civilisation when the poor white boy in the country districts of the
South receives one dollar's worth of education and the boy of the same
class in the North twenty dollars' worth, when one never enters a
reading-room or library and the other has reading-rooms and libraries
in every ward and town, when one hears lectures and sermons once in
two months and the other can hear a lecture or a sermon every day in
the year.

The time has come, it seems to me, when in this matter we should rise
above party or race or sectionalism into the region of duty of man to
man, of citizen to citizen, of Christian to Christian; and if the
Negro, who has been oppressed and denied his rights in a Christian
land, can help the whites of the North and South to rise, can be the
inspiration of their rising, into this atmosphere of generous
Christian brotherhood and self-forgetfulness, he will see in it a
recompense for all that he has suffered in the past.

CHAPTER III.

In the heart of the Black Belt of the South in _ante-bellum_ days
there was a large estate, with palatial mansion, surrounded by a
beautiful grove, in which grew flowers and shrubbery of every
description. Magnificent specimens of animal life grazed in the
fields, and in grain and all manner of plant growth this estate was a
model. In a word, it was the highest type of the product of slave
labor.

Then came the long years of war, then freedom, then the trying years
of reconstruction. The master returned from the war to find the
faithful slaves who had been the bulwark of this household in
possession of their freedom. Then there began that social and
industrial revolution in the South which it is hard for any who was
not really a part of it to appreciate or understand. Gradually, day by
day, this ex-master began to realise, with a feeling almost
indescribable, to what an extent he and his family had grown to be
dependent upon the activity and faithfulness of his slaves; began to
appreciate to what an extent slavery had sapped his sinews of strength
and independence, how his dependence upon slave labour had deprived
him and his offspring of the benefit of technical and industrial
training, and, worst of all, had unconsciously led him to see in
labour drudgery and degradation instead of beauty, dignity, and
civilising power. At first there was a halt in this man's life. He
cursed the North and he cursed the Negro. Then there was despair,
almost utter hopelessness,