The field is broad enough in the South for both races to attain all that is possible to them. In spite of the periodic political conflicts and occasional local riots and acts of individual violence, the relations between the races, in respect to nine tenths of the population, are very friendly. The general condition has been too often judged by the acts of a small minority. The Southern people understand the Negroes, and feel a real fondness for those that are thrifty and well behaved. When fairly treated the Negro has a strong affection for his employer. He seldom forgets a kindness, and is quick to forget a wrong. If he does not stay long at one place, it is not that he dislikes his employer so much as that he has a restless temperament and craves change. His disposition is full of mirth and sunshine, and not a little of the fine flavor of Southern wit and humor is due to his influence. His nature is plastic, and while he is easily molded into a monster, he is also capable of a high degree of culture. Many Negroes are thoroughly honest, notwithstanding their bad environment and hereditary disposition to steal. Negro servants are trusted with the keys to households to an extent that, probably, is not the case among domestics elsewhere in the civilized world.
It is strange that two races working side by side should possess so many opposite traits of character. The white man has strong will and convictions and is set in his ways. He lives an indoor, monotonous life, restrains himself like a Puritan, and is inclined to melancholy. The prevalence of Populism throughout the South is nothing but the outcome of this morbid tendency. Farmers and merchants are entirely absorbed in their business, and the women, especially the married women, contrast with the women of France, Germany, and even England, in their indoor life and disinclination to mingle with the world outside. Public parks and public concerts, such as are found in Europe, which call out husband, wife, and children for a few hours of rest and communion with their friends, are almost unknown in the South. The few entertainments that receive sanction generally exclude all but the well-to-do by the cost of admission. The life of the poor in town and country is bleak and bare to the last degree.
Contrasting with this tendency is the free-and-easy life of the blacks. The burdens of the present and the future weigh lightly upon their shoulders. They love all the worldly amusements; in their homes they are free entertainers, and in their fondness for conversation and love of street life they are equal to the French or Italians.
May we not hope that the conflict of these two opposite races is working out some advantages to both, and that the final result will justify all that the conflict has cost?
SIGNS OF PROGRESS AMONG THE NEGROES by Booker T. Washington
In addition to the problem of educating eight million negroes in our Southern States and ingrafting them into American citizenship, we now have the additional responsibility, either directly or indirectly, of educating and elevating about eight hundred thousand others of African descent in Cuba and Porto Rico, to say nothing of the white people of these islands, many of whom are in a condition about as deplorable as that of the negroes. We have, however, one advantage in approaching the question of the education of our new neighbors.
The experience that we have passed through in the Southern States during the last thirty years in the education of my race, whose history and needs are not very different from the history and needs of the Cubans and Porto Ricans, will prove most valuable in elevating the blacks of the West Indian Islands. To tell what has already been accomplished in the South under most difficult circumstances is to tell what may be done in Cuba and Porto Rico.
To this end let me tell a story.
In what is known as the black belt of the South—that is, where the negroes outnumber the whites—there lived before the Civil War a white man who owned some two hundred slaves, and was prosperous. At the close of the war he found his fortune gone, except that which was represented in land, of which he owned several thousand acres. Of the two hundred slaves a large proportion decided, after their freedom, to continue on the plantation of their former owner.