ds
of orations and addresses, and unlimited private discussions which have
generally produced more heat than light. The question has kept different
sections of the country apart and has created bitterness which will long
endure. Moreover, this discussion about ten million people has produced
an effect upon them, and the negroes are beginning to feel that they
constitute a problem.

Differing attitudes toward the negro generally arise from fundamentally
different postulates.

Many Northerners start with the assumption that the negro is a black
Saxon and argue that his faults and deficiencies arise from the
oppression he has endured. At the other extreme are those who hold that
the negro is fundamentally different from the white man and inferior to
him: and some go so far as to say that he is incapable of development.
Fifty years ago General John Pope predicted, with a saving reservation,
hat the negroes of Georgia would soon surpass the whites in education,
culture, and wealth. Other predictions, similar in tone, were common in the
reports of various philanthropic associations. Obviously these
prophecies have not been fulfilled; but it is just as evident that the
predictions that the former slaves would relapse into barbarism and starve
have also not been realized. Practically every prophecy or generalization
made before 1890 with regard to the future of the negro has been
discredited by the events of the passing years.

It is perhaps worth while to take stock of what this race has
accomplished in America during something more than fifty years of
freedom. The negro has lived beside the white man and has increased in
numbers, though at a somewhat slower rate than the white. The census of
1870 was inaccurate and incomplete in the South, and in consequence the
census of 1880 seemed to show a phenomenal increase in the negro
population. Upon this supposed increase was based the theory that the South
would soon be overwhelmingly black. From the historical standpoint, Albion
W. Tourgee's _Appeal to Caesar_ is interesting as a perfect example of this
type of deduction, for he could see only a black South. The three censuses
taken since 1880 definitely establish the fact that the net increase of
negro population is smaller than that of the white. This seems to have been
true at every census since 1810, and the proportion of negroes to the total
population of the nation grows steadily, though slowly, smaller.[1]

[Footnote 1: