white man was ipso facto a member of that police. Thus grew up a
double system of justice, which erred on the white side by undue
leniency and the practical immunity of red-handed criminals, and erred
on the black side by undue severity, injustice, and lack of
discrimination. For, as I have said, the police system of the South
was originally designed to keep track of all Negroes, not simply of
criminals; and when the Negroes were freed and the whole South was
convinced of the impossibility of free Negro labor, the first and
almost universal device was to use the courts as a means of reenslaving
the blacks. It was not then a question of crime, but rather one of
color, that settled a man's conviction on almost any charge. Thus
Negroes came to look upon courts as instruments of injustice and
oppression, and upon those convicted in them as martyrs and victims.

When, now, the real Negro criminal appeared, and instead of petty
stealing and vagrancy we began to have highway robbery, burglary,
murder, and rape, there was a curious effect on both sides the
color-line: the Negroes refused to believe the evidence of white
witnesses or the fairness of white juries, so that the greatest
deterrent to crime, the public opinion of one's own social caste, was
lost, and the criminal was looked upon as crucified rather than hanged.
On the other hand, the whites, used to being careless as to the guilt
or innocence of accused Negroes, were swept in moments of passion
beyond law, reason, and decency. Such a situation is bound to increase
crime, and has increased it. To natural viciousness and vagrancy are
being daily added motives of revolt and revenge which stir up all the
latent savagery of both races and make peaceful attention to economic
development often impossible.

But the chief problem in any community cursed with crime is not the
punishment of the criminals, but the preventing of the young from being
trained to crime. And here again the peculiar conditions of the South
have prevented proper precautions. I have seen twelve-year-old boys
working in chains on the public streets of Atlanta, directly in front
of the schools, in company with old and hardened criminals; and this
indiscriminate mingling of men and women and children makes the
chain-gangs perfect schools of crime and debauchery. The struggle for
reformatories, which has gone on in Virginia, Georgia, and other
States, is the one encouraging sign of the awakening o