Following the Color Line Part 37

Photograph by Harris-Ewing]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GOVERNOR HOKE SMITH of Georgia

Copyright, 1906, by Hallen Studios]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SENATOR B. R. TILLMAN of South Carolina

Photograph by F. B. Johnston]

[Ill.u.s.tration: EX-GOVERNOR W. J. NORTHEN of Georgia]

In the next chapter, under the t.i.tle "The New Southern Statesmans.h.i.+p," I shall outline the programme and recount the activities of the new Southern leaders.

_The Most Sinister Form of Negro Domination_

Travelling in the South one hears much of the "threat of Negro domination," by which is generally meant political control by Negro voters or the election of Negro officeholders. But there already exists a far more real and sinister form of Negro domination. For the Negro still dominates the _thought_ of the South. For over eighty years, until quite recently, few great or serious issues have occupied the attention of the South save those growing out of slavery and the Negro problem. Though the very existence of our nation is due largely to the courage, wisdom, and political genius of Southern statesmans.h.i.+p--to Was.h.i.+ngton, Jefferson, Marshall, Patrick Henry, and their compatriots--the South, since the enunciation of the Monroe doctrine in 1823, has played practically no constructive part in national affairs. As Professor Mitch.e.l.l of Richmond well points out, the great, vitalising influences which swept over the entire civilised world during the first half of the nineteenth century, the liberalising, nationalising, industrialising influences, left the South untouched. For it was chained in common slavery with the Negro.

Instead of expanding with the new thought, it clung to slavery in opposition to the liberal tendency of the age, it insisted upon states'

rights in opposition to nationality, it contented itself with agriculture alone, instead of embracing the rising industrialism. "It was an instance," as Professor Mitch.e.l.l says, "of arrested development."

Dr. John E. White of Atlanta has ably expressed the ethical result upon a people of confining their thought to a single selfish interest:

"As long as we struggled for that which was good for everybody everywhere," he says, "we moved with Providence and the South led the van.

There were great human concerns in the building up of the Republic. The whole world was interested in it. It was a work enn.o.bling to a people--the inspiration of a great national usefulness. The disaster began when the South began to think only for and of itself--began to have only one problem."

Thus the South, owing to the presence of the Negro, dropped behind in the progress of the world. And while the new and vitalising world influences are now spreading abroad throughout the South, manifesting themselves in factories, mines, mills, better schools, and more railroads, the old, ugly Negro problem still shackles political thought and cripples freedom of action. In other words, the South is being rapidly industrialised, but not so rapidly liberalised and nationalised, though these developments are certainly following.

_Exploiting Negro Prejudice_

The cause of this dominance of thought by the Negro lies chiefly with a certain group of politicians whose interest it is to maintain their party control and to keep the South solid. And they do this by harping perpetually on the Negro problem. I observed, wherever I went in the South and found busy and prosperous industries, that the Negro problem was little discussed. One manufacturer in New Orleans said to me, when I asked him about the Negro question:

"Why, I'm so busy I never think about it."

And that is the att.i.tude of the progressive, constructive Southerner: he is impatient with the talk about the Negro and the Negro problem. He wants to forget it.

But there remains a body of men in the South who, not prosperous in other industries, still make the Negro a sort of industry: they live by exploiting Negro prejudice. They prevent the expression of new ideas and force a great people to confine its political genius to a worn-out issue.

_Roosevelt Democrats Down South_

Talking with all cla.s.ses of white men in the South, I was amazed to discover how many of them had ceased to be Democrats (in the party sense) at all, and were followers in their beliefs of Roosevelt and the Republican party. Many of them told me that they wished they could break away and express themselves openly and freely, but they did not dare. A considerable number have ventured to vote the Republican ticket in national elections (especially on the free-silver issue), but few indeed have had the courage to declare their independence in state or local affairs. For the instant a rift appears in the harmony of the white party (and that is a better name for it than Democratic) the leaders talk Negro, and the would-be independents are driven back into the fold. Over and over again leaders with new issues have endeavoured to get a hearing. A number of years ago the Populist movement spread widely throughout the South. Tom Watson of Georgia, Kolb of Alabama, Butler of North Carolina, led revolts against the old Democratic party. By fusion with the Republicans the Populists carried North Carolina. But the old political leaders immediately raised the Negro issue, declared that the Populists were encouraging the Negro vote, and defeated the insurgents, driving most of their leaders into political obscurity. Now, I am not arguing that Populism was an ideal movement, nor that its leaders were ideal men; I am merely trying to show the cost of independence in the South. A number of years ago Emory Speer, of Georgia, now Federal Judge, ran for Congress on an independent ticket. His platform was "The Union and the Const.i.tution, a free ballot and a fair count." The inevitable Negro issue was raised against him, it was insisted that there must be no division among white people lest the Negro secure the balance of political power, and Speer was finally defeated. He became a Republican and has since had no influence in state politics.

Upon this point an able Southern writer, Professor Edwin Mims of Trinity College, N. C., has said:

"The independents in the South have to face the same state of affairs that the independents of the North did in the '80's--all the better traditions connected with one party, and most of the respectable people belonging to the same party. Just as George William Curtis and his followers were accused of being Democrats in disguise and of being traitors to the 'grand old party' that had saved the Union and freed the slaves, and deserters to a party of Copperheads, so the Southern independent is said to be a Republican in disguise, and is told of the awful crimes of the Reconstruction era. When all other arguments have failed, there is the inevitable appeal to the threatened domination of an inferior race which is not now even a remote possibility."

As a result of this domination of a worn-out issue, political contests in the South have ordinarily concerned themselves not with stimulating public questions, but with the personal qualifications of the candidates. The South has not dared to face real problems lest the white party be split and the Negro voter somehow slip into influence. A campaign was fought last year in Mississippi. Of course the candidates all belonged to the white party; all therefore subscribed to identically the same platform--which had been prepared by the party leaders--so that the only issue was the personality of the candidates. Let me quote from the Mississippi correspondent of the New Orleans _Times-Democrat_, April 29, 1907:

The only "issue" ... is the personality of the candidate himself. The voter may take the speeches of each candidate and a.n.a.lyse them from start to finish, and he will fail to find where there is any difference of opinion between the candidates on any of the live questions of the day which are likely to affect Mississippi. He must, therefore, turn from the speeches to the candidate himself for an "issue" and must take his choice of the several candidates as men, and decide which of them will do most good to the state and be the safest man to entrust with the helm.

_Negro Holds Democratic Party Together_

I am speaking here, of course, of the Negro as a dominant issue, the essential element which holds the Democratic party together and without which other policies could not be carried or candidates elected. Vigorous divisions on other issues have taken place locally within the lines of the Democratic party, especially during the last two or three years. The railroad and trust questions have been prominently before the people in most of the Southern states. During his long campaign for governor Hoke Smith talked railroads and railroad influence in politics constantly, but in order to be elected he raised the Negro question and talked it vigorously, especially in all of his country addresses. It is also highly significant that the South should have taken so strong a lead in the prohibition movement, although even this question has been more or less connected with the Negro problem, the argument being that the South must forbid the liquor traffic because of its influence on the Negro. No states in the Union, indeed, have been more radical in dealing with the trust question than Texas and Arkansas; and Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina have been the scenes of some of the hottest fights in the country on the railroad question. All this goes to show that, once freed from the incubus of the Negro on Southern thought, the South would instantly become a great factor in national questions. And being almost exclusively American in its population, with few rich men and ideals of life not yet so subservient to the dollar as those of the North, it would become a powerful factor in the progressive and constructive movements of the country. The influence of a single bold man like Tillman in the Senate has been notable. In the future the country has much to look for from the idealism of Southern statesmans.h.i.+p.

_Stifling Free Speech_

But the unfortunate result of the dominance of the single idea of the Negro upon politics has been to benumb the South intellectually; to stifle free thought and free speech. Let a man advance a new issue and if the party leaders do not favour it they have only to cry out "Negro," twisting the issue so as to emphasise its Negro side (and every question in the South has a Negro side), and the independent thinker is crushed. I once talked with the editor of a newspaper in the South who said to me, "such and such is my belief."

"But," I said, "you take just the opposite position in your paper."

"Yes--but I can't talk out; it would kill my business."

This timorousness has touched not only politics, but has reached the schools and the churches--and still shackles the freest speech. George W.

Cable, the novelist, was practically forced to leave the South because he advocated the "continual and diligent elevation of that lower man which human society is constantly precipitating," because he advocated justice for the Negro.

Professor Andrew Slade was compelled to resign from Emory College in Georgia because he published an article in the _Atlantic Monthly_ taking a point of view not supported by the majority in Southern sentiment!

Professor John Spencer Ba.s.sett was saved from a forced resignation from Trinity College in North Carolina for a similar offence after a lively fight in the Board of Trustees which left Trinity with the reputation of being one of the freest inst.i.tutions in the South.

The situation in the South has made people afraid of the truth. Political oratory, particularly, often gets away entirely from the wholesome and regenerative world of actual facts. I quoted in the last chapter from a speech of Governor Swanson of Virginia, in which he said: "The business houses and financial inst.i.tutions are in the hands of intelligent Anglo-Saxons, and with G.o.d's help and our own good right hand we will hold him (the Negro) where he is."

_Negro's Progress in Richmond_

What a curious thing oratory is! Right in Governor Swanson's own city of Richmond there are four banks owned and operated by Negroes; one of the Negro bankers sat in the convention to which Governor Swanson was at that moment speaking. There is a Negro insurance company, "The True Reformers,"

in which I saw eighty Negro clerks and stenographers at work. It has a surplus of $300,000, with a business in thirty states. Negroes also own and operate in Richmond four clothing stores, five drug stores, many grocery stores (some very small, of course), two hotels, four livery stables, five printing establishments, eight fraternal insurance companies, seven meat markets, fifty eating-places, and many other sorts of business enterprises, small, of course, but growing rapidly. In Richmond also, there are ten Negro lawyers, fifteen physicians, three dentists, two photographers, eighty-five school teachers, forty-six Negro churches.

_Southerners Who See the Danger_

When I make the a.s.sertion regarding "free speech" and the fear of truth in the South, I am making no statement which has not been far more forcibly put by thoughtful and fearless Southerners who see and dread this sinister tendency.

The late Chancellor Hill, of the University of Georgia, spoke of the "deadly paralysis of intellect caused by the enforced uniformity of thought within the lines of one party." He said:

"Before the war the South was in opposition to the rest of civilisation on the question of slavery. It defended itself: its thinking, its political science, even its religion was not directed toward a search for truth, but it was concentrated on the defence of a civil and political order of things. These conditions made impossible a vigorous intellectual life."

William Preston Few, dean of Trinity College, North Carolina, writes (_South Atlantic Quarterly_, January, 1905):

"This prevalent lack of first hand thinking and of courage to speak out has brought about an unfortunate scarcity of intellectual honesty."

An excellent ill.u.s.tration of this condition grew out of the statement of Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, president of the University of Virginia, at a dinner a year or so ago, in which he compared the recent political leaders.h.i.+p of the South somewhat unfavourably with the statesmans.h.i.+p of the Old South. Upon hearing of this remark Senator Bailey of Texas angrily resigned from the alumni committee of the University. Chancellor Hill said, concerning the incident:

"The question whether Dr. Alderman was right or wrong becomes insignificant beside the larger question whether Senator Bailey was right or wrong in his method of dealing with a difference of opinion. And this leads to the question: Have we freedom of opinion in the South? Must every man who thinks above a whisper do so at the peril of his reputation and his influence, or at the deadlier risk of having an injury inflicted upon the inst.i.tution which he represents?"

In giving so much s.p.a.ce to the words and position of Vardaman, Tillman, Hoke Smith, and others, I have not yet sufficiently emphasised the work and influence of the thoughtful and constructive men of the South. But it must be borne in mind that I am writing of politics, of majorities: and politicians of the Tillman type are still the political forces in the South. They are in control: they are elected. Yet there is the growing cla.s.s of new statesmen whose work I shall recount in the next chapter.