tle weight of the worth and ability of the Negro people. If they
had been given an economic start at Emancipation, if they had been in
an enlightened and rich community which really desired their best good,
then we might perhaps call such a result small or even insignificant.
But for a few thousand poor ignorant field-hands, in the face of
poverty, a falling market, and social stress, to save and capitalize
two hundred thousand dollars in a generation has meant a tremendous
effort. The rise of a nation, the pressing forward of a social class,
means a bitter struggle, a hard and soul-sickening battle with the
world such as few of the more favored classes know or appreciate.

Out of the hard economic conditions of this portion of the Black Belt,
only six per cent of the population have succeeded in emerging into
peasant proprietorship; and these are not all firmly fixed, but grow
and shrink in number with the wavering of the cotton-market. Fully
ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of
them sit in hopeless serfdom. For these there is one other avenue of
escape toward which they have turned in increasing numbers, namely,
migration to town. A glance at the distribution of land among the
black owners curiously reveals this fact. In 1898 the holdings were as
follows: Under forty acres, forty-nine families; forty to two hundred
and fifty acres, seventeen families; two hundred and fifty to one
thousand acres, thirteen families; one thousand or more acres, two
families. Now in 1890 there were forty-four holdings, but only nine of
these were under forty acres. The great increase of holdings, then,
has come in the buying of small homesteads near town, where their
owners really share in the town life; this is a part of the rush to
town. And for every land-owner who has thus hurried away from the
narrow and hard conditions of country life, how many field-hands, how
many tenants, how many ruined renters, have joined that long
procession? Is it not strange compensation? The sin of the country
districts is visited on the town, and the social sores of city life
to-day may, here in Dougherty County, and perhaps in many places near
and far, look for their final healing without the city walls.

IX

Of the Sons of Master and Man

Life treads on life, and heart on heart;
We press too close in church and mart
To keep a dream or grave apart.

MRS. BROWNING.

The world-old phenomeno