Sociology and Modern Social Problems Part 12

Statistics from other Northern communities tell the same story.

The vital statistics of Southern cities show that the negro death rate is very much higher than the white death rate. In ten Southern cities, for example, Hoffman gives the average death rate for the whites as 20 per thousand for the white population, and for the negroes as 32.6 per thousand of the negro population. These same cities in 1901-1905 showed an annual average death rate for the whites of 17.5 and for the negroes of 28.4. In several cities the negro death rate is nearly twice that of the whites. When these mortality statistics are a.n.a.lyzed, moreover, while they show that negro mortality at all ages is greater than white mortality, it is greatest among negro children under fifteen years of age. This is of course largely because of the ignorant manner in which negroes care for their children, but it also indicates that natural selection is at work among the American negroes rapidly eliminating the biologically unfit.

_Conclusions from Negro Vital Statistics._ Three important conclusions may be drawn from the negro vital and population statistics which are well worth emphasizing. (1) The negro population is not increasing so fast as the white, owing largely to its high death rate, yet it is increasing, and there is no indication as yet that the negro population will decrease. It is probable, indeed, that at the end of the twentieth century the negro population of the United States will be between twenty and thirty millions. The view of some students of the negro problem that the negro is destined to an early extinction in this country is merely a speculative hypothesis, and as yet is not substantiated by any statistical facts.

(2) While the negro is destined to be with us always, so far as we can see, yet owing to the fact of intermixture of races he will be less and less a pure negro, so that at the end of the twentieth century the negroes in the United States will be much nearer the white type than at the present time.

(3) The high death rate among the negroes indicates that a rapid process of natural selection is going on among them. Now, natural selection means the elimination of the unfit,--the dying out of those who cannot adapt themselves to their environment. This selective process will tend toward the survival of the more fit elements among the negroes, and, therefore, towards bringing the negro up to the standard of the whites.

The misery and vice which we see among the present American negroes are simply in a large degree the expression of the working of a process of natural selection among them. It would be preferable, however, if the white race could by education and other means subst.i.tute to some degree at least artificial selection for the miseries and brutality of the natural process of eliminating the unfit. This the superior race should do to protect itself as well as to raise the negro.

Industrial Conditions Among the Negroes.--Recently a committee of the American Economic a.s.sociation estimated that all of the taxable property in the United States owned by negroes amounted to $300,000,000, or about $33.00 per head,--this estimate being based upon the 1900 census returns. Thirty-three dollars per head of the negro population seems of course very small when compared to the $1,000.00 per capita owned by the whites; but we must remember that the negro at his emanc.i.p.ation was in no way equipped to acquire property, and, with the exception of a few freedmen, the negro at the close of the war had no property whatsoever.

In a few cases their old masters set up the emanc.i.p.ated negroes with small farms. In 1900 there were 746,715 farms occupied by negroes either as tenants or owners. Twenty-five per cent of these farms were owned by negroes and about ten per cent were owned unenc.u.mbered.

There are, of course, two ways of looking at these statistics. They are discouraging if we care to look at them in that way, but on the other hand, if we consider the disadvantageous position in which the negro was placed at the close of the Civil War, the statistics may be taken as showing a marked advance.

It must be said here that, as Booker Was.h.i.+ngton has urged, the negro problem is largely of an industrial nature. It is the unsatisfactoriness of the negro as a worker, as a producing agent, that gives rise largely to the friction between the two races. The negro has not yet become adapted to a system of free contract and is frequently unreliable as a laborer. This breeds continued antagonism between the races. It is only necessary here to remark that when the negro becomes an efficient producer and a property owner the negro problem will be practically solved.

Educational Progress Among the Negroes.--The educational progress among the negroes has been more satisfactory than their industrial progress.

At the time of the emanc.i.p.ation 95 per cent of all the negroes in the United States were illiterate, since nearly all the slave states had laws forbidding the education of negroes. Since the emanc.i.p.ation there has been a rapid decrease of illiteracy. In 1880 seventy per cent of the negroes above the age of ten years were still reported as illiterate. In 1890, 56.8 per cent; and in 1900, 44.6 per cent. The number of illiterate negro voters in the United States in 1900 was 47.3 per cent of the total number of negro males above the age of twenty-one. The per cent of illiterate negro voters ranged all the way in former slave-holding states from 61.3 per cent in Louisiana to 31.9 per cent in Missouri, while in Ma.s.sachusetts the percentage of negro illiteracy was only 10 per cent.

In the school year 1907-08, in the sixteen Southern states there were 1,665,000 negro children enrolled in the public schools, this number being 54.36 per cent of the negro population of the school age (five to eighteen). The number of white children enrolled was 4,692,000, or 70.34 per cent of the white population of school age. But these statistics fail to indicate the utter inadequacy of many provisions for the education of the negro children. In many districts of the South the negro schools are open only from three to five months in a year,--the equipment of the school being very inadequate and the teacher poorly trained. Nevertheless the sixteen Southern states have spent, since the emanc.i.p.ation, over $175,000,000 to maintain separate schools for negroes, a much larger sum than all that has been given by Northern philanthropy. In addition to the common schools for negroes there were in 1907-08 one hundred and thirty-five inst.i.tutions for the higher education of the negro with an annual income of over $2,800,000. In these there were 4185 negro students receiving collegiate or professional training, 17,279 were receiving a high school course, and 23,160 industrial training. The latter figure is important because it indicates that in 1907-08 a little more than one per cent of the total number of negro children in school were receiving industrial training.

The percentage is increasing, through the fact that industrial training is being introduced into a number of the city schools for negroes, both North and South; but at present not much over one per cent of the negro children are receiving industrial training.

Political Conditions.--Not much need be said concerning the political condition of the negro. The movement to disfranchise the negro by legal means came in 1890 when the new Mississippi const.i.tution adopted in that year provided that every voter should be able to read or interpret a clause in the const.i.tution of the United States. Since then a majority of the Southern states and practically all of the states of the "Black Belt" have embodied either in their const.i.tutions or laws provisions for disfranchising the negro voter. Louisiana made the provision that a person must be able to read and write or be a lineal descendant of some person who voted prior to 1860. This is the famous "Grandfather Clause,"

which has since proved popular in a number of Southern states. While these laws and const.i.tutional provisions have evidently been designed to disfranchise the negro voter, the Federal Supreme Court has upheld them in spite of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution.

Regarding all of this legislation it may be said that it has had perhaps both good and bad effects. In so far as it has tended to eliminate the negro from politics this has been a good effect, but it has oftentimes rather succeeded in keeping the negro question in politics; and the evident injustice and inequality of some of the laws must, it would seem, react to lower the whole tone of political morality in the South.

Again, the very provision of these laws to insure the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the illiterate negro has tended in some instances, at least, to discourage negro education, because the promoters of these laws in most cases did not aim to exclude simply the illiterate negro vote, but practically the entire negro vote. It is evident that a party designing to disfranchise the negro through this means would not be very zealous for the negro's education.

Proposed Solutions of the Negro Problem.--Among the various solutions proposed from time to time for the negro problem, more or less seriously, are: (1) admission at once of the negroes to full social equality with the whites; (2) deportation to Africa or South America; (3) colonization in some state or in territory adjacent to the United States; (4) extinction by natural selection; (5) popular education.

Regarding all these solutions it must be said at once that they are either impossible or fatuous. They may be dismissed, then, without further discussion. Mr. Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton has said that the negro is bound to become adjusted to our civilization because he is surrounded by the white man's civilization on every hand. This optimistic view, which seems to dismiss the negro problem as requiring no solution, is, however, not well supported by many facts, as we have just seen.

Everywhere we have evidence that the negro when left to himself, reverts to a condition approximating his African barbarism, and the statistics of increasing vice and crime which we have just given show quite conclusively that the negro is not becoming adjusted to the white man's civilization in many cases in spite of considerable efforts which are being put forth in his behalf. While we are very far from taking a pessimistic view toward this or any other social problem, we believe that most of the solutions that have thus far been tried or urged are failures, and that more radical methods need to be adopted if the negro becomes a useful social and industrial element in our society.

As we have already seen, the negro is still essentially unadjusted to our civilization, and it would not be too much to say that the ma.s.ses of negroes in this country are still not far removed from barbarism, though living in the midst of civilization. Slavery failed, as we have already seen, to render the ma.s.s of negroes capable of partic.i.p.ating in our culture, and all that has been done for the negro since emanc.i.p.ation has likewise failed to adjust the ma.s.s of the race to the social conditions in which they find themselves. We may say, then, roughly, without any injustice to the negro, that the negro ma.s.ses of this country are still essentially an uncultivated or a "nature" people living in the midst of civilization. The negro problem, in other words, is not greatly different from what it would be if the present negroes were descendants of savage aborigines that had peopled this country before the white man came. The problem of the negro and of the Indian, and of all the uncivilized races, is essentially the same. The problem is, how a relatively large ma.s.s of people, inferior in culture and perhaps also inferior in nature, can be adjusted relatively to the civilization of a people much their superior in culture; how the industrially inefficient nature man can be made over into the industrially efficient civilized man.

Undoubtedly the primary adjustment to be made by the American negro is the adjustment on the economic side. Only when the negro becomes adjusted to the economic side of his life will there be a solid foundation for the development of something higher. People must be taught how to be efficient, self-sustaining, productive members of society economically before they can be taught to be good citizens. The American negro in other words must be taught to be "good for something"

as well as to be good. The failure of common-school education with the negro has been largely for the reason that it has failed to help him in any efficient way to adjust himself industrially. Oftentimes indeed it has had the contrary effect and the slightly educated negro has been the one who has been least valuable as a producer. The common-school education has not been such a failure with the white child, for the reason that the white child has been taught industry and morality at home, but these the negro frequently fails to get in his home life.

Moreover, the common-school education of the white child has usually been simply the foundation upon which after school days he, as a citizen, has built up a wider culture. But the negro, on account of his environment, if not naturally, has proved incapable of going on with his education and building on it after getting out of school. Moreover, as we have already noted, under the present complex conditions of our social life the common school is no longer an efficient socializing agent, even for the white children. The present school system is a failure, not only for the negro race, but also, though not in the same degree, for the white race. Popular education on the old lines can never do very much to solve the negro problem.

This does not lead, however, to the conclusion that all training and education for the negro race is foredoomed to failure. On the contrary all the experiments of missionaries in dealing with uncivilized races has led to the conclusion that an all-round education in which industrial and moral training are made prominent can relatively adjust to our civilization even the most backward of human races. Wherever the missionaries have introduced industrial education and adjusted their converts to what is perhaps the fundamental side of our civilization, the economic, they have met with the largest degree of success. This success of missionary endeavors along this line has led to the establishment of similar industrial training schools for the negro in this country, and it must be said regarding such schools for the negro as Hampton and Tuskegee that they have proved an even more unqualified success than their predecessors originated by the missionaries. But these schools are as yet very far from solving the negro problem in this country, for the reason, as we have already seen, that they affect such a relatively small proportion of the negro population. Only about one per cent of negro children at the present time are probably receiving industrial training.

It should be remarked that this industrial training in no way precludes an all-round education. It is not meant that industrial education shall replace all other forms of education, but rather that it shall be added to literary education in order to enrich the educational process; and it may be remarked also that industrial training, while of itself having a strong uplifting moral influence, is not sufficient to socialize without explicit moral teaching being also added thereto. Schools that attempted to give such an all-round education to negro children would, of course, in no way cut off the possibility of higher and professional education for the small number who are especially fitted, and who should be encouraged to go on with such studies.

Accepting, then, without qualification the now widespread view that industrial training coupled with an all-round education is the best possible solution of the negro problem, let us look into the practical difficulties which confront any attempt to apply such a solution at the present time. These difficulties may be summed up under three heads: (1) The difficulty of securing adequately equipped schools to give such training; (2) the difficulty of obtaining teachers who are qualified to give this training, and who have the right spirit; (3) the present lack of intelligent cooperation by the members of both races.

As regards the first of these difficulties, it must be said that it is under our present system of school administration practically insuperable. Adequately equipped schools for industrial education will cost a great deal of money,--money which the whites of the South will probably not be willing to give for many years to come, and which we think they should not be asked to give. As we have already seen, there are more illiterate native whites in the South than in any other section of the Union. This is due in part to the effects of the war which left a majority of the Southern communities poverty-stricken, and in many communities there is still not yet sufficient money to maintain proper school facilities, even on the old lines; much less can it be expected that such communities can start at once industrial schools for the training of negro children.

As regards the difficulty of obtaining properly trained teachers with a proper spirit to do this work, it must be said that as yet these teachers could not be found, and certainly they could not within the negro race. The ma.s.s of negro teachers are still so far below even the low standards of the white schools that not one half of them would be licensed to teach if the same standards were applied to them as to the whites. Moreover, through the increase of race friction white teachers have gradually, since the Civil War, been excluded from negro schools.

This has been brought about largely also by the negroes demanding these positions for themselves. But it is an old adage that "if the blind lead the blind both will fall into the ditch," and it would seem that a majority of negro teachers are unqualified for their task of civilizing and socializing their race; hence one reason for the failure of the negro common school. It would seem also that, while competent negro teachers should be encouraged in every way, white teachers should not be absolutely excluded from negro schools; and particularly that white teachers would be necessary if industrial and moral training were to be emphasized in the education of the negro. This brings us to the third difficulty,--the lack of intelligent cooperation by the members of both races. Unfortunately the negroes do not care for the newer education, the education which emphasizes industrial training. Most of them, misled by unwise leaders, prefer the education of the older type and think that industrial training will only fit them to be "hewers of wood and drawers of water" to the whites. On the other hand, the ma.s.ses of uneducated Southern people also do not wish the new education for the negro, because they believe that it will give him superior advantages over the white children. They fail to see that anything that is done for a depressed element in society, like the negro, will ultimately benefit all society. They are, therefore, not willing to tax themselves to bring about, even gradually, the new education for the negro. While educated Southern people have supported Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton in his propaganda for the industrial training of the negro, it is notorious that Was.h.i.+ngton's ideas have met with as much opposition from the uneducated whites as from the negroes themselves.

On the whole, however, while the situation is a difficult one, it is not, as we have already seen, one which justifies pessimism. Time is the great element in the solution of all problems, and it must be especially an element in the solution of this negro problem. A beginning has been made toward the training and the education of the negro in the right way, and it may be hoped that from centers like Hampton and Tuskegee the influence will gradually radiate which will in time bring about the popularization of industrial education. What is needed, perhaps, most of all is sufficient funds to carry on wider and wider experiments along these lines. The Southern states should not be expected to furnish these funds. They have already done their full share in attempting to educate the negro. The negro problem is a national problem, and as a national problem it should be dealt with by the Federal Government. The burden of educating the negro for citizens.h.i.+p should rest primarily upon the whole nation and not upon any section or community, since the whole nation is responsible for the negro's present condition. The trouble is, however, again, that the ma.s.s of the Southern people would at the present time undoubtedly resent any attempt on the part of the Federal Government to aid in the education of the negro. The question, therefore, ultimately becomes a question of educating the whites and forming a proper public sentiment regarding the education of the negro. When the leaders of both races once become united on a plan of training the negro for efficient citizens.h.i.+p, undoubtedly the funds will be forthcoming. While the negro question is, therefore, from one point of view primarily a question of the industrial training and adjustment of the negro, from another point of view it is a moral question which can never be solved until the superior race comes to take a right att.i.tude toward the inferior race, namely, the att.i.tude of service.

SELECT REFERENCES

_For brief reading:_

HOFFMAN, _Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro,_ Vol.

XI of Pub. of Am. Economic a.s.s'n.

STONE, _Studies in the American Race Problem._ BAKER, _Following the Color Line._

_For more extended reading:_

DOWD, _The Negro Races._ DU BOIS, _The Negroes of Philadelphia._ DU BOIS, editor, _The Atlanta University Publications._ KEANE, _Ethnology._ KEANE, _Man, Past and Present._ MERRIAM, _The Negro and the Nation._ PAGE, _The Negro: the Southerner's Problem._ SMITH, _The Color Line._ TILLINGHAST, _The Negro in Africa and America,_ Pub. Am. Economic a.s.s'n, 3d series, Vol. III.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, _The Future of the American Negro._

CHAPTER XI

THE PROBLEM OF THE CITY

Professor J.S. McKenzie says "The growth of large cities const.i.tutes perhaps the greatest of all the problems of modern civilization." While the city is a problem in itself, creating certain biological and psychological conditions which are new to the race, the city is perhaps even more an intensification of all our other social problems, such as crime, vice, poverty, and degeneracy.

The city is in a certain sense a relatively modern problem, due to modern industrial development. While great cities were known in ancient times, the number was so few that the total population affected by city living conditions was comparatively small. Moreover, the populations of ancient cities have often been exaggerated. Probably at the height of its power, the population of Athens did not exceed 100,000; Carthage, 700,000; Rome, 500,000; Alexandria, 500,000; Nineveh and Babylon, 1,000,000. All the great cities of the ancient world practically disappeared with the fall of Rome. After Rome's fall, Constantinople was the only large city with over 100,000 population in all Europe for centuries. Down to 1600 A.D., indeed, there were only fourteen cities in all Europe with a population of over 100,000; and even in 1800, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were only twenty-two such cities. But at the end of the nineteenth century, in 1900, there were one hundred and thirty-six such cities in Europe, representing twelve per cent of the entire population. Moreover, while in 1800 less than three per cent of the total population of Europe lived in cities, in 1900 the total urban population was twenty-five per cent. Again, all of the great European capitals developed their present enormous population almost wholly within the nineteenth century. Thus, the population of London in 1800 was 864,000, while in 1901 it had reached 4,536,000, or in the total area policed, 6,581,000; the population of Paris in 1800 was 547,000, in 1901 it was 2,714,000; the population of Berlin in 1800 was only 172,000, in 1901 it was 1,888,000; the population of Vienna in 1800 was 232,000, in 1901 it was 1,674,000. These figures are cited to show that from four fifths to nine tenths of the growth of the greatest cities of the world has taken place within the nineteenth century.

Dr. Weber in his _Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century_ ill.u.s.trates the striking difference between the urban development of the nineteenth century and that of the eighteenth century by comparing the population of Australia in 1890 with the population of the United States in 1790. Australia in 1890, out of a population of 3,809,000 had 1,264,000, or 33.2 per cent, living in cities of 10,000 or over; while the United States in 1790, out of a population of 3,929,000 had only 123,000, or 3.14 per cent living in cities. Both countries, it will be noticed, had about the same total population at the two periods and the same area, but Australia in 1890 represented in its population the industrial development of the nineteenth century with its tendency toward urbanization, while the United States in 1790 represented the civilization of the eighteenth century with its predominating rural life.

The Growth of Cities in the United States.--A word about census terminology will be helpful before discussing the growth of cities in the United States. According to the United States census, a city is a place with a population of 8000 or over; a _small_ city is a place with a population of 8000 to 25,000; a _large_ city is a place with a population of from 25,000 to 100,000, and a _great_ city is a place with a population above 100,000. These distinctions are necessary in discussing the problems of the city, because the problems of cities change rapidly when the population goes above 100,000. It is mainly the problem of the great city which we shall discuss in this chapter.

In 1800 there were only six cities in the United States with over 8000 population. Philadelphia was the largest of these, with 69,000, and New York second with 60,000. These cities contained a fraction less than four per cent of the population of the United States. In 1900, on the other hand, there were 546 cities in the United States with a population of over 8000. Moreover, over thirty-three per cent of the total population of the United States lived in cities of 8000 and over, while nearly one fifth of the total population lived in the thirty-eight great cities. Between 1890 and 1900 the gain in the urban population of the country was sixty per cent, while the gain in the rural population was only fifteen per cent. During that decade, in other words, the cities grew four times as fast as the country districts in population.

Moreover, for that particular decade, the great cities grew faster than the smaller ones, but since 1900 certain state census statistics seem to show that the cities from 25,000 to 100,000 population are growing faster than those above 100,000.

_Distribution of the Urban Population of the United States._ If the urban population of the United States were distributed relatively uniformly among the several States, perhaps the problem of the city would not be so pressing as it is, but the urban population is largely concentrated in a very few states. Over fifty per cent of the urban population is found in the North Atlantic states alone. The five states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ma.s.sachusetts, Illinois, and Ohio contain also more than half of the urban population of the whole country. If we add to these five states New Jersey and Missouri, then these seven states contain nearly two thirds of the urban population of the United States.

It will be noticed that these states with a large urban population are the great manufacturing states of the Union. The proportion of urban to rural population indeed is a good index to industrial progress. The states with over half their population urban in 1900 were, Rhode Island, 81 per cent; Ma.s.sachusetts, 76 per cent; New York, 68.5 per cent; New Jersey, 61.2 per cent; Connecticut, 53.2 per cent. States with more than one fourth of their population urban were, Illinois, 47.1 per cent; Maryland, 46.9 per cent; Pennsylvania, 45.5 per cent; California, 43.7 per cent; Delaware, 41.4 per cent; New Hamps.h.i.+re, 38.6 per cent; Ohio, 38.5 per cent; Colorado, 38.1 per cent; Was.h.i.+ngton, 31.9 per cent; Michigan, 30.9 per cent; Missouri, 30.8 per cent; Wisconsin, 30.7 per cent; Louisiana, 29.3 per cent; Montana, 27 per cent; Minnesota, 26.8 per cent; Utah, 25.2 per cent. It will be noticed that only one of these states with the population more than one fourth urban is distinctively southern, namely, Louisiana. This is due to the fact that heretofore the South has been largely agricultural in its industries, consequently only a few of the great cities of the country are found within its borders.

There are but few countries in Europe that come up with the most urban of our American states. Certain countries of Western Europe, however, equal the most urban of our states, and the following countries have at least one quarter of their population urban: England and Wales, Scotland, Belgium, Saxony, Holland, Prussia, and France. The most urban of our states, however, such as Ma.s.sachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York, surpa.s.s all European countries in the number of their population living in cities, with the exception of England and Wales. This again is due to the fact that certain of our states have specialized in manufacturing industries more than any European country, with the exception of England and Wales.

Before leaving the statistics of the growth of cities, it is worth our while to note that certain great urban centers are developing in this country which promise to show, even in the near future, the most extensive urbanization of population known to the world; for example, a line of cities and suburban communities is now developing which will in the near future connect New York and Boston on the one hand and New York, Philadelphia, and Was.h.i.+ngton on the other hand. Thus in a few years, stretching from Was.h.i.+ngton to Boston, a distance of five hundred miles, there promises to be a continuous chain of urban communities with practically no rural districts between them. In a sense, this will const.i.tute one great city with a population of twenty millions or upwards. Other urban centers, though not so extensive, are also developing at other points in the United States. At the end of the twentieth century it is safe to say that this country will have at least a dozen cities with a population of over one million. Moreover, so far as we can see at the present time, there is no end in the near future to this growth of the urbanization of our population; for the causes of this great growth of cities seem inherent in our civilization. Let us see what these causes are.

Causes of the Growth of Great Cities.--There may be distinguished two cla.s.ses of causes of the growth of cities: (1) general or social causes, and (2) minor or individual causes. It is the social causes, the causes inherent in our civilization, which are of particular interest to us.

Among these social causes we shall place: