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Title: The Negro and the nation

Author: Hubert H. Harrison

Release Date: January 19, 2023 [eBook #69835]

Language: English

Produced by: Neal Caren. This file was derived from images generously
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                              THE NEGRO
                                 AND
                              THE NATION
                                   
                                  BY
                          HUBERT H. HARRISON
                                   
                    Cosmo-Advocate Publishing Co.
                         2305 Seventh Avenue
                               New York




                               PREFACE

This little book is made up of articles contributed several years ago
to radical newspapers and magazines like The Call, The Truth-Seeker,
Zukunft, and The International Socialist Review. They are re-published
in this form, partly to preserve a portion of the author's early work,
but mainly because they help to throw into strong relief the present
situation of the Negro in present day America, and to show how that
situation re-acts upon the mind of the Negro. That is the great need
of the Negro at this time.

Some time in the near future I hope to write a little book on the New
Negro which will set forth the aims and ideals of the new Manhood
Movement among American Negroes rich has grown out of the
international crusade "for democracy—for the right of those who submit
to authority to have A VOICE in their own government"— as President
Wilson so sincerely puts it.

Because I wish this little book to have as large a circulation as
possible among Negroes and white people, I have preferred publication
at a popular price to the doubtful advantage of having a prominent
publisher's name at the foot of the title-page. The present edition
consists of five thousand copies. When it is sold off a second edition
will be issued.

HUBERT H. HARRISON New York, August, 1917.




                        THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN

NOTE: This article and the next were contributed to the International
Socialist Review in 1912 while the author was a member of the
Socialist Party. He has since left it (but has joined no other party)
partly because, holding as he does by the American doctrine of "Race
First," he wished to put himself in a position to wont among his
people along lines of his own choosing.


Providence, according to Mr. Kipling, has been pleased to place upon
the white man's shoulders the tremendous burden of regulating the
affairs of men of all other colors, who, for the purpose of his
argument, are backward and undeveloped—"half devil and half child."
When one considers that of the sixteen hundred million people living
upon this earth, more than twelve hundred million are colored, this
seems a truly staggering burden.

But it does not seem to have occurred to the proponents of this
pleasant doctrine that the shoe may be upon the other foot so far as
the other twelve hundred million are concerned. It is easy to maintain
an =ex parte= argument, and as long as we do not ask the other side to
state their case our own arguments will appear not only convincing but
conclusive. But in the court of common sense this method is not
generally allowed, and a case is not considered closed until =both=
parties have been heard from.

I have no doubt but that the colored peoples of the world will have a
word or two to say in their own defense. In this article I propose to
put the case of the black man in America, not by any elaborate
arguments, but by the presentation of certain facts which will
probably speak for themselves.

I am not speaking here of the evidences of Negro advancement, nor even
making a plea for justice. I wish merely to draw attention to certain
pitiful facts. This is all that is necessary—at present. For I believe
that those facts will furnish such a damning indictment of the Negro's
American over-lord as must open the eyes of the world. The sum total
of these facts and of what they suggest constitute a portion of the
black man's burden in America. Not all of it, to be sure, but quite
enough to make one understand what the Negro problem is. For the sake
of clarity I shall arrange them in four groups: political, economic,
educational and social.


I—Political.

In a republic all the adult male natives are citizens. If in a given
community some are citizens and others subjects, then your community
is not a republic. It may call itself so. But that is another matter.
Now, the essence of citizenship is the exercise of political rights;
the right to a voice in government, to say what shall be done with
your taxes, and the right to express your own needs. If you are denied
these rights you are not a citizen. Well, in sixteen southern states
there are over eight million Negroes in this anomalous position. Of
course, many good people contend that they may be unfit to exercise
the right of suffrage. If that is so, then who is fit to exercise it
for them? This argument covers a fundamental fallacy in our prevailing
conception of the function of the ballot. We think that it is a
privilege to be conferred for "fitness." But it isn't. It is an
instrument by which the people of a community express their will,
their wants and their needs. And all those are entitled to use it who
have wants, needs and desires that are worth consideration by society.
If they are not worth considering, then be brutally frank about it;
say so, and establish a protectorate over them. But have done with the
silly cant of "fitness." People vote to express their wants. Of
course, they will make mistakes. They are not gods. But they have a
right to make their own mistakes—the Negroes. All other Americans
have. That is why they had Ruef in San Francisco, and still have
Murphy in New York.

But the American republic says, in effect, that eight million
Americans shall be political serfs. Now, this might be effected with
decency by putting it into the national constitution. But it isn't
there. The national constitution has two provisions expressly
penalizing this very thing. Yet the government—the President,
Congress, the Supreme Court—wink at it. This is not what we call
political decency. But, just the same, it is done. How is it done? By
fraud and force. Tillman of South Carolina has told in the United
States Senate how the ballot was taken from Negroes by shooting
them—that is, by murder. But murder is not necessary now. In certain
southern states in order to vote a man must have had a grandfather who
voted before Negroes were freed. In others, he must be able to
interpret and understand any clause in the Constitution, and a white
registration official decides whether he does understand. And the
colored men of states like Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi and Louisiana who meet such tests as those states provide
are disfranchised by the "white primary" system. According to this
system only those who vote at the primaries can vote at the general
elections. But the South Carolina law provides that: "At this election
only white voters … and such Negroes as voted the Democratic ticket in
1876 and have voted the Democratic ticket continuously since … may
vote." Of course, they know that none of them voted that ticket in
1876 or have done so continuously since. In Georgia the law says that:
"All white electors who have duly registered … irrespective of past
political affiliations are hereby declared qualified and are invited
to participate in said primary election."

Under the new suffrage law of Mr. Booker T. Washington's state of
Alabama. Montgomery county, which has 53,000 Negroes, disfranchises
all but one hundred of them. In 1908 the Democrats of West Virginia
declared in their platform that the United States Constitution should
be so amended so as to disfranchise all the Negroes of the country. In
December, 1910, the lower house of the Texas legislature, by a vote of
51 to 34, instructed its federal Senators and Congressmen to work for
the repeal of the two amendments to the national constitution which
confer the right of suffrage upon Negroes. But the funniest proposal
in that direction came from Georgia, where J. J. Slade proposed an
amendment to the state constitution to the effect that colored men
should be allowed to vote only if two =chaste= white women would swear
that they would trust them in the dark. But, however it has been
effected, whether by force or fraud, by methods wise or otherwise, the
great bulk of the Negroes of America are political pariahs to-day.
When it is remembered that they once had the right of suffrage, that
it was given them, not upon any principle of abstract right, but as a
means of protection from the organized ill-will of their white
neighbors, that that ill-will is now more effectively organized and in
possession of all the powers of the state,—it can be seen at a glance
that this spells subjection certain and complete.


II—Economic

Political rights are the only sure protection and guarantee of
economic rights. Every fool knows this. And yet, here in America
to-day we have people who tell Negroes that they ought not to agitate
for the ballot so long as they still have a chance to get work in the
south. And Negro leaders, hired by white capitalists who want cheap
labor-power, still continue to mislead both their own and other
people. The following facts will demonstrate the economic insecurity
of the Negro in the South.

Up to a few years ago systematic peonage was wide-spread in the South.
Now, peonage is slavery unsanctioned by law. In its essence it is more
degrading than mere chattel slavery. Any one who doubts this may look
to modern Mexico for proofs. This peonage in the South had reduced
many black men to slavery. And it isn't stamped out yet. It was on
January 3, 1911, that the Supreme Court, in the case of Alonzo Bailey,
declared unconstitutional the Alabama peonage law, which had been
upheld by the state Supreme Bench. About the same time W. S. Harlan, a
nephew of the late Justice Harlan of the United States Supreme Court,
and manager of a great lumber and turpentine trust, doing business in
Florida and Alabama, was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment
and fined $5,000 for peonage. He has since been pardoned and had his
fine remitted by President Taft.

One of the forms of this second slavery is the proprietary system,
according to which the Negro laborer or tenant farmer must get his
supply at the proprietor's store—and he gets it on credit. The
accounts are cooked so that the Negro is always in debt to the modern
slave-holder. Some of them spend a life-time working out an original
debt of five or ten dollars.

But peonage isn't all. The professional southerner is always declaring
that whatever else the south may not do for the Negro it supplies him
with work. It does—when he works for some one else. When he works for
himself it is very often different. For instance, there was the
Georgia Railroad strike of May, 1909. The Negro firemen were getting
from fifty cents to a dollar a day less than the white firemen, they
had to do menial work, and could not be promoted to be engineers. They
could be promoted, however, to the best runs by the rule of seniority.
But the white firemen, who had fixed the economic status of the black
firemen, objected to even this. They went on strike and published a
ukase to the people of the state in which they said: "The white people
of this state refuse to accept social equality."

On the eighth of March, 1911, the firemen of the Cincinnati, New
Orleans & Texas Pacific Railroad did the same thing. In the attacks
made on the trains by them and their sympathizers many Negro firemen
were killed. Occurrences of this sort are increasing in frequency and
they have a certain tragic significance. It means that the Negro,
stripped of the ballot's protection, holds the right to earn his bread
at the mere sufferance of the whites. It means that no black man shall
hold a job that any white man wants. And that, not in the South alone.
There is the case of the Pavers' Union of New York City. The colored
pavers, during the panic of 1907, got behind in their dues. The usual
period granted expired on Friday. On Monday they sent in their dues in
full to the national organization. The treasurer refused to receive
the dues and at once got out an injunction against them. This
injunction estopped them from appealing to the National Executive
Committee or to the national convention. They are still fighting the
case.

In January 1911 the several walking delegates of the Painters'
Plumbers', Masons,' Carpenters', Steam Fitters', Plasterers' and
Tinsmiths' Unions compelled the Thompson & Starrett Construction Co.,
the second largest firm of contractors in New York, to get rid of the
colored cold painters who were engaged on the annex to Stearns'
department store. They would not admit them to membership in the
union; they merely declared that colored men would not be allowed to
do this work. And these are the same men who denounce Negro
strike-breakers. They want them out of the unions and also want them
to fight for the unions. Presumably they would have them eating
air-balls in the meanwhile.

In February 1911 the New York Cab Company was dropping its Negro cab
drivers, because, it said, its patrons demanded it. In November 1911
the white chauffeurs of New York were trying to terrorize the colored
chauffeurs by a system of sabotage in the garage, because they, too,
believed that these jobs were white men's jobs.

It is but a short step from the denial of the right to work to the
denial of the right to own. In fact, the two are often linked
together, as in the next ease. In the latter part of 1910, land
speculators in Hominy Okla., sold some land for cotton farms to
Negroes. The Negroes paid for this land, took possession, and were
getting along splendidly when—"the local whites protested."
"Night-riders (i. e., Ku Klux) around Hominy, several days before,
served notice that all Negroes must leave the town at once, and to
emphasize the warning they exploded dynamite in the neighborhood of
Negro houses." So the Negroes fled, fearing for their lives. At
Baxterville, Miss., the same thing happened in March 1912. In November
1910, a colored man named Matthew Anderson in Kansas City was having a
fine $5,000 house built. But the jealousy of the white neighbors
prevented its completion. It was blown up by dynamite when it had been
almost finished. In Warrenton, Ga., notice was sent to three colored
men and one widow, who had prospered greatly in business, to the
effect that they must leave immediately because the white people of
Warrenton "were not a-goin' to stand for rich niggers." One of them
has been forced to sell out his business at a loss. Another never
answers a knock and never leaves his house by the front door. All
through these things Mr. Washington told his race that if it would
work hard, get property and be useful to a community it would not need
to strive for a share in the government!


III—Educational.

EDUCATION is the name which we give to that process of equipment and
training which, in our day, society gives the individual to prepare
him for fighting the battle of life. We do not confer it as a
privilege, but it is given on behalf of society for society's own
protection from the perils of ignorance and incompetence. It is a
privilege to which ever member of society is entitled. For without
some equipment of this sort the individual is but half a man,
handicapped in the endeavor to make a living. Here in America, we
subscribe to the dangerous doctrine that twelve million of the people
should receive the minimum of education. And in order to reconcile
ourselves to this doctrine, we deck it in the garments of wisdom.
Because of the serf idea in American life, we say that the Negro shall
have a serf's equipment and no more. It is the same idea that the
aristocracy of Europe evolved when the workers demanded that their
children should be trained better than they themselves had been.
"Why", said the masters, "if we give your children schooling they will
be educated out of their station in life. What should the son of a
carpenter need to know of Euclid or Virgil? He should learn his
father's vocation that he may be well equipped to serve in that
station of life into which it has pleased God to call him. We need
more plowmen than priests, more servants than savants."

In our own land, when Negroes demand education, we say, "Why, surely,
give them industrial education. Your race has a great opportunity—to
make itself useful. It needs trained craftsmen and workers and,
perhaps, a few parsons. Teach your sons and daughters to work. That is
enough." And we dexterously select leaders for them who will
administer the soothing syrup of this old idea with deftness and
dispatch. The General Education Board which disburses millions of
dollars annually in the South for education has, so far, given to
forty-one Negro schools the sum of $464,015. Only in two instances has
any money been given to a real college. Practically all of it went to
the labor-caste schools. Why? Because the dark degradation of the
Negro must be lightened by no ray of learning. That would never do. We
need them as "hewers of wood and drawers of water." And in the
meanwhile, this is what the richest country on earth offers to
ruthlessly exploited people as a training for life:

Before the Twelfth Annual Conference for Education in the South (1910)
Mr. Charles L. Coon, superintendent of schools in North Carolina, read
a paper on Negro Education in the South. His investigation extended
over eleven states: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia,
Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and
Tennessee. In these states the Negroes make up 40.1 per cent of the
population, but receive only 14.8 per cent of the school fund. He
showed that even if the school fund as disbursed were apportioned to
each race according to taxes paid the colored people of Virginia
should receive $507,305 instead of the $482,228 which they now
receive; in North Carolina they should get $429,127 instead of
$402,658, and in Georgia $647,852 instead of $506,170. So that these
three states expend for Negro education $93,278 less than what the
Negroes themselves pay for—and that sum is contributed by Negroes to
the white children of the state!

But, as a matter of fact, in no modern country is education made to
depend upon the tax-paying power of the parents. If that were so, the
children of 40,000,000 American proletarians would live and die
without schooling. So that the case is really much worse than it
seems.

South Carolina spent in 1910 $10.34 for the education of each white
child and $1.70 for the =education= of each colored child. In Lawrence
county the state gave to each colored child 97 cents worth of
education that year; in Lexington county, 90 cents; in Bamberg, 89
cents; in Saluda, 68 cents, and in Calhoun, 58 cents worth. The
smallest sum spent on a white child for education that year was $4.03.
In Georgia it was quite as bad. One county of this state owned 19 of
the 27 school houses for Negroes. The valuation of the entire 19 was
$2,500; that is, $131.58 for each school house for Negroes! =The
annual cost of the education of a Negro child in six counties of this
civilized state was 39 cents.= Meanwhile the whites of Baltimore were
protesting against the building of a new Negro school! In Louisiana
the report of the Department of Education shows that the average
monthly salary of white male teachers is $75.29, while that of colored
male teachers is $34.25. The average monthly salary of white female
teachers is $50.80 and that of the colored female teachers is $28.67.
The average length of the annual school term for white children is
eight months and a quarter; for colored children, four months and a
half.

In Wilcox County, Alabama, where there are 2,000 white children and
10,758 colored children, $32,660.48 is devoted to education. Of this
amount the 10,758 colored children receive one-fourth—$6,532.09, or
sixty cents each per annum—while the 2,000 white children receive the
remaining four-fifths—$26,128.13, or about $13 each per annum.
Mr. Booker Washington, who lives in this state sends his own children
to the best colleges and to Europe while advising the rest of his
people to "make your condition known to the white people of the
state." Now, if education—of any sort—is a training for life, is it
not evident here that black children are being robbed of their chance
in life? Why? Is it to be supposed that their fathers are so stupid as
to allow this if they could vote their own needs? Yet Mr. Washington
decries the agitation for the ballot as unwise and never loses an
opportunity of sneering at these who see something of value in it. But
to continue The number of white children of school age in Alabama is
364,266; the number of colored children of school age is 311,552. But
the teachers of the white children receive in salaries $2,404,062.54,
while the teachers of the colored children receive $202,251.13. The
value of all schoolhouses, sites and furniture for white children is
$6,503,019.57; for colored children, $273,147.50.

In South Carolina there are 316,007 Negro children of school age and
201,868 white children; but the state spends on its Negro children
$368,802, and on its white children $1,684,976. Thus does America keep
knowledge from Negroes. She is afraid of the educated black man. Of
such are the people who taunt Negroes with ignorance.


IV—Social.

When a group has been reduced to serfdom, political and economic, its
social status become fixed by that fact. And so we find that in "the
home of the free and the land of the brave" Negroes must not ride in
the same cars in a train as white people. On street-cars, certain
sections are set apart for them. They may not eat in public places
where white people eat nor drink at the same bar. They may not go to
the same church (although they are foolish enough to worship the same
god) as white people; they may not die in the same hospital nor be
buried in the same grave-yard. So far as we know, the segregation ends
here.

But why is segregation necessary? Because white Americans are afraid
that their inherent superiority may not, after all, be so very evident
either to the Negro or to other people. They, therefore, find it
necessary to enact it into law. So we had the first Ghetto legislation
in an American nation last year, in Baltimore. Hard on the heels of
this followed legislative proposals along the same line in Richmond
Va., Kansas City, Mo., St. Louis, Mo., and Birmingham, Ala. In
Memphis, Tenn., Negroes pay taxes for public parks which they are not
allowed to enter. A year ago they petitioned for a Negro park and were
about to get it when 500 white citizens protested against it. That
settled it with the park.

But discrimination goes even further and declares that Negroes shall
not possess even their lives if any white persons should want them.
And so we have the institution called the lynching-bee. The
professional southerner seems to love a lie dearly and continues to
assert that Negroes are lynched for rape committed upon white women.
Why not? It is perfectly American. If you want to kill a dog, call it
mad; if you want to silence a man, call him an Anarchist, and if you
want to kill a black man, call him a rapist. But let us see what the
facts actually are.

In the two decades from 1884 to 1904 there were 2,875 lynchings in the
United States. Of these 87 per cent, or 2,499 occurred in the South.
The national total was grouped as follows:

 1.  For alleged and attempted criminal assault, i. e., rape...  564
 2.  For assault and murder and for complicity.................  138
 3.  For murder............................................... 1,277 
 4.  For theft, burglary and robbery..........................   326
 5.  For arson.................................................  106
 6.  For race-prejudice (?)....................................   94 
 7.  For unknown reasons.......................................  134
 8.  For simple assault........................................   18 
 9.  For insulting whites......................................   18 
 10. For making threats.........................................  16

The causes for the remainder were: slander, miscegenation, informing,
drunkenness, fraud, voodooism, violation of contract, resisting
arrest, elopement, train wrecking, poisoning stock, refusing to give
evidence, testifying against whites, political animosity, disobedience
of quarantine regulations, passing counterfeit money, introducing
smallpox, concealing criminals, cutting levees, kidnapping, gambling,
riots, seduction, incest, and forcing a child to steal.

Yes, there are courts in the South; but not for black people—not when
the mob chooses to relieve civilization of the onus of law and order.
At Honeapath, S. C, a Negro was lynched in November 1911, charged, of
course, with "the usual crime." The charge had not been proven, or
investigated; but the man was lynched. The howling mob which did him
to death was composed of "prominent citizens" who had made up
automobile parties to ride to the affair. Among those present was the
=dis=-honorable Joshua Ashley, a member of the state legislature. He
and his friends cut off the man's fingers as souvenirs and were proud
of their work. Why shouldn't they? You see, it helps to keep "niggers"
in their place. And then, besides, isn't this a white man's country?
Gov. Blease of South Carolina was also proud of the event and said
that instead of stopping the horrible work of the mob he would have
resigned his office to lead it. In Okemeah, Oklahoma, last June, a band
of white beasts raped a Negro woman and then lynched her and her
fourteen-year-old son Nothing has been done to them. And it is not
that the facts are unknown. At Durant, Okla., and elsewhere, the
savages have posed around their victim to have their pictures taken.
One man, from Alabama sent to the Rev. John Haynes Holmes, of
Brooklyn, N.Y., a post-card (by =mail=) bearing a photograph of such a
group. "This is the way we treat them down here," he writes, and,
after promising to put Mr. Holmes' name on his mailing list declares
that they will have one, at least, each month.

In Washington, Ga., Charles S. Holinshead, a wealthy white planter,
raped the wife of T.B. Walker, a decent, respectable Negro. As his
wife returned to him dishevelled and bleeding from the outrage
perpetrated on her, Walker went to Holinshead's store and shot him
dead. For this he was tried and condemned and, while the judge was
pronouncing sentence, Holinshead's brother shot Walker in the
court-room. They held his head up while the judge finished the
sentence, Then he was taken out and lynched—not executed Nothing was
done to the other Holinshead.

The New York =Evening Post=, on October 23rd said in an editorial that
"there has hardly been a single authenticated case in a decade of the
Negroes rising against the whites, despite the growing feeling, among
them that there should be some retaliation since no tribunal will
punish lynchers or enforce the law." I am glad that the =Post= noticed
this. I had begun to notice it myself. When President Roosevelt
discussed lynching some years ago, he severely reprobated =the Negro=
for their tendency to shield their "criminals" and ordered them to go
out and help hunt them down. So was insult added to injury.

But, putting my own opinion aside, here are the facts as I have seen
them. In the face of these facts, the phrase, "the white man's
burden," sounds like a horrid mockery.




                       SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO


1. Economic Status Of The Negro

The ten million Negroes of America form a group that is more
essentially proletarian than any other American group. In the first
place the ancestors of this group were brought here with the very
definite understanding that they were to be ruthlessly exploited. And
they were not allowed any choice in the matter. Since they were
brought here as chattels their social status was fixed by that fact.
In every case that we know of where a group has lived by exploiting
another group, it has despised that group which it has put under
subjection. And the degree of contempt has always been in direct
proportion to the degree of exploitation.

Inasmuch then, as the Negro was at one period the most thoroughly
exploited of the American proletariat, he was the most thoroughly
despised. That group which exploited and despised him, being the most
powerful section of the ruling class, was able to diffuse its own
necessary contempt of the Negro first among the other sections of the
ruling class, and afterwards among all other classes of Americans. For
the ruling class has always determined what the social ideals and
moral ideas of society should be; and this explains how race prejudice
was disseminated until all Americans are supposed to be saturated with
it. Race prejudice, then, is the fruit of economic subjection and a
fixed inferior economic status. It is the reflex of a social caste
system. That caste system in America today is what we roughly refer to
as the Race Problem, and it is thus seen that the Negro problem is
essentially an economic problem with its roots in slavery past and
present.

Notwithstanding the fact that it is usually kept out of public
discussion, the bread-and-butter side of this problem is easily the
most important. The Negro worker gets less for his work—thanks to
exclusion from the craft unions—than any other worker; he works longer
hours as a rule and under worse conditions than any other worker, and
his rent in any large city is much higher than that which the white
worker pays for the same tenement. In short, the exploitation of the
Negro worker is keener than that of any group of white workers in
America. Now, the mission of the Socialist Party is to free the
working class from exploitation, and since the Negro is the most
ruthlessly exploited working class group in America, the duty of the
party to champion his cause is as clear as day. This is the crucial
test of Socialism's sincerity and therein lies the value of this point
of view—Socialism and the Negro.


2. The Need of Socialist Propaganda.

So far, no particular effort has been made to carry the message of
Socialism to these people. All the rest of the poor have had the
gospel preached to them, for the party has carried on special
propaganda work among the Poles, Slovaks, Finns, Hungarians and
Lithuanians. Here are ten million Americans, all proletarians, hanging
on the ragged edge of the impending class conflict. Left to themselves
they may become as great a menace to our advancing army as is the army
of the unemployed, and for precisely the same reason: they can be used
against us, as the craft unions have begun to find out. Surely we
should make some effort to enlist them under our banner that they may
swell our ranks and help to make us invincible. And we must do this
for the same reason that is impelling organized labor to adopt an
all-inclusive policy; because the other policy results in the
artificial breeding of scabs. On grounds of common sense and
enlightened self-interest it would be well for the Socialist party to
begin to organize the Negroes of America in reference to the class
struggle. The capitalists of America are not waiting. Already they
have subsidized Negro leaders, Negro editors, preachers and
politicians to build up in the breasts of the black people those
sentiments which will make them subservient to their will. For they
recognize the value (to them) of cheap labor power and they know that
if they can succeed in keeping one section of the working class down
they can use that section to keep other sections down too.


3. The Negro's Attitude Toward Socialism.

If the Socialist propaganda among Negroes is to be effectively carried
on, the members and leaders of the party must first understand the
Negro's attitude toward Socialism. That attitude finds its first
expression in ignorance. The mass of the Negro people in America are
ignorant of what Socialism means. For this they are not much to blame.
Behind the veil of the color line none of the great world-movements
for social betterment have been able to penetrate. Since it is not
yet the easiest task to get the white American worker—with all his
superior intellect—to see Socialism, it is but natural to expect that
these darker workers to whom America denies knowledge should still be
in ignorance as to its aims and objects.

Besides, the Negroes of America—those of them who think—are suspicious
of Socialism as of everything that comes from the white people of
America. They have seen that every movement offer the extension of
democracy here has broken down as soon as it reached the color line.
Political democracy declared that "all men are created equal," meant
only all white men. The Christian church found that the brotherhood of
man did not include God's bastard children. The public school system
proclaimed that the school house was the backbone of democracy—"for
white people only," and the civil service says that Negroes must keep
their place—at the bottom. So that they can hardly be blamed for
looking askance at any new gospel of freedom. Freedom to them has been
like one of

   "those juggling fiends.
    That palter with us in a double sense;
    That keep the word of promise to our ear,
    And break it to our hope."

In this connection, some explanation of the former political
solidarity of those Negroes who were voters may be of service. Up to
six years ago the one great obstacle to the political progress of the
colored people was their sheep-like allegiance to the Republican
party. They were taught to believe that God had raised up a peculiar
race of men called Republicans who had loved the slaves so tenderly
that they had taken guns in their hands and rushed on the ranks of the
southern slaveholders to free the slaves; that this race of men was
still in existence, marching under the banner of the Republican party
and showing their great love for Negroes by appointing from six to
sixteen near-Negroes to soft political snaps. Today that great
political superstition is falling to pieces before the advance of
intelligence among Negroes. They begin to realize that they were sold
out by the Republican party in 1876; that in the last twenty-five
years lynchings have increased, disfranchisement has spread all over
the south and "jim-crow" cars run even into the national capital—with
the continuing consent of a Republican congress, a Republican Supreme
Court and Republican presidents.

Ever since the Brownsville affair, but more clearly since Taft
declared and put in force the policy of pushing out the few near-Negro
officeholders, the rank and file have come to see that the Republican
party is a great big sham. Many went over to the Democratic party
because, as the =Amsterdam News= puts it, "they had nowhere else to
go." Twenty years ago the colored men who joined that party were
ostracized as scalawags and crooks—which they probably were. But
today, the defection to the Democrats of such men as Bishop Waiters,
Wood, Carr and Langston—whose uncle was a colored Republican
congressman from Virginia—has made the colored democracy respectable
and given quite a tone to political heterodoxy. All this loosens the
bonds of their allegiance and breaks the bigotry of the last forty
years. But of this change in their political view-point the white
world knows nothing. The two leading Negro newspapers are subsidized
by the same political pirates who hold the title-deeds to the handful
of hirelings holding office in the name of the Negro race. One of
these papers is an organ of Mr. Washington, the other pretends to be
independent—that is, it must be "bought" on the installment plan, and
both of them are in New York.

Despite this "conspiracy of silence" the Negroes are waking up; are
beginning to think for themselves; to look with more favor on "new
doctrines." And herein lies the open opportunity of the Socialist
party. If the work of spreading Socialist propaganda is taken to them
now, their ignorance of it can be enlightened and their suspicions
removed.


The Duty of The Socialist Party.

I think that we might embrace the opportunity of taking the matter up
at the coming national convention. The time is ripe for taking a stand
against the extensive disfranchisement of the Negro in violation of
the plain provisions of the national constitution. In view of the fact
that the last three amendments to the constitution contain the clause,
"Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate
legislation," the party will not be guilty of proposing anything worse
than asking the government to enforce its own "law and order." If the
Negroes, or any other section of the working class in America, is to
be deprived of the ballot, how can they participate with us in the
class struggle? How can we pretend to be a political party if we fail
to see the significance of this fact?

Besides, the recent dirty diatribes against the Negro in a Texas
paper, which is still on our national list of Socialist papers; the
experiences of Mrs. Theresa Malkiel in Tennessee where she was
prevented by certain people from addressing a meeting of Negroes on
the subject of Socialism, and certain other exhibitions of the thing
called southernism, constitute the challenge of caste. Can we ignore
this challenge? I think not. We could hardly afford to have the taint
of "trimming" on the garments of the Socialist party. It is
dangerous—doubly dangerous now, when the temper of the times is
against such "trimming." Besides it would be futile. If it is not met
now it must be met later when it shall have grown stronger. Now, when
we can cope with it, we have the issue squarely presented: Southernism
or Socialism—which? Is it to be the white half of the working class
against the black half, or all the working class? Can we hope to
triumph over capitalism with one-half of the working class against us?
Let us settle these questions now—for settled they must be.


The Negro and Political Socialism.

The power of the voting proletariat can be made to express itself
through the ballot. To do this they must have a political organization
of their own to give form to their will. The direct object of such an
organization is to help them to secure control of the powers of
government by electing members of the working class to office and so
secure legislation in the interests of the working class until such
time as the workers may, by being in overwhelming control of the
government, be able "to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new
government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing
its power in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their safety and happiness"—in short, to work for the abolition of
capitalism, by legislation—if that be permitted. And in all this, the
Negro, who feels most fiercely the deep damnation of the capitalist
system, can help.


The Negro and Industrial Socialism.

But even the voteless proletarian can in a measure help toward the
final abolition of the capitalist system. For they too have labor
power—which they can be taught to withhold. They can do this by
organizing themselves at the point of production. By means of such
organization they can work to shorten the hours of labor, to raise
wages, to secure an ever-increasing share of the product of their
toil. They can enact and enforce laws for the protection of labor and
they can do this at the point of production, as was done by the
Western Federation of Miners in the matter of the eight-hour law,
which they established without the aid of the legislatures or the
courts. All this involves a progressive control of the tools of
production and a progressive expropriation of the capitalist class.
And in all this the Negro can help. So far, they are unorganized on
the industrial field, but industrial unionism beckons to them as to
others, and the consequent program of the Socialist party for the
Negro in the south can be based upon this fact.




                        THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM

The African slave-trade was born of the desire of certain Europeans to
acquire wealth without working. It was to fill the need for a cheap
labor supply in developing new territory that Negro slaves were first
brought to the western world by the Spanish, Dutch, and English during
the 16th and 17th centuries. Contact of white with black was thus
established on the basis of the economic subjection of the one to the
other. This subjection extended to every sphere of life, physical,
mental and social. Out of this contact there arose certain definite
relations and consequent problems of adjustment. It is the sum of
these relations which we (rightly or wrongly) describe as the Negro
Problem.

Unfortunately, the spell of mere words is still very strong, and when
people speak of the Negro Problem they carry over into the discussion
a certain mental attitude derived from the original meaning of the
word, Problem. In arithmetic, a sum to be worked out; in chemistry, to
find by experiment a certain re-agent; in geography, to chart a
puzzling current—all these are problems in the primary sense, and all
these involve the idea of solution by him who approaches them. That is
to say, they can be solved =by thinking=. And those who think loosely
call up this idea of solution by thinking whenever they see the word
"problem". So we have been pestered with this, that, and the other
"solution" of the Negro problem. Therefore, it is well to bear in mind
that a race problem is always the sum of the relations between two or
more races in a state of friction.

Because when we understand this we are in a fair way to find that
these relations are not to be explained on the basis of the thinking
or feeling of either party. They must be interpreted in terms of human
relations and in the order in which human relations are established:
(1) economic, (2) social, (3) political and (4) civic. So understood,
a knowledge of the historical conditions under which these relations
developed is seen to be of the greatest value in understanding the
problem. For this is all that our intellects can do in the case of a
racial problem—to help us to understand. The actual work of adjustment
must be fought out or worked out; becomes, that is to say, a struggle
to be settled by the contending races with forces more complex than
the purely intellectual ones of argument and proof. Let us first
consider, then, the conditions under which the relations between the
black and white races were established in America.

During the period of colonization the land of America was granted by
European kings to certain gentlemen who had no intention of working
with the hands. Nevertheless working with the hands was the only
method of extracting that wealth which was the object of their
ownership, it was necessary, then, to obtain a supply of those persons
who could do this work for them; and to insure this, it was imperative
that these persons should not own land themselves: they must be a
permanently landless class; since it was unthinkable then as now that
one should work the land of others for a part of the fruits if he
could work his own land for all of the fruits. So there was begun in
America the process of establishing such a class. Confining ourselves
to the territory which became the United States, we may say that the
first attempt was made to enslave the Indians, and when this failed to
work, white people were imported from Europe as chattel slaves. All
through the colonial period this importation continued with its
consequent effects on the social and political life of the colonies.
Most people will be surprised to learn that the first Fugitive Slave
Law was framed, not in the south, but in the north, and was made not
for black but for white laborers. This was the Massachusetts act of
1630 "Respecting Masters, Servants and Laborers". A reading of this
one act would destroy all those pretty illusions about "our fathers
and Freedom" which we get from the official fairy tales—I mean the
school histories.

Side by side with the economic subjection of white men there grew up
the economic subjection of black men, and for the same reason. These
were of alien blood—and cheaper. Therefore, the African slave trade
outgrew the European slave trade, although the latter continued, in a
lessening degree, down to the third or fourth decade of the 19th
century. Negroes were brought here to work, to be exploited; and they
were allowed no illusions as to the reason for their being here. Those
white men who owned the land brought them here to extract the wealth
which was in the land. The white aristocrat did not buy black slaves
because he had a special hatred or contempt for anything black, nor
because he believed that Negroes were inferior to white people. On the
contrary he bought them precisely because, as working cattle, they
were superior to whites.

Being of alien blood, these black people were =outside= of the social
and political system to which they were introduced and, quite
naturally, beyond the range of such sympathies as helped to soften the
hard brutalities of the system. They were, from the beginning, more
ruthlessly exploited than the white workers. Thus they had their place
made for them—at the bottom.

Now it is a social law—not yet proclaimed by our college
sociologists—that whenever a certain social arrangement is beneficial
to any class in a society, that class soon develops the psychology of
its own advantage and creates insensibly the ethics which will justify
that social arrangement. Men to whom the vicarious labor of slaves
meant culture and refinement, wealth, leisure and education, naturally
came—without any self-deception, to see that slavery was =right=. As
Professor Loria points out, there is an economic basis to moral
transformations in any society which is built on vicarious production.

We turn now to the resulting conditions of the slaves. They were at
the bottom, the most brutally exploited and, therefore, the most
despised section of the laboring class. For it is a consequent of the
law stated above that those who are exploited must needs be despised
by those who exploit them. This mental attitude of the superior class
(which makes the laws of that society in which it is dominant) will
naturally find its expression in those actions by which they establish
their relations to the inferior class. And whenever anyone is to be
kicked it is usually the man farthest down who gets it, because he is
most contiguous to the foot. So the Negro having been given a place at
the bottom in the economic life of the nation, came to occupy
naturally the place at the bottom in the nation's thinking. I say, the
nation's advisedly; because the dominant ideas of any society which is
already divided into classes are as a rule the ideas preservative of
the existing arrangements. But since those arrangements include a
class on top, the dominant ideas will generally coincide with the
interest of that class. The ethics of its own advantage, then, will be
diffused by that class throughout that society—will be, if need arise
imposed upon the other classes, since every ruling class has always
controlled the public instruments for the diffusion of ideas.

In this way the slave-holding section of the dominant class in America
first diffused its own necessary contempt for the Negro among the
other sections of the ruling class, and the ideas of this class as a
whole became through the agency of press, pulpit and platform, the
ideas of "the American People" on the Negro.

In further application of the materialistic method to this subject, it
is curious and interesting to note how the southern attitude toward
the Negro changed with the changing industrial system. When the
wasteful agricultural methods of chattel slavery had exhausted the
soil of the south and no new land loomed up on the horizon of the
system, slavery began to decay. The planters of that section settled
down into the patriarchal type of family relations with their slaves,
who were then simply a means of keeping the master's hands free from
the contamination of work and not a means of ever-increasing profits.
Slavery was then in a fair way to die of its own weight. But with the
invention of Whitney's cotton-gin, which enabled one man to do the
work of three hundred, cotton came to the front as the chief
agricultural staple in America. The black slave became a source of
increasing revenue as a fertilizer of capital. The idyllic relations
of the preceding forty years came to a sudden end. Increased profits
demanded increased exploitation and the ethics of advantage dictated
the despising of the Negro.

De Bow's Review, the great organ of southern opinion, appeared, and in
serious scientific articles maintained the proposition that the Negro
was not a man but a beast. About that time (and conformably to that
opinion) the practice was begun of spelling the word, Negro, with a
small "n"—a practice still current in America, even in the socialist
press.

In the meanwhile, the system of industrial production known as the
machine system developed in the north. The factory proletariat whose
condition determined that of the other northern workers could
fertilize capital more rapidly and cheaply than the slaves. This form
of production (and its products) came into competition with the slave
system and the tremendous conflict reflected itself upon the political
field as a struggle for the restriction of slavery within its original
bounds. The Louisiana Purchase, the annexation of Texas, the Missouri
Compromise, the Dred Scot Decision, the Kansas-Nebraska Bill,—all
these were political episodes in the competition between the two main
sections of the dominant class; and in the conflict each used the
army, the navy, the executive, the courts and the legislature to
strengthen its own position.

When the business interests of the north had definitely captured the
powers of government in the general election of 1860, the southerners
seceded because they knew too well what governmental power was
generally used for. They wanted a government which would be the
political reflex of their own economic dominance. One can see now why
the northern statesmen like Lincoln insisted that the preservation of
the Union was the paramount issue and not the freedom of slaves.
Indeed, Lincoln punished those officers of the army who in the early
days of the war dared to act upon that assumption. And not all the
arguments of Greeley, Conway and Governor Andrews could make any
change in his attitude. Not until he saw that it was expedient "as a
war measure" did he issue the "Emancipation Proclamation" which
brought 187,000 Negro soldiers into the northern army.

Emancipation gave to the Negroes a new economic status—the status of
free wage-laborers, competing with other wage-laborers for work. They
who had worked to create wealth for others were now turned loose
without wealth or land to shift for themselves in a world already
hostile to them. The mental attitude of the white south had been
shaped by three centuries of slavery and was hard to get rid of. It
was difficult for them to think of black labor under any form but that
of slavery and they naturally turned to compulsion as the proper mode
of obtaining work from their former slaves. This attitude was well
expressed in the Black Codes of the southern states during the fall
and winter of 1865–66. As soon as the end of the hostilities gave them
a free hand at home they began to give legislative expression to the
new conditions. They framed new constitutions and new laws. "But it
was seen that the Negro had no privilege of voting in the first
instance, and it was not to be expected that the right would be
accorded him under the new state constitutions; no guarantee that
justice should be done him was exacted. These new constitutions were
formed, the legislatures met, laws were made, senators and
representatives to Congress were chosen; but the Negro was not only
not admitted to any participation in the government, but the new
legislatures shocked the northern sense of justice by the cruel and
revengeful laws which they enacted. The barbarity of the most odious
slave-code was, under various disguises, applied to the Negro in his
new condition of freedom". Even before the resentment of the national
legislature had taken form, the Ku-Klux Klan, the Knights of the White
Camelias, the Society of the Pale Faces, and other bands of organized
representatives of culture had begun to do their bloody work of
terrorizing Negroes into economic and social subjection. And all this
before any steps had been taken to extend the suffrage to Negroes.

When the northerners investigated these conditions they met with such
fierce and unreasoning hostility on the part of the south that they
found it necessary to arm the Negro with the ballot in his own
defense. And yet, professional southerners like Tom Dixon, Tom Watson,
Ben Tillman Vardaman and Blease pretend to their ignorant or forgetful
countrymen that the present attitude of the south was caused in the
first instance by a reaction against "Negro domination", social and
political which the north had forced upon it.

The subsequent developments can not be explained by those amiable
enthusiasts who see in the "freedom" of Negroes an act of genuine
humanitarianism on the part of the north. For, after northern
business-men had secured the government—and their thousands of miles
of railroad-grants—they promptly dropped the mask of humanitarian
hypocrisy, and left the Negroes to shift for themselves. During the
disputed count of the votes in the Hayes-Tilden electoral contest in
1877 a deal was arranged by which the northerners agreed to withdraw
the army which protected the Negroes, newly-granted franchise in the
south, on condition that the southerners should concede the election
to Hayes. The new industrial order wanted above all things to retain
control of the government which it had captured during the war, and
upon the altar of this necessity it sacrificed the Negro in the south,
just as Lincoln had done in the early days of the war. From that time
the suppression of the Negro vote, the growth of "Jim Crow"
legislation, lynching and segregation have continued with the
continuing consent of Republican congressman, presidents and supreme
courts. And through it all, Negro "leaders" like Mr. Washington have
found it very much worth their while to administer anodynes both to
the Negro and the Nation, to reconcile the one to a bastard democracy
and the other to a mutilated manhood.

It would be well to trace here the nature of the economic changes
which have given certain new and malignant features to the relations
between black and white in America. The effect upon the free laborers
of the sudden influx of black competitors in the labor-market; the
consequent attitude of the labor-unions; the political and social
reflex of all this, with the vestiges of the old, re-developing under
the new conditions—all these are parts of the problem. But space will
not permit, and these considerations will be taken up in a second
paper. Yet I may indicate here the gist of my conclusions by quoting
the words of a well-known Southerner, the Rev. Quincy Ewing. "The race
problem—is not that the Negro is what he is in relation to the white
man—the white man's inferior—but this, rather: How to keep him what he
is in relation to the white man; how to prevent his ever achieving or
becoming that which would justify the belief on his part, or on the
part of other people, that he and the white man stand on common human
ground."

The economic necessities of a system of vicarious production led to
the creation of a racial labor-caste; the social adjustment consequent
upon this and upon its development created a social sentiment inimical
to this class, and its continuance requires a continuance of this
sentiment in our society; this is the pivotal fact. And the
unavoidable conclusion is, that when this system of vicarious
production disappears, the problem which is its consequence will
disappear also—and not till then, in spite of all the culture,
individual or collective, which that class may achieve.




                 ON A CERTAIN CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES

It would be a difficult task to name one line of intellectual endeavor
among white men in America, in which the American Negro has not taken
his part. Yet it is a striking fact that the racial attitude has been
dominantly conservative. Radicalism does not yet register to any
noticeable extent the contributions of our race in this country. In
theological criticism, religious dissent, social and political
heresies such as Single Tax, Socialism, Anarchism—in most of the
movements arising from the reconstruction made necessary by the great
body of that new knowledge which the last two centuries gave us—the
Negro in America has taken no part. And today our sociologists and
economists still restrict themselves to the compilation of tables of
statistics in proof of Negro progress. Our scholars are still
expressing the intellectual viewpoints of the eighteenth century. The
glimmer of a change is perceptible only in some of the younger men
like Locke of Howard University and James C. Waters.

It is easy to account for this. Christian America created the color
line; and all the great currents of critical opinion, from the
eighteenth century to our time, have found the great barrier
impassible and well-nigh impervious. Behind the color line one has to
think perpetually of the color line, and most of those who grow up
behind it can think of nothing else. Even when one essays to think of
other things, that thinking is tinged with the shades of the
surrounding atmosphere.

Besides, when we consider what Negro education is to-day when we
remember that in certain southern counties the munificent sum of 58
cents is spent for the annual education of a Negro child; that the
"great leader" of his race decries "higher" education for them; that
Negro boys who get as far as "college" must first surmount tremendous
special obstacles—we will cease to wonder at the dearth of thinkers
who are radical on other than racial matters.

Yet, it should seem that Negroes, of all Americans, would be found in
the Freethought fold, since they have suffered more than any other
class of Americans from the dubious blessings of Christianity. It has
been well said that the two great instruments for the propagation of
race prejudice in America are the Associated Press and the Christian
Church. This is quite true. Historically, it was the name of religion
that cloaked the beginnings of slavery on the soil of America, and
buttressed its continuance. The church saw to it that the religion
taught to slaves should stress the servile virtues of subservience and
content, and these things have bitten deeply into the souls of black
folk. True, the treasured music of these darker millions preserves,
here and there, the note of stifled rebellion; but this was in spite
of religion—not because of it. Besides, such of their "sorrow-songs"
as have this note in them were brutally banned by their masters, and
driven to the purlieus of the plantation, there to be sung in secret,
And all through the dark days of slavery, it was the Bible that
constituted the divine sanction of this "peculiar institution."
"Cursed be Canaan," "Servants obey your masters" and similar texts
were the best that the slaveholders' Bible could give of consolation
to the brothers in black, while, for the rest, teaching them to read
was made a crime so that whatever of social dynamite there might be in
certain parts of the book, might not come near their minds.

Lowell, in his "Biglow Papers," has given a caustic but correct
summary of the Christian slave-holders' theology in regard to the
slavery of black working-people:

   "All things wuz gin to man for's use, his sarvice an' demean
      delight?
    An' don't the Greek an' Hebrew words that mean a man mean white?
    Ain't it belittlin' the good book in all its proudes' features
    To think ‘t wuz wrote for black an' brown an' 'lasses-colored
      creatures,
    Thet couldn' read it ef they would—nor ain't by lor allowed to,
    But ought to take wut we think suits their naturs, an' be proud
      to?
                   *       *       *        *
    Where'd their soles go ter, I'd like to know, ef we should let 'em
        ketch
    Freeknowledgism an' Fourierism an' Speritoolism an' sech?"

When the fight for the abolition of slavery was on, the Christian
church, not content with quoting scripture, gagged the mouths of such
of their adherents as dared to protest against the accursed thing,
penalized their open advocacy of abolition, and opposed all the men
like Garrison, Lovejoy, Phillips and John Brown, who fought on behalf
of the Negro slave. The detailed instances and proofs are given in the
last chapter of "A Short History of the Inquisition," wherein the work
shows the relation of the church and slavery.

Yet the church among the Negroes today exerts a more powerful
influence than anything else in the sphere of ideas. Nietzsche's
contention that the ethics of Christianity are the slave's ethics
would seem to be justified in this instance. Show me a population that
is deeply religious, and I will show you a servile population, content
with whips and chains, contumely and the gibbet, content to eat the
bread of sorrow and drink the waters of affliction.

The present condition of the Negroes of America is a touching bit of
testimony to the truth of this assertion. Here in America the spirit
of the Negro has been transformed by three centuries of subjection,
physical and mental, so that they have even glorified the fact of
subjection and subservience. How many Negro speakers have I not heard
vaunting the fact that when in the dark days of the South the Northern
armies had the Southern aristocracy by the throat, there was no Negro
uprising to make their masters pay for the systematic raping of Negro
women and the inhuman cruelties perpetrated on Negro men. And yet the
sole reason for this "forbearance" is to be found in the fact that
their spirits had been completely crushed by the system of slavery.
And to accomplish this, Christianity—the Christianity of their
masters—was the most effective instrument.

A recent writer, Mr. E. B. Putnam-Weale, in his book, "The Conflict of
Color," has quite naively disclosed the fact that white people are
well aware of this aspect of Christianity and use it for their own
ends. Mr. Putnam-Weale makes no pretense of believing in the Christian
myth himself, but he wants it taught to the Negroes; and comparing it
with Islam, he finds it a more efficient instrument of racial
subjugation. The Mohammedan, he finds, preaches the equality of all
true believers—and lives up to it. The white Christian preaches the
brotherhood of man, but wants "niggers" to sit in the rear pews, to
ride in "Jim Crow" cars, and generally to "keep in their place." He
presents this aspect of the case under the caption of "The Black
Samson and the White Delilah," and, with less fear than an angel,
frankly advises the white Lords of Empire not so much to civilize as
to christianize Africa, so that Deliah's work may be well done.

Here in America her work has been well done; and I fear that many
years must pass before the leaders of thought among my people in this
country contribute many representatives to the cause of Freethought.
Just now, there are a few Negro Agnostics in New York and Boston, but
these are generally found to be West Indians from the French, Spanish,
and English islands. The Cuban and Porto Rican cigar-makers are
notorious Infidels, due to their acquaintance with the bigotry,
ignorance and immorality of the Catholic priesthood in their native
islands. Here and there one finds a Negro-American who is reputed to
have Agnostic tendencies; but these are seldom, if ever, openly
avowed. I can hardly find it in my heart to blame them, for I know the
tremendous weight of the social proscription which it is possible to
bring to bear upon those who dare defy the idols of our tribe. For
those who live by the people must needs be careful of the people's
gods; and

   "An up-to-date statesmen has to be on his guard,
    If he must have beliefs not to b'lieve 'em too hard."

Myself, I am inclined to believe that freedom of thought must come
from freedom of circumstance; and so long as our "leaders" are
dependent on the favor of our masses for their livelihood, just so
long will they express the thought of the masses, which of itself may
be a good thing or a bad according to the circumstances of the
particular case Still there is a terrible truth in Kipling's modern
version of Job's sarcastic bit of criticism:

   "No doubt but ye are the people—your throne is above the King's,
    Whoso speaks in your presence must say acceptable things;
    Bowing the head in worship, bending the knee in fear—
    Bringing the word well-smoothen—such as a King should hear."

And until this rising generation of Negroes can shake off the trammels
of such time-serving leaders as Mr. Washington, and attain the level
of that "higher education" against which he solidly sets his "face;
until they, too, shall have entered into the intellectual heritage of
the last two hundred years, there can be little hope of a change in
this respect.




                      WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US

In the good old days "when cotton was king", chattel-slavery was a
flourishing institution. Not only the people who profited by the
system, but most others—even those who were the sufferers—thought that
this was really a "law of nature", that it couldn't be otherwise.
Nevertheless, chattel slavery has gone. But while it lasted this was
its essence: Certain human beings were compelled to labor and the
wealth which their labor produced went, not to them, but to certain
other human beings who did not labor at all but lolled in luxury on
the labor of their slaves.

To-day, fellow-sufferers, they tell us that we are free. But are we?
If you will think for a moment you will see that we are not free at
all. We have simply changed one form of slavery for another. Then it
was chattel-slavery, now it is wage-slavery. For that which was the
essence of chattel-slavery is the essence of wage slavery. It is only
a difference in form. The chattel-slave was compelled to work by
physical force; the wage-slave is compelled to work by starvation. The
product of the chattel-slave's labor was taken by his master; the
product of the wage-slave's labor is taken by the employer.

The United States Government has made a study of the wealth producing
power of the wage-slaves, and has shown that the average worker
=produces= $2,451 a year. The government has also made a study of
wages in the U.S. which shows that the average worker gets $437 a
year. This means that the average employer takes away from the average
wage-slave $2,014 a year. In the good old days the master took away
the wealth produced by the slave in the simplest form; today he takes
it away in the form of profits. But in one respect the wage-slave is
worse off than the chattel slave. Under chattel slavery the master
owned the man and the land; he had to feed and clothe the man. Under
wage-slavery the man feeds and clothes himself. Under chattel slavery
it was to the interest of the owner to give the slave work and to keep
him from starving to death. Under wage-slavery, if the man goes out of
work the employer doesn't care; that is no loss to him; and if the man
dies there are millions of others eager to take his place, because, as
I said before, they must either work for him or starve. There is one
very striking parallel between the two cases. To-day there are many
people who say that this system is divinely appointed—is a law of
nature—just as they said the same thing of chattel slavery. Well,
there are millions of workers who say that it is wrong.

Under chattel-slavery black workers were robbed; under wage-slavery
all the workers are robbed. The Socialist Party says that this robbing
shall cease; that no worker black or white shall be exploited for
profit. And it says, further, that there is one sure and certain way
of putting an end to the system and that is by working for the success
of Socialism.

But, before I tell you just how Socialism proposes to do this, let me
say a word about the Civil War which put an end to chattel-slavery.
Now, I know that certain people have taught you to believe that the
Civil War was fought to free the slaves. But it isn't true, at all,
and only very ignorant people hold that opinion nowadays. If you will
read the Emancipation Proclamation carefully you will see that it
wasn't for love of the slave that the slaves were freed. You will see
that this was done, "as a fit and necessary war-measure for
suppressing said rebellion." If you will read Lincoln's letter to
Horrace Greeley (August 22nd 1862) you will find this sentence: "My
paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not
either to save or destroy slavery." Now I will tell you briefly how
"this struggle" came about. I know that my explanation is not the one
which you have been taught. But, no matter; it happens to be true.
This was the way of it: In the South there had grown up one system of
exploiting the laborer. That was chattel-slavery. The money-Kings of
that section whom we will call capitalists, for short, were naturally
fond of their own system. In the North the capitalists had another
system of which they were equally., fond. That was wage-slavery. The
Southern capitalists found that it was necessary to extend their
system; so we had the Mexican War, and they got Texas. Then, as fast
as new territory was opened they would rush to occupy it with their
system and so shut out the Northern system. Of course, the Northern
capitalists would try to get their system into the new territory also;
so we had the long struggle over Kansas and Nebraska. These two
systems were then in open competition and it came to be seen that one
or the her had to give in; that both of them couldn't exist in the
same country; that "a house divided against itself cannot stand"; that
"this nation cannot exist half-slave and half-free." Then people began
to talk of "the impending crisis"; of "the irrepressible conflict."
Then, when Lincoln was elected in 1859, the southern capitalists saw
that their system was doomed. They wished to preserve it; so they
seceded and tried to make of themselves a separate nation in which
their system of robbing the worker should be the only one. But the
Northern capitalists said, "Nix! Our system shall be the only system."
So they went to war "to save the Union"—for their system of robbing
the workers. And that's the gist of the whole story.

"But", you will say, "didn't they go to war on account of John Brown
and Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Sumner?"
Not on your life, they didn't. If you will read the newspapers of that
time you will see that they tried to lynch Garrison in Boston; they
ostracized Wendell Phillips; they sneered at Sumner and damned John
Brown. Why, nice, good, Christian people told them they were
crazy—just as some of them tell Socialists now—and the anti-slavery
orators couldn't get the use of a church in New York either for love
or for money. No, indeed. These men were grand old heroes—but no war
was fought on their account. The older system of chattel-slavery
simply broke down to make way for the present system of wage-slavery,
which pays better. Pays the capitalist, I mean.

Under the old system the capitalist owned the man; today he own the
tools with which the man must work. These tools are the factories, the
mines, and the machines. The system that owns them owns you and me and
all the rest of us, black, white, brown, red, and yellow. We can't
live unless we have access to these tools, and our masters, the
capitalists, see to it that we are separated from what we make by
using these things, except so much as is necessary to keep us alive
that we may be able to make more—for them. This little bit is called
wages. They wouldn't give us even that if they thought that we could
live without it. In the good old days the chattel-slave would be
fastened with a chain if they thought that he might escape. Today no
chain is necessary to bind us to the tools. We are as free as air. Of
course. We are free to starve. And that chain of
the-fear-of-starvation binds us to the tools owned by the capitalist
as firmly as any iron chain ever did. And this system doesn't care
whether the slaves who are bound in this new way are white or black.
To the capitalist system all workers are equal—in so far as they have
a stomach.

Now the one great fact for the Negro in America today is Race
Prejudice. The great labor problem with which all working-people are
faced is made harder for black working-people by the addition of a
race problem. I want to show you how one grows out of the other and
how, at bottom, they are both the same thing. In other words, I want
you to see the economic reason for race-prejudice.

In the first place, do you know that the most rabid, Negro-hating,
southern aristocrat has not the slightest objection to sleeping in the
same house with a Negro—if that Negro sleeps there as his servant? He
doesn't care if his food is prepared by a Negro cook and handled by a
Negro waiter before it gets to him; he will eat it. But if a Negro
comes into the same public restaurant to buy and eat food, then, Oh
my!, he gets all het up about it. But why? What's the difference? I
will tell you. The aristocrat wants the black man to feel that he is
on a lower level. When he is on that level he is "in his place". When
he is "in his place" he is liked. But he must not be allowed to do
anything to make him forget that he is on this lower level; he must be
kept "in his place", which means the place which the aristocrat wants
him to keep. You see, the black man carries the memory of slavery with
him. Everybody knows that the slaves were the exploited working-class
of the South. That put them in a class by themselves, down at the
bottom, downtrodden, despised, "inferior."

Do you begin to see now that Race Prejudice is only another name for
Caste Prejudice? If our people had never been slaves; had never been
exploited workers, and so, at the bottom of the ladder, there would be
no prejudice against them now. In every case where there has been a
downtrodden class of workers at the bottom, that class has been
despised by the class that lived by their labor. Do you doubt it? Then
look at the facts. If you had picked up a daily paper in New York in
1848 you would have found at the end of many an advertisement for
butler, coachman, lady's maid, clerk or book-keeper these words: "No
Irish need apply." There was a race-prejudice against the Irish then,
because most of the manual unskilled laborers were Irish. They were at
the bottom, exploited and despised. But they have changed things
since. Beginning in the seventies when Jewish laborers began to come
here from Russia, Austria and Germany, and lasting even to our own
day, there has been race-prejudice against the Jews. And today when
the Italian has taken the place which the Irish laborer vacated—at the
bottom —he, too, comes in for his share of this prejudice. In every
one of these cases it was the condition of the people—at the bottom as
despised, exploited, wage-slaves—that was responsible for the
race-prejudice. And it is just so in the black man's case, with this
difference: that his color marks what he once was, and even though he
should wear a dress suit every evening and own an automobile or a farm
he can always be picked out and reminded.

Now, under the present system, exploiting the wage-slave is
respectable. I have already shown you that wherever the worker is
exploited he is despised. So you will see that despising the
wage-slave is quite fashionable. You may recall the name of the great
capitalist who said, "the public be damned." He was only a little more
outspoken than the rest of his class. As long as the present system
continues, the workers will be despised; as long as the workers are
despised, the black men will be despised, robbed and murdered, because
they are least able to defend themselves. Now ask yourself whether you
haven't a very special interest in changing the present system.

Of course, you will ask: "But haven't white working people
race-prejudice too?" Sure, they have. Do you know why?

It pays the capitalist to keep the workers divided. So he creates and
keeps alive these prejudices. He gets them to believe that their
interests are different. Then he uses one half of them to club the
other half with. In Russia when the workingmen demand reform the
capitalists sic them on the Jews. In America they sic them on the
Negroes. That makes them forget their own condition: as long as they
can be made to look down upon another class. "But, then", you will
say, the average wage-slave must be a chump." Sure, he is. That's what
the capitalist counts on. And Socialism is working to educate the
workers to see this and to unite them in doing away with the present
system.

Socialism stands for the emancipation of the wage-slaves. Are you a
wage-slave? Do you want to be emancipated? Then join hands with the
Socialists. Hear what they have to say. Read some of their literature.
Get a Socialist leaflet, a pamphlet, or, better still, a book. You
will be convinced of two things: that Socialism is right, and that it
is inevitable. It is right because any order of things in which those
who work have least while those who work them have most, is wrong. It
is inevitable because a system under which the wealth produced by the
labor of human hands amounts to more than two hundred and twenty
billions a year while many millions live on the verge of starvation,
is bound to break down. Therefore, if you wish to join with the other
class—conscious, intelligent wage-earners—in putting an end to such a
system; if you want to better living conditions for black men as well
as for white men; to make this woful world of ours a little better for
your children and your children's children, study Socialism—and think
and work your way out.

Twelve years ago Mark Hanna, the Big Boss of the Republican Party,
made a statement which you would do well to consider. After he had
made McKinley president, he noticed something that you may not have
noticed yourself. He saw that there was no essential difference
between the Republican party and the Democratic party. He knew that
the same big Wall Street companies supplied the campaign funds for
each of them. He knew that the same money power was buying out the men
whom you elected, whether you elected Republicans or Democrats. He saw
that very soon you and I and the rest of us, black as well as white,
would come to see it too. And he opened his mouth and spake these
words: "The next great political battle in this country will be
fought, not between the Republican and the Democratic parties, but
between the Republican party and Socialism." I will tell you later
what that implies. But just now, what I should like you to see is
this: that Senator Hanna realized that Socialism was a serious issue.
He couldn't afford to pooh-pooh it. Neither can any sensible person.
The Socialist party is the third in point of numbers. It is important.
What do you know of this party? Have you ever read its platform? Read
it once, just for the sake of fair play—just to show that you are not
afraid to give it a hearing—and you will realize why Mark Hanna paid
it such a tribute of respect. Don't be a baby any longer and listen to
the stale lies which other people tell you about Socialism. Read the
Socialist platform and you will understand why some politicians have
to tell lies about it just the same as they have to tell lies about
you. They lie about it because they don't want you to know what it
really is, just as they lie about you because they don't want people
to know what you really are. Every year they feed you with the same
soft mush around election time to help them to ride into power on your
votes; then after election they give you Brownsville and lynching
bees. Do you wonder that General Clarkson, a grandson of the great
abolitionist, when he gave up his job as collector of the Port of New
York, said that he was sick of the way in which the Republican party
was selling you out? The Republican party is always engaged in selling
you out—or in selling out the working people of this country. Do you
doubt it? Then ask yourselves why is it that a Republican Congress has
never said a word or done anything about the disfranchisement of
nearly three million Negro voters in the South? Read the Fourteenth
and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution and you will see
that the Republican party has always had the power to stop it. But
just now I want to get you interested in the one party that strikes at
the very root of your trouble and that of every workingman in the
country—white and black alike. I want you to see what is the attitude
of the Socialist Party toward the American Negro. And for that reason
I am introducing to you the following declarations of the attitude
made by Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate for President, and by
other members of the party. Compare its straight-forward,
uncompromising utterances with what the other two parties have said
and done; then look yourself in the face and say whether it is worth
you while to sell your birthright and your future freedom—yes, and
that of your children and your children's children—for a mess of
political pottage.




                     THE NEGRO AND THE NEWSPAPERS

It is not an easy task to plead in the courts of the oppressor against
oppression and wrong. It is not easy to get the judgement of the white
men of the world against the white man's injustice to the black. But
nevertheless the attempt must be made and made again until the seared
conscience of the civilized world's hall throbs with righteous
indignation at such outrage. "To sin by silence when we should protest
makes cowards out of men. The human race has climbed on protest. Had
no voice been raised against injustice, ignorance and lust, the
Inquisition yet would serve the law and guillotines decide our least
disputes. The few who dare must speak and speak again to right the
wrongs of many."

The urgent need of speaking out is shown by the following
communication from Mr. J. Ellis Barker of London in an interview given
to a correspondent of =The New York Age= and published in that paper
on December 29th 1910.

"We people in Europe," says Mr. Barker, "do not understand the race
problem, and we do not know the colored people, for the simple reason
that there are not any colored people in Europe. In London, where I
live, there are only a few hundred colored students whom one does not
meet. Before I came to the United States my prejudice against the
colored people was as great as that of any Southern planter. My
prejudice against your race, as I believe the prejudice of most white
people, was due rather to ignorance than to ill-will. I had been told
in the books and papers published in Europe that the colored people
were a race of barbarians and savages. I had been told that the
colored people were a worthless set of people, dressed in rags,
working a day or two during the week, and loafing during the rest of
the time. I was told that the colored people were idle, diseased and
vicious. So I imagined that all of them lived in slums and alleys and
that the aristocracy of the race consisted of the waiters and railway
porters.

I had been told that the colored people only played at science; that
their doctors and lawyers were charlatans. I had been told that the
people of a mixed race were even worse than pure Negroes; that the
mulattoes had lost the primitive virtues of the Negroes and had
acquired all of the vices of the whites. A chance encounter with a
cultured man of color induced me to look into the race problem and I
was perfectly amazed when I discovered how greatly the colored people
have been libelled and traduced. I have spent a considerable amount of
time with colored people and have met many who are highly cultivated.
I have found that among your race you have excellent lawyers, and some
of the foremost physicians and surgeons. I have been over a large
number of your elementary and higher grade schools and colleges and
over Howard University, and I have admired the earnest and resolute
determination with which your children try to improve their minds and
to raise themselves. In your night schools I have found old men and
women, former slaves, who are anxious to learn writing and reading. I
have been to the homes of many colored people and I have found them
cosy, comfortable, elegant, and peopled by happy and harmonious
families. I have come to the conclusion that the race is oppressed and
persecuted and very largely because it is not known."

But it is not in Europe alone that these baneful effects of calumny
appear. Here in America, and even in the south where the bulk of the
Negroes live in the midst of a people who resentfully declare that
they should be left to deal with the Negro because they alone know
him—even there the notion of the Negro, fostered by the press and
other agencies of public opinion is as wide of the truth as it can be.
To illustrate:

In the March number of Van Norden's Magazine in 1907 there appeared a
symposium on The Negro Question. It was composed of expressions of
opinion from twelve intelligent southerners, and was followed by an
article by Mr. Booker T. Washington. The humor of the think lay in
this, that these men were Southern college presidents and heads of
banks, had lived all their lives among Negroes, and were, by their own
words, proved to be either woefully or willfully ignorant of what the
Negro had done and was doing. The mordant irony of fate decreed that
Mr. Washington should be the one to present the facts that changed
their seeming sapience to Falstaffian farce. The president of
Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Va. set forth that the Negro will not
work regularly, that he needs but three dollars a week and, therefore,
works but three days to get it and "quits work to spend it." The
president of Howard College, Alabama declared that, "My deliberate
opinion is that the days of the Negro as a fair, honest laborer are
numbered, and are few at that. He is becoming daily more shiftless,
more unreliable, more restless, less inclined to work steadily." The
president of the University of South Carolina and the president of the
North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts re-echoed the
same doleful dictum while the president of the First National Bank of
Birmingham, Ala. and the president of the Bank of Lexington, N.C.
declared that it was a mistake to grant the rights of citizenship to
the Negro and that education was a curse to him. The president of
Guilford College repeated the "lazy, shiftless" argument while the
president of Randolph-Macon College, Va. said, "Reduce their wages so
that they shall have to work all the time to make a living and they
will become better workmen or disappear in the struggle for
existence," repeating in substance, the argument of his
brother-president of the Woman's college.

Mr. Washington's article did not show any sign that it had been
written as a reply of any sort. But it did show among other things,
that the census of 1900 proved that the Negro people =owned= in the
very states of these college presidents, "23,383 square miles of
territory, an area nearly as large as that of Holland and Belgium
combined"; that this represented only a quarter of the farms worked by
them; that, "after a searching investigation, I have not been able to
find that a single graduate of Tuskegee, Hampton or any of the Negro
colleges can now be found in the prisons of the South;" that in a
single county of Virginia-Gloucester Co.—Negroes were paying taxes on
land valued at 88 million dollars and on buildings assessed at 80
millions, and all this on the soil where they had been slaves forty
years before.

Is not this eloquent of the value of American opinion on the American
Negro as given in the American press? And the question suggested is,
whether such statements are published in ignorance or ill-will? In
either case it is equally damnatory.

In December 1907 Professor R. R. Wright, Jr., an eminent Negro
sociologist, published in McGirt's Magazine an article on "The
Newspapers and the Negro", showing how the Negro is being "done" by
headlines and other newspaper devices. The Horizon, at that time the
most brilliant Negro periodical, dealt with the subject in its issue
for April 1908. Under the caption, "The Color Line in the Press
Dispatches", it quoted approvingly these words of a Socialist
paper—The Appeal to Reason—"The hand that fakes the Associated Press
is the hand that rules the world." European readers who are acquainted
with the occasional diversions of Reuter's Hong Kong and Shanghai
correspondents will appreciate the point.

The Horizon was constrained to refer to the matter again in its August
issue. In both instances specific cases were cited and proof given.
Since that time the need of some formal protest has been growing in
the minds of all those thinking Negroes who are not compelled to
"crook the pregnant hinges of the Knee"; and it has grown largely
because the practices complained of have grown to alarming
proportions.

The newspapers of this country have many crimes to answer for. They
feature our criminals in bold head lines: our substantial men when
noticed at all are relegated to the agate type division. Their
methods, whether they obtain through set purpose or through
carelessness, constantly appeal to the putrid passion of race hatred.
They cause rapine to break loose by nurturing rancor. They help create
untold sorrow. They are week-kneed and apologizing when the hour is
bloody.

But how can such a protest be effectively put? Though Truth come hot
on the heels of Falsehood it could not quite undo its devil's work.
And the detractors of the weak and helpless are well aware of this.

But Truth in the Negro's case is not even unleashed. Truth, in fact,
is chained up and well guarded, and it is this terrible task of
setting Truth free that the Negro must essay in the very teeth of the
American press. It is not an easy task to voice an adequate protest,
for it needs the widest publicity. And since prejudice will oppose, it
needs prestige also. Any such effort must feel itself feeble, and yet
it must be made.




   Transcriber's Note: Apparent typographical errors have been 
   changed. Bold denoted by equals signs. 

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