the southern protests against this practice are becoming stronger and stronger every day, no matter how petty the position given to the negro. The case in the little town of Indianola is still vivid in the memories of all, when the appointment of a negro as postmaster has called out such disorders that the Post Office Department was forced to close the postoffice of that town. It is true that the federal service has a long and complicated civil service act, which on the whole works quite well But this excepts the negroes. If a negro who has passed the best civil service examination is appointed to the petty position of a letter carrier, the most southern towns force the resignation of such a letter carrier by threats, intimidation, and even do not stop at direct violence.

These few characteristic cases are sufficient for our purpose, for they illustrate the tendency, which has grown up upon the basis of material interests, but is now extending to all possible forms of social life. The relations are not improved either by the education of the black men. For if the french author Dumas or the great Russian poet Pushkin, both of whom had a strong vein of negro blood in them, were to live in the south to-day, they would be treated no better than any other ordinary "nigger". A Virginia physician, residing in Washington, stated to me without any feeling of shame, that negroes were making life intolerable in Washington, for there he dare not knock down a negro, who does not leave a sidewalk when meeting him. Medical societies refuse to admit negro physicians into their membership, no matter what their personal achievements. One cannot help indorsing the words of Judge Powell of Mississippi, in reference to the efforts of several towns in that state to expell all their negroes from their limits: "I confess, gentlemen, I cannot understand this foolish hostility to the negro. He is here without. his consent, and here undoubtedly he must remain in large numbers. He has been eliminated by our constitution and laws from all political control. He asks not for social recognition. He only asks the poor privilege of working for his daily bread in peace, and to indulge in hope that the coming years. may bring something better to his posterity. We of white race have all the offices of power, from Governor to constable, and the negro is simply the creature of our mercy. It strikes me that for us to oppress where we should protect, to debase where we might lift up, is unmanly and unworthy of the proud race to which we belong."

The sympthetic judge did not even suspect that in the very deliverance of one part of the population into the tender.

mercy of the other part lay the real secret of this persecution and injustice.

"So much for the negro in the South, and his place, the place the southerner gives him. What of the negro in the North. There he has no place at all. Says the Northerner: We have no place for the negro. We don't like him. Take him away."

Thus a Southern lady writing in an English magazine an apology for the Southern treatment of the negro.

In these words is seen the characteristic desire of the southerner to show that the negro is worse off in the North than in the south and that the North therefore has nothing to reproach the South with. It is scarcely necessary to say that this point of view represents an extreme exaggeration. That the negro is better off in the north than he is in the south, is shown by the fact that the immigration of the negroes northward is growing, notwithstanding the unfavorable climate of the north. Thus in the North Atlantic states the total number of negroes during the decade 1890-1900 increased from 269,906 to 385,020 or by 42.6 per cent, while the increase of the negroes in the country at large was only 18.1 per cent. But it is certainly true that the conditions in the north are far from ideal for the negro, especially the intelligent, cultured negro. It is true that there are no legislative restrictions of the civil or political rights of the negro, and that the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the constitution have been of some permanent value to the negro of the north. The political rights of the negro once granted remained inviolable. The social intolerance towards the negro, has somewhat decreased, though it has not yet vanished altogether. Sporadic instances of the revival of the old feelings occur now and then. While the president, has not hesitated to put Mr. Booker Washington at his table and treat him as his equal, nevertheless, the aristocratic white servants of the rich still eat at a separate table from the negro servant. While the theatres admit the negroes, yet every now and then the demands of a southerner in regard to the ejection of a negro patron are complied with. First class hotels still persist in declining to serve negroes, but the majority of the second class hotels are getting rid of of this race pride. The majority of the Northern Universities, (though by no means all) admit negro male students on terms of absolute equality with the white students, and among the male students there occasionally may be found absolute freedom from the racial prejudice. But the condition of affairs is different in the female colleges, most of which firmly

decline to accept any students with ever so slight an admixture of negro blood. In those few colleges, where female negro students are admitted, the white students refuse to have anything at all to do with them. The terrible scandal which was caused by the discovery that one of the students. in the aristocratic Vassar was found to be a negress, (i. e., a white girl with such a small mixture of negro blood that there was no trace of it in her appearance, is still remembered by many. On the other hand many state and municipal institutions receive negro students of both sexes without any restrictions whatsoever. Here the state appears to be a progressive force in comparison with some social strata. the majority of the northern cities the common schools are the same for both races, though in some cities the local feeling has forced separation. New York City has even seen a few negro school teachers in classes of white children, though their position was not enviable and they often wandered from one school to another.

In general, it may be said, that the north is more ready to recognize the rights of the prominent exceptional negro; the capitalist, the artist, scientist, poet, writer, etc., while the south is emphatically opposed to any such favorable distinctions; "once a nigger always a nigger," and that is all there is to it; that is the southerner's absolute decree. Northern papers and magazines frequently invite the collaboration of negro writers and public men; the south does not think that the best negro is capable of saying anything that is worth listening to. The northerner is less fanatical to the presence of a drop of negro blood; and if the drop is slight, and not noticeable, is willing to disregard it.

Nevertheless, those rude incidents which with relentless cruelty remind the negro of his belonging to a lower race, and which are so frequent in the south, are sometimes met with in the north as well. Here a negro will be forced out of his honest employment, there a neighborhood will rise in revolt at a perfectly respectable negro buying a house on the exclusive

street.

In the northern cities those cases excite some attention, so as to be recorded in the daily press, while in the south the situation is so well agreed upon, that no paper would consider it worth while mentioning it, and so a search through the files of northern papers might disclose a great number of these cases. Yet one cannot tell, that these cases represent a well formed plan or attitude towards the negro. The average northerner of some education and intelligence will not permit himself to express any prejudice towards the negroes, but

when it is a question of personal relations in private life, one can find side by side with many cases of absolute tolerance, also numerous cases of a feeling of disgust, which the persons affected do not all try to analyse. On one hand it is an unconscious survival of the old, on the other it shows the effect of the moral contamination of the south, the effect of fashion, and imitation.

And this effect of fashion is remarkably well displayed by the northerners who come down to live in the south. For the average American is nothing but a faithful slave of fashion, and is dreadfully afraid of any effort to overcome and resist it. Before the average northerner has lived a week in the south, he stops calling the negro "mister", and loudly proclaims the doctrine of the inferiority of the negro race. In this the southerner finds the strongest corroboration of the justice of his own attitude on the question, disregarding the fact that the northerner does not change his opinion out of any serious considerations or study of conditions, but simply out of the desire to fall in line, which makes his future business and personal relations with local society so much easier and pleasanter. Thus because of the increasing intercourse between the north and the south, the contamination of race hatred is enabled to find its victims far beyond geographical limits within which it is historically logical. (To be continued.)

I. M. ROBBINS.

the

The Economic Interpretation of Politics. The editor of the Nation, the weekly edition of the Evening Post of New York City, is an able and clear-headed writer who is more fortunate than the editors of the papers published by capitalists for the edification of workingmen. His paper is read by capitalists and by many of the professors, writers and editors who help make "public opinion." These people need to know the truth themselves, and the editor of the Nation therefore writes with a freedom that is altogether exceptional. In summing up the issues of the present campaign he says:

"When one considers the attempt this year to make out in the official platforms sharp issues between the Republicans and the Democrats, one merely gets a new impression of the confusion of current politics, and of the way in which old shibboleths and party watchwords have lost their force. When both parties have come to the same things, neither can attack the other with anything but artificial zeal. . Hence, if there is to be excitement in the campaign, it must be extra-political. The truth is that sagacious observers are already looking more to the business than to the political situation. The former may easily dominate the latter. If conditions in the industrial world should not sensibly improve; if thousands of men remain out of work; if they see their savings disappear and the pinch of another winter coming, with no sure promise of better times, then, indeed, we might expect exciting times, which could not fail to be reflected in politics. The one critical sign which the shrewd managers of both parties are watching is the state of trade. If there is much to be said for the economic interpretation of history, there is more to be said for the economic interpretation of politics. Parties go solemnly through their motions, yet in their hearts they know that the result of the election may easily depend, not upon party creed or party leaders, but upon the reduced shipments of iron ore from the Great Lakes, the number of idle men in Pittsburg and Youngstown, St. Louis and Chicago and New York, the size of the wheat and corn and cotton crops, and the prices they bring. Let him who wants real excitement eschew platforms and campaign speeches, and study grain reports and the iron output and the earnings of railways. They are to be this year bigger than all the politicians."