While I was in London I received letters from a great many persons of all classes and conditions. One of these was from a coloured man who was born and raised in the South and was anxious to get back home. I am tempted to quote some passages of his letter here, because they show how conditions impressed a coloured man from the South who got closer to them than I was able to. He had been living, he said, in London for fourteen months without work.
"I have tried to apply for work," he continued. "They said they want Englishmen. It seems to me that all Britain are against the Negro race. Some say, 'Go back to your own country,' knowing if I had the means I would fly to-morrow."
Perhaps I would do better to quote some passages from his letter verbatim. He says:
I cannot get a passage; to be alone in London without any help or funds, like a pin in a haystack, nothing but sorrow and distress. Hearing Mr. B. T. Washington were in London I appeal to him in the name of God Almighty if he can possibly help me with a ticket to get across, because the lady that was kind enough to give me a shelter is without fund herself; being a Christian woman she gave me food for what she can afford. At night I have to sleep in a house with a widow which has two children which has to make her living by chopping wood, whom some day, does not earn enough to buy a loaf of bread for her children. The winter is coming on and I like to get home to shuck corn or to get to Maryland for a oyster draggin. It is a long time since I had watermelon, pig's feet and corn. Say, Mr. Washington, if you ever knew what a man in a hole is I guess I am in a hole and the cover over. I can see the pork chops and the corn bread and the hot biscuits calling me to come over and get some and many a time I have tried but failed. I can't reach them; the great Atlantic Ocean stop me and I remain
Your Obedient Servant,——
This letter from which I have given a few extracts is but one of many which I received during my stay in London, not only from coloured but from white Americans who had come to England to better their condition or seek their fortune.
These letters served still further to impress me with the fact that the masses of my own people in the South do not fully appreciate the advantages which they have in living in a country where there is a constant demand for labour of all kinds and where even poor people do not starve.
If I were asked what I believed would be the greatest boon that could be conferred upon the English labourer, I should say that it would be for him to have the same opportunities for constant and steady work that the Negro now has in the South. If I were asked what would be the next greatest benefit that could be conferred upon the English labourer, I should say that it would be to have schools in which every class could learn to do some one thing well—to have, in other words, the benefit of the kind of industrial education that we are seeking, in some measure, to give to the Negro at the present time in the Southern States.