by 74,303 or seven percent; that of Alabama diminished by 7,630 or eight percent; that of Louisiana diminished by 13,617, or 1.8 percent. Georgia was the only state in the Black Belt which gained in population between 1910 and 1920, and her increase did not offset the losses of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. The present tendency is for the Negroes of the Black Belt to move into other Southern states. For illustration, the Negro population of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland increased during the 1910-20 decade to an extent which nearly equalled the losses in the other states.

There is, therefore, no present indication that the Negro population in the Black Belt will preponderate over the white population or gain in relative strength.

The question which remains as necessary to evaluate Dr. Gregory's prophecy of a future free colored state, is: Will Mexican immigrants come in to fill the places of the emigrated blacks, and, if they do, will they complicate the color problem by intermarrying with the blacks?

The trend of agriculture in the United States is away from culture dependent upon human muscle or horse power, and toward culture dependent upon mechanical power and machinery. Less and less labor is necessary per acre of product, and more and more capital. Intensive farming is taking the place of extensive farming. This change is being hastened in the South by the recent Negro migration.

As more capital and machinery come to be employed in agriculture, the number of native whites who will take up agriculture as a career will increase, and the demand for labor of the Mexican type will be diminished.

It does not seem at all likely, therefore, that the immigration of Mexicans into the South will ever be on a large scale. Before the lapse of another century the United States will be overpopulated, like the countries of Europe, and will be exporting instead of importing labor.

Should Mexicans come to the South in any considerable number, I do not think that they would intermarry with the Negroes to the extent that Dr. Gregory supposes. In the Central or South American states the South Europeans have intermarried with the Indians, but not with the Negroes. The mestizo, half Spanish and half Indian, has somewhat intermarried with the Negro, but in the majority of instances the hybrid offspring of the mestizo and Negro is the result

of illicit relations. The term Negro, especially African Negro, is odious alike to the Spaniard and mestizo. The Mexican "greasers," who have come into Oklahoma and Texas, show as little tendency to mix with the Negro as the native Caucasians. There does not, therefore, seem to be a strong probability of the free intermarrying of the Negroes and Mexicans within the next century.

To sum up, the facts in the case do not point decisively to a future free colored state in the Black Belt as the outcome of the race problem in the South, if the problem be left to the "process of drift."

CHAPTER 62

CIVIL EQUALITY AS A SOLUTION

Practical Difficulties of Enforcing Civil Equality in a Nation of Racial Diversity -Failure to Enforce Civil Equality in the South During the Reconstruction Period-Result of Effort to Eliminate Color Discrimination in the Franchise -Theory of John Stuart Mill That Only One Race Can Govern in One Territory-Theory of Charles Francis Adams That the Principle of Equality Applied to the Negro and Caucasian Works Only Chaos

N'

TEARLY all of the Negroes in the United States, and a large element of the whites, believe that the solution of the Negro problem is a very simple one, namely, to give the Negro the same civil rights as the white man. In other words, the solution is to enforce the decrees of our Constitution which prohibit any civil discriminations on account of race or color. This solution was the one advocated by William Lloyd Garrison, and his anti-slavery followers prior to the Civil War, and, since the adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to our Constitution, it has been earnestly desired by a majority of the white people of the United States, including many men of the highest patriotism and finest idealism.

The phrase in our Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, met with the enthusiastic and universal approbation of the American people. This declaration, however, was not understood as meaning anything more than that all of the white men composing the population had inalienable right to equal opportunity in this new country. The author of the Declaration represented a state where Negro slavery was a recognized institution, and, though he deplored the existence of the institution, it is very evident he had no idea that the Negroes would ever be citizens of our republic. Down to the Civil War, even in states which had abolished slavery, the Negro was not allowed civil rights, except in Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island. The organic law of Virginia, as of other slaveholding states, contained the expression: "All men are born free and equal."

At the time of the adoption of our Constitution it was so generally understood that citizenship in this country was for Caucasians

only that the question was not even discussed, and all of the original declarations of equality in our organic laws must be interpreted as having reference to the white population only.

Soon after the adoption of our Constitution, however, the declaration of equality came to be interpreted literally, and to be applied to the Negroes. The champions of the abolition of slavery used the declaration of equality as an argument in favor of their cause, and began to point out the inconsistency of such a declaration with the existence of slavery. But, while the equality argument was used to combat slavery, it was not urged in favor of giving the Negro the right to vote and hold office. Laws disqualifying Negroes from voting or holding office continued in existence in Northern states which had long before abolished slavery, and in Western states where slavery had never existed. The idea that the exericse of the franchise was one of the rights necessarily belonging to a people "born free and equal" was a very gradual development, and never became widespread until the events of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

The Northern people believed that the exercise of the franchise by the Negroes was the only means by which the latter could protect themselves against oppressive laws made by their former masters, and the idea prevailed generally throughout the North that there should be in our republic neither civil nor social discriminations on account of race or color.

It may be that sectional hatred, and the desire to humiliate and punish the South, played a part in the enactment of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to our Constitution, but there is no reason to doubt that most of the Northern people favoring these amendments were actuated primarily by humanitarian considerations and high idealism, and that they could see no reason why the new provisions of our Constitution, so evidently just from a theoretical point of view, might not be fully realized.

But, alas, for the consequences! During the Reconstruction Period the effort to enforce civil and social equality in the South by the bayonet was a signal failure, and, since the withdrawal of the bayonet, neither civil nor social equality has existed in any Southern state.

Before the experiment of civil equality was tried in the South, practically all men who knew human nature, and had had an opportunity to observe the effect of racial contacts, foresaw the impossibility of two races as unlike as the Negro and the Caucasian living together on terms of equality. De Tocqueville in 1830 said he could not imagine.

"that the black and white races will ever live in any country upon an equal footing." 1

William H. Seward, speaking at Detroit, Michigan, September 4, 1860, made this statement: "The great fact is now fully realized that the African race here is a foreign and feeble element, like the Indians, incapable of assimilation . . . and that it is a pitiful exotic, unwisely and unnecessarily transplanted into our fields, and which it is unprofitable to cultivate at the cost of the desolation of the native vineyard." 2

Lincoln, in his debate with Douglas at Quincy, October 15, 1858, spoke as follows: "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, would probably forbid them living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position." 3

In the debate at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858, he said: "I will say that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about, in any way, the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."

Not only does observation of racial contact in the United States lead to the conviction that equality cannot exist between the Negroes and whites, but an acquaintance with history leads to the same conviction. Thus far no two races differing in any marked degree have ever lived together harmoniously in the same geographical area.

The Roman Empire included within its boundaries many contrasting ethnic groups, but all of these were separated from each other geographically, and the same is true of the modern British Empire. Even when ethnic groups differing only slightly in physical appearance have

Democracy in America, Vol. 2, p. 238.

'Quoted by Munford, Virginia's Attitude Toward Slavery and Secession, p. 167. Quoted ibid., p. 169.

'Quoted ibid., p. 168.