ore
frequently the hopeless battle to support a family, lead to separation,
and a broken household is the result. The Negro church has done much
to stop this practice, and now most marriage ceremonies are performed
by the pastors. Nevertheless, the evil is still deep seated, and only
a general raising of the standard of living will finally cure it.

Looking now at the county black population as a whole, it is fair to
characterize it as poor and ignorant. Perhaps ten per cent compose the
well-to-do and the best of the laborers, while at least nine per cent
are thoroughly lewd and vicious. The rest, over eighty per cent, are
poor and ignorant, fairly honest and well meaning, plodding, and to a
degree shiftless, with some but not great sexual looseness. Such class
lines are by no means fixed; they vary, one might almost say, with the
price of cotton. The degree of ignorance cannot easily be expressed.
We may say, for instance, that nearly two-thirds of them cannot read or
write. This but partially expresses the fact. They are ignorant of
the world about them, of modern economic organization, of the function
of government, of individual worth and possibilities,--of nearly all
those things which slavery in self-defence had to keep them from
learning. Much that the white boy imbibes from his earliest social
atmosphere forms the puzzling problems of the black boy's mature years.
America is not another word for Opportunity to all her sons.

It is easy for us to lose ourselves in details in endeavoring to grasp
and comprehend the real condition of a mass of human beings. We often
forget that each unit in the mass is a throbbing human soul. Ignorant
it may be, and poverty stricken, black and curious in limb and ways and
thought; and yet it loves and hates, it toils and tires, it laughs and
weeps its bitter tears, and looks in vague and awful longing at the
grim horizon of its life,--all this, even as you and I. These black
thousands are not in reality lazy; they are improvident and careless;
they insist on breaking the monotony of toil with a glimpse at the
great town-world on Saturday; they have their loafers and their
rascals; but the great mass of them work continuously and faithfully
for a return, and under circumstances that would call forth equal
voluntary effort from few if any other modern laboring class. Over
eighty-eight per cent of them--men, women, and children--are farmers.
Indeed, this is almost the onl