this legislation had to be accomplished in
the face of the labor movement throughout the world, and particularly in
the South, where it was beginning to enter among the white workers. This
was accomplished easily, however, by an appeal to race prejudice. No
method of inflaming the darkest passions of men was unused. The lynching
mob was given its glut of blood and egged on by purposely exaggerated and
often wholly invented tales of crime on the part of perhaps the most
peaceful and sweet-tempered race the world has ever known. Under the flame
of this outward noise went the more subtle and dangerous work. The
election laws passed in the states where three-fourths of the Negroes
live, were so ingeniously framed that a black university graduate could be
prevented from voting and the most ignorant white hoodlum could be
admitted to the polls. Labor laws were so arranged that imprisonment for
debt was possible and leaving an employer could be made a penitentiary
offense. Negro schools were cut off with small appropriations or wholly
neglected, and a determined effort was made with wide success to see that
no Negro had any voice either in the making or the administration of
local, state, or national law.

The acquiescence of the white labor vote of the South was further insured
by throwing white and black laborers, so far as possible, into rival
competing groups and making each feel that the one was the cause of the
other's troubles. The neutrality of the white people of the North was
secured through their fear for the safety of large investments in the
South, and through the fatalistic attitude common both in America and
Europe toward the possibility of real advance on the part of the darker
nations.

The reaction of the Negro Americans upon this wholesale and open attempt
to reduce them to serfdom has been interesting. Naturally they began to
organize and protest and in some cases to appeal to the courts. Then, to
their astonishment, there arose a colored leader, Mr. Booker T.
Washington, who advised them to yield to disfranchisement and caste and
wait for greater economic strength and general efficiency before demanding
full rights as American citizens. The white South naturally agreed with
Mr. Washington, and the white North thought they saw here a chance for
peace in the racial conflict and safety for their Southern investments.

For a time the colored people hesitated. They respected Mr. Washington for
shrewdness and