the percentage of illegitimacy of the total number of coloured births was 17.6 per cent., and for the whites 2.32 per cent. In 1894, 26.46 per cent. for the blacks, and for the whites 2.56 per cent.

The negro women are the most discouraging part of the whole negro problem. There are some who possess intelligence, nobility of character, but they are the exceptions. The change which came with the Civil War has been for the worse, and there are undoubtedly signs of decadence of the women of the negro race.

Let us turn to economic conditions and tendencies. The negro's greatest sphere of usefulness is as an agricultural labourer. But he rushes off to the overcrowded cities, and tries to get into the overcrowded professions. The negro farm labourer, when good, is very good. He is especially fit to labour in the cotton and corn fields, for he can stand the fierce heat of the sun. His weak points are lack of perseverance and unreliability. Many a Southern farmer has lost heavily through the desertion of his negro labourers at a critical

moment.

Even when he owns his land, as many do now, the negro cannot be compared with the peasant owners of other countries, as France, for instance. The negro's wants are limited. He has little ambition. He cultivates just so much, and no more. If he has a farm of 20 acres, and he can eke out a livelihood from three acres, he allows seventeen acres to remain fallow. Little benefit accrues to the community from negro ownership of land.

The fact seems to be that the South will lag behind the world industrially in just so far as she depends entirely on negro labour. Sad to relate, the huge sum of $800,000,000 spent on the education of the negro since the Civil War, has done little to fit him for his spheres of servant and peasant. In the South there are technical schools exclusively for negroes. They are not servant-training schools. The negroes there are taught to be masters. The majority

go out into the world determined to break loose from the white

man.

On many of the plantations of Louisiana white labourers from Southern Europe are employed instead of negroes. Perhaps this is the beginning of a gradual replacement. What earthly chance will the negro have if he lets the labour for which he is suited slip from his hands? The educationalists teach him that, given the same knowledge and training, he can compete with the white man in any walk of life. This is a false, a pernicious doctrine, and it is absolutely unjust to teach it to the black man: The greater part of the education of the negro in America to-day is, in my opinion, doing far more harm than good. There will be a whirlwind some day!

Since the war the presence of the negro has been a clog, in one sense, to the industrial advancement of the South. Labour has been more or less despised by the white man. Every inducement has been offered the negro to carry on the rough work of the country. Partially he has refused. The white man has been forced to take

off his coat and go to work. He is beginning to learn the important lesson that has made his brother of the North such a marvellous success--the dignity of labour. Owing to the presence of the negro it has taken the white man at the South nearly one hundred years to learn how to work.

In the development of one great industry of the South the negro has taken no part. In the cotton mills no negroes are employed in any of the skilled work. The negro cannot be relied on year in and year out to work in these mills, and as reliability is a necessity, skilled white labour is employed.

Many of the Miners' Unions admit negroes on full terms, but the blacks prefer not to become miners. The fact of the matter is that the negro dreads continuous and confining toil, and prefers living near the poverty line, rather than mounting to a higher position by hard work.

The question of race amalgamation is one that has often been discussed in America. By the people of the South, race amalgamation is viewed with horror, and if there is one thing on earth they are determined on, it is that this amalgamation shall never come about. Ask the leading negro men their views on the subject, and you will find that those who are candid enough to tell you, have a passionate faith in amalgamation.

Substantially all of the States have laws against the intermarriage of blacks and whites, and the exceptions are in those States where either no negroes live or where they are so few as not to be regarded by the law-makers. Even intensely pro-negro legislation, supported by military power in the Southern States during the reconstruction period, did not dare to legalize intermarriages of the blacks with the whites. The words of Abraham Lincoln are very true: "There is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid them living together on terms of social and political equality."

This brief account of the negro in America makes a rather dismal story. We all know the phrase "the white man's burden, but I believe the people of the South have had, and still have, the greatest part of the burden. The negro question is one that weighs heavily on the keenest brains and the kindest hearts of the South. it is recognized that their first duty is toward their own race, who, in To-day some sections, are vastly outnumbered by the negroes, the thousands of poor whites who never received a cent in money, or any sympathy from the flood which burst over the South from the North after the Civil War. These unfortunate whites are well worth training, well worth helping.

"white

For the sake of the negro himself, the poor whites, or trash," as the negroes derisively call them, should be educated and elevated. It is found that most bitterness, most race hatred exists in those districts in which the white race is most illiterate. In communities where the white race is highly educated, the black race is treated with a helpful kindness that astonishes the visitor.

Facing back over the history of the negro in America is not cheering. Looking forward is trying to the stoutest-hearted optimism. Africa still mocks America from her jungles. In the words of William Garratt Brown, "Still," she jeers, 66 with the dense darkness

of my ignorance I confound your enlightenment. Still with my sloth I weigh down the arms of your industry. Still, with my supineness I hang upon the wings of your aspiration. And in the very heart of your imperial young Republic I have planted, sure and deep, the misery of this ancient curse I bear."

We have come to the end of the subject. Perhaps a few remarks on the Native problem in South Africa will make a fit ending to this paper. I believe South Africa can learn a great deal from the bitter experience America, especially the Southern States, has had in the past.

The first lesson to learn is the danger of too hasty legislation. How much better it would have been after the Civil War had the wild Radicals been kept under, and far-seeing statesmen been at the helm of State. No such hasty legislation would have been passed, and the condition of the negro would have been better to-day. In such momentous questions the greatest care and the greatest study are essential.

The next lesson to learn from the American experience is this :Beware of the enthusiastic, irrational sentimentalist. He sets out in the world with his sails all a-flying, expecting to do good at every turn, but he generally succeeds in inflicting irreparable damage. Some one has said that the irrational sentimentalist does as much harm in the world as the rational blackguard. Most of the Radicals were sentimentalists, ignorant as babes of the issues involved; some of them were unscrupulous, scheming politicians, who cared not what became of either race in the South, so long as their ends were accomplished.

The next lesson is the education of the negro. I have said that education has done little for the negroes as a race. The wrong kind of education has been given the negro, exactly the same as a white child receives.

No doubt the reason for this is the wave of liberalism which swept over the world, so that men looked at things as they desired them to be, not as they actually were. The declaration "All men are created equal" becomes on scientific enquiry an absurdity. All men of the same race even are not equal. Most of us would like to equal Shakspeare in poetry, or Newton in Natural Science, but we know how woefully unequal we are to these great men.

The fatal

What is true of men is also true of races. mistake made in America in dealing with the negro race was that it was supposed that the black man was the white man's equal in every respect, and only required the same environment and the same opportunity to equal the achievements of the Caucasian race. The fact is that race traits and tendencies have been neglected too much in the study of nations, and that environment has received more than its due. There is abundant evidence that we find in race and

heredity the determining factors in the upward or downward course of mankind.

One of the most important lessons of all can be learned from the history of lynching in the Southern States. The most awful side of lynching is not that some miserable creature is put out of the world, but the effect of the practice on the mobs. They learn such lessons of lawlessness that all respect for law is liable to disappear. One of the reasons for lynching has been "the law's delay." Instead of the negro ruffian being tried and executed expeditiously, there are delays and formalities, and in many cases a sentence in no wise commensurate with the crime. No one wishes to see the practice of lynching introduced into South Africa. One of the surest ways to prevent it is to have such a stringent law against the offence for which negroes in the South are lynched, that even an attempt of the crime meets immediate death at the hands of the law. If such laws are passed and carried out, the people will realize that their women folk are safe, and will not resort to lynching. On the other hand, if the crime is dealt with lightly, as it has been on several occasions in this country, as sure as to-morrow's sun rises the people of this country will some day resort to the same awful method that prevails in many districts of the South to-day.

Every woman in South Africa should learn the use of fire-arms, especially of revolvers. Not only have many women in the South owed their safety to skill in the use of a revolver, but in the West as well women have often protected themselves from the Indians by being crack shots.

Another important lesson for South Africa is the necessity of solidarity in dealing with the negro question. You have heard of the "Solid South" in connection with politics. The explanation of this phalanx, which remained unbroken so long, was the practical unanimity of opinion on this vital question amongst the white men in the Southern States. It will be fatal for Cape Colony to have one native policy, and the Transvaal to have one diametrically opposite. There should be, there must be, a uniform native policy for the whole of South Africa. The negro question in the Southern States has been instrumental in knitting the white people close together. In South Africa perhaps a common problem will do much to bring together the divergent members of the white race.

There are unmistakable signs that the North has far different views on the negro question than formerly. It is felt now that the problem of the negro is a national problem. And so in South Africa, the negro question is one that vitally concerns the whole country.

I have stated that millions of dollars were lavished on the negroes by the philanthropists from the North. Little of their wealth was expended in helping the poor of their own race. The "white trash" had to stagger along without much outside help. In this country force of circumstances will produce a large "poor white" class. Let your hand and your heart first go out to the distressed of your own race before giving money and energy to the education of the native.

THE NEGRO IN AMERICA.

And in the education of the negro much can be learned from In far too many cases the bitter experience of the South. Most absurd notions were held on the subject of educating the black man.

Greek, Latin, and Hebrew were taught the unfortunate pupils. The consequence is that on the whole education of the negro in the South has proved a dismal failure.

That an increasing number of natives of South Africa will be It is fair not only to the white man but educated I have no doubt. to the negro as well, that the proper kind of education be given him. It is a gross injustice, for instance, to train the native to be a skilled artisan, and then drive him from end to end of South Africa in a vain search for work; to make a lawyer out of him and prevent him from practising. Instruction should be given him through the medium of his own language, and not by means of the classics of Greece, Rome, or England.

There There is one thing that the negro in America, in the majority of cases, is sure of getting, and that is justice before the law. In South Africa it should are cases, no doubt, of gross injustice, but the courts as a rule see that the negro gets equitable treatment.. Nothing is appreciated more by the negro mind than

be the same.

plain justice.

It is their I have spoken of the horror with which the Southern whites Angloview the subject of amalgamation with the negro race. bête noir. A negro leader in America said recently that the " Saxon is the most arrogant and rapacious, the most exclusive and Quite so, and when it loses these intolerant race in history. Race purity is becoming a passion in qualities it will cease to exist. In no part of the limitless lands of the Anglo-Saxon are the South. the ideals of our race cherished more than in the South. I hope the same passion will grow in this country, and that any approach to amalgamation will be viewed with dismay.

As I have already The last lesson is the most important of all. intimated, the wholesale enfranchisement of the freedmen has proved That for one of the most colossal blunders of political history. It has been a real cause of the decline of the negro race in the South. which the white man struggled for years was freely given to the blacks. What marvel then that it stultified their development and checked real progress and effort. Politically, the negro was made the white man's equal. In consequence he concluded there was no difference whatsoever between himself and his former master. The race has never climbed the steep and rugged heights along which every people that has become great must toil, but has been lifted on a flowery bed of ease to the summit. Let not the same political blunder be made in South Africa !

In conclusion, I beg to state my indebtedness to Hoffman's "Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro" (The Macmillan Co., New York) in the preparation of this paper. This work should be in the library of every one in South Africa interested in the Negro Problem.