romise was made
with what is called the "Civil Rights Law," which was intended to give
the negroes the same privileges at the hotels, theaters, and other
public places, that the whites had. The Northern politicians pretended
to believe that the efforts they were making were for the benefit of the
negroes, though no doubt the majority of them knew better. Of course,
the Southern people resisted the pressure thus brought to bear by
the Northern sectionalists, and the result was what might have been
expected. The condition of the negro was made more uncomfortable
than ever, and the color line was more closely drawn. To show how
shortsighted the politicians were and are, it is only necessary to call
attention to one fact, and it is this: that while the Civil Rights Law
has kept negroes out of public places both North and South, they ride
on the street cars side by side with the white people, and it frequently
happens that an old negro woman who comes into a crowded car is given
a seat by some Southerner who has tender recollections of his negro
"mammy."

[Illustration: Streetcar in the South 318]

It is worthy of note, that while the politicians on both sides were
fighting the shadows that the "negro problem" called up, the problem was
solving itself in the only way that such vast problems can be settled
in the order of Providence,--by the irresistible elements of time and
experience. A great deal of misery, suffering, and discontent would have
been spared to both races, if, after the war, the conservative men of
the North had either insisted on the policy that Abraham Lincoln
had mapped out, or had said to the pestiferous politicians who were
responsible for carpet-bag rule, "Hands off!" No doubt some injustice
would have been done to individuals if the North had permitted the
negroes to work out their political salvation alone, but the race itself
would be in a better condition every way than it is today; for outside
interference has worked untold damage and hardship to the negro. It has
given him false ideas of the power and purpose of government, and it
has blinded his eyes to the necessity of individual effort. It is by
individual effort alone that the negro race must work out its destiny.
This is the history of the white race, and it must be the history of all
races that move forward.

When Georgia, with the rest of the Southern States, had passed safely
through the reconstruction period, the people, as has been se