in the Negro question. He absolutely refused to give any information and did not think it worth while to answer such questions, although he admitted that his union had no colored people and would never accept them." To be thoroughly concrete, however, let us consider the Negro plasterers of Pittsburgh. On January 1, 1917, about thirty of these men, discriminated against by the local white union, wrote to the national organization in Middletown, Ohio, asking formally to have a local body of their own. Headquarters sent back reply to the effect that a charter could not be given without the consent of the older organization. Then followed a meeting in which the Negro secretary was given five minutes before the white local at its regular meeting. Nothing resulted. Under such circumstances is it any wonder that Negroes adopt a canny attitude when labor unions are concerned? More than this, can not organized labor itself realize the dangers for all in this hostile attitude toward the black race?

In spite of the labor unions, however, the Negro has gone North. The war, suddenly putting an end to the great immigrant stream from Europe, brought a sudden demand for unskilled labor undreamed of five years ago. Nobody knows how many Negroes have gone from the South to the North within the last three years. Perhaps 500,000; perhaps even 200,000 more. We do know, however, that they have gone in amazing numbers; and the thing of really vital importance is that these people shall be adequately adjusted to their new environment. Some opportunity should be afforded them to rise from the ranks of unskilled into those of skilled laborers. It is moreover of the highest importance that these newcomers to our large cities shall be adequately housed. Thirty persons are known to have lived recently in a seven-room house in Philadelphia; and in Pittsburgh 57 out of 390 rooms investigated have shown over six persons using the same room. In many cases the paper is torn off the walls, plaster sags from the laths, windows are broken, and the ceiling is low and damp. The whole question is of course closely connected with disease and mortality. In many places, and even in some of our training camps, there is too little opportunity for wholesome refreshment for the Negro. When will our cities learn that tuberculosis and typhoid fever are no respecter of persons? It is not enough to isolate bad cases after they are found out. The conditions of home sanitation, or lack of sanitation, that lead to these should be made impossible. I recall a section of pleasant homes in the West End of Atlanta. Suddenly, in the midst of clean, comfortable little cottages for white people there yawned before me an alley in which Negroes lived, with its dilapidated two-room dwellings, general lack of cleanliness, and its unwholesome air. From these places came the cooks and the washerwomen for the white families in the neighborhood; and this condition in one section of Atlanta can be duplicated in any city in the South, and in many in the North.

In 1910 the death-rate in 57 representative cities was 27.8 per 1,000 for Negroes and 15.9 for white people. The rates for both white people and Negroes were higher in the South than in the North, but not a great deal more so. Among the Negroes the diseases that overwhelmingly outnumbered the others in their victims were tuberculosis and pneumonia. Can any one doubt that this is due to the unsanitary conditions under which these people are in many instances forced to live?

To argue, however, that the Negro should be looked after in order that white people should be protected is to be guilty of a fallacy. All should be protected because all should have the best chance at life that their city or their state can afford them. All the more important is the question since it involves the welfare of three million men and women upon whom so largely rest the burdens of our farming, our mining, our railroading, our planing industries, and our home life.

The war has already taught us many things, and among the most important is the need for a new adjustment of social and economic values. If we are to be together in a crisis we must be together in times of peace, with the broadest sympathy one for another. Especially must we give due consideration to those who have the hardest work to do. Too long have some few become rich by exploiting the poor, the unprotected, the ignorant. True democracy does not mean that any one race or any one class shall be on top or at the bottom, but that all shall advance together to the height of human attainment. Only thus can we finally be secure. Only thus can our country be the country of our dreams.

IV

LYNCHINGToC

Within the last thirty-five years 3,200 Negro men and women have been lynched within the boundaries of the United States, an average of just a little less than 100 a year. While there has been some decrease within recent years, the figures between 1890 and 1900 were so extraordinary that the average is still high. Nor can one find much comfort in the fact that there has been some decrease within recent years, for some of the most recent cases were those of the most revolting torture. The year 1917 moreover was marked by the greatest outbreak of mob violence that the race has ever suffered, considerably more than one hundred Negro men, women, and children losing their lives in East St. Louis.

Fifteen years ago, in Mississippi, a Negro became involved in a quarrel with a white man who was just about to shoot him when the Negro himself fired, fatally wounding the man. He then fled to the woods and his wife accompanied him. Bloodhounds were sent after them, and after a long chase they were captured. Then followed such torture as is without parallel even in the history of lynching. The man and his wife were both tied to trees, one after another their fingers were cut off, then their ears, both fingers and ears being distributed as souvenirs among the members of the mob. The supreme stroke, however, was still to come. A large corkscrew was bored into the more fleshy parts of the two writhing bodies, and so jerked out as to tear out large pieces of flesh. Both the man and his wife were then burned alive. And the sun still shone in heaven!

Such is the story that with necessary differences of situation and detail has disgraced our country for forty years. Within eight months recently the state of Tennessee has been distinguished by three separate burnings. At Dyersburg a red-hot poker was rammed down the throat of the victim, and he was further mutilated in ways indecent and unmentionable. At Estill Springs all the colored people in the vicinity were made to walk around the scene of the burning as an object-lesson. Of Henry Smith in Texas some years ago we are told that "he was taken from his guards, red-hot irons were thrust into his eyes, down his throat, and on his abdomen, and he was then burned." In the case of Jesse Washington, a Negro boy of seventeen, in Waco, Texas, in May, 1916, we read: "On the way to the scene of the burning, people on every hand took a hand in showing their feelings in the matter by striking the Negro with anything obtainable; some struck him with shovels, bricks, clubs, and others stabbed him and cut him until when he was strung up his body was a solid color of red." It was estimated that the boy had twenty-five stab wounds. "Fingers, ears, pieces of