It is sadly true that men of all races are too prone to unchastity. It is chaste women that give human amelioration its main propulsion; for they make every husband to know that the children around his fireside are his own. If I were asked in what one particular had my life-long comparison convinced me that the two races are farthest apart, I would unhesitatingly answer, in the character of the women of each—the average white woman, from her marriage on, forgetting all other men but her husband, the black wife always with a paramour, if to be had.
The tie which holds the family stanch is wanting. The men often cast aside their domestic burdens, and begin their lives over in a distant region with a new woman. The wife and mother left behind does not mope. She has generally prearranged satisfactorily with another man.
Disease is making great ravages in this lower class of negroes. I never knew of a case of consumption among the slaves, and I can recall but one serious case of pneumonia. Now these two diseases slay the negroes by hundreds. Before the war the negro was regarded as immune from yellow fever, and almost immune from dangerous malarial affections. He has lost his charm against these also. There has been a dreadful increase of insanity among them. The only ante-bellum case that I can recall was due to an accidental injury of the head.
It is but natural that the death rate among the negroes mounts fearfully. Their great multiplication has far outrun their reasonable means of subsistence. We note what a heavy burden a large family is to a man in hard times. I must believe that the thirteenth census will show a still greater negro death-rate.
We shall sum up as to this lower class after we have described the displacement of black by white labor.
Now we must consider the upper class. We need look only at its main divisions, to wit, the negro farmers, and the well-to-do urban negroes.
The rose-colored statements of Professor DuBois as to the former cannot impose upon residents of the south.[170] I shall begin with the negro farm owners of Georgia. In what he says of them in the second Bulletin mentioned in the last footnote he hardly ever looks away from the report of the comptroller-general of the State. I shall deal with relevant facts about which the comptroller-general is not required to concern himself—and of which the census takes but little note. Where agricultural land commands only a few dollars per acre a large part of it will get into possession of purchasers under title-bond who expect to work it and pay for it in annual instalments out of its produce. Of course the vendor sees to it that he himself escapes taxation on this land, and so the purchasers, although they may have paid him but a trifle or nothing at all, are assessed as if they were the real owners, while the vendors are retaining the title as security. Soon after the war many a white planter, in order to get out of a failing business and procure capital for something else, sold his land in whole or part. He could find no purchaser but some exceptional negro; and the latter could buy only on credit. Much of the lands so sold had to be retaken because the purchasers failed to meet their payments. It was my observation when I left Greene county twenty-three years ago that in that and the adjoining counties the number of negro owners of agricultural land was decreasing, and it is my information that such is now the case. This indicates an important fact not shown in the reports of the comptroller-general, to wit, that a large number of the negroes appearing therein as owners are really not owners, and are losing their holdings.
The next fact to be mentioned is that, as I learn from residents, many farms of which a negro had acquired the fee are heavily encumbered, and often fall to the local merchants.
Further, as Professor DuBois states, “the land owned by negroes is usually the less fertile, worn-out tracts.”[171]
According to the comptroller’s report for 1903 the acres of white ownership are 29,762,259, returned at a value of $121,629,094; which is $4,139 per acre. The per cent of the total value owned by the blacks is 4.07. This result—that the negroes own a fraction over four per cent of the improved lands of Georgia—must be corrected by proper deduction for purchase money debts, and also for encumbrances. It must be further corrected by another deduction. The negroes land is considerably below the average of the rest in quality and market value. Yet while the white returns at $4.08 an acre, the other returns at $4.13. This higher valuation is not because of conscientious avoidance of tax-dodging. It comes from that optimistic exaggeration characterizing the race, which is vividly illustrated in Booker Washington’s gravely stating that the love of knowledge by the average negroes of the south has become the “marvel of mankind,”[172] and in the extravagant assertion of Professor DuBois as to their chastity commented on a few pages back.