especially as symbolized by the common meal. And the
prohibition was enforced among the whites by the penalty of sure and
stern ostracism.

Under these conditions, then, the two sections of the Southern people
have been working their way, for almost thirty years. How first have the
negroes fared? Of the prophecies for their future, made when they were
in bondage and in view of possible emancipation, one was that they would
die out,--but in less than half a century they have doubled. Another was
that if freed they would refuse to work,--but the industrial product of
the South has never fallen off, but has steadily and vastly increased,
with the negro still as the chief laborer. Another prediction was that
they would lapse into barbarism. The Southern negroes as a mass have a
fringe of barbarism--a heavy fringe. So has every community, white,
black or yellow, the world over. Have the Southern blacks, as a body,
moved toward barbarism or toward civilization since they were set free?

The comparative tests between civilization and barbarism are, broadly
speaking, productive industry, intelligence and morality. If we gauge
industry by results, we find that the class which forty years ago
entered into freedom with empty hands now owns more than $300,000,000 of
property by the tax-gatherers' lists. Another estimate--cited by Prof.
Albert Bushnell Hart--puts their entire property holdings at
$500,000,000. Though most of them are tenants or hired laborers, yet
there are more than 173,000 who own their farms. The total number of
farms worked by them in the South--owned, leased, or rented on
shares--is figured at 700,000. The census of 1900 shows that in almost
every profession, trade and handicraft the black race has numerous
representatives--their range of occupation and industrial opportunity
being far wider in the South than in the North. Taking the whole
country, the percentage of adults in gainful pursuits is a trifle higher
among blacks than among whites. Allow for the more frequent employment
in toil of the black woman; allow, too, for the more intermittent
character of black labor,--yet the relative showing is not unfavorable
to the enfranchised race. And this comparison touches, too, the more
difficult problem of morality,--for industry is itself a chief safeguard
of morality.

As to intelligence, the statistics show that, roughly speaking, about
half the blacks over ten years old can read and write. That is not much