is a Negro problem. The white man as well as the black is being tried by fire. The white man is in full control of the South, politically, socially, industrially: the Negro, as ex-Governor Northen points out, is his helpless ward. What will he do with him? Speaking of the education of the Negro, and in direct reference to the conditions in Atlanta which I have already described, many men have said to me:

“Think of the large sums that the South has spent and is spending on the education of the Negro. The Negro does not begin to pay for his education in taxes.”

Neither do the swarming Slavs, Italians, and Poles in our Northern cities. They pay little in taxes and yet enormous sums are expended in their improvement. For their benefit? Of course, but chiefly for ours. It is better to educate men in school than to let them so educate themselves as to become a menace to society. The present kind of education in the South may possibly be wrong; but for the protection of society it is as necessary to train every Negro as it is every white man.

When I saw the crowds of young Negroes being made criminal—through lack of proper training—I could not help thinking how pitilessly ignorance finally revenges itself upon that society which neglects or exploits it.

[Pg 66]

[Pg 66]

CHAPTER IV

IN THE BLACK BELT: THE NEGRO FARMER

The cotton picking season was drawing to its close when I left for the black belt of Georgia. So many friends in Atlanta had said:

The

“The city Negro isn’t the real Negro. You must go out on the cotton plantations in the country; there you’ll see the genuine black African in all his primitive glory.”

It is quite true that the typical Negro is a farmer. The great mass of the race in the South dwells in the country. According to the last census, out of 8,000,000 Negroes in the Southern states 6,558,173, or 83 per cent., lived on the farms or in rural 

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