people of the two races found a common level of education and manners. The Southern whites for a while took their own practice as a matter of course. But then, especially as by degrees some black men and women acquired mental cultivation and social polish,-then came question and challenge from the world without and from conscience within; why this rigid separation? An answer must be found or made, and presently the answer appeared: If white and black men and women eat and drink together, play and work together, then they will intermarry, and the white race will become mixed and degenerate. So that became the conviction, the creed, the shibboleth, of the Southern whites,-race purity, to be safeguarded by complete prohibition of all social intimacy, especially as symbolized by the common meal. And the prohibition was enforced among the whites by the penalty of sure and stern ostracism.

Under these conditions, then, the two sections of the Southern people have been working their way, for almost thirty years. How first have the negroes fared? Of the prophecies for their future, made when they were in bondage and in view of possible emancipation, one was that they would die out, but in less than half a century they have doubled. Another was that if freed they would refuse to work, but the industrial product of the South has never fallen off, but has steadily and vastly increased, with the negro still as the chief laborer. Another prediction was that they would lapse into barbarism. The Southern negroes as a mass have a fringe of barbarism-a heavy fringe. So has every community, white, black or yellow, the world over. Have the Southern blacks, as a body, moved toward barbarism or toward civilization since they were set free?

The comparative tests between civilization and barbarism are, broadly speaking, productive industry, intelligence and

morality. If we gauge industry by results, we find that the class which forty years ago entered into freedom with empty hands now owns more than $300,000,000 of property by the tax-gatherers' lists. Another estimate cited by Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart-puts their entire property holdings at $500,000,000. Though most of them are tenants or hired laborers, yet there are more than 173,000 who own their farms. The total number of farms worked by them in the South-owned, leased, or rented on shares-is figured at 700,000. The census of 1900 shows that in almost every profession, trade and handicraft the black race has numerous representatives-their range of occupation and industrial opportunity being far wider in the South than in the North. Taking the whole country, the percentage of adults in gainful pursuits is a trifle higher among blacks than among whites. Allow for the more frequent employment in toil of the black woman; allow, too, for the more intermittent character of black labor,-yet the relative showing is not unfavorable to the enfranchised race. And this comparison touches, too, the more difficult problem of morality,-for industry is itself a chief safeguard of morality.

As to intelligence, the statistics show that, roughly speaking, about half the blacks over ten years old can read and write. That is not much below the status of the people of England half a century ago. In the higher fields of intelligence, the American negroes,-there are 9,000,000 of them, -supply to-day a large part of their own teachers, ministers, lawyers and doctors, and in all these professions the standard is steadily rising.

In regard to morality, generalization is difficult. There is undoubtedly a much larger criminal element among the blacks than among the whites. There are proportionately more crimes against property, crimes of sensuality, crimes

of violence. Materials are wanting for exact comparison, either with the whites, or among the blacks at different periods. Yet there are few or no sections at the South, even in the worst parts of the Black Belt, as to which the public gets the impression of any general lawlessness. And in any comparison of the present with the time of slavery, we must remember what Carlyle says in speaking of the cruelties of the French Revolution as compared with those of the tyranny which preceded it, when the high-born suffer the world hears of it, but the woes of the inarticulate are unheard. Wrongs at the South which shock us to-day, or wrongs as great-were commonplace, were unnoted and unchronicled, under slavery. It is offenses against women that rouse the hottest resentment. But for centuries the black woman's chastity had absolutely no protection under the law, and her woes were pitiful beyond telling. For the Southern negro, true family life was impossible until within fifty years. With so brief experience in the best school of character, there is no ground for doubting that he has won a vast moral advance, and the promise of greater.

Of the negroes, as of every race or community, we may consider the lowest stratum, the great mass, and the leaders. Regarding not morality only, but general conditions, there is a considerable element of the Southern blacks whose condition is most pitiable. Such especially are many of the peasants of the Black Belt; barely able to support themselves, often plundered with more or less of legality by landlord and storekeeper, shut up to heavy, dull, almost hopeless lives. Inheritance weighs on them as well as environment; when these plantations were recruited from Virginia, it was only the worst of the slaves whom their masters would sell, and the bad elements propagated their like. The case of these people to-day presents one of the open sores, the

unanswered questions,—we might say the impossible tasks, did we not remember Armstrong's attitude toward things "impossible." Yet, even as to these,-are they not better off than when enslaved? A part of their trouble is the burden of responsibility-for themselves, their wives and children. In slavery they had no responsibility beyond the day's task; the whip and the full stomach were the two extremes of their possibilities. Now at least they are men -with manhood's burdens, but with its possibilities, too.

Of the great middle class, something has already been said, as to industry, property and education. But statistics are cold and dead, could we but see the living human realities which they vainly try to express. The growth of a slave, or a slave's child, into a free man or woman,-the birth and development of true family life,-could we see this in its millions of instances, or even distinctly in one typical instance, with all its phases of struggle, mistake, disappointment, success, the growth of character, the blossoming of manhood and womanhood,-it would be a more moving spectacle than any that Shakespeare has given. Here, again, it is mostly the inarticulate class, and their story is not told to the world. We especially fail to learn it, because of the wall of caste by which the white man shuts himself out from the finest sights and the most brotherly opportunities. More than farming or carpentry, more than school or church, and taking in the best fruits of all these, is family life, in its fullest and best. That is where the negro is coming to highest manhood.

A necessary test of a race is its power to furnish its own leaders. The negro race in America is developing a leadership of its own,-small as yet, but choice and growing. It was part of Armstrong's central idea to create and supply such a leadership. Hampton has gone steadily on in the work, and the sisters and the children of Hampton are

multiplying their fruits. It was by an ideal fitness of things that Armstrong attracted, inspired and started as his worthy successor one of the negro race. At Tuskegee the black man is doing for himself what at Hampton the white man is doing for him. Booker Washington is the pupil and successor of Armstrong, but he has his own distinct individuality, his own word and work. His constant precept and practice has been that the black man should make himself so serviceable and valuable to the community that every door will open as fast as he is fit to enter it. It is the gospel of wisdom and of peace. Toward all the opportunities denied to the race, its attitude is one of patience but of untiring persistence. Its constant word is, Make yourself fit for any function, any place, and sooner or later it will be yours. Against political exclusion Mr. Washington on due occasion speaks his calm word, but he does not beat against the closed gate; he knows that when the black man shows his full capacity for citizenship it cannot long be denied him. The social exclusion he accepts with quiet self-respect; let time see to that, let us only do our full work, learn our full lesson. His teaching goes far beyond the schoolroom; he gathers in conference the heads of families, the fathers and mothers; he sets them to study and practice the curriculum of the family and the neighborhood. In his intense practicality he lacks something of the spiritual inspiration which Armstrong had and gave. But his teaching is in no wise narrow or selfish, for always it is animated by the spirit of brotherhood and service. His personal story, Up from Slavery, is one of the most moving of human documents; in itself it is an answer to all pessimism. It is a typical story; even as these sheets are written there comes to hand another like unto it, the story of another boy, William Holtzclaw, who groped his way up from a negro cabin, caught the sacred fire at Tuskegee, did battle with misfortune and