, of overseeing and driving the
slaves on the plantations of the more wealthy whites, fitted the
habitual mood of the poor white exactly. No form of service was more
congenial to him than that of whipping intractable Negroes for their
masters.

It thus came to pass that the poor white man registered it as his first
duty to wreak vengeance upon this unbowing, scornful Negro standing
between him and all that was dear to his heart. This feeling of
hostility was handed over from father to son, from generation to
generation, until the very social atmosphere was charged with this
bitter feeling.

When the Civil War came this neglected and despised class suddenly
became important and furnished its quota of soldiers and commanders.
Nathan Bedford Forrest hailed from this class, and as a result the
American people have on their annals Fort Pillow and its savage-like
massacre. When the war was over, the poor white class began to bestir
itself in civil life, and from that class the nation derived the Hon.
Benjamin R. Tillman, of South Carolina.

And now literature is receiving its contribution from this class of
whites, in the work being done by Mr. Thomas Dixon, Jr., of North
Carolina, who does not hail from the more wealthy and more friendly
element of Southern whites, but from mingling with the poorer classes,
where hatred of the Negro was a part of the legacy handed down from
parent to child. For, before Mr. Dixon's marriage he was a poor man and
was viewed by the Negroes of Raleigh, N. C., as one belonging to the
class of their hereditary enemies. It is with the outpourings of a man
who has been steeped in all the traditions of this hostile atmosphere
that we are now called upon to deal.

The goal toward which Mr. Dixon is striving is the ejection from America
of nearly ten million of his fellow citizens, against the overwhelming
majority of whom he can allege no unusual offense save that they are of
African descent.

The work of their fathers and of themselves in wresting the fields of
the South from the clutch of forest; in crimsoning American soil with
their blood in every war that has been fought; in yielding of all of the
best of their heart and mind for this country's good is, according to
Mr. Dixon, to count for naught.

HARNESSING HATRED.

It is to be conceded that the presence in large numbers of two distinct
races in the same territory under a democratic form of government
constitutes a grave problem, an