eadily furnish,
the wealthy southerners must finally reach the position of
regarding themselves and the negroes as having a community
of interests which each must promote. "Nature itself in those
States," Douglass said, "came to the rescue of the negro. He
had labor, the South wanted it, and must have it or perish.
Since he was free he could then give it, or withhold it; use
it where he was, or take it elsewhere, as he pleased. His
labor made him a slave and his labor could, if he would, make
him free, comfortable and independent. It is more to him than
either fire, sword, ballot boxes or bayonets. It touches the
heart of the South through its pocket." Knowing that the negro
has this silent weapon to be used against his employer or
the community, the South is already giving the race better
educational facilities, better railway accommodations,
and will eventually, if the advocacy of certain southern
newspapers be heeded, grant them political privileges. Wages
in the South, therefore, have risen even in the extreme
southwestern States, where there is an opportunity to import
Mexican labor. Reduced to this extremity, the southern
aristocrats have begun to lose some of their race prejudice,
which has not hitherto yielded to reason or philanthropy.

Southern men are telling their neighbors that their section
must abandon the policy of treating the negroes as a problem
and construct a program for recognition rather than for
repression. Meetings are, therefore, being held to find
out what the negroes want and what may be done to keep them
contented. They are told that the negro must be elevated, not
exploited; that to make the South what it must needs be, the
cooperation of all is needed to train and equip the men of all
races for efficiency. The aim of all then must be to reform
or get rid of the unfair proprietors who do not give their
tenants a fair division of the returns from their labor. To
this end the best whites and blacks are urged to come together
to find a working basis for a systematic effort in the
interest of all.[100]

Another evidence of the beneficent effects of the decrease in the
population in the Black Belt of the South is the interest now almost
generally manifested in the improvement of the negro quarters in
southern cities. For a number of years science has mad