“I ’ll try for you, Harris,” he said, “but it’s a doubtful experiment. The men fear the Negro as a pestilence.”
“Do the best you can for me. I must have bread. I only ask a man’s chance,” answered Harris. Halliday proposed his name and backed it up with a strong personal endorsement, gave a brief sketch of his culture and accomplishments and asked that he be allowed to learn the bricklayer’s trade.
When his name came up before the Brick Layers’ Union, and it was announced that he was a negro, it precipitated a debate of such fury that it threatened to develop into a riot.
One of the men sprang toward the presiding officer with blazing eyes, gesticulating wildly until recognised.
“I have this to say,” he shouted. “No negro shall ever enter the door of this Union except over my dead body. The Negro can under live us. We can not compete with him, and as a race we can not organise him. Let him stay in the South. We have no room for him here, and we will kill him if he tries to take our bread from us!”
“Have you no sympathy for his age-long sufferings in slavery?” interrupted Halliday.
“Slavery! of all the delusions the idea that slavery was abolished in this country in 1865 is the silliest, Slavery was never firmly established until the chattel form was abandoned for the wage system in 1865. Chattel slavery was too expensive. The wage system is cheaper. Now they never have to worry about food, or clothes, or houses, or the children, or the aged and infirm among wage slaves.
“Once the master hunted the slave,—now the slave must hunt the master, beg for the privilege of serving him and trample others to death trying to fasten the chains on when a brother slave drops dead in his tracks.
“No, I don’t shed any crocodile tears over the Negro slavery of the South. It was a mild form of servitude, in which the Negro had plenty to eat and wear, never suffered from cold, slept soundly and reared his children in droves with never a thought for the morrow.
“Then mothers and babes were sometimes, though not often, separated by an executor’s or sheriff’s sale. Now, we know better than to allow babes to be born. Then, a babe was a valuable asset and received the utmost care. Now, we have baby farms which we fertilise with their bones. I know of one old hag in this city who has killed over two thousand babes.