[40]. This typical Southern view is forcibly expressed by Mr. Thomas Nelson Page: “The history of that period, of the Reconstruction period of the South, has never been fully told. It is only beginning to be written. When that history shall be told, it will constitute the darkest stain on the record of the American people.... They took eight millions of the Caucasian race, a people which in their devotion and their self-sacrifice, in their transcendent vigour of intellect, their intrepid valor in the field, and their fortitude in defeat, had just elevated their race in the sight of mankind, and placed them under the domination of their former slaves. There is nothing like it in modern history.”—“The Negro: the Southerner’s Problem,” pp. 243, 246.
[41]. Another negro writer, Mr. W. H. Thomas (“The American Negro,” p. 295), is still more emphatic on this point: “That colour is the prime cause of American prejudice against negroes is not to be believed for one moment. Every shred of authentic evidence disproves conclusions so preposterous.” Mr. Thomas goes on to argue that the condition of “the low class of whites” in the South is “infinitely inferior to that of the lowest plantation negro.” Somewhat similar is the view of a clergyman who writes to me from Clyde, Kansas: “The problem is simply one of caste, and the negro is the extreme example of the labour caste. The problem is one of aristocracy whatever the colour of the plebeians.... Whatever its professions, the South is still pro-slavery. It wants the negro, but it wants him as a slave. And it would want to enslave any other race that came to take his place.” Both of these views seem to me so manifestly paradoxical and excessive that I venture to maintain the position taken up in the text. At the same time, I would not be understood to mean that the difficulty lies in colour alone, apart from the “other physical peculiarities.” On this point a gentleman in Port Arthur, Texas, writes to me: “I have long had a feeling that negrophobia is not a matter of colour.... No, the thing that rouses a blind disgust—not superficial, not capricious, but deep-rooted—is the body odour, the flat nose, the thick lips, the suggestion of ‘slobber’ in the voice and the mouth-movements, together with the unnatural hair and the animalism of bodily contour at many points. I have often thought that some accidental discovery may at any moment put it in the African’s power to remove the dark pigment from his skin: if this ever happens, it will, I think, be found that the real repulsiveness of the negroid type has been merely unveiled, not dissipated.”
Let me take this opportunity of saying that to the best of my belief the “body odour” of which we hear so much is mainly a superstition. The fact probably is that the negro ought to be at least as scrupulous in his ablutions as the white man—but often is not.
XVI
PROHIBITION
Every one agrees that the most remarkable phenomenon in the recent history of the South is the “wave of prohibition” which has passed, and is passing, over the country. “There are 20,000,000 people in the fourteen Southern States, 17,000,000 of whom are under prohibitory law in some form.” “Yes, sir,” says Mr. Dooley, “in the sunny Southland ’tis as hard to get a dhrink now as it wanst was not to get wan.... Why, Hinnissy, I read th’ other day iv a most unfortunate occurrence down in Texas. A perfectly respectable an’ innocent man, of good connexions, while attemptin’ to dhraw a revolver to plug an inimy, was hastily shot down be th’ rangers, who thought he was pullin’ a pocket-flask. Is no man’s life safe against th’ acts iv irresponsible officers iv the law?”
Georgia led the way in “State-wide” prohibition, by a law which came into force on January 1, 1908. This law nominally affected only fifteen counties, since 135 out of the 150 counties in the State had already “gone dry” under local option. But its importance is not to be measured by the mere number of the counties affected; it lies in the stoppage of the “jug trade” between “wet” counties and “dry.”
Alabama and Mississippi both passed Statewide prohibition laws which came into force in January, 1909. A strong fight is being made for State-wide prohibition in Tennessee, though “all but five of the ninety-six counties in the State are now ‘dry’, and only three cities—Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga—remain ‘wet.’” Though Kentucky has over £30,000,000 invested in distilleries, the saloon has been expelled from 94 out of 119 counties, and from the great majority of its towns and cities. All over the South, in fact, the same tale is being told—even where Statewide prohibition cannot as yet be carried, local option is riddling the defences of the whisky trade.
First-hand Evidence.
Of course I made it my business to inquire into the effects of this great movement, and, of course, I received many conflicting answers to my inquiries.