Black and White Part 6

If the literary reputation of the United States had been rated, up to the close of the Rebellion, on the contributions of Southern men--fiction, prose and poetry, science, art, and invention--the polite nations of the world would have regarded us as a nation of semi-barbarians. But, happily, the rugged genius of New England made up then and makes up now for the poverty of literary effort on the part of the South. True, a few men since the war have placed the South in a better light; but even their work, as an index of Southern genius, is regarded as highly precocious and tentative.

The South has yet to demonstrate that she has capacity for high literary effort. In the process of that demonstration, I am fully persuaded that the Anglo-African--with his brilliant wit and humor, his highly imaginative disposition and his innate fondness for literary pursuits--will contribute largely to give the South an enviable and honorable position.

What the South lacked in literary effort before the war she made up in a magnificent galaxy of meteoric statesmen, who rushed into politics with the instinct of ducks taking to water, and who were forgotten, in the majority of cases, before they had run out their ephemeral career.

A few names have survived the earthquake, and are remembered for their cleverness rather than their depth. A few more decades, and they will be remembered only by the curious student who plods his weary way through the labyrinth of Congressional records and the musty archives of States, seeking for data of times which long ago pa.s.sed into the hazy vista of history and romance. Before the war the Southern man of leisure took to politics more as a pastime than as a serious business.

But as the pastime was agreeable, and as it gave additional weight and distinction, all those who could, strived to make it appear that they were men of importance in the Nation. They were largely a nation of politicians, always brilliant, shallow, bellicose and dogmatic, as ready to decide an argument with the shotgun or saber as with reason and logic.

This was the temper of the people who rushed into the war with the confidence of a schoolboy and who limped out like a man overtaken in his gymnastic exercise by a paralytic stroke. The war taught the South a very useful lesson, but did not sufficiently convince it that it was preeminently a supercilious, arrogant people, who did not and do not possess all the virtue, intelligence, and courage of the country; that its stock of these prime elements is woefully small considering the long years it had posed as America's own patrician cla.s.s.

But when the war was over, and the Southern n.o.bility turned its thoughts once more to social arrogance and political dominion, it found that Oth.e.l.lo's occupation was entirely gone. A revolution had swept over the country more iconoclastic and merciless than that which followed in the wake of the French revolution nearly a hundred years before. The bottom rail had been violently placed upon the top; industrial adjustments had been so completely metamorphosed as to defy detection; while the basis and the method of political representation and administration had been so altered as to confound both the old and the new forces.

Aside from the ignorance of the black citizens and the insatiate greed and unscrupulousness of their carpet-bag leaders--a band of vultures more voracious and depraved than any which ever before imposed upon and abused the confidence of a credulous people--the white men of the South had been educated to regard themselves as, naturally, the factors of power and the colored people as, naturally, the subject cla.s.s, no factor at all. It was these two things which produced that exhibition of barbarity on the part of the South and impotence on the part of the government which make us go to Roumania and the Byzantine court for fit parallel.

But, as I have said, a love of power easily degenerates into treason.

If we may not call the violence, the a.s.sa.s.sinations, which have disgraced the South, _treason_ by what fitter name, pray, shall we call it? If the nullification of the letter and spirit of the amendments of the Federal Const.i.tution by the conquered South was not renewed _treason_, what was it? What is it?

The white men of the South, to the "manor born," having shown their superiority in the superlative excellencies of murder, usurpation and robbery (and I maintain they have gone further in the execution of these infamies than was true of the Negro-Carpet-bag _baccha.n.a.lia_); having made majorities dwindle into iotas and vaulted themselves into power at the point of the shot gun and dagger (regular bandit style); having made laws which discriminate odiously against one cla.s.s while giving the utmost immunity to the other; having, after doing these things, modeled the government they rule upon the pro-slavery doctrine that it is a "white man's government"--having had time to become sobered, the white men of the South should be open to reason, if not to conviction.

The black men of the South know full well that they were disfranchised by illegal and violent methods; they know that laws are purposely framed to defraud and to oppress them. This is dangerous knowledge, dangerous to the black and the white man. It will be decided by one of two courses--wise and judicious statesmans.h.i.+p or b.l.o.o.d.y and disastrous insurrection. When men are wronged they appeal either to the arbitrament of reason or of violence. No man who loves his country would sanction violence in the adjudication of rights save as a last resort. Reason is the safest tribunal before which to arraign injustice and wrong; but it is not always possible to reach this tribunal.

The black and white citizens of the South must alter the lines which have divided them since the close of the war. They are, essentially, one people, and should be mutual aids instead of mutual hindrances to each other. By "one people" I don't wish to be understood as implying that the white and black man are one in an ethnological, but a generic sense, having a common origin. Living in the same communities, pursuing identical avocations, and subject to the same fundamental laws, however these may differ in construction and application in the several States, it is as much, if not even more, the interest of the white man that the black should be given every possible opportunity to better his mental, material and civil condition. Society is not corrupted from the apex but from the base. It is not the pure rain that falls from the heavens, but the stagnant waters of the pool, that breed disease and death. The corruption of the ballot by white men of the South is more pernicious than the misuse of it by black men; the perversion of the law in the apprehension and punishment of criminals, by being wielded almost exclusively against colored men, not only brings law into contempt of colored men but encourages crime among white men. Thus the entire society is corrupted. Mob law is the most forcible expression of an abnormal public opinion; it shows that society is rotten to the core. When men find that laws are purposely framed to oppress and defraud them they become desperate and reckless; and mob law, by usurping the rightful functions of the judiciary, makes criminals of honest men. As Alexander Pope expressed it:

_Vice is a monster of such frightful mien, That to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet, seen too oft, familiar with his face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace._

The South has nothing to gain and everything to lose in attempting to repress the energies and ambition of the colored man. It is to the safety as well as to the highest efficiency of society that all its members should be allowed the same opportunities for moral, intellectual and material development. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

There is no escape from the law of G.o.d. You either deal justly or suffer the evil effects of wrong-doing. The disorders which have made the South a seething cauldron for fifteen years have produced the most widespread contempt of lawful authority not only on the part of the lawless whites but the law-abiding blacks, who have suffered patiently the infliction of all manner of wrong _because they were a generation of slaves, suddenly made freemen_. They permitted themselves to be shot because they had been educated to bare their backs at the command of the white oligarch. But that sort of pusillanimous cowardice cannot be expected to last always. Men in a state of freedom instinctively question the right of others to impose unequal burdens upon them, or to deny to them equal and exact protection of the laws. When oppressed people begin to murmur, grow restless and discontented, the opposer had better change his tactics, or lock himself up, as does the cowardly tyrant of Russia.

A new generation of men has come upon the stage of action in the South. They know little or nothing of the regulations or the horrors of the slave regime. They know they are freemen; they know they are cruelly and unjustly defrauded; and they _question the right_ of their equals to oppose and defraud them. A large number of these people have enjoyed the advantage of common school education, and not a few of academic and collegiate education, and a large number have "put money in their purse." The entire race has so changed that they are almost a different people from what they were when the exigencies of war made their manumission imperative. Yet there has been but little change in the att.i.tude of the white men towards this people. They still strenuously deny their right to partic.i.p.ate in the administration of justice or to share equally in the blessings of that justice.

There must be a change of policy. The progress of the black man demands it; the interest of the white man compels it. The South cannot hope to share in the industrious emigration constantly flowing into our ports as long as it is scattered over the world that mob law and race distractions constantly interrupt the industry of the people, and put life and property in jeopardy of eminent disturbance; and she cannot hope to encourage the investment of large capital in the development of her industries or the extension of her national system.

Capital is timid. It will only seek investment where it is sure of being let alone. Again, while the present state continues, no Southern statesman, however capable he may be, can hope to enjoy the confidence of the country or attain to high official position. Thoughtful, sober people will not entrust power to men who sanction mob law, and who rise to high honor by conniving at or partic.i.p.ating in a.s.sa.s.sination and murder. They have too much self-respect to do it.

Only a few weeks since, a narrow-minded senator from the State of Alabama, speaking upon the question of "National Aid to Education,"

said he would rather vote for an appropriation to place the Southern States in direct communication with the Congo than to vote money to educate the blacks. There is no ingrate more execrable than the one who lifts up his hand or his voice to wrong the man he has betrayed.

This senator from Alabama does not represent the majority of the people of his state. Take away the shot gun and mob law and he would be compelled to crawl back into the obscurity out of which he was dragged by his accomplices in roguery.

The colored man is in the South to stay there. He will not leave it voluntarily and he cannot be driven out. He had no voice in being carried into the South, but he will have a very loud voice in any attempt to put him out. The expatriation of 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 people to an alien country needs only to be suggested to create mirth and ridicule. The white men of the South had better make up their minds that the black men will remain in the South just as long as corn will ta.s.sel and cotton will bloom into whiteness. The talk about the black people being brought to this country to prepare themselves to evangelize Africa is so much religious nonsense boiled down to a sycophantic plat.i.tude. The Lord, who is eminently just, had no hand in their forcible coming here; it was preeminently the work of the devil.

Africa will have to be evangelized _from within_, not _from without_.

The Colonization society has spent mints of money and tons of human blood in the selfish attempt to plant an Anglo-African colony on the West Coast of Africa. The money has been thrown away and the human lives have been sacrificed in vain. The black people of this country are Americans, not Africans; and any wholesale expatriation of them is altogether out of the question.

The white men of the South should not deceive themselves: the blacks are with them to remain. Whether they like it or not, it is a fact that will not be rubbed out.

If this be true, what should be the policy of the whites towards the blacks? The question should need no answer at my hands. If it were not for the unexampled obtuseness of the editors, preachers and politicians of that section, I should close this chapter here.

The white men and women of the South should get down from the delectable mountain of delusive superiority which they have climbed; and, recognizing that "of one blood G.o.d made all the children of men,"

take hold of the missionary work G.o.d has placed under their nose.

Instead of railing at the black man, let them take hold of him in a Christian spirit and a.s.sist him in correcting those moral abscesses and that mental enervation which they did so awfully much to infuse into him; they should first take the elephant out of their own eyes before digging at the gnat in their neighbor's eyes. They should encourage him in his efforts at moral and religious improvement, not by standing off and clapping their hands, but by going into his churches and into his pulpits, showing him the "light and the way" not only by precept but example as well. Can't do it, do you say? Then take your religion and cast it to the dogs, for it is a living lie; it comes not from G.o.d but from Beelzebub the Prince of Darkness. A religion that divides Christians is unadulterated paganism; a minister that will not preach the Gospel to sinners, be they black or white, is a hypocrite, who "steals the livery of Heaven to serve the Devil in."

They should make liberal provision for the schools set apart for the colored people, and they should visit these schools, not only to mark the progress made, and to encourage teacher and pupil, but to show to the young minds blossoming into maturity and usefulness that they are friends and deeply interested in the progress made. In public, they should seek first to inspire the confidence of colored men by just laws and friendly overtures and by encouraging the capable, honest and ambitious few by placing them in position of honor and trust. They should show to colored men that they accept the Const.i.tution as amended, and are earnestly solicitous that they should prosper in the world, and become useful and respected citizens. You can't make a friend and partisan of a man by shooting him; you can't make a sober, industrious, honest man by robbing and outraging him. These tactics will not work to the uplifting of a people. "A soft answer turns away wrath." Even a dog caresses the hand that pats him on the head.

The South must spend less money on penitentiaries and more money on schools; she must use less powder and buckshot and more law and equity; she must pay less attention to politics and more attention to the development of her magnificent resources; she must get off the "race line" hobby and pay more attention to the common man; she must wake up to the fact that--

_Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow,_

and that it is to her best interest to place all men upon the same footing before the law; mete out the same punishment to the white scamp that is inexorably meted out to the black scamp, for a scamp is a scamp any way you twist it; a social pest that should be put where he will be unable to harm any one. In an honest acceptance of the new conditions and responsibilities G.o.d has placed upon them, and in mutual forebearance, toleration and a.s.sistance, the South will find that panacea for which she has sought in vain down to this time.

CHAPTER XI

Land and Labor

There is more prose than poetry in the desperate conflict now waging in every part of the civilized world between labor and capital,--between the dog and his tail, again, for, when the question is reduced to a comprehensive statement of fact, it will be readily seen that capital is the offspring of labor, not labor the offspring of capital. Capital can produce nothing. Left to itself, it is as valueless as the countless millions of gold, silver, copper, lead and iron that lie buried in the unexplored womb of Nature. This storied wealth counts for nothing in its crude, undeveloped state. As it is to-day, so it was a thousand years ago. Years may add to the bulk, and, therefore, the richness of its value; but until man, by his labor of muscle and brain, has brought it forth, it has no value whatever.

To have value, it must become an object of barter, of circulation, in short, of exchange. As its value depends upon its utility, so when it can no longer be used it again becomes a useless ma.s.s of perishable wealth. It is the product of labor, pure and simple. Speaking on "Management of the Banks" (footnote p. 223), in his work on _Labor and Capital_, Edward Kellogg says:--

All who become rich by speculations in bank, state and other stocks, gain their wealth at the expense of the producing cla.s.ses; for no increased production is made by the changing market value of these stocks. It is clear, that when the rate of interest is increased, the gains of money-lenders are augmented, and the money gained will buy a greater quant.i.ty of property and labor. The increased gains of the lender must be paid by the borrowers, by the productions of their own or of others' labor.

So Adam Smith, speaking of "the Origin and Use of Money" (_Wealth of Nations_, p. 33), says:

In order to avoid the inconveniency of such situations, every prudent man in every period of society, after the first establishment of the divisions of labor, must naturally have endeavored to manage his affairs in such a manner as to have at all times by him, besides the peculiar produce of his own industry, a certain quant.i.ty of some one commodity or other, such as he imagined few people would be likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of their industry.

Labor is the one paramount force which develops the resources of the world. It produces all the wealth; it pays, in the last a.n.a.lysis, all the taxes--National, State and munic.i.p.al; it produces the wealth which sustains all the inst.i.tutions of learning, as well as ministers to the profligate luxuries of the idlers and sharpers who add nothing to the wealth of society, but on the contrary constantly take from it, and who have not inaptly been termed by Dr. Howard Crosby the "dangerous cla.s.ses;" it makes the wealth which gives a few men millions of dollars as their share, either as rental or usurious interest upon capital invested in the production of wealth; and it creates the vast surplus which lies in the coffers of the Federal and State treasuries of our land.

The producing agency, without which there could be no wealth; without which the landlord could exact no rent and capital could draw no interest, the producing agency alone receives an inadequate proportion of the wealth it produces. The man who conducts any business requiring labor and capital not only exacts an unjust proportion of the laborer's hire, but takes more than he justly should as interest upon his capital and as reward for his own time and labor, often amounting to no trouble or labor, he delegating to other hands, such as foremen or overseers, the absolute control of his investment. Yet, the man who invests capital not only derives, in a majority of cases, a sufficient income to enable him to live in more than comfort but to have a healthy bank account; while the laborer, who alone makes capital draw interest by giving it employment in developing the resources of nature, derives only a bare subsistence, frequently not sufficient to meet the absolute necessaries of his daily life. His wife and children must be content with life simply--bare, cold life--often without any of the conveniences or the commonest luxuries which make existence anything more than the curse it is to a large majority of humankind.

This is peculiarly true of the condition of the ma.s.ses of the Old World, and is fast becoming true in our own young and vigorous country.

In every quarter of the globe the cry of depressed and defrauded labor is heard. The enormous drain upon the producing agents necessary to maintain in idleness and luxury the great capitalists of the world who acc.u.mulated their ill-gotten wealth by fraud, perjury and "conquest,"

so called, grinds the producing agent down to the lowest possible point at which he can live and still produce. The millionaires of the world, so called "aristocracies," and the taxes imposed by sovereign states to liquidate obligations more frequently contracted to enslave than to ameliorate the conditions of mankind, are a constant drain which comes ultimately out of the laboring cla.s.ses in every case.

What are millionaires, any way, but the most dangerous enemies of society, always eating away its entrails, like the cultures that preyed upon the chained Prometheus? Take our own breed of these parasites; note how they grind down the stipend they are compelled to bestow upon the human tools they must use to still further swell their unG.o.dly gains! Note how they take advantage of the public; how they extort, with Shylock avarice, every penny they possibly can from those who are compelled to use the appliances which wealth enables them to contrive for the public convenience and comfort; how they corrupt legislatures and dictate to the unscrupulous minions of the law. The Athenians were wise who enacted into law the principle that when a citizen became too powerful or rich to be controlled within proper bounds, the safety of society demanded that he should be exiled--sent where his power or riches could not be used to the detriment of his fellow-citizens. Should such a rule be applied to-day, society in every land could disgorge with much advantage the men who ride the people as the Old Man of the Sea rode Sindbad the luckless sailor. But our civilization is built upon a higher conception of individual right and immunity; there is now no limit to the right of one man to rob another of the produce of his labor or his natural and conferred rights. Not only may individuals rob and plunder their fellows with absolute impunity, but our laws have put breath into that soulless thing which has become notoriously infamous as a "corporation." Around this thing, this engine of extortion and oppression, our laws have placed bulwarks which the defrauded laborer, the widow and orphan, and even the sovereign public, cannot overleap. Here is where Monopoly first shows its cormorant head.

If millionaires are enemies of society, and I a.s.sume that they are--not because they have property, but because, as a rule, they have acquired it by unjust processes and use it tyrannically--what excuse have we for aristocracies, an idle cla.s.s, a privileged cla.s.s, who toil not, nor spin? What is a recognized aristocracy, such as England maintains? From what perennial fountain did it draw its n.o.bility and wealth? Came they not through Norman conquest and robbery? Who pay the heavy taxes levied upon the people to support the privileged cla.s.ses of England? The royal revenues and princely preserves, are they not supported out of the sweat of the poorer cla.s.ses, upon whom all the burdens of society fall at last? And why should there be royal revenues and princely preserves? Do they add anything to the wealth of a nation or the happiness of a people? Let us see.

Bra.s.sey (Sir Thomas), in his book on _Work and Wages_, p. 71, says:

The Irish Poor Law Commissioners stated that the average produce of the soil in Ireland was not much above one half the average produce in England, whilst the number of laborers employed in agriculture was, in proportion to the quant.i.ty of land under cultivation more than double, viz.: as five to two. Thus ten laborers in Ireland raised only the same quant.i.ty of produce that four laborers raised in England, and this produce was generally of an inferior quality.

Why is it that ten men in Ireland produce no more than four men produce in England?

Henry George says (_Social Problems_, p. 150):

A year ago I traveled through that part of Ireland from which these government-aided emigrants come. What surprises an American at first, even in Connaught, is the apparent spa.r.s.eness of population, and he wonders if this can indeed be that over-populated Ireland of which he has heard so much. _There is plenty of good land_, but on it are only fat beasts, and sheep so clean and white that you at first think that they must be washed and combed every morning. Once, this soil was tilled and was populous, but now you will find only traces of ruined hamlets, and here and there the miserable hut of a herd, who lives in a way that no Terra del Fuegan could envy. For the 'owners' of this land, who live in London and Paris, many of them having never seen their estates, find cattle more profitable than men, and so the men have been driven off. _It is only when you reach the bog and the rocks_ in the mountains and by the sea sh.o.r.e, that you find a dense population. Here they are crowded together on land on which nature never intended men to live.

It is too poor for grazing, so the people who have been driven from the better lands are allowed to live upon it--as long as they pay their rent. If it were not too pathetic, the patches they called fields would make you laugh.

Originally the surface of the ground must have been about as susceptible of cultivation as the surface of Broadway. But at the cost of enormous labor the small stones have been picked off and piled up, though the great boulders remain, so that it is impossible to use a plow; and the surface of the bog has been cut away and manured by seaweed, brought in from the sh.o.r.e on the backs of men and women, till it can be made to grow something.

Sir Thomas Bra.s.sey writes from a capitalist's standpoint, while Mr.

George writes from the standpoint of a philosopher who not only sees gross social wrongs but boldly applies the remedy. But let us see if the same fester which irritates the body of Irish society has not also a parasitical existence in our own land, where society is yet in its infancy, where the people are supposed to enjoy all the advantages of the compet.i.tive system, and where all are, measurably, free to take and to use the opportunities offered the pioneers, or him who gets first his grip upon the three natural elements absolutely essential to man's existence, viz.: air, water, and land.