Negro and the white laborer. Both
capital and common sense were making it clear, however, that the
Negro was undoubtedly a labor asset and would have to be given place
accordingly.

[Footnote 1: _The Negro in the South_, 115.]

In March, 1895, there were bloody riots in New Orleans, these growing
out of the fact that white laborers who were beginning to be organized
objected to the employment Of Negro workers by the shipowners for the
unloading of vessels. When the trouble was at its height volley after
volley was poured upon the Negroes, and in turn two white men were
killed and several wounded. The commercial bodies of the city met,
blamed the Governor and the Mayor for the series of outbreaks, and
demanded that the outrages cease. Said they: "Forbearance has ceased to
be a virtue. We can no longer treat with men who, with arms in their
hands, are shooting down an inoffensive people because they will not
think and act with them. For these reasons we say to these people that,
cost what it may, we are determined that the commerce of this city must
and shall be protected; that every man who desires to perform honest
labor must and shall be permitted to do so regardless of race, color, or
previous condition." About August I of this same year, 1895, there were
sharp conflicts between the white and the black miners at Birmingham,
a number being killed on both sides before military authority could
intervene. Three years later, moreover, the invasion of the North by
Negro labor had begun, and about November 17, 1898, there was serious
trouble in the mines at Pana and Virden, Illinois. In the same month
the convention of railroad brotherhoods in Norfolk expressed strong
hostility to Negro labor, Grand Master Frank P. Sargent of the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen saying that one of the chief purposes
of the meeting of the brotherhoods was "to begin a campaign in advocacy
of white supremacy in the railway service." This November, it will be
recalled, was the fateful month of the election riots in North and South
Carolina. _The People_, the Socialist-Labor publication, commenting upon
a Negro indignation meeting at Cooper Union and upon the problem in
general, said that the Negro was essentially a wage-slave, that it was
the capitalism of the North and not humanity that in the first place had
demanded the freedom of the slave, that in the new day capital demanded
the subjugation of the working class--Negro or otherwise; and i