and quasi-public places. Railroads and common carriers were compelled to provide separate accommodations for whites and blacks, "Jim Crow Cars," as they are called in popular parlance, and to furnish special seats in street railway cars. These laws have also been upheld by the courts; but not without a great strain on their logical faculties.

Undoubtedly there are mixed motives behind such legislation. It is in some part a class feeling, for whites are allowed to take their colored servants in the regular coaches and sleeping cars. Nevertheless, the race feeling unquestionably predominates. As the author of the Louisiana "Jim Crow Car" law put it: "It is not only the desire to separate the whites and blacks on the railroads for the comfort it will provide, but also for the moral effect. The separation of the races is one of the benefits, but the demonstration of the superiority of the white man over the negro is the greater thing. There is nothing that shows it more conclusively than the compelling of negroes to ride in cars marked for their especial use."

The Attitude of the North

Although all possibility of northern interference with the southern states in the management of their domestic affairs seemed to have disappeared by Cleveland's first administration, the negro question was continuously agitated by Republican politicians, and at times with great vigor. They were much distressed at losing their Federal patronage after the election of Cleveland in 1884; and this first Democratic presidential victory after the War led many of them to believe that they could recover their lost ground only by securing to the negro the right to vote. The Republicans were also deeply stirred by the over-representation of the South in the House of Representatives under the prevailing system of apportionment. They pointed out that the North was, in this respect, at even a greater disadvantage than before the Civil War and emancipation.

Under the original Constitution of the United States, only three fifths of the slaves were counted in apportioning representatives among the states; under the Fourteenth Amendment all the negroes were counted, thus enlarging the representation of the southern states. And yet the negroes were for practical purposes as disfranchised as they were when they were in servitude. It was pointed out that "in the election of 1888 the average vote cast for a member of Congress in five southern states was less than eight thousand; in five northern states, over thirty-six thousand. Kansas, which cast three times the vote of South Carolina, had only the same number of congressmen." The discrepancy tended to increase, if anything. In 1906, a Mississippi district with a population of 232,174 cast 1540 votes, while a New York district with 215,305 cast 29,119 votes.

The Republicans have several times threatened to alter this anomalous condition of affairs. In 1890, Mr. Lodge introduced in the House of Representatives a bill providing for the appointment of federal election commissioners, on petition of local voters, endowed with powers to register and count all votes, even in the face of the opposition of local officers. This measure, which passed the House, was at length killed in the Senate. In their platform of 1904, the Republicans declared in favor of restoring the negro to his rights under the Constitution, and for political purposes the party in the House later coupled a registration and election law with the measure providing for publicity of campaign contributions. It was not acted upon in the Senate. In 1908, the Republicans in their platform declared "once more and without reservation, for the enforcement in letter and spirit of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution which were designed for the protection and advancement of the negro," and condemned all devices designed to disfranchise him on grounds of color alone. Although they have been in possession of all branches of the Federal government several times, the Republicans have deemed it inexpedient to carry out their campaign promises.

With the decline in the influence of the Civil War veterans in politics, the possibility of Federal interference has steadily decreased. The North had never been abolitionist in temper or political belief, as the vote of the Free Soil party demonstrates. The Republican party was a homestead, railway, and protectionist party opposed to slavery in the territories, and its great leader, Lincoln, had long been on record as opposed to political and social equality for the negro. Emancipation had come as a stroke of fortune—not because a majority of the people had deliberately come to the conclusion that it was a measure of justice. As in the French Revolution at its height, the extreme radicals forged to the front for a time, so during the Civil War and its aftermath, "radical" Republicans held the center of the stage and gave to politics a flavor of talk about "human rights" which was foreign to practical statesmen like Clay and Webster. In a little while, practical men came to the helm once more, and they were primarily interested in economic matters—railways, finance, tariff, corporations, natural resources, and western development. The cash nexus with the South was formed once more, and made far stronger and subtler than in olden days. Agitation of the negro question became bad form in the North, except for quadrennial political purposes.

The Negro Problem

Thus the negro, suddenly elevated to a great height politically, was almost as suddenly dropped by his new friends and thrown largely upon his own ingenuity and resources for further advance. His emancipation and enfranchisement had come almost without effort on his own part, without that development of economic interest and of class consciousness that had marked the rise of other social strata to political power. It was fortuitous and had no solid foundation. It became evident, therefore, that any permanent advance of the race must be built on substantial elements of power in the race itself. The whites might help with education and industrial training, but the hope of the race lay in the development of intellectual and economic power on its own account.

In relative numerical strength the negro is not holding his own, because of the large immigration from Europe. In 1790, the negro population formed 19.3 per cent of the whole, and since that time it has almost steadily declined, reaching at the last census 10.7 per cent of the whole. Even in the southern states where the stream of foreign immigration is the least, the negro population has fallen from 35.2 per cent in 1790 to 29.8 per cent in 1910. In education, the negro has undoubtedly made great progress since the War, but it must be remembered that he was then at the bottom of the scale. The South, though poor as compared with the North, has made large expenditures for negro education, but it is authoritatively reported that "nearly half of the negro children of school age in the South never get inside of the schoolhouse."[6] The relative expenditures for the education of white and colored children there are not ascertainable, but naturally the balance is heavily in favor of the former. When we recall, however, the total illiteracy of the race under slavery and then discover that in 1910 there was an average daily attendance of 1,105,629 colored children in the southern schools, we cannot avoid the conclusion that decided changes are destined to be made in the intellectual outlook of the race.

Reports also show that negroes are accumulating considerable