the only function
of Negroes in life was that of hewers of wood and drawers of water quite
fully realized that Negroes who had been to college did not care to work
longer as field laborers. Some were to prove scientific students of
agriculture, but as a group they were out of the class of peons. In this
they were just like white people and all other people. No one who has
once seen the light chooses to live always on the plane of the "man with
the hoe." Nor need it be thought that these students are unduly crowding
into professional pursuits. While, for instance, the number of Negro
physicians and dentists has greatly increased within recent years, the
number would still have to be four or five times as great to sustain
to the total Negro population the same proportion as that borne by
the whole number of white physicians and dentists to the total white
population.

The subjects of the criminality and the mortality of the race are in
their ultimate reaches closely related, both being mainly due, as we
have suggested, to the conditions under which Negroes have been forced
to live. In the country districts, until 1900 at least, there was little
provision for improvements in methods of cooking or in sanitation, while
in cities the effects of inferior housing, poor and unlighted streets,
and of the segregation of vice in Negro neighborhoods could not be
otherwise than obvious. Thus it happened in such a year as 1898 that in
Baltimore the Negro death rate was somewhat more and in Nashville just
a little less than twice that of the white people. Legal procedure,
moreover, emphasized a vicious circle; living conditions sent the
Negroes to the courts in increasing numbers, and the courts sent them
still farther down in the scale. There were undoubtedly some Negro
thieves, some Negro murderers, and some Negroes who were incontinent;
no race has yet appeared on the face of the earth that did not contain
members having such propensities, and all such people should be dealt
with justly by law. Our present contention is that throughout the period
of which we are now speaking the dominant social system was not only
such as to accentuate criminal elements but also such as even sought
to discourage aspiring men. A few illustrations, drawn from widely
different phases of life, must suffice. In the spring of 1903, and again
in 1904, Jackson W. Giles, of Montgomery County, Alabama, contended
before the Supreme Court of the United States