their yearnings and the religious zeal with which they look
forward to the future for better days, and to other climes
than this for better conditions.

Now to pass severe laws to block this movement will not only
be a waste of time, but the most unwise way of dealing with
the problem. The problem can not be solved from the angle of
force.

In order for the negro to be kept in the South he must be made
to see, to feel, that on the whole it will be better for him
to remain in the South than to migrate to the North. Stop
lynching. Teach us to love the South and be contented here by
ceasing to abridge us in such extremes in common rights and
citizenship.

Another method of helping to keep the negro in the South is
for the better class of whites to get hold of the negroes.
In a word, there should be cooperation between the races. The
negroes should be given better schools and the whites should
set before the negroes better examples of law and order. The
North is offering better homes, better schools and justice
before the law. The South can do the same.

"One of our grievances," said a negro correspondent of the
_Chattanooga Times_,[180] "is that in colored localities we have very
bad streets, no lights, no sewerage system, and sanitary conditions
are necessarily bad. Give the negro the right kind of a show, living
wages, consider him as a man, and he will be contented to remain
here."

A good presentation of the negroes' side of the case is given in
the following letter from a negro minister to the Montgomery
_Advertiser_.[181] He wrote:

Why should the South raise such objections to the jobless
man seeking the manless job, especially when it has held
that jobless man up to the ridicule of the world as trifling,
shiftless and such a burden to the South? Now the opportunity
has come to the negro to relieve the South of some of its
burden, and at the same time advance his own interests, a
great hue and cry is started that it must not be allowed,
and the usual and foolish method of repressive legislation is
brought into play.

Addressing the editor of the _Advertiser_, another negro correspondent
said:

I have read with profound interest the many articles published
in your paper upon the great negro exodus from the South.

The negro has remained in the South almost as a solid mass
sin