ommissioner Abercrombie.

These illustrations, so far as they concern the Gulf States, are not
exceptional cases; nor are they overdrawn.

Until there is industrial independence, it is hardly possible to have
good living and a pure ballot in the country districts. In these
States it is safe to say that not more than one black man in twenty
owns the land he cultivates. Where so large a proportion of a people
are dependent, live in other people's houses, eat other people's food,
and wear clothes they have not paid for, it is pretty hard to expect
them to live fairly and vote honestly.

I have thus far referred mainly to the Negro race. But there is
another side. The longer I live and the more I study the question, the
more I am convinced that it is not so much a problem as to what the
white man will do with the Negro as what the Negro will do with the
white man and his civilisation. In considering this side of the
subject, I thank God that I have grown to the point where I can
sympathise with a white man as much as I can sympathise with a black
man. I have grown to the point where I can sympathise with a Southern
white man as much as I can sympathise with a Northern white man.

As bearing upon the future of our civilisation, I ask of the North
what of their white brethren in the South,--those who have suffered
and are still suffering the consequences of American slavery, for
which both North and South were responsible? Those of the great and
prosperous North still owe to their less fortunate brethren of the
Caucasian race in the South, not less than to themselves, a serious
and uncompleted duty. What was the task the North asked the South to
perform? Returning to their destitute homes after years of war to face
blasted hopes, devastation, a shattered industrial system, they asked
them to add to their own burdens that of preparing in education,
politics, and economics, in a few short years, for citizenship, four
millions of former slaves. That the South, staggering under the
burden, made blunders, and that in a measure there has been
disappointment, no one need be surprised. The educators, the
statesmen, the philanthropists, have imperfectly comprehended their
duty toward the millions of poor whites in the South who were buffeted
for two hundred years between slavery and freedom, between
civilisation and degradation, who were disregarded by both master and
slave. It needs no prophet to tell the character of our future