e less than
12 per cent of the total population.

3. It does not account for the facts arranged under it as satisfactorily
as can be done under a different hypothesis. The author fails to
consider that the discouraging facts of observation may be due to the
violent upheaval of emancipation and reconstruction, and are, therefore,
only temporary in their duration.

I do not know whether the author believes in Providence as a determining
factor in society or not. It may not be accounted scientific to take
cognizance of any element which cannot be quantified, counted, weighed,
or measured. But I do know that the wisest of our species have always
believed that God is the controlling factor in human affairs. The
Negro's hopes and aspirations are built upon the foundation of this
belief. We are told in His word that he visits the sins of the fathers
upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. If the Negro,
then, will conform his life to the moral and sanitary laws, may not the
evil tendencies now observable be eradicated or overcome? The first
effects of emancipation are always harmful to the moral and physical
well-being of the liberated class. The removal of physical restraints,
before moral restraints have grown strong enough to take their place,
must always result in misconduct. The Jews in Egypt labored under
circumstances remarkably similar to those of the American Negro. After
their emancipation, it required them forty years to make the progress
which the scientific process would have required them to make in forty
days. Such was their moral and physical degeneracy, that only two
persons of all the hosts who left the land of Egyptian bondage survived
to reach the Promised Land forty years afterward. Luckily for the
Hebrews, there were no statisticians in those days. Think of the future
which an Egyptian philosopher would have predicted for this people! And
yet out of the loins of this race have sprung the moral and spiritual
law-givers of mankind. We should not be discouraged because the Negro
does not make a bee-line from Egyptian bondage to the Promised Land
beyond the Jordan. He, too, must tarry awhile in the wilderness before
he enters upon the full enjoyment of the heritage of freedom.

To the Negro I would say, let him not be discouraged at the ugly facts
which confront him. The sociologists are flashing the searchlight of
scientific inquiry upon him. His faults lie nearer the surface and are
more e