that its mother might acquire—of course at four or five times its value—what do you think?—a huge green plush album!

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“Just in these days,” Miss Graham continued, “we have had some terrible revelations of child-labour, at a certain place on the Gulf Coast, where more than 200 children, from nine years old upwards, are kept ‘shucking’ oysters for twelve hours a day, under the most horrible conditions, physical and moral. And the Law Committee of our S.P.C.C. reports that there is no remedy, because the factory law at present in force in Louisiana applies only to ‘cities or towns having a population of 10,000 or more;’ whereas this place is a little private inferno, owned by a single company and occupied solely by its serfs. But we are fighting a good fight for better laws and better conditions.”

My greatly condensed report of her conversation may lead the reader to mistake Miss Graham for a one-idea’d humanitarian. There could not 93be a greater error. She is an eminently practical, energetic, broad-minded young lady, with a keen sense of humour and an interest in many things outside the work to which she has devoted herself. I am sure the little children of New Orleans have in her not only a sincere but a very shrewd and efficient friend.

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Miss Graham reported the relations between the white and coloured populations in New Orleans rather exceptionally good. The reason, I think, is not far to seek—namely, that the whites outnumber the blacks by about three to one. The acuteness of the problem in any given locality is apt to depend largely on the numerical proportions of the races.[26]

On the New Orleans street-cars the two races are kept apart, but the discrimination is certainly made with the utmost urbanity. The rear-seats of each car are marked “For Coloured Patrons Only.”

26. “I lay it down as a fact which cannot successfully be challenged, that the relations between the white and negro races in every State in the Union have been, and are now, controlled by considerations ultimately governed by the factor of the relative numbers of the two.’—A. H. Stone: “The American Race Problem,” p. 57.

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XI CRIME-SLAVERY AND DEBT-SERFDOM[27]

Montgomery, the legislative capital of Alabama, has the air of a pleasant and prosperous country town, with spacious streets, 

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