of skill and persist ence who have been denied admittance to the union, and who have suffered because of this. Would the Negro as a workman be better off, then, if there were no labor unions? I have heard colored men prominent in industrial school work say that they would be ; yet it is difficult to conceive of the American laborer to-day without the benefits that have accrued and are accruing to him from the collective bar gaining and from the protective legislation that organized labor has often obtained. Whether in or out of the union, the Negro has benefited by this ; but if labor organization creates race discrimina tion, then it deserves the condemnation of the colored race. It is spoken of sometimes as doing this, but the accusation is not true. It has found caste feeling and has at times been unable to overcome it, but it has not created it. If it had, we should have seen the negro strongest in those pursuits which were unorganized ; yet many occu pations are closed to him because of the prejudice of white em ployees who have never formed a union. There are to-day numbers of negroes coming to us from the West Indies who have been trained as clerks and accountants, but you will find them in New York acting as elevator boys in the halls of the business houses (554) The N'^gro iu ine Trades Unions in New York 93 whose offices they never enter. If organization made race prej udice, we should find it lacking among the women whose unions are too young to be accounted of much strength; but for years white working girls hay£-been cruel in their refusal to admit their colored sisters to the right to work in factory or shop. Nothing in New York so holds the Negro race from moral and industrial pro gress as the denial to its women of the varied opportunities of labor. The banding together of men of one class and of a common interest may occasionally emphasize race discrimination, but it does not bring it into existence. And as the working man grows to see with increasing clearness that he needs all competent labor within his organization, the Negro when he is efficient will find the union discouraging the individual who allows his caste sentiments to inter fere with this movement for unification. The far-sighted leaders of the labor world understand this. They strive to stamp out class feeling, not to cultivate it. Appreciating the danger of an exploited class of workmen in America, they endeavor, though not always successfully, to obliterate race lines in the organizations of the country. But if organized labor does not create race discrimination, there is a sufficient amount of it in America to make the Negro often occupy the position of a strike-breaker. We have seen this at times in New York. When men are wanted in large numbers for comparatively unskilled work, they will be sent for from the South, as was the case with a strike of lorigshoremen.iiiJBrQC>klyn, and as was conspicuously the situation_jn_ Chicago during the teamsters' strike last summer. ~Some of the Negroes who come to the North do not know what the conditions are, others understand fully what they are doing; but, innocent or comprehending, they are equally hated by the men whose places they take. They have also been indiscriminatingly praised by the Negro world. At the National Negro Business League, held in New York last August, one of the speakers gave great glory to the Negro strike-breakers in Chicago. I do not think he said this because he was an indi vidualist and believed every strike-breaker to be a hero; it was rather because he felt that the colored man had been imposed upon and was vindicating his rights. While this is sometimes so, it is not always the case. Negro strike-breakers are of many kinds, and they should be (555) 94 The Annals of the American Academy considered in relation to their immediate labor problem as we should consider any other men. There are colored men who cannot get into the union in their own city, and when a strike occurs, after having been denied the right to work under union conditions in their own trade, take the places of the striking men. In doing this they are justified. Then there are the Negroes who, coming from another State, take the jobs of unionists who have refused colored men admittance into the locals of their city. Such men , if they had work at home, are in a questionable position when they interfere with an effort on the part of the laboring class to better its condition. Their justification would be that the men of their color had not been fairly treated by the striking union. And, lastly, there are the men who take the place of strikers in a trade in which the Negro has had union rights. This, as I understand, was the status of the colored strike-breakers who took the positions of teamsters in Chicago last summer. The teamsters' union had been open to colored men, and they had no grievance against it. The Negroes who came to the city from the South and worked as team sters were strike-breakers, and no more to be commended than the white men who did the same thing, though dieir bravery was doubtless greater. When Negroes, without discrimination, publicly applaud the strike-breakers of their race, they are taking a stand that they should seriously consider, since they separate themselves from the ethics of the greater part of the labor world. In the printers' strike in New York to-day the situation has been an interesting one. Until a few weeks ago there was but one colored man in Typographic_aL_Linion Naj67 it was generaViy known that Negroes could not get into this union. Since the strike colored men trained in an industrial school have taken the place of unionists in a prominent New York firm. This was the only chance these men had to get into printing in New York, or seemed so; but I more admire the five colored printers who went about the city pretending to look for work in a non-union shop. They did not mean to take it, but their ruse was successful ; they were met by a union picket, invited to join the organization, and are now_ ojjstrike pay. ^ I feel the need of emphasizing the Negro's entering into or ganized labor when it is possible and keeping upon good terms with white laborers, because I regard with some fear the counter teach- (556) The Negro in the Trades Unions in New York 95 ing which the race now so often hears, that it must win its way alone, as a segregated people. That this is possible in New York I do not believe. The colored man has neither the skill nor the numbers to maintain himself as a worker in a segregated group. We can see this in the pursuits which he has lost. At one time he had almost a monopoly of the barbering business; now he rarely keeps a shop, except where he works fnr his nwn^rare As a waiter he has fast lost ground, for no first-class_hotels employ him, and but few good restaurants. He cannot keep a nioiiopoly of a'trade so long as he is thought of as a worker who must always be with his kind, his own people. A man who is hiring laborers wants the greatest efficiency he can get, and he will not choose to employ men from a race that works only in race groups and at the same time constitutes but 2 per cent, of the city's population. Take the case of the waiters, for instance. There are, or were, according to the last census, 30,104 white waiters in Greater New York, and 6,078 colored, ik an employer must choose either white or colored, will he not be sure to find more efficiency in the group that contained 30,000 men than in the group one-fifth as large ? The smaller group will have able men in it, but they will be held back by their ineffi cient co-laborers. The only place in the world of labor that the colored man can win as a segregrated race in New York is the place that no one else wants. He may sweep down the subway steps, run the elevators in cheap apartment houses, act as porter in stores, where the work is heavy and the pay small ; but when he ceases to be segregated and enters the organized trades, he is on an equal footing with other laborers, he gets their pay and their hours, and he is a man in a movement of workingmen. How to get to this place should be his constant question. He should grow increasingly efficient and should pound at the union's door, break ing it down if he is refused admittance, but after he is within doing his best to be of service to his fellow-workers. He should learn to count on the improvement of his condition through the working class. Having so long been associated with various forms of do mestic service, the colored man has laid too much stress upon what his employer might do for him. There is the occasional employer who takes a black man because he believes he .should have a chance, and keeps him despite the prejudice of his other employees, but such a man is rare. "I have no objection to hiring you," is the (557) 96 The Annals of the American Academy usual remark addressed to the Negro who looks for employment, "but my clerks would not care to work with you." A little firmness would perhaps overcome, the clerks' opposition, but there are plenty of cheap white clerks; and if the black man should by chance get such a position, he would probably receive a lower wage than the white man next him. As the Negro gains in productive efficiency he will become in creasingly important to the world of organized labor. Education will raise his standard of living, and he will give his support to the effort to gain proper human conditions for all who work. It is only through the solidarity of labor's interests that he can hope to be saved from remaining in an exploited class. Every colored man in New York who stands with the organization, working for it in its defeat or its success, gains respect not only for himself but for his race. He comes in contact with men of his own class, and in the best way that such contact can come about, as a workman by the side of another workman. Caste lines disappear when men are held together by a common interest, and as they feel their dependence one upon another they gain in sympathy and in fra ternal spirit. I heard a story the other day, whose every word I can vouch for, which illustrates better than anything else I can say the thought which I have tried to express. An Irish friend was talking on trade union matters, and she said : "Do you know, yisterday I dined wid a nayger. Little did I iver think I wud do sich a thing, but it was this wa}'. You know my man is sicretary of his union, and the min are on strike, and who should come to the door at twelve o'clock but a big black nayger. 'Is Brother O'Neill at home?' seys he. 'Brother O'Neill,' thinks I; 'well, if I'm brother to you I'd better have staved in Ireland.' But I axed him in, and in a minute my man comes and he shakes the nayger by the hand, and saj^s he, 'You must stay and ate wid us.' So I puts the dinner on the table and I sat down and ate wid a nayger. 'Well,' I said, 'how did he seem?' 'To tell you the truth,' she said, 'he seemed just like anybody else.' " (558) THE MIGRATION OF NEGROES TO THE NORTH By R. R. Wright, Jr., Special Research Fellow in Sociology, University of Pennsylvania. In the space allotted to me I shall consider briefly: I. The Extent of Negro Migration to the North. 2. The Causes of this Migration. 3. The Social Effect of Negro Migration. I. The Extent of Negro Migration to the North. There is no way of directly measuring this migration, as in this country there is no registration of persons who go from one place to another, as there is in some European countries. Hence we are left largely to approximate measurements afforded by the figures of the United States Census. According to this authority, the movement of the center of the negro population during the past century has been steadily toward the southvi^st over four hundred miles, and during the two decades from i§8o to 1900, thirty-one miles, from Walker County, Georgia, to iPekalb County, in northeast Alabama. The northern movement is directly Opposite to this tendency, and in the past forty years has been so great as to transfer from the South to the North 2.5 per cent. of the entire negro population. In i860 there were 344,719 negroes in the North,' and in 1900 911,025, an increase of 164.3 P^^ cent., as against an increase of 93.4 per cent, for the negroes of the South during the same period. The following table gives the growth of the negro population of the North and the South from i860 to 1900 by decades: ^''The NortJi" includes the North Atlantic, North Central and Western States. As defined by the United States Census, "The South" is the States of the South Atlantic and South Central divisions. (559) 98 The Annals of the American Academy Negro Population hy Decades, i860 to 1900 {U. S. Census). i860. 1870. 1880. 1890. 1900. The North 344.719 4S9,i98 626,890 728,099 911,025 The South 4,097,111 4.420,811 5.953,903 0,760,577 7,922,69b Total 4,441,830 4,880,009 6,580,793 7,488,676 8,833,721 Percentage of Increase. 1860-1870. 1870-1880. 1880-1890. 1890-1900. 1860-1900. The North 33-3 36.5 16.2 25.1 164.3 The South 8.8 34.7 13.5 17.2 93.4 ' Total 9.9 34.9 13.8 18.0 98.9 Forty years ago only 7.8 per cent, of the negroes were in the North; to-day more than 10.3 per cent. This increase is due almost entirely to migration ; for the available statistics seem to show that the birth rate of the Northern negro barely equals the death rate, making a natural increase practically impossible. The following table will show the nativity of the negro popula tion by divisions of States, according to the United States Census : Per 10,000 Distribution of Native Negro Population in each Division, hy Division of Birth (Census Bulletin No. S, igoo). Division of Birth Division of Residence North North South South I'nited Atlantic Central Western Atlantic Central States United States" 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 South Atlantic 4,439 910 2,012 9,879 549 4,682 South Central 156 2,406 2,597 81 9.372 4,640 North Atlantic 5,198 115 351 15 4 239 North Central 112 6,448 2,149 6 46 398 Western 14 16 2,660 . . . . lo This table shows that of every 10,000 native negroes living in the North Atlantic division 4,439 were born in the South Atlantic division, and 156 in the' South Central States, 5,108 in the North At lantic division, and 126 in the North Central and ^^'estern divisions. In other words, 53.24 per cent, were born in the North and 45.95 per cent, were born in the South. Of every 10.000 native negroes living in the North Central States in 1900, 6.448 were born in that division, 2,406 were born in the South Central division, 910 in the South Atlantic division, while 131 were born in the North Atlantic =Eaeh 10,000 includes the proper proportion of those horn at sea, in American possessions, and whose birth place is unknown (560) The Migration of Negroes to the North 99 and Western divisions ; that is, about one-third of the negroes of the North Central division were born in the South. Of every 10,000 negroes living in the Western States, 2,660 were born in that division, while 2,500 were born in the other Northern States, and 4,609 were born in the South. Of the total number of native negroes who live in the North, about forty per cent, are migrants from the South. The above table also shows something of the course of migra tion, which is along the line of the least resistance. The South At lantic States send negroes up the seaboard to the North Atlantic, and from the South Central division they come up the Mississippi Valley to the North Central States ; and from both Southern divisions they go West, some coming up the Mississippi and crossing over through Missouri and Kansas, and others going around the South west through Texas. But, to be still more definite, they are the so-called border States which furnish most migrants to the North, as the following table will show : State of Residence State of Birth Born outside of state North South Ken- Ten- Number % Maryland Virginia Carolina Carolina tucky nessee New York . .50,518 52.8 2,864 24,118 6,587 2,724 690 291 New Jersey. .37,026 53.4 4,430 15,965 3.9o8 806 176 104 Penna 85,002 54.5 17,415 40,870 5,206 1,009 657 835 Ohio 39,796 41.3 732 9,983 2,189 437 13,970 2,327 Illinois 53,768 63.7 693 3,473 i,073 649 10,587 10,237 Indiana ....31,829 55-4 97 1.232 1,817 185 i9,379 3,459 Kansas 29,814 57-4 152 i,44i 618 389 5,638 5,131 From Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland come about two- thirds of the negro migrants of New York and New Jersey, and more than two-thirds of those of Pennsylvania, while these States furnish only about one-third of the migrants to Ohio, and less than one-tenth to Illinois, Indiana and Kansas. On the other hand, from Kentucky and Tennessee come about 72 per cent, of the migrants of Indiana, and about two-fifths of those of Ohio and Indiana, while these States furnish about one-fiftieth, one-sixtieth and one one- hundred and thirtieth of the migrants to New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey respectively. But the movement has not been uniform to all portions of the North for between 1880 and 1900 five Northern States decreased in (561) loo The Annals of the American Academy negro population, viz. : Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Nevada and Wisconsin ; . nd between 1890 and 1900 the two Dakotas, New Mexico, Oregon and California did the same. The Northern migra tion has been a movement to the Northern cities, and to the great cities particularly. Within the two decades from 1880 to 1900 the negro population of cities of 4,000 inhabitants and over more than doubled, while the rural population actually decreased more than one-tenth. The rural districts of most of the Northern States east of the Mississippi River decreased, while the cities of 100,000 inhabi tants or more increased over three times more rapidly in negro popu lation than in whites. Northern Negro Population in Cities and Rural Districts, 1880 and igoo. (U. S. Census.) 1900 1880 Increase 1880 to 1900 Number. Percent. Number. Percent. Number Percent. Cities of 100,000 Pop 335,531 36.8 122,203 19.5 213,328 175.5 Citiesof 25,000 to 100,000.102,055 11.2 57,787 9.2 44,268 76.8 Cities of 8,000 to 25,000. .192,624 11.3 64,773 10.3 37,851 58.6 Cities of 4,000 to 8,000. . 65,555 7-2 42,198 6.7 23,357 55.3 Cities of at least 4,000. .605,765 66.5 286,961 45.7 318,804 iii.i Rural districts 305,260 33.5 339,929 54.3 *34,669 *io.i Total (North) 911,025 loo.o 626,890 loo.o 284,135 39.6 ?Decrease. To-day two of the four largest urban aggregations of negroes in the world are north of Mason and Dixon's line, and are increasing with many times the rate at which Southern cities are increasing, as the following table will show : Increase of Cities 1890-igoo (U. S. Census). CiTV Negro Popiilation. Increase, Total „, ., North. igoo. i8go. Negroes. Increase. Philadelphia 62,613 39,371 jg.o 23.6 New York 60,666 23,601 157.8 126.8 Chicago 30,150 14,271 111.2 54,4 Boston 11,591 8,125 13.3 25.1 Cleveland 5,988 2,939 loo.o 461 Pittsburg 17,040 7,850 117.1 34,8 Cincinnati 14,482 11,655 24.3 98 Newark 6,694 4,141 61.6 35'3 Indianapolis 15,931 9,133 74.4 ^^ (562) The Migration of Negroes to the North loi City. Negro Populat on. Increase, Total South. igoo. 1890. Negroes. Increase. Washington 86,702 75,572 14.7 29.7 Baltimore 79,258 67,104 18.1 30.7 New Orleans 77,714 64,491 20.5 12.0 Memphis 49,9io 28,706 73.9 92.0 Louisville 39,i39 28,651 36.6 30.2 Atlanta 35,727 28,098 29.3 75.2 Richmond 32,230 32,330 0.3* 28.0 Charleston 31,522 30,970 1.8 9.9 Nashville 30,044 29,382 2.3 75.7 ?Decrease. These comparisons show a remarkable amount of migration to the Northern cities, when it is considered that from the most reliable data the birth rate is low and the death rate high. For example, the death rate of New York negroes exceeded the birth rate every year from 1895 to 1904, and in 1904 it was 10.43 P^^" thousand in excess, while the same was true for the ten years in Indianapolis, where the excess of deaths in 1904 was 3.2 per 1,000, and in Cincinnati, where it was 30.9 per 1,000. Had there been no migration to these cities the negro population would have decreased very considerably. Temporary Migration. The census figures above used give at best only the minimum figures, and a very crude measurement of the permanent migration at two points, namely, the birthplace and the place of residence at the time of the census. It gives nothing as to the temporary migration as such, nor can we do more than form an estimate of this. We may describe the temporary migrants as sum mer migrants, winter migrants and roving or irregular migrants. The summer migrants are made up of those who come North every summer to work in the hotels and in domestic service chiefly at the seashore resorts. They come chiefly from Maryland and Virginia, but also from the States as far down as Florida and Louisiana, and are scattered along the seashore from New Jersey to Maine, often doubling, and even trebling, the negro population of a given place in a season. Among these are hundreds of negro students who earn their next year's school expenses in the North during the summer. There is also another class, which comes generally from the small towns and rural districts to work on the farms of Pennsylvania and Maryland, where they are in great demand. The employment agents (563) I02 The Annals of the American Academy of Philadelphia find it extremely difficult to secure the Southern negroes wanted by farmers in the vicinity of that city, and often the farmers, not trusting to agents, go down to the boats themselves in order to persuade incoming negroes to go to farm work. These sum mer migrants, or a large part of them, return South when the winter's cold comes — the students go back to the Southern schools, a large number of waiters, porters, and other domestic workers go to work in Southern winter resorts in Florida and other States, and many go back to their former labor. In the winter there come to the large cities many unskilled labor ers, who find work scarce in the small cities and on the farms. Many of these have been farm laborers during the summer — some as tenants on Southern farms. Among them are many married men, who leave their families behind and go back to them in the spring. From both classes of these temporary migrants the perma nent residents of the North are recruited. Some remain, having come to the city for the first time, while others go regularlv from North to South each season for a dozen years or more before becom ing permanently settled in the North. There are also many temporar)- migrants who roam from place to place, living in one section onl}- a very short time. They are un skilled laborers, of the unsteady type, and roving is made easy be cause of the demand for unskilled labor in the large cities. These migrants are from sixteen years of age to forty. After forty there are very few "rovers." .S'^'.r and Age of Migrants. In the total negro population there is an excess of females, but in the Northern negro population the males are in the majority, there being 1,025 males to each 1,000 females. The large cities of the East, however, have an excess of females, except Pittsburgh and Boston, due to the fact that few women go to the rural districts, while there is great demand for men on the farms. As to age, the migration begins at about fifteen years and extends to forty, being greatest between eighteen and twenty-eight for men and fifteen and twenty-five for women. The following table of 512 persons questioned by me as to the age of leaving their\irth- place and the age at coming to Philadelphia illustrates this point • (564) The Migration of Negroes to tlie North 103 Age at leaving Age at arriving birthplace. in Philadelphia. Age periods. Males Females Males Females Number. % Number. % Number. % Number % Under 10 years 27 lo.o 41 16.9 9 3.4 11 4.5 10 to 14 years 40 15.0 47 19.4 15 5.6 27 II. I 15 to 19 years 74 27.5 59 24.3 69 25.6 66 27.1 20 to 29 years 79 29.4 62 25.5 109 40.5 75 30.9 30 years and over 22 8.1 22 9.0 56 20.8 56 23.1 Unknown 27 lo.o 12 4.9 11 4.1 8 3.3 Total 269 loo.o 243 loo.o 269 loo.o 243 loo.o The above table shows that considerable time elapsed between that of leaving home and arriving in the city of Philadelphia. Only about half of the migrants came directly to the city, while the other half lived in various other places covering a period which averaged over eight years. The large number of children (sixty-eight) who are reported as leaving their place of birth under ten years of age, and most of them from ten to fourteen, were with their parents or guardians. After fourteen the migration is generally of individuals. The census brings out clearly the effect of this migration, as a comparison between the population of Pennsylvania and Virginia shows : Negro population of Age Periods. Pennsylvania. Virginia. Males. Females. stales. Females Under 15 years 19,421 20,526 132,720 134,690 IS years to 29 years .... 27,108 28,589 90,422 98,994 30 years to 44 years 20,778 I7,i93 48,676 S3,0Si 45 years to 59 years 8,674 7,425 31,641 31,251 59 years and over 2,916 3,429 18,771 18,151 Unknown 451 335 1,229 1.126 Total 79,348 77,497 323,459 337,263 The sudden drop after fifteen years in the case of Virginia is due to emigration, while the rise at fifteen for Pennsylvania is due to immigration. II. Causes of Migration. As a general rule migration proceeds from the country of great est density, most highly developed resources, greatest competition and highest cost of living, to that of less density, comparatively low cost of living, and undeveloped but rich resources, especially where (565) I04 The Annals of the American Academy there is an opportunity for exploitation. On this principle, millions of Europeans left their native shores for the American continent, and upon this principle thousands of the men of the East went to the West, and thousands are to-day going to the Northwest and the South. The negroes, however, seem to be going contrary to this principle, in so far as they are coming from the undeveloped South — the land of opportunity and future wealth — and crowding to the highly developed Northern cities where competition is severest, and cost of living highest. As we have seen, very few Northern-born negroes migrate South, while many Southern-born migrate North. To get the point of view of the migrants themselves I submitted to several hundred of them the question, "Why did you leave the South ?" Their answers are given in the following table : Causes for Leaving the South. Males Females Total Causes. Number. % Ntmiber. % Ntimber. % Desire for higher wages 120 44.6 96 39.5 216 42.2 Higher wages and travel 12 4.5 10 4.1 22 4.3 Higher wages and protection 14 5.2 6 2.5 20 3.9 "To better condition" 25 9.3 31 12.8 56 10.9 "Tired of the South" 9 3.3 13 5.4 22 43 "Wanted to make a change'' 27 lo.o 22 9.0 49 g.6 Came with parent or guardian 29 10.8 40 16.5 69 13.5 Old persons, to be with children. . 3 i.i 6 2.5 9 1.8 Parent died, left home to work... 2 .7 5 2.0 7 1.3 Had position in the North 3 i.i 3 1.2 6 1.2 Ran away from home I .4 o .. i .2 Brought away by soldiers i .4 0 . . i .2 To attend school 3 i.i 0 .. 3 .6 Not given 20 7.5 11 4.5 31 6.0 Total 269 loo.o 243 loo.o 512 loo.o Over fifty per cent, gave as their reason for leaving the South the desire for higher wages; about eight per cent, wanted, beside higher wages, protection and travel ; 10.9 per cent, wanted "to better their condition," while 4.3 per cent, left because they were "tired of the South"; 13.5 came with their parents, and 9.6 per cent, left simply because they "wanted to make a change." These answers, though not very profound, leave us without doubt that the chief cause for the movement northward is economic — and is seen from the migrants' point of view in the higher wages offered in the North. (566) The Migration of Negroes to the North 105 A comparison of the wages which these persons received in the South and those which, according to their testimony, they are now receiving in the North makes even clearer the force which higher wages has in the migration from the South. The following table is based upon the answers of 512 migrants: Number of Negroes Receiving Specified Wages per Week in the South and in the North. Weekly wages. South North Males. Females. Total. Males. Females. Total. "Board and clothes" 6 4 10 SO cents to $1.99 8 26 34 . . i i $2 to $2.99 22 48 70 .. II II $3 to $3.99 26 34 60 . . 16 16 $4 to $4.99 12 II 23 10 46 56 $5 to $5.99 21 14 35 II 31 42 $6 to $6.99 47 6 53 23 12 35 $7 to $8.99 24 I 25 35 9 44 $9 to $11.99 5 0 5 64 7 71 $12 to $13.99 I 0 I 23 4 27 $14 to $15.99 I 0 I 3 o 3 $16 and over i 0 i 7 0 7 Working for self 5 0 5 4 i 5 Not working 19 24 43 5 19 24 Not reported 71 75 146 84 86 170 Total 269 243 512 269 243 512 The wages generally paid to the women in the South were $1.50 per week ($6 per month) to $3 per week in the small towns, and from $2 to $4 in the cities ; while men received $2 to $3.50 in the small towns and on the farms, and from $5 to $9 in the cities. These wages are bettered by from 75 per cent, to 150 per cent, in the North. Domestic servants among women earn in Philadelphia from $3 to $6 per week, averaging about $4.50; while men earn from $6 to $12 per week, averaging about $9, with more, however, receiving $12 per week than $6. These figures are corroborated so far as the South is concerned by special local studies published by the United States Government. The Bulletin of Labor, January, 1898, says of domestic service in Farmville, Va. : "The men receive from $8 to $10 a month ; the women receive from $1 to $5, according to age and work ; a general servant in an ordinary family receiving $4, a nurse girl $1 to $3 and (567) io6 The Annals of the American Academy a cook $5." Laborers in Farmville receive from 30 cents to $I per day. In Sandy Spring, Md., (Bulletin of Labor, January, 1901), "the wages range from 'victuals and clothes' and lodging (in two cases) to $10 a month. The usual wages for a young nurse girl is from $1.50 to $4 a month, generally $3 ; for a housemaid, from $4 to $7, generally $6 ; for a cook $6 to $10, generally $7 or $8." This same contrast holds good for farm labor in the North and in the South. According to the report of the United States Department of Agriculture, the following table^ represents wages paid to negroes in typical Northern and Southern States : Wages of Negro Farm Labor per Month, by the with Board; also per day, ordinary labor Year, Without Board and ¦, 1898 and 1902. State. New Jersey $22.30 Pennsjrlvania . . . 20.59 Ohio 19-54 Indiana 19.26 Kansas 21.03 Connecticut* . . . 27.65 New York 23.01 Maryland 16.63 Virginia 13- 18 North Carolina. . 11. 10 South Carolina. . 9.48 Georgia 10.36 Kentucky 1505 Tennessee 12.83 Per month, Without board. 189S. ipo2. $25.89 24.94 22.31 21.17 2443 28.59 2613 17.29 14-97 12.7710.7912.2416.19 13-94 by the year With board. Per Without day, ordinary labor board. $12.85 12.5813.2612.45 14-4716.00 15.71 10.36 9.16 7.486.73 7.25 10.71 9.06 1902. $15.27 14.3115.2114.42 16.49 17.5618.01II. 15 10.06 8,84 7.61 8.50 11.62 9.71 $1.24 1.08I.OI .93 1. 10 1.401.23 .86 .67 .56¦49 .56-75 .65 1902. $1.32 30 15 03 30 45 38 92 76 64 53 ,62,81 73 With board. 1S98. 1902. $1.00 .92.92.82 I.OI 1.051-05 .67 .56 •49.43¦49.61 •SS $0.93 .80 71 72 91 02 94 .60 48 4341 4457 51 ^Connecticut and New York make no separate returns for the labor of negroes ; all the other States do. We notice that New Jersey pays the highest price to negro labor on the farm. There is also more migration of farm labor to this State, which according to the report quoted above, is the State most affected by the incoming of negro farm laborers. Another cause, not entirely economic but having very definite economic bearing, is that suggested in such answers in the above 'Wages of Fnrm L.ilior in the United St.Ttes, Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture, No. 26. (568) The Migration of Negroes to the North 107 table as, "tired of the South," "desire for higher wages and protec tion," "to better one's conditons." There is no doubt that the social unrest resulting from the discriminations against negroes in the South is having the effect of driving an increasing number of them from that section. The South has known the negro chiefly as a slave without political, social or even personal rights, save those which whites condescended to give. And by erecting double stan dards of morality, legality, social and economic efficiency, the white South seems determined that the blacks shall share in its economy to the least degree possible. On the other hand, growing intelligence on the part of the negroes demands more and more of appreciation, and when this is not given, the unrest becomes intense. This is not the desire which some wish to denote by the much misused term "social equality." It is that fundamental desire of human nature which Professor A. W. Small, of the University of Chicago, says the sociologist must assume as natural to every individual. "Each man," he says, "embodies a claim to be an undiminished unit among like units. . . The Germans talk of 'pcrsonliche Geltung' 'counting for all that one is essentially worth,' and this again seems to be an utterance of the native human instinct. The privilege of standing over against his fellow, with the assured franchise of equal freedom of self-expression, is an explicit demand of every unspoiled man. The demand is not primarily an assertion of 'equality' in the sense in which the idea is notoriously abused by pseudo-democrats. It is the demand that such as I am, with such sort and size of merit as I personally possess, I may be permitted to assert myself without suppression or subversion by the arrogation of others." "The root of the matter," continues Professor Small, "is not to be socially discounted in accordance with any fictitious scale." {American Jour nal of Sociology, Sept., 1900.) This inability on the part of negroes to secure this "personliche Geltimi:;" is one of the most serious fac tors in the progress of the negro and of the South, and needs thor ough and unbiased study. At present free speech on the subject is not allowed to negroes or whites in the South, and Northern students of social conditions are not inclined to look the matter squarely in the face. The two general causes for migration to the North are higher wages and opportunity for freer self-expression. These are the arguments which thousands of negroes now living in the North use (569) io8 The Annals of the American Academy in their letters to their friends in the South whom they are endeavor ing to persuade to come North. These are the arguments which employment agents have used to bring thousands of negroes from their Southern homes. It is very quaintly summed up in the ex pression of a South Carolina negro who said to me: "The white folks respects you up here. You ain' no better, and you ain' no worse than any other working man. You get what you'se worth, that's all. Down where I come from, you are all right among your own color, but when there's a white man in it, you's sho' goin' to git left." There has been, in recent years, no wholesale emigration from any part of the South, but simply a steady flow, which in some sec tions is causing a slow depopulation. The young people leave first. If a young man, he sends for his brother, uncle, father or other relative, and friends. He tells of the many advantages, he com pares the life in the country town with that of the Northern city, mentioning often in detail every superiority of the latter over the former, but he generally does not tell of his struggles, disappoint ments and sorrows. The young women write in the same strain. They persuade their relatives and friends to come North, often "just for a summer ;" they secure places of employment for them, and thus the migration begins and continues. I have written dozens of letters for migrants from the South to their Southern friends and rela tives, and not a few times have I had to suggest to the author not to paint the picture of Northern conditions too beautiful, which they were often inclined to do. They are not the best negroes, from the economic point of view, who come North, just as they are not the best Russians or Italians who come to America. They are the ill-adjusted. We may divide the negroes of the South into four classes: First, the property- holders, which include most of the professional class, business men, the most intelligent artisans and farmers ; second, the tenant farm-^ ers, the artisans, domestic servants of skill and intelligence, who do not own their homes ; third, the unskilled laborer of the city, and the country farm hand; fourth, the vagrant and criminal class.' Of these four classes, the majority of migrants to the North come from the third class, who first feel the economic stress, and who find it more difficult to get work enough to support them in the South than in the North. The second and fourth classes furnish respec- (S7o) The Migration of Negroes to the North 109 tively the next largest number, while the first class furnishes the few est migrants. This might lead one to ask why do not the best negroes leave the South ? for they, more than all others, ought to feel the pressure of their Southern environment. The reason can be found in the policy of race separation, which tends to develop among the negroes an upper class, who hold their places not so much because of superior efficiency as because they are negroes. Thus negro teachers, preach ers, doctors, and leaders in small business concerns have been devel oped. It would be difficult for these, who have gotten their places under a limited competition, to hold the corresponding place in the economic system of the North as of the South. For example, the South has twenty negro college presidents, who would hardly hold the same position if they migrated to the North. But there is an in creasing amount of migration even among this class. Ministers are being transferred. Many students who study in the North fail to re turn South, and negroes are gradually working into the public school system and in business in the North. Since I have been gathering information with regard to migra tion a surprising amount of material has come to me of a type of negro who, because of his inability to use free speech in the South, has come North, where almost invariably he has proved useful. A few examples of this type are: A Georgia negro editor who was forced to leave his native city because he too strongly denounced lynching, now conducts two successful printing offices in New York. He is a college graduate. Another negro who was forced to leave the same place where he was engaged in teaching is now the secre tary of the Y. M. C. A. in a New Jersey town. A Tennessee woman who edited a negro newspaper was accused a teaching unwholesome doctrine to the negroes of her vicinity and had to leave to save her self from bodily harm. She is now a most useful woman in social reform work in Chicago. A South Carolina negro says: "After a dispute with a white man who became angry with me over a trivial matter, I thought that he might kill me and there would have been no redress whatever; after thinking of my three little girls who might grow to virtuous womanhood, but whose virtue had no protection in public sentiment, I decided to take my chances in a freer, though harder climate." This man is now head of one of the largest schools in a metropolitan city of the North. Boston, (571) lio The Annals of the American Academy Philadelphia, New York, ]]uffalo, Chicago, and nearly every large Northern city contains many such of these "exiles" from the South. III. Some Effects of Negro Migration to the North. What, it may be asked, are some of the effects of the migra tion of negroes to the North — on the North, on the South, on the negroes ? (a) The effect on the North has been but slight. The immigra tion of foreigners has so balanced the migration of negroes to the North that in the forty years from i860 to 1900 the proportion of negroes to the total population has remained about the same. Percentage of White and Negro to total Population for each Geographical Division of the North, from i860 to igoo (U. S. Census). i860. 1880. 1900. Division. White. Negro White. Negro. White. Negro. North Atlantic 98.5 1.5 98.4 1.6 98.1 1.8 North Central 97.8 2.0 97.7 2.2 97.9 1.9 Western 89.0 .7 91.2 .7 94.7 .7 The North 96.7 1.7 95.2 1.9 95.8 1.8 In i860 the negroes were 1.7 per cent of the population of the North, and in 1900 1.8 per cent. Industrially the negroes have affected the North only in isolated places and in unskilled labor and in domestic service. As has been seen, there are enough negroes in New Jersey to affect the farm labor of the Southern district. In the large cities negroes furnish a great proportion of the unskilled labor about mills and factories. Negroes are the chief laborers in the laying of asphalt pave ment ; they are quite a considerable factor in domestic service, and in some cities they compose as high as one-fifth of the workers in domestic and personal service. Negroes have been used effectively as strike breakers in unskilled work, notably in the Chicago stock yards' strike of 1904 and the Chicago teamsters' strike of 1905, and have been able in isolated cases to demand recognition from labor unions. {b) The South has suffered economically from the migration of negroes, for this is the time when laborers are needed and especially on the farm. There was afforded last winter a striking (572) The Migration of Negroes to the North 1 1 1 example of the effect of migration on the South by the fact that the State of Virgina made a special bid for workers from abroad. The State is in sore need of laborers ; negroes form a large part of the laborers. They are leaving by the thousands, while "thousands of acres of agricultural land is now going to weeds." In the past twenty years, i. e., from 1880 to 1900, two-thirds of the counties of the State decreased in negro population The census of 1900 reports over 250,000 negroes who were born in A^irginia and are now living in other States, while only 35,000 negroes had migrated to Virginia from other States. In other words, the minimum figure -would put Virginia's loss of negroes at 215,000. These negroes leave, as we have seen, after the age of fifteen years, to spend the years of their economic efficiency in other States. If we use Dr. Farr's method of determining the economic loss due to emigration, we may place the loss of Virginia, because of the emigration of negroes, at not less than $215,000,000, allowing an average of $300 as the lowest estimate of the social loss in maintaining the individual up to the age of fif teen years, and $700 as an estimate of the lowest average gain to the community by the presence of the individual negro. Other Southern States have suffered proportionately, as they have needed and have lost negroes. Some of these States have sought to reduce to a mini mum, if not to prohibit, the emigration of negroes by excessive license fees required of "emigrant agents." Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Alabama have such laws ; but they do not prove very effective. (c) The effect upon the negroes. In preparing this paper, I have read many articles bearing upon the condition of negroes in the North. Most of these articles claimed that the North was bad in its effect upon negroes ; and some advised negroes not to migrate North. I have talked with thousands of Southern-born negroes, who now live in the North, and while with rare exception each said that he was prospering in the North far better than the South, the general opin ion was that the Northern negro was degenerating. It is here we have the individual and social point of view in greatest contrast. Considering the Southern negro in the North from the point of view of social development, there can be no doubt at all that the North has been of benefit to the negro and the negro has profited by it. The reasons why the Northern Negro does not appear to have (573) 112 The Annals of the American Academy made as rapid strides as the Southern negro are many, a few of which may be mentioned: First, the records of the races are not separated, as in the case of property lists, school attendance, etc., and therefore do not stand out so prominently ; second, the extremes of poverty and wealth are greater in the North than in the South. A negro owning $10,000 in the South is rated rich; a negro drug store or grocery, though small, is easily seen in the South; but in the North no one especially notices a $10,000 man, even though he be a negro, and drug stores and groceries are so common that when a negro establishes one there is but little comment. But there is an upward and a downward tendency among the negroes as a result of migration to the North. The increased amount of crime, which is slightly in excess of the South, and the high death rates — often greatly in excess of births, as in New York — indicate a downward tendency. Tuberculosis and pneu monia take away thousands of negroes from the large cities each year. Competition and the cold climate are relentless in driv ing the weaker negroes, the more ignorant and shiftless, to the very lowest round of the social ladder. New opportunities for crime and vice, indeed, the very opportunity for fuller self-expression, tend to develop a class of criminals, loafers and street loungers, who are all too prominent in the negro sections of any great Northern city. But if sociology has been unfortunate in any particular with regard to its method, it has certainly been quite unfortunate, espe cially at the hands of the so-called practical sociologist, in giving far too large a place to pathological conditions This has especially been true in studying the negroes. Crime, disease and degeneracy do have a place, but they have only a very small place in determining the course of social development as a whole or of a particular group. It should never be forgotten by the social student that the normal is more important than the abnormal, and especially when the ab normal is a very small percentage of the whole. Yet even in social pathology an interesting study of crime in the North might not be unprofitable, if it would reveal to us just how much is a result of degeneracy, or ill-adjustment to the new environment; how much is a result of that freedom of expression permitted in the North, which is the one great requisite for the highest social activitA'. though it sometime leads to anti-social actions. There are, however, many positive evidences of a healthful (574) The Migration of Negroes to the North 113 effect and an upward tendency among the negroes of the North. Physically they are improving ; the death rate is decreasing, and the birth rate increasing in most of the large centers. If we keep in mind the class of negroes from which the immigrants generally come and note their conditon here and that of the negroes of their class in their native homes, the progress in the north is quite remark able. Only a few points which need more thorough investigation can be given here. The Northern negro is intellectually improved. The illiteracy of the negro of the North is 18.1 per cent. ; of the South it is 48. In fact the Northern negro under thirty is less illiterate than the South ern white, as the following table shows : Illiteracy of Negroes of the North, and Whites and Negroes of the South hy Ages, According to Census of 1900. Northern Southern Southern Age Period. Negroes. Negroes. Whites. Ten to fourteen years 4.1 32.2 9.8 Fifteen to twenty years 6.4 35.3 8.9 Twenty-one to twenty-four years .... 8.4 38.4 9.2 Twenty-five to thirty-four years 11.4 44.1 9.9 Thirty-five to forty- four years 20.8 57.6 13.2 Forty-five to fifty-four years 36.5 72.8 15.9 Fifty-five to sixty-four years 48.3 82.6 16.1 Over sixty-five years 61.8 88.3 20.9 Unknown 41-1 579 199 All ages 18.1 48.0 11.7 Good schools, compulsory education, free libraries, cheap news papers, free entry to theatres, museums and other places of amuse ment and enlightenment, are great stimuli to the mental activity of the negro of the North, and the whole Northern environment, unlike the South, puts a value upon intelligence and demands it as a requisite for success in the negro as well as in the white man. Competition has raised the standard of negro efficiency in every line of endeavor. Employment agents who have placed over 100,000 negro domestic servants in the past fifteen years are almost a unit in declaring that the servant who comes from the South, even with good recommendations is rarely efficient, and that the change in two years is remarkable. It is often remarked that the con centration of the Northern negro in domestic service shows that he (575) 114 The Annals of the American Academ,y is losing rather than gaining; but when it is considered that these persons were very poor servants, or largely farm hands, and casual laborers in their Southern home, the concentration in the North in a higher grade of domestic service is really a gain for the negro rather than a loss. But not only in domestic service has the negro gained a higher efficiency, but in business and in the professions. It takes more for negroes to succeed in the North in the professions or in business than it does in the South, because the competition is greater. In the South a negro competes with negroes for negro patronage ; in the North he competes with all men for all the patronage he can get. One would suppose that most negro business and professional men would go where the race is represented in greatest numbers, but that this is not the case, as the following table, based on the United States census for 1900, seems to indicate : Number of Negroes in Business and Professions and the Proportion of the same to every 1,000 Negroes in the North and South, Based on U. S. Census igoo. Number. Per 10,000 Negroes. Professions. North. South. North. South. Lawyers 280 438 3 '/i„ Dentists 109 96 i Vio Clergymen 2,600 12,764 28 13 Government officials 141 2454 i i/^ Physicians and surgeons 474 1,100 5 i Actors and showmen 1.335 685 15 V, Teachers 2,319 18,948 25 19 Musicians 2,118 i,797 23 I'/a Other professions 805 750 9 '/, Total 10,184 37,038 112 37 Number. Per 10,000 Negroes Business Occupation. North. South. North. South Agents 618 1,487 7 I Bankers and brokers 81 144 i y. Bookkeepers & stenographers 2,986 4,056 33 1 Merchants 2,156 7,087 23 7 Undertakers 93 346 i y^^ Manufacturers, etc 411 754 c y Photographers 115 nj j y^ Printers 471 648 5 y^. Salesmen 902 1,897 10 2 When the competition which one has to undergo to succeed is (576) The Migration of Negroes to the North 115 taken into consideration, it should be expected that the highest indi vidual efficiency would be found in the North, and so it is. The largest businesses, the oldest and largest newspapers, and five out of eight negro magazines, are in the North. The majority of negro inventors and the best authors were either born in the North or mi grated to the North. If the following tables, from Bulletin No. 8 of the United States census, are correct, the average size and value of the negroes' farms in the North are above those of the South : Number and Acreage of Negro Farms. Number of farms. Acreage Per ¦ni„;.: ., r,, , , , ^',* .Acreage cent Im- JJ'^'='°°- Total. , buildings. Total, per farm. Improved, proved Continental U. S 746,715 716,512 38,233,920 51.2 23,362,786 61. i North Atlantic 1,761 " 1,724 84,407 47.9 55,079 65.3 North Central 12,255 11,665 787,071 64.2 566,073 71.9 Western 7,37 324 76,005 225.5 20,850 27.4 South Atlantic 287,933 278,308 I5,573,56i 54i 8,874,506 57.0 South Central 444.429 424.491 21,702,876 48.9 13,846,274 63 3 Average Value of Property on Farms of Negroes, igoo. Average value per farm. Land and Implements All farm improve-nents and Ma- Live property (except buildings.) Buildings. ciiinery. stock Continental U. S $669 $434 $96 $25 $114 North Atlantic 2,712 1,513 832 117 250 North Central 2,008 1,463 239 59 247 Western 3,117 2,133 329 107 548 South Atlantic 566 369 93 20 84 South Central 690 443 91 27 129 The average size and value of the Northern negro's farm even exceed the same for the Southern white's farm. The Northern negro earns more, as we have seen in the com parison of wages. He is, therefore, able to maintain a higher stan dard of living. His expenses are a great deal higher, but not for the same things, but for better things. He lives in a much better house by far, and he pays sometimes two or three times as much rent for it ; he wears better clothing ; he has more leisure ; he has more amuse ment ; and with all his high expenses he is able to save more. Of the 373,450 homes owned by negroes in 1900, 45,913, or 12.3 per cent., were owned by the negroes of the North, who compose 10.3 per cent. of the negro population. If the farm homes are excluded, the North ern negroes would own 22 per cent, of the remaining. (577) ii6 The Annals of the American Academy The North has taught the negroes the value of money ; of econ omy ; it has taught more sustained effort in. work, punctuality and regularity; it has taught negroes even a greater race respect and race loyalty. And though the negroes, with the weight of the in heritance of slavery (for perhaps 95 per cent, of the Northern negroes are descendants of slaves), and with the weight of ignorance and poverty, together with the great inconvenience they suffer be cause of their color, from the American point of view, are only beginning to be real Americans ; and though they are greatly handi capped in the struggle in the North, I think I can safely say that the North is indeed the great and hard school for them, where the}- are learning their best and often their first lessons in American thrift and industry, and the true dignity of American citizenship. (578) THE TRAINING OF THE NEGRO LABORER IN THE NORTH By Hugh M. Browne, Principal Institute for Colored Youth, Cheyney, Pa. "All nations have their message from on high, Each the messiah of some central thought. For the fulfillment and delight of man; One has to teach that labor is divine; Another Freedom; and another Mind; And all, that God is open-eyed and just. The happy centre and calm heart of all." An English colonist of South Africa, writing about the future of the native African in that section, says, "The natives must go; or they must work as laboriously to develop the land as we are prepared to do." Ex-President Harrison was accustomed to say, "The Indian has citizenship and a white man's chance offered to him, and must take it or perish." These two statements, I candidly believe, represent the attitude of the vast majority of the Anglo- Saxon race toward "retarded races." This attitude means that we, as a race, must "work as laboriously" and as successfully to over come in the struggle for existence as the white man has done, or we must go — whether we dwell in dear old Africa or sojourn in other lands. What I should like to see expressed in every word and act of my race is the determination not to go — whether the going means annihilation or amalgamation. But, determining to stay, shall we labor to produce an imitation of a white man or a thoroughly devel oped black man ? Shall our goal be an artificial flower or a naturally developed wild flower? Or, to be specific, shall citizenship de jure and de facto in these United States be the end of the colored man's efforts in social and political development, or the means by which he shall become the founder and builder of a developed African nation? Should the thoughtful colored men — whether pure black or mixed blood — come out into the open and answer honestly this aim-settling question, the Negro problem would become clarified and (579) ii8 The Annals of the American Academy we could call a spade a spade, and the adjustment of the races would become an easier proposition. For myself, I stand for a developed African race in Africa and, to me, the United States is the greatest of the schools from which the founders and builders of this xAfrican nation are to be graduated. This race lesson, which I learned first at my mother's knee, has been confirmed by the observations and experiences of my life in this country, in Europe, and in Africa. I accepted the honor of an invitation to take part in the dis cussion of the topic, "The Training of the Negro Laborer in the North," before this distinguished Academy, solely that I might, per chance, invite its thought to this view-point of the Negro problem and present some considerations which make the economic training of the Negro laborer a necessity. I believe God has ordained of races, as well as of plants, that each shall bear fruit after its kind, and that the periods of maturity ¦ — fruit-bearing times — differ among races as they do among plants. I have, therefore, no patience with the sentimentalities, weak excuses, and grotesque imitations which flaunt themselves as solutions of a problem which, under God's Providence, must be solved bv natural laws. We have before us to-day the records of two and a half cen turies of slavery in this country; the records of forty-three years of freedom in this country ; quite an extensive knowledge of Africa and its peoples, and the records of the civilizations of the other races and peoples which inhabit the earth. The time has fully come for us to read our destiny in these records. We shall, however, most assuredly fail to discover God's purpose concerning us if we fix our attention upon any one, or any class of facts in our history or in these records. We must take in the whole range of His Provi dences if we would know by what path He leadeth us, and appre ciate the design in any one of them. Let me illustrate by the following story, which I heard while in Africa: A clerk in one of the European factories there was previously a member of a German military band. He carried his horn with him to Africa and regularly practiced alone the bass parts of the pieces which he had been accustomed to plav at home A native boy, who worked in the same factory, frequently expressed his surprise that the white man, who could do so many wonderful things, could not produce any better music than that which came (580) The Training of the Negro Laborer in the North 119 from the clerk's bass horn. It chanced that one of the agents took this lad to Hamburg, where he heard a full brass band. On his return he said to the clerk, in the English of the west coast of Africa, "Daddy, your horn no be fit for something by himself ; but suppose you can blow him one time with all dem horns, he be fine plenty." It is only in the harmony of all our experiences that we appreciate the music of any one of them. Joseph in the pit; Joseph a chattel in the Ishmaelite's caravan; Joseph a slave in Potiphar's house; Joseph a common convict in the Egyptian jail, are single facts in which there is no music ; but these several facts blending and har monizing in Joseph the Prime Minister of Egypt and the saviour of Israel from starvation, produce rapturous music which lifts us to "a height from which we anticipate better ages ;" to a height from which we comprehendingly and joyously swell the chorus when Shakespeare sings : "Sweet are the uses of adversity. Which like the toad, ugly and venomous. Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.'" To this height I would have every thoughtful Negro climb to day, and from it interpret our present condition and environment in this country and learn that misfortunes, single or many, unrequited toils, and terrific violences in the life of a race, do not indicate that God has no gracious purpose concerning it, but that these are but the chastisements of a loving Father, made necessary by the stiff- neckedness of that race. Our view of the Negro problem, then would be comprehensive and racial. It would not be colored by impulses and desires born of selfishness and egotism, nor would it limit the time element of the individual reformer to the three score and ten years. The development of a race or people is a process which requires not years, but centuries ; the food on which it feeds requires such a long time to digest, and affords at each meal little real nutriment. Listen to this historical statement concerning the civilization of Eu rope. Says Guizot, "The history of the European civilization may be thrown into three great periods : First, a period which I shall call that of origin, or formation, during which the different elements of society disengaged themselves from chaos, assumed an existence, and showed themselves in their native forms, with the principles by (581) I20 The Annals of the American Academy which they are animated ; this period lasted almost till the twelfth century. The second period is a period of experiment, attempts, groping; the different elements of society approach and enter into combinations, feeling each other, as it were, but without producing anything general, regular or durable; this state of things, to say the truth, did not terminate until the sixteenth century. Then comes the third period, or the period of development, in which human so ciety in Europe takes a definite form, follows a determinate direc tion, proceeds rapidly and with a general movement toward a clear and precise object; this began in the sixteenth century and is now running its course." I am disposed often to look upon the proscriptions, discrimina tions and prejudices which we are made to feel at every turn in this country as a chastisement necessary to accomplish in us what the chastisements of the wilderness accomplished in the Jews. And I fear that we have, as yet, but tasted of the bitter waters of ]\Iarah ; the deadly bite of the serpent is yet to come, unless, happily, our necks prove not so stiff as theirs and we become persuaded bv gentler strokes in this, the formative period of our development, to learn, among others, the following vital and indispensable lessons : I. We must come to know God as the God of our fathers. He must become to us Jehovah, a God perfecting that which he has begun in us; a God fulfilling the promises which he made to our fathers. We must come to understand and believe that blessings dispensed by Him are equally efficacious, whether we picture Him dispensing them with ebony black or lily white hands. Yea, we must come to knov/ of a truth that He says to us, as a race, "If vou obey My voice you shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me." 2. We must come to know ourselves. If the proper study of mankind is man, then we should specialize in the study of the black man. Our present progress has begun to create a demand for this knowledge, and the data for it is fast coming to hand. When the Jew entered the wilderness all his types of civilization were Egyptian ; but he did not wander long before he felt the neces sity for types of his own : then he began to use the former as a means to an end. Like the old-fashioned pump-makers, he poured the water of the pumps in operation down the barrel of the new pump, to enable it to send forth its own. This lesson a kind Provi dence IS teaching us now. All the lessons of civilization which we (582) The Training of the Negro Laborer in the North 121 learned in slavery and are now learning in freedom must be regarded by us as the water from the pump in operation, to be poured into the barrel of the new one. "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life," is commanded of races as well as of individuals ; and the inscription over the temple of learning is also the inscription over the gate which opens to the highway of a race's development, namely, "Know thyself." It is, however, so much easier to live upon the crumbs that fall from the rich race's table than to raise the grain and make one's own bread that many are satisfied to eke out an existence in this way. But the time will come, under God's Providence, when these crumbs will produce nausea, and their starving bodies, minds and hearts will turn toward more appropriate and nutritious food. I am aware that this is a strange doctrine to those of my people who have grown fat on these crumbs and believe this fatness to be health. These men are not so wise as the foolish servant who wrapped his talent in a napkin and hid it. They give their talent at once to the man who has five, and are idiotic enough to believe that they will share the profits which he earns. If he 'who brought back all that his Lord gave him is accounted accursed, what shall be the lot of these? Tell me not that God has put millions of black men on this earth and given them a rich continent for no special purpose ! Tell me, rather, what history teaches, that the black man has not yet reached that stage in his development where the idea of race mission enters — where races fall upon their faces and exclaim, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ?" 3. We must come to know that the potentialities of a nation have been emplanted in us. In Egypt Israel was a family and a tribe : in the wilderness she became a nation. God made the black race for a nation. He is the Father of all nations and will be glorified by their differences. He has appointed different nations for different missions in the accomplishment of His purposes in this world. "There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit; diversities of workings, but the same God who worketh in all." There is no malice against the white race in this view-point of the Negro problem, nor is there any antagonism to the efforts of the white people of this country to assist in our peculiar development. A nobler and more Christ-like body of laborers never entered the field for humanity than the white philanthropists and teachers who (583) 121 The Annals of the American Academy started and, in many instances, are still carrying on the work of education among our people in the South — be these philanthropists and teachers northern or southern. On the contrary, their assist ance from this view-point becomes more essential and effective, be cause it will touch our struggle only at points where the impossible, to us, presents itself. With the spirit of the Master before the tomb of Lazarus, these benevolent friends will do for us only that which we cannot do for ourselves, and they will require us to roll away the stone. Assistance rendered us in this wise will not interfere but hasten the accomplishment of the God-appointed mission of the black race. The duckling will take to the water, even though the hen furnish the warmth for its incubation. Confusion, incongruities and consequent waste of effort and means arise when the hen at tempts to make a chick of the duckling. We rejoice in the soul-stirring song which our white brother is still writing and singing to the world. What encouragement and enthusiasm it carries to those who are in the thickest of the struggle for life, and how the arches of heaven must ring with the strains of altruism which, ever and anon, burst forth to strengthen those who struggle for the life of others. But "Because the nightingale so sweetly sings, Shall meadow-lark and hermit thrush be still?" Give us not this song as a substitute for ours because ours is still unwritten. Rather, teach us the theory and practice of music and the art of composition, that we may write and sing ours. Teach us this in the spirit of the brotherhood of man, and\ye shall produce our song and sing it ; not in opposition nor in competition, but as a part of that God-ordained variety which must be the charm of heaven as it is the spice of life on earth. The Japanese who fifty years ago were known as little, harmless heathen, are to-day, in their same home, one of the first nations of the \A-orld. They gathered all over the western world the waters to start their pumps, and the life-giving and preserving value of the flow of these pumps has astounded the world. In God's appointed time the same will be true of the now heathen African, and the western waters which shall start the flo^^• of his pumps will be ear ned back to Africa principally by American citizens of African descent. Already a band of Tuskegee graduates, under the auspices (584) The Training of the Negro Laborer in the North 123 of the German Government, has introduced cotton raising among the native Africans in Togo, Africa. I beg pardon for the personal allusion, but I consider it the greatest privilege of my life that, twenty years ago, I was permitted to furrow the ground for the seeds of industrial education in the Republic of Liberia. In all due modesty, let me suggest that : The soul which under the benumbing influences of slavery has given the world the Negro plantation melodies possesses a natural endowment too rich to be developed for any other mission than its own ; The slave who has supported and protected the wife and daughter of his master while the latter fought to perpetuate his slavery has too much altruism to sell his birthright at any price ; The man who has forgiven and forgotten so readily and wil lingly as has the Negro the most barbarous outrages on his wife and daughter has too much of the Christ-spirit to sail on the sea of life under any other colors than his own. Let me affirm, in this connection, that the training in civiliza tion, citizenship, and self-government which my people are receiving in this country will no more lead to the bugbear of Negro domination or the scarecrow of amalgamation than will a course in gymnastics lead to the change in the color of their skin. On the contrary, the desire to "Itrike out for themselves will vary directly as this training. Having stated my point of view, I wish now to refer briefly to the necessity for our training in the economic activities of your civili zation. When I was in Africa I saw two farms ; the first was worth twenty times its original purchasing price, and the second was worth simply its original cost. These farms had the same soil, the same cli mate, the same sunshine and rain, and were on the bank of the same rivet. What nature had done for one she had done also for the other ; but the owner of the first farm had cleared it, set out coffee trees, cultivated them, cured and hulled the coffee bean, shipped the same to Europe and lived on the money returns; while the owner of the second farm had left it almost as he found it and lived on its wild products. When I came to know them, I found that these two men differed as much as did the farms. The difference in value between the two farms was due to the amount of work done on each by its owner, and the difference between the two men was due to the amount of work done on each by his farm. The first man was a (585) 124 The Annals of the American Academy strong, vigorous physical specimen of humanity; every stroke of the axe, every stroke of the hoe, every pull of the rake, reacted on his body and made his muscles supple and strong, his digestion good. This man was also considered a strong man mentally; he was con sidered by his neighbors as a well-informed man, a man of good judgment; in his efforts to plant and cultivate a profitable coffee farm he had read all the literature and sought all the practical advice obtainable on this subject; he had tested this information in the practical management of his farm; he had gone further and experimented along lines which his actual observations had sug gested ; he had purchased and used implements employed in other countries on coffee farms ; he had reconstructed some of these and made others of his own. All the thought and manipulation that he thus gave to the cultivation of his farm reacted upon his mind and made him what his neighbors considered him. Further, this man was looked up to as a man of good principles, a morally strong man. In the purchasing of the things required for the development of his farm and selling the harvest of the same he had bargained with other men, had been cheated and cheated others; but, bent on success, he learned first, amid these experiences, that honesty is the best policy, and, later on, became a disciple of the Golden Rule. As I thought of these two men it seemed to me that the differ ence between them was, in a general way, from an economic stand point at least, the difference between your race and mine. We have, practically, lived for centuries upon the wild products of Africa, while you have cut down the forests, gone down into the mines, crossed the seas, captured the forces of nature, made them do your bidding, and are now the strong and the conquering race that you are, by reason of the reaction on you of the work a'ou have done on nature. So tremendous, so complex, and so subtle have become your efforts that you have outgrown the capacity of the organs of your senses, the medium of communication between you and nature. Why, if the instruments which you have invented to reinforce the natural capacities of these organs were destroyed, you would be as helpless in many departments of the activities of your civilization as a man deaf, dumb and blind. We have not }'et reached the stage in our development which even suggests that the natural capacities of these organs are limited. The qualities contributing to social efficiency which you possess by reason of vour achievements, viz., "such char- (586) The Training of the Negro Laborer in the North 125 acteristics as strength and energy of character, probity and integrity and simple-minded devotion to conceptions of duty in such circum stances as arise," are attainable by us, and you, under God's Provi dence, have become our teachers and our trainers. You cannot legislate these qualities into us, nor can you preach them into us; but you can, and you should, secure for us "a free hand, a fair field, and a cordial God-speed" in the economic activities and avocations of your civilization; so that, struggling in these, we may develop such qualities. Work is the means by which you have succeeded and it is the only means by which we shall succeed. Our introduction to continuous work was in slavery in the Southern States. The climate was similar to Africa, vegetation was similar to the vegeta tion of Africa and the economic system was exceedingly simple. This condition permitted us to pass somewhat gradually from the work of gathering wild products to the work of cultivating these products. The reaction from the work in slavery produced the natural results, as benumbing and degrading as the system was. During slavery the mental element was a minimum and the moral element was present by precept only. I have no excuse to offer for slavery ; nevertheless it has brought us into contact with a more advanced race, and whatever of civilization and development we now possess came to us by means of it. The blessings to Israel in Egypt were mightier than the hardships endured, and I am persuaded that we shall, by and by, acknowledge the same concerning our bondage in this country. Since slavery the elements of self-help, self-direction and self- protection have entered into our work; but the change from un skilled labor to skilled labor has lagged far behind the natural and necessary demand on the part of my people for it. We have re ceived about all the developing influences which can come to us as a reaction from unskilled labor, and we stand face to face to-day in this country with the tragic situation of a race shut out from the only economic means which will secure its natural development in its present stage — the opportunity to learn and practice skilled labor. As a class, my people are to-day restricted to the formulated knowl edge of books treating of the economic activities of your civilization. Exercise in these activities out of which these books grow and by which you have been developed, is denied us. And yet many of you are surprised that we do not possess the social efficiency which is (587) J 26 The Annals of the American Academy the effect of this exercise. The most serious feature of our condi tion in this country to-day is the lack of opportunity to engage in work which requires knowledge, thought and skill. As the poor man in the midst of wealth feels his poverty all the more keenly, so the northern colored laborer, living in the section of discovery, invention, commercial enterprise, and all the other myriad forms of Yankee ingenuity, realizes more keenly this lack of economic opportunity. It is also observable that the benumbing and degrading effects of this deprivation are more pronounced in him by reason of this environment. It does seem to me that the necessity to train the colored laborers in the North would follow also from considerations like the following : I. The surest and quickest way, if not the only way, for him to get a working knowledge of )'our civilization is through systematic and continuous work in the scientific processes and with the devices, machinery, apparatus and the like, which are the useful applications of the formulated knowledge of your civilization. Or, if you please, in this way only can he learn to work your farm profitably to you and gain thereby the requisite knowledge and skill to eventually work his own farm. (I know there are people who, having read a book on electricity, think they can run an electric plant, but the man who owns such a plant never thinks so.) This is the way the colored laborer of the North can catch the spirit of progress and thrift of the present day, and by skill, dexterity and excellence make the profits of his labor purchase other and better opportunities. Unless he is allowed the benefits of such training he will remain, as now, in the procession of your progress, but out of step. 2. Training in the economic activities of your civilization will best enable the northern colored laborer to discover in work other returns than the wage. Such, for instance, as the satisfaction of having done a piece of work well, and the highest reward of all, the development which comes by reaction to the worker. At present he sees only the wage and takes the shortest cut to obtain it. Some times I wonder if you fully realize the amount of friction between us which this short-cut method is producing. It causes you serious vexations and it is lessening daily our opportunities for even un skilled labor. I tremble with anxiety when I think of the possible end to which this may lead. (588) The Training of the Negro Laborer in the North 127 3. The saddest and possibly the most serious feature of this lack of economic opportunity is the effect on the children of the laborer. Fancy a child pursuing a course of instruction every concept of which has been built up by another race and from first hand facts, about which neither his parents nor his playmates know anything. This fact simply paralyzes the vital principle in education of apper ception. In this connection, let me testify that if ever there was a man sent of God to a needy people at the psychological moment, Booker T. Washington is one. And I would further testify that the support which the white people have given him is to-day the rainbow of promise that the door of hope will not be closed to the brother in black. Christian industrial Tuskegee, under a corps of colored executive officers and colored teachers, is to-day the most potent force at work in our development in this country. It was the reali zation of the importance of contact with these first-hand facts that led the Friends to establish at Cheyney, two years ago, a normal school which will supply these first-hand facts in the classroom. We are further insisting, in this connection, at Cheyney, that the present condition of the colored people makes it necessary that the school teacher be able to give helpful precept and practice along all the lines of every-day activity. For many years to come the colored teacher will find parents' meetings a field for vital usefulness, almost as large and important as that of his school. Nicely prepared essays and speeches will not avail in these meetings ; the developing influ ence for these meetings consists of the teacher's ability to actually perform, after the most approved and economic methods, the every day activities of the housewife and the husbandman. In conclusion, I wish to say that those of us who regret most the lack of these opportunities bear no malice to you, never dream of despair, and are firmly convinced that we shall secure a "free hand, fair field and a hearty God-speed" in these opportunities some day only by deserving them through our own activity and our own spirit of love. In this spirit would I remind you that you are the truant officers who have brought us into your own school, and beseech you in the name of our common Master and your sense of fair play to teach us after the laboratory method. (589) THE INDUSTRIAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO IN NEW YORK CITY By William L. Bulkley, Principal Public School No. 80, Borough of Manhattan, New York. During the nineteenth century the Afro-American population of New York State increased more than 300 per cent., or from 31,320 to 99,232. The greatest percentage of increase in any decade was from 1890 to 1900, or 70,092 to 99,392. New York City has received the largest part of this increase, the population almost doubling in the twenty years from 1880 to 1900, or 36,134 to 65,984. In 1890 the Afro-American population of New York City was 42,816; to 1900 there was a gain of 23,000. In the whole State during the same period there was a gain of 29,000. New York City now has a larger Negro population than any other Northern city, and stands fourth in the list of all cities of the United States. This great influx is due both to the universal tendency to drift to urban centres (the larger the city the more attractive) and also to the intolerable civil, social, educational, and political conditions existing in various parts of the South. But we are not to discuss the cause of their flocking to the city, but rather to discover what they are capable of, what they are now doing, and what hope is before them. Therefore, (i) Is the Afro-American possessed of the necessary qualifica tions to hold his own in the strenuous industrial and economic conflicts of a city like New York? (2) Are his opportunities for employment conducive to the development of the best of '\\'hich he is capable ? (3) What kinds of employment are open to him? (4) Is prejudice increasing or diminishing ? Is there reason to hope that he will find a satisfactory place among other craftsmen in the various lines of industrial endeavor ? (590) Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page The Industrial Condition of the Negro in New York City 133 (d) The spirit of our constitution is all right. Whatever is wrong is but the flapping of the sail ; the old ship is secure. The time must come when all men under the stars and stripes will enjoy the right to work as well as the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ! (e) The growth of socialism, as represented by such men as Eugene V. Debs, promises equal opportunity to all men. (f) Lastly, the determination of the people to rise is itself the highest and best encouragement. Even with all the keen opposition that a small business man feels, one finds scores, yes hundreds of small enterprises, mercantile and industrial, conducted by colored men and women in the city. They are increasing with normal rapidity. A most encouraging evidence of the eagerness to know how to do something well, to be prepared for some sphere of industrial usefulness was the attendance this winter at our evening school for adults. We had expected to register possibly 200 people in the com mon branches (the three R's) and the industrial classes; but we registered 1,500 people, of whom about 1,300 were colored. The enthusiasm in the work, the faithfulness in attendance, the excel lence of results, so pleased the Board of Education that they are planning to enlarge the plant next year. To show the spirit that filled this school, permit me to draw a picture as I drew it some months ago in the press of New York : Future of Colored Race. To the Editor of the New York Times: While Dixon's "Clansman" is being played next door. Evening School No. 80, in which 1,000 colored men and women have registered, is industri ously attending to business. Within thirty feet of my office, where I now write this, the curtain is possibly being raised at this moment in an effort to portray the negro race in the worst possible colors ; within this building hundreds of the maligned race are at the same 'moment quietly but earnestly working at their books or in the trades. So far as I can note, not one of them cares a straw what slanders any marplot may heap upon them; happy, hopeful, busy each and all. What a refutation to all pessimism would it be if the audience in the theatre would take a recess for a few moments and go through our class rooms! Suppose they could see these men and women, up to sixty-seven years of age, present in full force this stormy night, hungry for knowledge, (595) 134 The Annals of the American Academy determined to learn some trade that will make them worth more to the com munity — what an object lesson it would be! Not a room in the building is vacant. Even seats for baby pupils and kindergarten tables are occupied. Neither cold nor heat, snow nor moonshine, with all their attendant drawbacks or attractions, can keep these pupils away. In the theatre the audience is looking at the past ; these people are looking into the future. To the one crowd despair; to the other hope. What may be the thoughts of the people who are witnessing the play I do not know, but of this much I am sure — there are not 700 happier people in any building in New York than those who are busy here to-night. William L. Bulkley, Principal. New York, lanuary 8, 1906. To be sure, we have our full share of worthless men and women who are a disgrace to humankind. May their tribe diminish I But, in my moments of quiet contemplation, I wonder not that there are so many Afro-Americans that are good for nothing, but that there are so few. It takes tremendous courage and determination to rise to the plane of respectability beneath such a Cyclopean weight of prejudice. A little charity towards the weak brother and sister can not surely be too much to ask. In closing, let me appeal for the establishment of trade schools in the cities of the North to do work similar to that done in our industrial schools in the South. And, then, let this be held out before every boy and girl of all the races as one of the fundamentals of our constitution — the right to work; opportunity to work; en couragement to work in any sphere in which one may be useful. (596) THE THREE AMENDMENTS^ By John B.vscom, Professor of Political Science, Williams College, Williamstown, Mass. A restless doubt begins to be observable in the public mind whether the last three amendments made to the Constitution of the United States do, after all, express the wide, sound policy they were thought to contain. This uneasiness is to be regretted, as it goes to "show that public opinion is again becoming variant and wayward, rather than settling down into principles fundamental in our policy. This hesitancy seems to arise from a faulty and conflicting sentiment. South and North, toward the colored race, a sentiment which in- .clines us to regard negroes as an exception to the rules of govern ment which hold between white men. It has been greatly increased by the errors of reconstruction— errors traceable to other causes, but assumed to inhere in these amendments. As prosperity has re turned and increased vigor has spread over the land, there has come with it a revival of earlier feelings ; a disposition in the North to settle back into indifference, and in the South to reassert long-cher ished social distinctions. These sentiments were many years in formation. The communities subject to them have not been wholly hfted out of them by one violent wrench, and we begin to feel the tendency to sHde back into the convictions familiar to us. One feels something of the same solicitude at these rising waves, that comes to the engineer at the first approach of a storm, which threatens to test the strength of a lighthouse just made ready to hold its dangerous position. ¦Although dealing with the civil and political status of the negro in the United States, this paper may appropriately be published in connection with the foregoing addresses dealing with the industrial conditions affecting negro labor. Professor Bascom points out that two requisites must be met if the colored man is to advance : (1) He must be given economic opportunities. "If he is to be pushed aside m favor of white labor, the problem of poverty and social depravity will remain, ready to beget new evils and set up new barriers to growth." (2) The civil and political rights of the negro must not be curtailed because of his race. We must hold to the fundamental principles "that birth brings citizenship and citizenship civil rights, that politcal rights turn on the ability to use them, this ability resting on tests the fsame for all." — Editok. (597) 136 The Annals of the American Academy The three amendments give distinct statement to principles which our history has labored with from the beginning, and still holds back from their complete enunciation. These amendments be tray an anxious state of mind that could not satisfy itself with a sim ple statement of primary truths, but was still fearful as to the man ner in which they might be applied. This hesitancy and apprehen sion are disclosed in the clause with which each amendment is fin ished. "Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appro priate legislation." Congress was not willing to rest without an explicit declaration of a power plainly implied in previous sections. This distrustful state of mind is also seen in the third and fourth sections of the fourteenth amendment. These clauses are not so much a statement of constitutional principles as of specific regula tions to be made under them. They are legislative enactments rather than constitutional conceptions. The third clause specifies the condi tions under which those who had been in rebellion should be restored to their political rights. "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under the State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitu tion of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or re bellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability." This was a question on which Congress was feeling its way with much disturbance, yet with much determination, to a policy which should fully secure the fruits of the great sacrifices which had been made in the war. This clause was not so much the enun ciation of a principle to guide action in any and every case of rebel lion as it was a vindication of legislation which was being framed to close a controversy, the like of which was not expected to recur. Congress felt, in those days of anxiety, that it had to deal both with the present and the future, and must be at liberty to lay secure foun dations for a quiet national life. In less dangerous times simple legislation might suffice, but now men looked for a modification of (598) The Three Amendments j-,^ the organic law which had been for so many years in bitter contro versy. Inference and generalities had so often missed their mark that those who were now responsible for the conditions of peace were quite ready to descend to explicit statements. It may also be doubted whether this clause does not outline a policy unduly severe under the circumstances. Considering human nature and human history, the readjustment of political relations by Congress at the close of the war was considerate and just. Yet a more kindly and wise policy would seem to have been within reach. The history of the past had not been such as to inspire confidence be tween the two portions of the country. A disagreement on the sub ject of slavery had led to a misapprehension of character and to many ungenerous feelings. The long and severe conflict had brought into the foreground the immense liabilities and losses of this dissension, and those on whom devolved the settlement of this protracted controversy could not but feel that every possible guar antee for the future should be secured. This led in part to an over sight of the fact that the third section, rigidly enforced, went far to destroy for the time being the political integrity of the South, and to make impossible any adequate collective action either for good of for evil. It is not easy to punish a people, and impossible to punish them and at the same time to expect from them considerate con duct. The material losses of the war could have hardly been made greater short of annihilation. If the North could have regarded this fact as sufficient, and, with more confidence, have rapidlv re habilitated the South with political rights, the conditions of recon struction would have been far more favorable. In that case the real power and life of the South would have been brought into the fore ground. Those would have been occupied with laying anew the foundations of society who were chiefly interested in society and best able to estimate its gains and losses. It is not surprising that this magnanimity of reconciliation was impossible on both sides, but its absence was the great evil of the reconstruction period. This third section, however, has ceased to have any significance. Events have traveled beyond it, and it simply remains as a mark of the obscure and murky conditions which once prevailed. The fourth section also pertains to an immediate, practical ques tion — the indebtedness of the two sections. (599) 138 The Annals of the American Academy "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and boun ties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrec tion or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave ; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.'' Though the conditions to which the points raised in this section chiefly apply have passed by, there still remains some vitality in them. Our pension policy covers claims of very different degrees of jus tice. While a considerable portion of it is a patriotic recognition of fitting claims, another portion can hardly be freed from the charge of unwise concessions for political ends. The history of the Grand Army goes far to confirm the wisdom of those prognostications which resulted in the suppression of the Order of Cincinnati at the close of the Revolution. Though the abuse of pensions has been to the South a grievance, it has called out little criticism. Both the North and the South have accepted it in silence as one of those evils too deeply ingrained in polities' to render protest in any degree promising. When we scale off from the three amendments these adventi tious sections, we are impressed with the fundamental character and natural sequence of what remains. The first of the three makes the prohibition of slavery a part of the organic law; the second pro tects the civil rights incident to this universal freedom ; and the third removes from political rights any taint which might attach to race, color or condition of servitude. Emancipation thus became not nom inal, but real and complete. The thirteenth amendment was the direct and chief result of the war. No diversity of feeling remains at this point ; or, if such feeling remains, it is not of any moment. Though the first and second sections of the fourteenth amendment arise as a direct corollary from the previous amendment, there is in them still the possibility of violent dissent. I. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or en force any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States ; nor shall any State deprive any per- (600) The Three Amendments i^p son of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 2. "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representa tives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male in habitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States ; or in any way abridged, except for participa tion in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State." Nothing can Well be worse than a servile population whose rights are inadequately defined and carelessly guarded. Freedom owes its chief value to civil rights. These rights define the differ ence between the thrall and the freeman. No more obvious obliga tion rested on the North than this, that having secured liberty for the negro, it should make sure that the emoluments of liberty went with it. The first clause meets this claim. The blacks born in the United States are citizens of the United States, entitled to all the rights of citizens without equivocation or abbreviation. The interpretation of this first clause by the Supreme Court gives it a meaning exclusively applicable to the colored race, more so than the language alone seems to imply. The court has held that this section must be interpreted in the light of the circumstances which gave rise to it ; that it was not the intent of the amendment to give any new rights to the citizens of the States, but to make the negro a full partaker in these rights. The court went somewhat farther than this, and affirmed that Congress had no right, under this section, to enter the domain of police law in the States, but must satisfy itself with the annulling of any law that disregarded these limitations. The initiative still lies with the States,- not with the LTnited States. The office of the latter is simply one of correction. The second section defines the conditions under which alone political rights can be restricted, and in doing this it gives a strong motive to make the terms of suffrage as free as possible. Citizenship (6oi) 140 The Annals of the American Academy carries with it civil rights, but not political rights. Indeed, the third clause was inserted expressly to withhold political rights. The doc trine is accepted that political rights are to be bestowed or withheld as those who receive them are prepared to exercise them. They are not like civil rights to be protectively enjoyed, but to be actively exercised. Certain powers are presupposed in them. Different States do not necessarily have the same criteria of these powers. They are left to establish their own criteria, but the political power that they are granted in reference to each other is made to turn on the political power they themselves have recognized in their own concerns. Those who are deprived of political power are not sup posed to enlarge the power of those who have deprived them. One who cannot himself exercise political power has none to bestow on others. This section had a double purpose; it induced the States to establish liberal forms of suffrage, and it put upon a just basis, the representation between the States. This representation had been a standing grievance previous to the war. That a slave should pos sess neither civil nor political rights, and yet be able to confer politi cal rights on others, was an anomalous state of things. The same act which deprived the slave of power bestowed additional power on the master. The master was left to use the representative capacity of the slave against the slave. That this representative capacity was cut down to three-fifths simply showed how wholly artificial was its character. It would not be fitting that an inequality between the States which was always irritating should again be tolerated. Political power should in every case rest on its own numerical basis. A little later, when it became plain that the fourteenth amend ment was not likely to accomplish its object, and that political rights would be withheld simply on the ground of race, the fifteenth amend ment was framed to meet the evil. The general principle of equal rights on which our institutions rest, the plain fact that a portion of the colored race is pre-eminently prepared for suffrage, the espe cial obligation of the North to watch over the interests of the negro, and the fear which the North felt of leaving any seeds of mischief in the soil, combined to lead to this amendment. I. "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State on ac count of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." (602) The Three Amendments 141 This amendment completes the series. The negro as a negro has no longer any barrier placed in his path. He stands on the same footing as his fellow-citizens. The "inalienable rights" of the Dec laration of Independence are for the first time recognized. No posi tion short of these three amendments could be logically or safely taken. They do not establish universal suffrage, they simply in volve the doctrine that its conditions, whatever they are, shall be the same for all. Men as men shall stand on a fair footing with each other. Why then does dissatisfaction arise with these amendments which simply place us openly on the principles which, from the very beginning, were thought to inhere in our institutions ? It has arisen chiefly out of the difficulties of reconstruction. There was no possi bility of an entirely fortunate solution of the problem of reconstruc tion. Though the war settled and clarified the public mind some what, we were still under the accumulated social feelings and politi cal evils which pertained to slavery and were only partially removed by its abolition. These evils had not been escaped, they were to be met and slowly, very slowly, overcome. The expiatory process could not be avoided, and we had neither the wisdom nor the good will nor the patience demanded by it. Much of the old diversity of opinion remained. North and South. The errors which have been committed were so reciprocal, so the fruits of circumstances, and have so acted and reacted on each other to the mutual obscuration of sound opinion, that we have little occasion for recrimination, and much oc casion for gratitude that we have emerged from that dark period with growing prosperity and fellowship. To overcome evil with good is a slow process, and seems at the outset to accept the evil at its highest terms. It is the mastery of the mind itself which finally tempers down disaster, and turns it into permanent welfare. When we confronted the question what was to be done with this large dependent class, ignorant and ready to drop into poverty and vice, every mind and every community was searched for its best moral appliances, and some found them in rigorous law and some in gentle persuasives, stimulating hopes and endless waiting. The North suffered from too little sympathy and too great fear. We had behind us only a melancholy history of inadequate efforts to stem an evil which had always proved too strong for us. The North desired, if possible, a reconstruction which should leave no (603) r4a The Annals of the American Academy room for further trouble. It had had its defeats, delays and disap pointments, and it wished an immediate and radical remedy. It held, in a general way, to the principles of the Revolution, but it had never boldly sustained them or found them adequate to its purposes. It was still apprehensive of the indomitable temper of the South, though it had for the moment fought it down. The doctrine of State sovereignty, which had been the evil spirit of the Union from the beginning, once more raised its shaggy locks, now clotted with the carnage of many bloody battles. The United States was con ceded sufficient competency to endure the disastrous strife, but not a particle of power with which to exact guarantees for the future. Her resources were like those of Prometheus, able to face pain, but not to correct it. The convention called by the President in South Carolina repealed the act of secession as if it were still a valid law. The States returning to the Union were thought to be in full pos session of their former rights. We could win victory, but could not frame peace. The North, with divided counsels, was afraid of itself and afraid of its adversary. The South, always bold, always unhesitating in its convictions, while compelled to yield slavery, was still disposed to save the wreck. The loss of the battle did not alter its feeling as to the true relations of the races. It was not ready for a future, new in its aims and principles. There was thus the same conflict of opinion in a differ ent, but equally urgent, form to be met. It was impossible that this contention in its present, as in its previous phase, should pass by without grave evils. The North and the South, instructed, but not corrected, in their errors, must encounter as best they were able the obscure and trying experience before them. The first mistake of reconstruction was that the governments established in the recalcitrant States, resting on a doctrine of per fection applied to most unsuitable material, were left unguided and unrestrained by Congress. Republican institutions, above all insti tutions, call for watchfulness, many safeguards and a delicate bal ance of interests. The North, entering on so remote and extreme an experiment, should have given itself no rest in carrying it for ward. A military government is a simple thing, but to start free institutions in a chaotic social state, associated with extreme indus trial depression, and the deepest possible division of interests, was an undertaking quite beyond human power. The only apology for (604) The Three Amendments 143 so crude an effort was that the North was at its wit's end. No safe path seemed to lie before it. The response that this labor should have been passed over to the South itself is one readily made, but one not at the moment promising success. The South was no more prepared for wise action than was the North. If the South had been ready to rehabilitate the States under admissible principles of liberty, the North would have been inexcusable in preventing it. But this was not the attitude of the South. Under the guidance of the President they had an opportunity to show their hand. The result was a black code, which laid heavy stress on the servile con dition of the negroes, guarded carefully against it with penalties that were sure to be abused, and which were accompanied with no provision for progress, no recognition of political rights. The old idea of rule by force prevailed throughout, such a rule as that ex pressed in Georgia by the chain gang. In South Carolina, Governor Orr, General Hampton and others were said to favor restricted political rights. If this temper, or any temper its equivalent, had prevailed in the conventions called to restore State institutions, the case would have been entirely altered. The disposition seemed rather to be to rake together what remained of former sentiments and institutions and build upon them a social system still uninstructed in the principles of liberty. The rights and hopes of the colored race were lightly esteemed. They were ready to sink into a servile state no more consonant with our form of government than slavery itself. Fidelity to the negro, fidelity to itself, fidelity to the future, forbade the North to accept this adjustment. Events which from the begin ning of the strife between the two sections had shown themselves so critical, so difficult of management, so readily perverted, would not allow themselves to be slurred over or patched together in this fashion. A true policy of social growth neither portion of the nation was prepared to conceive or establish. We are only now approaching such a policy, we have not reached it. A distinct and degraded class, severe vagrant laws, lynching, a bitter tyranny of feeling, can never secure social progress. As long as these methods and these ideas are in the foreground, the entail of slavery will rest heavily upon us. What the South has not fully earned in these intervening forty years was, at the period of reconstruction, a very obscure vision in the future. The errors of reconstruction grew out of circum- (605) 144 The Annals of the American Academy stances from which there was no method of immediate escape. The mischief which came from the policy adopted was no more inten tional than is the corruption of our large cities a part of the pur pose of universal suffrage. The North, undertaking reconstruction at arm's length, was in no condition to devise or apply any other principle than that of manhood suffrage. The military government to which the South reverted, when its own efforts at reconstruction were unsatisfactory, was not much complained of in its administra tion, and gave little opportunity, when State conventions were called for the formation of constitutions, to devise or apply any test of suf frage but the familiar one of manhood, in frequent acceptance at the North. But conventions elected under this free form of suffrage inevitably made it the basis of the constitutions framed by them. The North has never demanded universal suffrage of any State as a condition of membership in the Union. The three amendments do not call for it. They only enforce the principles of liberty which lie at the basis of our polity as applicable to all citizens under the same conditions. There is nothing in these amendments which is fitted to interrupt the harmony of the two sections. North and South, if only rights, civil and political, are defined by suitable limitations the same for all. They simply shake off every form of servitude and annul every taint of blood. A difficulty attended on reconstruction which is always closely united with human action, that of a makeshift policy which concedes too much to present embarrassments and attaches too little im portance to the conditions of growth. To make way for the future, to look to progress as a correction of evil, is a wisdom rarely at tained by us. The passion and prejudice and clamor of the hour are allowed to crowd back the adjustments which just sentiments and far-reaching plans urge upon us. The unduly irritable feehng present to those who controlled reconstruction was evinced in the impeachment of President Johnson. The alarm excited by his action was excessive, and the evils associated with it could have been overcome by milder methods. It belongs to free institutions that more should be expected from them than they are likely to render. They give an opportunity, but they do not necessarily secure its realization. The spirit which is to make these institutions successful remains to be won. The State governments which at length ap peared under the protection of Federal authority were out of har- (606)^ The Three Amendments 145 mony with the constituency which they represented, and could not but produce results very different from those hoped for and intended. By the haste of growth the conditions of growth were embarrassed and lost. If the primary ideas expressed in the three amendments could have been offered to the Southern States, not in their formal, but in their actual force, and been accepted cheerfuly by them, while immediate results might not have been all we could wish, they would have prepared the way for a quiet and rapid development in the future. A score of years were consumed in the colliding of hostile interests which would otherwise have found more quickly the path of reconciliation. For this result the South was as much at fault as the North. The conciliation should have been mutual, the con cession joint. If, as in the case of President Johnson, Congress was hasty, that haste was not unprovoked. Perhaps a reconstruc tion, sympathetic, concessive, patient of delay, was not possible. Certainly it was not attained. We have occasion to congratulate ourselves that the evils devel oped in reconstruction took on no such violation of fundamental principles as to leave the occasions of strife uncorrected. They were chiefly loss of time and resources. The years that have intervened have been years of true reconciliation and a better grasp of the prob lem with which we have to deal. That these years of reconstruction should disclose serious differences of opinion was inevitable. The only thing to be escaped at all hazards was a revival of the irrepres sible conflict out of which the war sprang. This result would seem to have been proximately attained, and the two sections are bet ter prepared than ever before to seek their own prosperity and the national prosperity along paths fairly open to progress. Our great danger is the formation of a servile class, suffering oppression by the debased sentiment it creates. This danger we have not yet es caped. The problem of dealing with the colored race assumes more varied form and is more mutual than before the war. It was then easy to say that slavery was our embarrassment, and that slavery was confined to the South. The negro race is now spread through the nation, and calls everywhere for a special mode of treatment. On this question the North has strong feeling and somewhat less sympathy than the South. The South has an irresistible pride and fear of social trespass which render its sympathy nugatory. While the race problem is modified in practice by a large variety of senti- (607) 146 The Annals of the American Academy ment, it is mainly to be settled by growth achieved under the general principles of liberty,— the principles embodied in the three amend ments. These standing firm, the immense impulse given by our industrial prosperity and the placable temper of our Christian faith will accomplish the rest. The problem resolves itself into one of time. The speedy solutions of violence lead to farther violence, and give rise to a servile state ever sinking into deeper servility. This was the difficulty of slavery: the slaveholder could never be sufficiently protected. Intelligence and virtue and all forms of thrift were constantly getting in the way of obedience. The overcoming of evil with evil is impossible ; the overcoming of evil with good is often a slow and wearisome process. The better impulse must have time in which to mature its own fruit; the mistakes of the fire-eater must have time to disclose themselves and to disappear. The better method, whose proofs are found in the slow, unfolding of experience, must be accepted in faith. Some of this process we have seen since the war. If the movement has been slow, if it has shown periods of dangerous reaction, the wiser opinion and the better temper have prevailed. The colored people have gained in intelligence, in re sources and in self-reliance. The South is occupied with prosperous industries. These cannot fail to correct the evils of slavery under two conditions : First, these economic interests must include the negro, and include him rewardfully. If he is to be pushed aside in favor of white labor the problem of poverty and social depravity will remain, ready to beget new evils and set up new barriers to growth. The evil logic of oppression will grow with oppression. Second, civil and political rights, the rights which we define and establish in our collective action, must be allowed freely to establish themselves under their own principles on their own basis. Herein is the im portance of the three amendments. Our troubles have arisen from the absence in our national counsels of these fundamental convic tions ; the incompatibility of constrained labor with free institutions ; that birth brings citizenship, and citizenship civil rights ; that political rights turn on the ability to use them, this ability resting on tests the same for all. No one of these principles can be obscured or reduced without danger. If they all remain, growth is possible under them and will overcome minor difficulties. There may be no danger that these constitutional safeguards will be withdrawn. More than this is needed ; that they receive com- (608) The Three Amendments 147 plete and cheerful acceptance. No evasion is to be thought of, no concession tolerated. Under them each State can shape a policy in accordance with its own conception of its own wants, but the limi tations of suffrage must be honestly framed and the results of these limitations on the collective action of the States be cheerfully ac cepted. In the long contention which preceded the war the difficulty was that we had no common ground of principles on which to base our arguments. The South assumed that property in slaves was as much a right, in the presence of constitutional law, as was the possession of any other form of property. This opinion the North hesitatingly denied. No reconciliation was possible because the division inhered in the starting point. The three amendments reconcile our institutions with the principles of liberty which the founders of the government failed distinctly to enunciate. The least confusion at this point, like the early evasion, will issue in endless difficulty. The theoretical integrity of our institutions must be fully accepted, and be allowed to vindicate itself in the national life. There is sufficient harmony and strength in that life to clear itself the moment it has the field. (609) 3 9002