mass of millions of people, so that the upward tendency may be
apparent to the casual observer. It is too soon to decide what effect
general education will have upon the rank and file of the Negro race,
because the masses have not been educated.

Throughout the South, especially in the Gulf states, the great bulk of
the black population lives in the country districts. In these
districts the schools are rarely in session more than three months of
the year. When this is considered, in connection with poor teachers,
poor schoolhouses, and an almost entire lack of apparatus, it is
obvious that we must wait longer before we can judge, even
approximately, of the effect that general education will have upon the
whole population. Most writers and speakers upon the subject of the
Negro's non-progressiveness base their arguments upon alleged facts
and statistics of the life of Negroes in the large cities. This is
hardly fair. Before the Civil War the Negro was not, to any
considerable extent, a denizen of the large cities. Most of them lived
on the plantations. The Negro living in the cities has undergone two
marked changes: (1) the change from slavery to freedom; (2) the change
from country life to city life. At first the tendency of both these
changes was, naturally, to unsettle, to intoxicate and to lead the
Negro to wrong ideas of life. The change from country life to city
life, in the case of the white man, is about as marked as in the case
of the Negro. The average Negro in the city, with all of its
excitements and temptations, has not lived there more than half a
generation. It is, therefore, too soon to reach a definite conclusion
as to what the permanent effect of this life upon him will be. This, I
think, explains the difference between the moral condition of the
Negro, to which Professor Straton refers, in the states where there
has been little change in the old plantation life, as compared with
that in the more northern of the Atlantic states, where the change
from country to city life is more marked.

Judging from close observation, my belief is that, after the Negro has
overcome the false idea which city life emphasizes, two or three
generations will bring about an earnestness and steadiness of purpose
which do not now generally obtain. As the Negro secures a home in the
city, learns the lessons of industry and thrift and becomes a
taxpayer, his moral life improves. The influence of home surroundings,
of the scho