will be nationalized by this exodus. The
poor whites of both sections will strike at this race long stigmatized by
servitude but now demanding economic equality. Race prejudice, the fatal
weakness of the Americans, will not so soon abate although there will be
advocates of fraternity, equality and liberty required to reconstruct our
government and rebuild our civilization in conformity with the demands of
modern efficiency by placing every man regardless of his color wherever he
may do the greatest good for the greatest number.

The Negroes, however, are doubtless going to the North in sufficiently
large numbers to make themselves felt. If this migration falls short of
establishing in that section Negro colonies large enough to wield economic
and political power, their state in the end will not be any better than
that of the Negroes already there. It is to these large numbers alone that
we must look for an agent to counteract the development of race feeling
into riots. In large numbers the blacks will be able to strike for better
wages or concessions due a rising laboring class and they will have enough
votes to defeat for reelection those officers who wink at mob violence or
treat Negroes as persons beyond the pale of the law.

The Negroes in the North, however, will get little out of the harvest if,
like the blacks of Reconstruction days, they unwisely concentrate their
efforts on solving all of their problems by electing men of their race as
local officers or by sending a few members even to Congress as is likely
in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago within the next generation. The
Negroes have had representatives in Congress before but they were put out
because their constituency was uneconomic and politically impossible.
There was nothing but the mere letter of the law behind the Reconstruction
Negro officeholder and the thus forced political recognition against
public opinion could not last any longer than natural forces for some time
thrown out of gear by unnatural causes could resume the usual line of
procedure.

It would be of no advantage to the Negro race today to send to Congress
forty Negro Representatives on the pro rata basis of numbers, especially
if they happened not to be exceptionally well qualified. They would remain
in Congress only so long as the American white people could devise some
plan for eliminating them as they did during the Reconstruction period.
Near as the world has approached real dem