(8) Ex-Governor Aycock, of North Carolina, some time ago at a public dinner well expressed the present sentiment of the thinking population of the South upon this subject. He says that so far as his state is concerned the negro problem has been solved, and in his own words, he thus states the solution:

It is, first, as far as it is possible under the Fifteenth Amendment, to disfranchise him; after that let him alone; quit writing about him, quit talking about him, quit making him "the white man's burden"; let him "tote his own skillet"; quit coddling him; let him learn that no man, no race, ever got anything worth having that he did not earn himself, that character is the outcome of sacrifice, and worth is the result of toil; that whatever his future may be, the present has in it for him nothing that is not the product of industry, thrift, obedience to law and uprightness.

Here certainly we have a fairly definite solution of this problem.

(9) Turning northward to Maryland, we find Governor Warfield declaring:

The people demand that the state shall be governed by those citizens who, because of their intelligence, their heredity and their interest in the material welfare of the commonwealth are best fitted to properly, patriotically and wisely exercise the high duties of citizenship.

This result can only be attained by an amendment to the Constitution fixing a higher standard of qualification for the exercise of the elective franchise. I believe that an amendment to the Constitution upon the lines which I have suggested, expressed in clear, definite, simple terms, should be submitted to the people of Maryland.

The State of Maryland differs in some degree from others

of the Southern States in having the two great political parties nearly balanced, and yet even here the same principle of the absolute exclusion of the negro from all participation in governmental affairs is contemplated. At the last Republican State Convention the platform adopted contains this declaration:

The Republican party of the State of Maryland favors no social equality among the races, favors no negro domination over the white people here or elsewhere, and can be depended upon to guard against the establishment of either of these conditions here in Maryland.

This convention was presided over by the Honorable Charles J. Bonaparte, now Attorney-General in the Cabinet of President Roosevelt, and doubtless the above resolution expresses with substantial accuracy the sentiment of the best citizenship of Maryland upon the subject.

(10) Virginia, through her governor, the Honorable Claude A. Swanson, presents the same solution of the problem:

The disfranchisement of the negro [said he in his address before the American Bankers' Association at Atlantic City, September, 1907] and his consequent elimination from politics in many Southern States has been one of the greatest factors in the advancement of the South.

At last the offices, the business houses and the financial institutions of the South are in the hands of intelligent Anglo-Saxons, and with God's help and our own good right arm we will hold him where he is for his own good and our own salvation.

(11) The Honorable John Sharp Williams, of Mississippi, after a close and bitter contest, was selected in the summer of 1907 by the people of his state to represent John Sharp Williams on them in the United States Senate. He has since

the Negro. had conferred upon him the distinction of party

leadership in the House of Representatives, and may fairly be deemed to represent the conservative attitude of his section upon the negro question. Incidentally it may be noted that Mr. Williams comes from a district whose population is three-fourths negro, and that at his unanimous election in 1906 he received the total number of 2091 votes.

Under the title of "The Negro and the South," in the Metropolitan Magazine of November, 1907, Mr. Williams turns the powers of his observing and resourceful intellect upon this intricate question. Here at least we might expect to find light and leading, but as we turn page after page of his article we find the same familiar complaint as to the ignorance and prejudice which other sections of the United States display in their treatment of the subject, leading to the whimsical suggestion of a solution by the distribution of the negro evenly throughout the country, so that "a knowledge of the negro problem may be carried to white men in other parts of the Union."

After that, nothing, save the time-worn denunciation of the negro for his ignorance and poverty, and the usual glorification of the measures by which he has been deprived of the franchise, ending with optimistic expressions of confidence that in some way "we can hope, from the natural evolution of things, for a solution of this great problem, as of most others."

Gover

We might continue to add citation after citation. nors, senators, congressmen, doctors, lawyers, editors, business men, authors, all classes and qualities of Southern citizenship might be called to the stand, but the concurring testimony of nearly all would be as hereinbefore indicated. Under the stress of necessity the South has solved the negro problem to its own partial satisfaction by eliminating the black man as a political or social factor, and relegating him

to the position of an industrial inferior. Let us see how this solution works out in its concrete results.

While the foregoing statements embody the general theory upon which the Southern solution of the problem is proceeding, and fairly indicate the attitude of the practical Southern mind upon the subject, sentiment on the matter is not entirely unanimous. There is another and slowly growing school of Southern thought which with clearer insight as to the needs and welfare of the section and with a correct apprehension of the consequences involved in the action of the majority seeks to solve the problem in an entirely different way. We shall later in this work recur to this saner and more satisfactory solution.

But, in the mean time, having carefully read and thoroughly digested the foregoing extracts from representative Southern statements, and noted the substantial unanimity prevailing among those entitled to speak with authority as to the proper position of the negro in the social, political, and economic structure of society in the Southern States, we are now in a situation fairly to draw therefrom the following conclusion:

BY THE GENERAL CONSENSUS OF OPINION IN THE SECTION MENTIONED, THE NEGRO IS AN INHERENTLY INFERIOR

The

BEING, NOW AND FOREVER INCAPABLE OF CIVILISouthern ZATION OR OF PARTICIPATION IN GOVERNMENT; Opinion. EXCLUDED BY NATURAL DEFICIENCIES FROM EQUAL ASSOCIATION IN ANY CAPACITY WITH THE WHITE RACE, AND TO BE TOLERATED ONLY AS A DEPENDENT AND SUBORDINATE ELEMENT OF THE COMMUNITY IN WHICH HE IS FOUND. THE SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM LIES IN THE ADOPTION AND MAINTENANCE OF SUCH MEASURES AS MAY BE REQUISITE TO RETAIN HIM IN THIS CONDITION.

The sentiment of the South is the same to-day as it was forty-eight years ago, when Alexander H. Stephens, then

Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, said in his celebrated address at Savannah, March, 1861, speaking of the newly founded government:

Its foundations are laid, its corner stone rests, upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery-subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.

Out of the chaotic industrial conditions following the Civil War and the turmoil of racial strife, the South is slowly shaping her political institutions, her industrial organization and her social relations, to conform with the existence upon her soil of two fundamentally differing races inextricably intermingled, the one asserting its natural right to compose a superior governing class and to consign the other to the occupancy of a subject and subordinate position.

It by no means follows from this theory of permanent subordination that the Southerner hates the negro or would do him intentional harm. The contrary is rather the case. The descendants of the old master retain much of that feeling of personal affection for the dependent black man which served to mitigate the asperities of slavery and lent something of the glamour of romance to that sordid institution. The Southern white man loves the "nigger" in much the same fashion as he does his dog or his horse. He slaps him on the back, laughs with him, and would like to see him thrive, but he reserves the privilege of occasionally kicking him if he is "impudent," or shooting him offhand if guilty of serious infraction of the law.

He derides the ability of the negro as a farmer, but is ready to rent him his lands, virtually admitting that he cannot get along without him. He mocks his efforts to acquire education, and is inwardly hostile to the acceptance of aid from the North for that purpose, and in many localities