hands and servants.

To-day there are two and a half million laborers, the majority of whom are
efficient wage earners. Above these are more than a million servants and
tenant farmers; skilled and semi-skilled workers make another million and
at the top of the economic column are 600,000 owners and managers of farms
and businesses, cash tenants, officials, and professional men. This makes
a total of 5,192,535 colored breadwinners in 1910.

More specifically these breadwinners include 218,972 farm owners and
319,346 cash farm tenants and managers. There were in all 62,755 miners,
288,141 in the building and hand trades; 28,515 workers in clay, glass,
and stone; 41,739 iron and steel workers; 134,102 employees on railways;
62,822 draymen, cab drivers, and liverymen; 133,245 in wholesale and
retail trade; 32,170 in the public service; and 69,471 in professional
service, including 29,750 teachers, 17,495 clergymen, and 4,546
physicians, dentists, trained nurses, etc. Finally, we must not forget
2,175,000 Negro homes, with their housewives, and 1,620,000 children in
school.

Fifty years ago the overwhelming mass of these people were not only
penniless, but were themselves assessed as real estate. By 1875 the
Negroes probably had gotten hold of something between 2,000,000 and
4,000,000 acres of land through their bounties as soldiers and the low
price of land after the war. By 1880 this was increased to about 6,000,000
acres; in 1890 to about 8,000,000 acres; in 1900 to over 12,000,000 acres.
In 1910 this land had increased to nearly 20,000,000 acres, a realm as
large as Ireland.

The 120,738 farms owned by Negroes in 1890 increased to 218,972 in 1910,
or eighty-one per cent. The value of these farms increased from
$179,796,639 in 1900 to $440,992,439 in 1910; Negroes owned in 1910 about
500,000 homes out of a total of 2,175,000. Their total property in 1900
was estimated at $300,000,000 by the American Economic Association. On the
same basis of calculation it would be worth to-day not less than
$800,000,000.

Despite the disfranchisement of three-fourths of his voting population,
the Negro to-day is a recognized part of the American government. He holds
7,500 offices in the executive service of the nation, besides furnishing
four regiments in the army and a large number of sailors. In the state and
municipal service he holds nearly 20,000 other offices, and he furnishes
500,000 of the votes which rule the Union.

In