rant laborers have a good chance to take refuge. And to all this must be added the obvious fact that a slave ancestry and a system of unrequited toil have not improved the efficiency or temper of the mass of black laborers. Nor is this peculiar to Sambo-it has in history been just as true of John and Hans, of Jacques and Pat, of all ground-down peasantries. Such is the situation of the mass of the Negroes in the Black Belt to-day, and they are thinking about it. Crime and a cheap, dangerous socialism are the inevitable results of this pondering. I see now that ragged black man sitting on a log, aimlessly whittling a stick. He mutters to me with the murmur of many ages when he says: "White man sit down whole year; Nigger work day and night and make crop; Nigger hardly gits bread and meat; white man sittin' down gits all. It's wrong."

A modern laboring class in most lands would find a remedy for this situation in migration. And so does the Negro, but his movement is restricted in many ways.

In considerable parts of all the gulf states, and especially in Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas, the Negroes on the plantations in the back country districts are still held at forced labor practically without wages. Especially is this true in districts where the farmers are composed of the more ignorant class of poor whites, and the Negroes are beyond the reach of schools and intercourse with their advancing fellows. If such a peon should run away, the sheriff, elected by white suffrage, can usually be depended on to catch the fugitive, return him and ask no questions. If he escape to another county, a charge of petty thieving, easily true, can be depended on to secure his return. Even if some unduly officious person insist upon a trial, neighborly comity will probably make his conviction sure, and then the labor due the county can easily be bought by the master.

Such a system is unusual in the more civilized parts of the South, or near the large towns and cities; but in those vast stretches of land beyond the telegraph and newspaper the spirit of the Fourteenth Amendment is sadly broken. This represents the lowest economic depths of the black American peasant and in a study of the rise and condition of the Negro freeholder we must trace his economic progress from this modern serfdom.

Even in the better ordered country districts of the south the free movement of agricultural laborers is hindered by the migration agent laws. The Associated Press informed the world not long since of the arrest of a young white man in south Georgia who represented the "Atlantic Naval Supplies Company," and who "was caught in the act of enticing hands from the turpentine farm of Mr. John Greer." The crime for which this young man was arrested is taxed $500 for each county in which the employment agent proposes to gather laborers for work outside the state. Thus the Negroes' ignorance of the labor market outside his own vicinity is increased rather than diminished by the laws of nearly every southern state.

Similar to such measures is the unwritten law of the back districts and small towns of the south, that the character of all Negroes unknown to the mass of the community must be vouched for by some white man. This is really a revival of the old Roman idea of the patron under whose protection the new-made freedman was put. In many instances this system has been of great good to the Negro, and very often, under the protection and guidance of the former master's family or other white friends, the freedman progressed in wealth and morality. But the same system has in other cases resulted in the refusal of whole communities to recognize the right of a Negro to change his habitation and to be master of his own fortunes. A black stranger in Baker County, Georgia, for instance is liable to be stopped anywhere on the public highway and made to state his business to the satisfaction of any white interrogator. If he fails to give a suitable answer or seems too independent or "sassy" he may be arrested or summarily driven away.

As a result of such a situation arose, first, the Black Belt and, second, the Migration to Town. The Black Belt was not, as many assumed, a movement towards fields of labor under more genial climatic conditions; it was primarily a huddling together for self-protection; a massing of the black population for mutual defense in order to secure the peace and tranquility necessary to economic advance. This movement took place between emancipation and 1880 and only partially accomplished the desired results. The rush to town since 1880 is the counter movement of men disappointed in the economic opportunities of the Black Belt.

In Dougherty County, Georgia, one can see easily the results of this experiment in huddling for protection. Only ten per cent. of the adult population was born in the county, and yet the blacks outnumber the whites four or five to one. There is undoubtedly a security to the blacks in their very numbers--a personal freedom from arbitrary treatment, which makes hundreds of laborers cling to Dougherty in spite of low wages and economic distress. But a change is coming, and slowly but surely even here the agricultural laborers are drifting to town and leaving the broad acres behind. Why is this? Why do not the Negroes become landowners and build up the black landed peasantry, which has for a generation and more been the dream of philanthropist and statesman?

This is the question which this paper seeks to answer; it seeks to trace the rise of the black freeholder in one county of Georgia's Black Belt, and his struggle for survival, to picture present conditions and show why migration to town is the Negro's remedy. To the car-window sociologist, to the man who seeks to understand and know the south by devoting the few leisure hours of a holiday trip to unraveling the snarl of centuries-to such men very often the whole trouble with the black field-hand may be summed up by Aunt Ophelia's word: "Shiftless!" And yet they are not lazy, these men; they work hard when they do work, and they work willingly. They have no sordid selfish money-getting ways but rather a fine disdain for mere cash. They'll loaf before your face and work behind your back with good-natured honesty. Their great defect as laborers lies in their lack of incentive to work beyond the mere pleasure of physical exertion. They are careless because they have not found that it pays to be careful; they are improvident because the improvident ones of their acquaintance get on about as well as the provident. Above all they cannot see why they should take unusual pains to make the white man's land better or to take more care of his mule and corn.

On the other hand the white land-owner argues that any attempt to improve these laborers by increased responsibility or higher wages or better homes or land of their own would be sure to result in failure. He shows his northern visitor the scarred land; the ruined mansions, the worn-out soil and mortgaged acres and says, "This is Negro freedom!"

Now it happens that both master and man have just enough argument on their respective sides to make it difficult for them to understand each other. The Negro dimly personifies in the white man all his ills and misfortunes; if he is poor it is because the white man secures the fruits of his toil; if he is ignorant it is because the white man gives him neither time nor facilities to learn. And, indeed, if any misfortune happens to him it is because of some hidden machinations of "white folks." On the other hand the masters and the masters' sons have never been able to see why the Negroes, instead of settling down to be day laborers for bread and clothes, are infected with a silly desire to "rise" in the world, and are sulky, dissatisfied and careless where their fathers were happy and dumb and faithful. "Why! these niggers have an easier time than I do," said a puzzled Albany merchant to his black customer. "Yes," he replied, "and so does yo' hogs."

66

Looking now.at the county black population as a whole, we might attempt to divide it roughly into social classes. Forty-four families, all landowners, from their intelligence, property and home life would correspond to good middle class people anywhere. Seventysix other families are honest working people of fair intelligence. One hundred and twentyfive families fall distinctly below the line of respectability and should be classed with the lewd, vicious and potentially criminal. This leaves the mass of the population, 1,229 families composed of the poor, the ignorant, the plodding toilers and shiftless workers-honest and well-meaning, with some, but not great, sexual looseness, handicapped by their history and present economic condition.

The class lines are by no means fixed and immutable. A bad harvest may ruin many of the best and increase the numbers of the

worst.

The croppers are entirely without capital, even in the limited sense of food or money, to keep them from seed-time to harvest. All they furnish then is labor; the landowner furnishes land, stock, tools, seed and house, and at the end of the year the laborer gets from a third to a half of the crop. Out of his share, however, comes payment and interest for food and clothing advanced him during the year. Thus we have a laborer without capital and without wages, and an employer whose capital is largely his employees' wages. It is

an unsatisfactory arrangement both to hirer and hired, and is usually in vogue on poor land with hard-pressed owners.

Above the croppers come the great mass of the black population who work the land on their own responsibility, paying rent in cotton and supported by the crop mortgage system. After the war this system was attractive to the freedmen on account of its larger freedom and its possibilities for making a surplus. But with the carrying out of the crop-lien system, the deterioration of the land and the slavery of debt, the position of the metayers has sunk to a dead level of practically unrewarded toil. Formerly all tenants had some capital, and often considerable, but absentee landlordism, rack-rent and falling cotton, have stripped them well nigh of all, and probably not over half of them in 1898 owned mules. The change from cropper to tenant was accomplished by fixing the rent. If, now, the rent fixed was reasonable, this was an incentive to the tenant to strive. On the other hand, if the rent was too high, or if the land deteriorated, the result was to discourage and check the efforts of the black peasantry. There is no doubt that the latter case is true; thus in Dougherty county every economic advantage of the price of cotton in the market and of the strivings of the tenant, has been taken advantage of by the landlords and merchants, and swallowed up in rent and interest. If cotton rose in price, the rent rose even higher. If cotton fell the rent remained, or followed reluctantly. If a tenant worked hard and raised a large crop, his rent was raised the next year. If that year the crop If that year the crop failed, his corn was confiscated and his mule sold for debt. There were, of course, exceptions to this-cases of personal kindness and forbearance, but in the vast majority of cases the rule was to extract the uttermost farthing from the mass of the black farm laborers.

The result of such rack-rent can only be evil-abuse and neglect of the soil, deterioration in the character of the laborers, and a widespread sense of injustice. On this low plane half the black population of Dougherty county-perhaps more than half the black millions of this land-are to-day struggling.

A degree above these we may place those laborers who receive money for their work. Some receive a house with perhaps a garden spot, their supplies of food and clothing advanced and certain fixed wages at the end of

the year varying from $30 to $60, out of which the supplies must be paid for with interest. About 18 per cent. of the population belong to this class of semi-metayers, while 22 per cent. are laborers paid by the month or year and either "furnished" by their own savings or perhaps more usually by some merchant who takes his chances of payment. Such laborers receive 35 cents to 40 cents a day during the working season. They are usually young unmarried persons, some being women, and when they marry they sink to the class of metayers, or, more seldom, be

come renters.

The renters for fixed money rentals are the first of the emerging classes and form 4.6 per cent. of the families. The sole advantage of this small class is their freedom to choose their crops, and the increased responsibility which comes through having money transactions. While some of the renters differ little in condition from the metayers, yet on the whole they are more intelligent and responsible persons and are the ones who eventually become landowners.

Landholding in this county by Negroes has steadily increased. They held nothing in 1870, but in 1880 they had 2,500 acres. By 1890 this had increased to 10,000 acres, and to 15,000 acres in 1898, owned by 81 families. Of the 185 Negro families who at one time or another have held land in this county during the last thirty years, I held his land 25 to 30 years; 4 held their land 20-25 years; 12 held their land 15-20 years; 12 held their land 10-15 years; 41 held their land 5-10 years, and 115 held their land 1-5 years. Most of those in the shorter period still hold their land, so that the record is not complete.

If all the black landowners who had ever held land here had kept it or left it in the hands of black men, the Negroes would have owned nearer 30,000 acres than the 15,000 they now hold. And yet these 15,000 acres are a creditable showing-a proof of no little weight of the worth and ability of the Negro people. If they had been given an economic start at emancipation, if they had been in an enlightened and rich community which really desired their best good, then we might perhaps call such a result small or even insignificant. But for a few thousand ignorant field hands in the face of poverty, a falling market, and social stress to save and capitalize $200,ooo in a generation has meant a tremendous

effort. The rise of a nation, the pressing forward of a social class, means a bitter struggle-a hard and soul-sickening battle with the world such as few of the more favored classes know or appreciate.

Out of the hard economic conditions of this portion of the Black Belt only six per cent. of the population have succeeded in emerging into peasant-proprietorship, and these are not all firmly fixed, but grow and shrink in number with the wavering of the cotton market. Fully 94 per cent. have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom. For these there is one other avenue of escape toward which they have turned in increasing numbers, namely, migration to town. A glance at the distribution of land among the black owners curiously reveals this fact. In 1898 the holdings were as follows: Under 40 acres,

And

49 families; 40 to 250 acres, 17 families; 250 to 1,000 acres, 13 families; 1,000 or more acres, 2 families. Now in 1890 there were forty-four holdings, but only nine of these were under forty acres. The great increase of holdings then has come in the buying of small homesteads near town, where their owners really share in the town life. This then is a part of the rush to town. for every landowner who has thus hurried away from the narrow life and hard conditions of country life how many field hands, how many tenants, how many ruined renters have joined that long procession? Is it not strange compensation? The sin of the country districts is visited on the town, and the social sores of city life to-day may, here in Dougherty county and perhaps in many places, near and far, look for their final healing without the city walls.

O

F all the differences in this land of contrast, none are more remarkable than those in the education of our children. The contrast extends to the schoolhouses. Side by side with buildings almost ideal in sanitary construction and equipment stand others that defy hygienic laws in almost every respect. The purpose of the present paper is to relate some facts in regard to the actual American schoolhouse, and to describe briefly an ideal one.

Investigation of the condition of Boston schoolhouses was begun in 1895 by a committee of the Collegiate Alumnæ, and reports were made by them, and also by an expert committee appointed by Mayor Quincy. Some of the results of this investigation, cited from an article by Mrs. Allen Upton Pearmain,

chairman of the committee, are as follows: Of ninety-five buildings over two stories high, only twenty-seven had good fire-escapes. One hundred and thirty-six buildings had an aggregate of 346 cesspools in playgrounds, cleaned irregularly, and those in connection with ten buildings were never cleaned. The Board of Health had repeatedly condemned the sanitaries in 126 schools, and of these twentytwo were old-style yard vaults. Only fortytwo out of sixty-nine schools reported satisfactory ventilation. In sixteen buildings the ventilating shaft entered the attic, which in some cases was kept closed. Only thirteen buildings reported the required initial airspace, 250 cubic feet per pupil. Twentyseven has less than 150 cubic feet per pupil. The law requires thirty cubic feet of air

"Inside the buildings are constantly met conditions showing lack of expert knowledge and judgment in permitting certain things to be done in the way they are, and in continuing old methods that would not be allowed an instant in progressive private work. If cases like these came within the observation of the Health Department, in their inspection of private houses, alterations would be peremptorily ordered, with the alternative of closing the building against all occupation."

Since the report of the investigation of the Collegiate Alumnæ many improvements have been made, but the conditions are still far from ideal.

Following the example of Boston a committee of the School Association of the city of Buffalo made a similar investigation. This committee, of which Dr. F. M. McMurry, now of Columbia University, was the chairman, reported schoolhouses "for years overcrowded," buildings rented "practically unfit for school use," twenty-five annexes in use, "more than one-half of the schools using rooms that were never intended for that purpose," attics, halls, basements, cloakrooms, etc., lack of seats, more pupils than desks, lack of air space in the majority of rooms, in some rooms not more than sixtyeight to eighty-three cubic feet per pupil, instead of 250 required, seventeen schools with no system of ventilation, insufficient light, wraps hung in the schoolroom, few adjustable seats and desks, and those in the same room usually of about the same size. The report of individual schools shows the

defects more concretely. The following is a single illustration:

School 37. At Peach and Carlton streets. "End of upper hall is used for class-room. In three rooms there are more pupils than desks. Twenty-five of the twenty-eight rooms are deficient in air space. Halls and class-rooms are papered. The closets for the pupils are in the basement; those for the teachers at the end of the cloak-rooms. These basement rooms have very little light and no ventilation whatever. The flues that were built to conduct the air from those rooms open into the grade-rooms and in the room above. At times it was necessary to dismiss the pupils, on account of the nausea brought on by this foul air. Until this year the system of ventilation was practically useless, and the air throughout the building was bad. There were many complaints of headache, drowsiness and defective power of attention due to the bad air. Relief had been asked for many times, but only this summer has this school been provided with what is hoped will prove an adequate system of ventilation. This school is very crowded. Some rooms are so crowded with desks that children are almost in contact with the steam pipes. In others, two children must occupy a single seat, or three a double one, while others sit on the teacher's platform. The ends of the upper hall are partitioned off for class use. Masses of clothing, often wet, hang in the halls diffusing odors throughout the building, while in four rooms, as stated, the children's wraps are hung on the walls underneath the blackboards. These rooms are so filled with children that those in the seats nearest the walls must sit almost in contact

with these wraps. In winter waterproofs, umbrellas, etc., must also lie on the floors. It is a condition which a proper regard for school hygiene would not allow for a day."

A more recent report by the same Association (1899) notes improvement, and yet enumerates among still existing defectsovercrowding, defective plumbing, unsatisfactory ventilation, inadequate light, schools without fire-escapes and "ten pasteboard annexes still in use."

Time would fail to tell of the investigations of the Arundel Good Government Club in Baltimore and of the Collegiate Alumnæ in Oakland, Cal., and of other special studies. They show that neglect of school hygiene is confined to no section of the country. Even in the city of Washington, where one might suppose plenty of money for school purposes would be available, the sanitary conditions are not ideal as shown by an investigation made by the Committee on Education of the Civic