under classes VI and VII, while the remainder of the empire has an area of but 1,684,224 hectares under this heading. The population of the provinces and states, with the maximum of large holdings, represented in table B is 15,500,000; that of the rest of the empire represented by table A, with the minimum of large holdings, is 41,000,000.

These figures furnish a key to the economic, social, and political complications which surround the fatherland; but it is not the object of these pages to deal with them. It is obvious that the large numbers do not represent such holders of land as are interested in the duties on corn and other agricultural products. A preponderance of small and medium holdings is opposed to an insignificant minimum in large holdings in all the states and provinces where small holdings predominate. On the other hand, where the large holdings absorb the large percentage of the area shown in the second table, the small tenant almost disappears. The part of the peasantry that is represented in class III is possessed of barely one-half of the ratio of the area that is absorbed by the corresponding class in my first table. The contrast between the Eastern provinces of Prussia, on the one hand, and the industrial provinces of the monarchy with the rest of Germany, on the other, is well illustrated by these showings. The contest is one between the Northeast, where feudal conditions have still a strong foothold, and the rest of the empire, where democratic tendencies prevail.

What has been set forth in detail may be thus recapitulated: Of 5,558,317 agricultural tenancies classified in the census of 1895, as many as 3,236,367 tenants, who occupy respectively not more than 2 hectares, are excluded, on account of the smallness of their holdings, from all participation in the benefits of the tariff. They are heavily burdened, as they have to buy their articles of food, whether bread, flour, or meat. Those who are found in class II (2 to 5 hectares), numbering 1,016,318 persons, produce no salable surplus, and have frequently to buy corn, and in most cases a part or the whole of the flesh food they consume. They are not benefited, but burdened to the extent that they become purchasers. Class III (5 to 20 hectares), numbering 998,804 heads, shows an average of but 12 hectares to each holder. It follows that a great percentage in this class comes near the lower limit of size in holdings. Without reference to the estimate by the Baden report of 15 hectares as the point at which the high grain duties become of benefit to the producer, we may assume that one-half of that number may be considered to derive some benefit from the high tariff. They look, however, with indifference on these duties, as they declare in the report pre

viously quoted, because their interests are too insignificant. The other classes number in all 307,000 heads. They hold from 20 to 500 hectares and over. But of these again, it must be remembered, 25,000 hold nearly as much land as the remaining 280,000. It is in their interest alone that all these burdens are heaped upon the peasantry and the industrial classes of Germany.

With consummate skill the privileged classes keep themselves free, and put the burdens of taxation upon the peasantry and the industrial classes in a double or treble degree. That the working classes are little able to stand up under increased burdens is clearly proved by the conditions which now rule in all the industries of Germany. The miserable wages paid to working-men seldom permit them to lay aside a penny for a rainy day. The iron and coal industries have never been so prosperous as in the last two years. Millions and tens of millions have been heaped up in profits by the lucky owners of mines and furnaces. But, as shown in a previous number of THE FORUM, the increases in wages have been of the paltriest nature.' The wages of miners, which were 3.75 marks (90 cents) in 1895 rose to 4.55 ($1.09) in the boom time, and those of day laborers from 2.74 marks (63 cents) in 1895 to 3.04 marks (73 cents). We may judge from the mining industry, the most prosperous in the empire, what the condition must be in less fortunate fields, and in times of relapse.

From what has been shown in the course of this article, it is evident that the tariff increases proposed by the German Reichsrath can in no way inflict a very serious injury upon American interests, or, for that matter, upon the interests of any foreign state. But that their enactment would be a most cruel infliction upon the German people for the sole benefit of 300,000 landholders is clearly demonstrable, and permits of no doubt. JACOB SCHOENHOF.

"The Nations in Competition at the Close of the Century." THE FORUM for

March, 1901.

THE SOUTHERN PROBLEM.

MR. BAILEY'S special plea in THE FORUM for April, 1901, entitled "The Case for the South," is one of many indications that the greatest problem facing the United States since the Civil War has reached the stage at which attempted solutions are the subject of calm and reasonable discussion. In other words, the practical side is uppermost, and sentiment and prejudice are compelled by the logic of events to take the second place. That may not be true in the case of every man or every community; for intolerance is not confined to either side of Mason and Dixon's line. The intolerance of the Northern man in this question comes from an ignorance of the facts; that of the Southerner from the idea that the results of ordinary experience are final. It cannot be doubted that before any impartial tribunal the position of the Southern man would be the stronger; and yet in the position adopted by the Southerner there is a fatal weakness which comes as near putting him out of court as does the Northern man's ignorance. I mean, of course, when the case is considered from a strictly judicial standpoint; for the Southern man's practical knowledge is invaluable. It is not too much to say that the North really concedes this, and will watch the South with critical and apparently unsympathetic eye while it works out its own salvation.

Naturally, an occasional politician and editor will rail in unrestrained fashion at the disfranchisement of the negro, and will threaten the enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment; but the best evidence that there is nothing behind such protests is the fact that the legal disfranchisement of the negroes in several of the Southern States is an accepted fact. To be sure, Maryland is the only one that has taken an unassailable position. The others have admitted illiterate whites and have barred practically all blacks; but the results are accepted in a tolerant if not an approving mood.

Mr. Bailey sums up by saying: "So, then, I submit that it is good statesmanship to leave the South to her own way in working out her salvation from the ignorant negro vote." Good! She already has it. To that can only be added the advice: Now make the best of it.

What is the best that can be made of it? Is it to proceed on the assumption that experience of the negro as a slave, or as a slave suddenly freed, is final? This would be a fatal error. As well might one assume to judge of the capacities of a man in health from observing his petulance as an invalid. This would be as hopelessly unjust and foolish as was the Northern man's idea that the former masters of the negroes were not their best friends. Of course, the point of view is to blame for this misconception. The Southern man can see the Northern man's folly, but he cannot imagine his own, even when he admits the remarkable intellectual and material advancement of the negro in one generation. That advancement is none the less marked because of his relatively low position to-day. The negro's condition a little over a generation ago has been most vividly portrayed by Ex-Secretary Herbert, as follows:

"Not in all of the imaginings of the Arabian Nights is there any concept so startling as the sudden manumission of four millions of slaves, left unshackled to shift for themselves—without property, without resources excepting their labor, without mental training, and with no traditions, save only such as connected them with bondage and barbarism.”

Yet, Mr. Bailey solemnly asserts that it is unreasonable to hope that the negro can be fitted for the responsibilities of the ballot in two hundred years. There is the fatal weakness of the Southerner's position. No man has any right to predict what standard of development or decadence any race of human beings will attain in two hundred years. It all depends upon circumstances.

Aside from the negro's savage ancestors and his position of irresponsibility as a slave, he has missed, for the most part, the influences of even the most-rudimentary sort of home life. Under the exigencies of the slave system, the humblest home had no chance of permanency, and consequently had but little influence. Among the civilized races that have gone far on the road of progress, the family life of the people is reckoned the foundation of self-respect and morality. The negroes in the United States thirty-five years ago had, however, scarcely any better developed traditions of family life than the birds that mate in the spring.

But the generation born since the war and now rearing young children possesses a home life, poor as it must be in a majority of instances. Their children's children, the proverbial third generation, will inherit certain family traditions and ideas of training. What those traditions and ideas are will depend upon the education of the fathers and grandfathers. Suppose, for instance, that a negro, now of the age of thirty, has received at the institution conducted by Mr. Booker T. Washington, at

Tuskegee, a common-school education and the knowledge of a trade, together with some ideas of proper living. Suppose, too, that his children and grandchildren will have a similar training. Will any man undertake to lay down the positive dictum that those grandchildren will be more unfit for the responsibilities of the ballot than the children of the European peasants who vote in all our States? Will any man, not blinded by prejudice and intolerance, claim that he can predict the future of the negro race before he has seen the third generation born outside of slavery -a generation possessing some idea of a home, and a little education and knowledge of skilled labor? That will be sixty years hence, almost a hundred years after the period of slavery. Will any man, who has given the subject an hour's thought, deny the reasonableness of suspending judgment? The extent to which favorable conditions will obtain will depend upon public-spirited men and the voters who sustain their policy.

Of course, all the race will not come under the beneficent influences of Tuskegee, Hampton, and other centres of practical education; but already in the maturity of the first generation born since the war, the leavening influences of the best education are distinctly a factor in the problem. If the South is to make the best of its tacit freedom to settle its own peculiar troubles, it will be necessary for it to adopt a new point of view in estimating the capabilities of the black man, not so much in the present generation as in the generations to come.

There can be no reasonable objection to an educational qualification for the franchise; but a test of this kind ought to be a fair one, and it ought to apply to all the citizens in the State. To allow an illiterate man to vote because his grandfather voted, and to debar another because of his ignorance, is for the law-making power to stultify itself and to destroy, by its own act, the respect of honest men. To leave to the discretion of election officers the choice of questions to determine a man's qualifications for the ballot is to make a farce of the whole proceeding. For instance, how many white men of fair intelligence can explain the meaning of that provision in the State constitutions which prohibits the making of ex post facto laws?

As for the lack of sympathy of the North for the South, it is probably a lack of comprehension rather than anything else; it is certainly not active antagonism. The attitude of the North is undoubtedly critical, but that is always the case in families and nations. The people of the North value our united country quite as highly as the people of the South love the Union. The progress of both sections is a matter of GEORGE A. THACHER.

ratulation, pride, and

criticism.