of the New South? In 1894
a number of large employers were asked about this point. 50 per cent
said that in skilled labor they considered the Negro inferior to the
white worker, 46 per cent said that he was fairly equal, and 4 per cent
said that, all things considered, he was superior. As to common labor 54
per cent said that he was equal, 29 per cent superior, and 17 per cent
inferior to the white worker. At the time it appeared that wages
paid Negroes averaged 80 per cent of those paid white men. A similar
investigation by the Chattanooga _Tradesman_ in 1902 brought forth five
hundred replies. These were summarized as follows: "We find the Negro
more useful and skilled in the cotton-seed oil-mills, the lumber-mills,
the foundries, brick kilns, mines, and blast-furnaces. He is superior
to white labor and possibly superior to any other labor in these
establishments, but not in the capacity of skillful and ingenious
artisans." In this opinion, it is to be remembered, the Negro was
subjected to a severe test in which nothing whatever was given to him,
and at least it appears that in many lines of labor he is not less than
indispensable to the progress of the South. The question then arises:
Just what is the relation that he is finally to sustain to other
workingmen? It would seem that white worker and black worker would long
ago have realized their identity of interest and have come together. The
unions, however, have been slow to admit Negroes and give them the same
footing and backing as white men. Under the circumstances accordingly
there remained nothing else for the Negro to do except to work wherever
his services were desired and on the best terms that he was able to
obtain.

6. _Defamation: Brownsville_

Crime demands justification, and it is not surprising that after such
violence as that which we have described, and after several states had
passed disfranchising acts, there appeared in the first years of the new
century several publications especially defamatory of the race. Some
books unfortunately descended to a coarseness in vilification such as
had not been reached since the Civil War. From a Bible House in St.
Louis in 1902 came _The Negro a Beast, or In the Image of God_, a book
that was destined to have an enormous circulation among the white people
of the poorer class in the South, and that of course promoted the
mob spirit.[1] Contemporary and of the same general tenor were R.W.
Shufeldt's _The Negr