New Orleans in 1895. Said
E.A. Ball, second vice-president of the Firemen's Union, in an address
to the public: "It will be up to you to determine whether the white
firemen now employed on the Georgia Railroad shall be accorded rights
and privileges over the Negro, or whether he shall be placed on the same
equality with the Negro. Also, it will be for you to determine whether
or not white firemen, supporting families in and around Atlanta on a pay
of $1.75 a day, shall be compelled to vacate their positions in Atlanta
joint terminals for Negroes, who are willing to do the same work for
$1.25." Some papers, like the Augusta _Herald_, said that it was a
mistaken policy to give preference to Negroes when white men would
ultimately have to be put in charge of trains and engines; but others,
like the Baltimore _News_, said, "If the Negro can be driven from one
skilled employment, he can be driven from another; but a country that
tries to do it is flying in the face of every economic law, and must
feel the evil effects of its policy if it could be carried out." At any
rate feeling ran very high; for a whole week about June I there were
very few trains between Atlanta and Augusta, and there were some acts of
violence; but in the face of the capital at stake and the fundamental
issues involved it was simply impossible for the railroad to give way.
The matter was at length referred to a board of arbitration which
decided that the Georgia Railroad was still to employ Negroes whenever
they were found qualified and that they were to receive the same wages
as white workers. Some thought that this decision would ultimately tell
against the Negro, but such was not the immediate effect at least, and
to all intents and purposes the white firemen had lost in the strike.
The whole matter was in fact fundamentally one of the most pathetic that
we have had to record. Humble white workers, desirous of improving the
economic condition of themselves and their families, instead of assuming
a statesmanlike and truly patriotic attitude toward their problem,
turned aside into the wilderness of racial hatred and were lost.

This review naturally prompts reflection as to the whole function of the
Negro laborer in the South. In the first place, what is he worth, and
especially what is he worth in honest Southern opinion? It was said
after the Civil War that he would not work except under compulsion; just
how had he come to be regarded in the industry