ible, asking the reader to
bear in mind that very much more might be said along this line than I
allow myself space to say.

I

That the Negro is not a problem because he is lazy, because he declines
to work, is evidenced by the patent fact that in virtually every
Southern community he is sought as a laborer in fields, mills, mines,
and that in very many Southern communities the vexing problem for
employers is not too many, but too few Negroes. In certain agricultural
sections, notably in the Louisiana sugar district, quite a number of
Italians ("Dagoes") are employed. The reason is not dissatisfaction
with Negro labor, but simply that there is not enough of it to meet the
requirements of the large plantations. There is, perhaps, not one
of these plantations on which any able-bodied Negro could not get
employment for the asking; and as a rule, the Negroes are given, not
the work which demands the lowest, but that which demands the highest,
efficiency: they are the ploughmen, the teamsters, the foremen. If any
one doubts that Negroes are wanted as laborers in Southern communities,
very much wanted, let him go to any such community and attempt to
inveigle a few dozen of the laziest away. He will be likely to take his
life in his hands, after the usual warning is disregarded!

II

The small politician's trump-card, played early and late, and in all
seasons, that the Negro is a black shadow over the Southland because
of his excessive criminality, serves well the politician's purpose,--it
wins his game; but only because the game is played and won on a board
where fictions, not facts, are dominant. Nothing is easier than to offer
so-called proofs of the contention that the Negro's tendency to crime is
something peculiar to his race; there are the jail and penitentiary and
gallows statistics, for instance. But surely it should not be difficult
for these so-called proofs to present themselves in their true light to
any one who takes the trouble to consider two weighty and conspicuous
facts: this, first, that the Negroes occupy everywhere in this country
the lowest social and industrial plane, the plane which everywhere else
supplies the jail, the penitentiary, the gallows, with the greatest
number of their victims; and secondly this, that in the section of the
country where these penal statistics are gathered, all the machinery of
justice is in the hands of white men.

No Negro is a sheriff, or judge, or justice of th