errands of business. Why, sir, two miles from this town, the Negroes are afraid to come here to trade at night. The country merchants are feeling the force of it very sorely, and if this foolishness isn’t stopped their losses in fall trade will be very heavy. [Pg 82] Even some of the ladies of our community are complaining of this rashness. That it is demoralising the labour in the home department. So in conclusion, in behalf of my community and other country communities, I feel it my duty to raise a warning voice against all such new foolish ku-kluxism. T. J. Lowe. T. J. Lowe. Mableton, Ga. While I was in Georgia a case came up which threw a flood of light upon the inner complexities of this problem. In the county of Habersham in North Georgia the population is largely of the type known as “poor white”—the famous mountain folk who were never slave-owners and many of whom fought in the Union army during the Civil War. Habersham is one of the “white counties” which is growing whiter. It has about 2,000 Negroes and 12,000 whites—many of the latter having come in from the North to grow peaches and raise sheep. One of the Negroes of Habersham County was Frank Grant, described by a white neighbour as “a Negro of good character, a property owner, setting an example of thrift and honesty that ought to have made his example a benefit to any community.” Grant had saved money from his labour and bought a home. He was such a good worker that people were willing sometimes to pay him twice the wages of the average labourer, white or black. On the night of December 16, 1906, the Negro’s house was fired into by a party of white men who then went to the house of his tenant, Henry Scism, also a Negro, and shot promiscuously around Scism’s house, and warned him to leave the country in one week, threatening him with severe penalties if he did not go. As a result Grant had to sell out his little home, won after such hard work, and he and his tenant Scism with their families both fled the county. “In Grant,” said his white neighbour, “the county lost a capable labourer—in its present situation, a most valuable asset—and a good citizen.” Here, then, we have race hatred versus economic necessity. The important citizens and employers of Habersham County[Pg 83] came to Atlanta and presented a petition to Governor Terrell, January 18, 1907, as follows:
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