lobe; and that the future
conflict in that section will not be racial or political in character,
but between capital on the one hand and labor on the other, with the
odds largely in favor of nonproductive wealth because of the undue
advantage given the latter by the pernicious monopoly in land which
limits production and forces population disastrously upon subsistence.
My purpose is to show that poverty and misfortune make no invidious
distinctions of "race, color, or previous condition," but that wealth
unduly centralized oppresses all alike; therefore, that the labor
elements of the whole United States should sympathize with the same
elements in the South, and in some favorable contingency effect some
unity of organization and action, which shall subserve the common
interest of the common class.

T. THOMAS FORTUNE.
New York City, July 20, 1884.

CONTENTS

I--Black 1
II--White 6
III--The Negro and the Nation 13
IV--The Triumph of the Vanquished 19
V--Illiteracy--Its Causes 28
VI--Education--Professional or Industrial 38
VII---How Not to Do It 55
VIII--The Nation Surrenders 62
IX--Political Independence of the Negro 67
X--Solution of the Political Problem 79
XI--Land and Labor 89
XII--Civilization Degrades the Masses 96
XIII--Conditions of Labor in the South 107
XIV--Classes in the South 120
XV--The Land Problem 133
XVI--Conclusion 145
Appendix 151

On a summer day, when the great heat induced a general thirst, a Lion
and a Boar came at the same moment to a small well to drink. They
fiercely disputed which of them should drink first, and were soon
engaged in the agonies of a mortal combat. On their suddenly stopping
to take breath for the fiercer renewal of the strife, they saw some
vultures in the distance, waiting to feast on the one which should
fall. They at once made up their quarrel, saying, "It is better
for us to be friends, than to become the food of crows or
vultures."--