280 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Bismarck. But in spite of appearances more brilliant than substantial, there is little real interventionism in France today. EUGENE FOURNIERE, " L'lnterven- tionisme de 1'ancien regime et du regime moderne," in Revue socialiste, May, 1904. E. B. W.
Results of Negro Education . The people of the South and of the North who have been contributing liberally toward the education of the black man have a right to know what the influence of education upon us is. I believe that you will have to agree with me that whatever kind of education the negro has received, so far, has paid. The difference between the five million natives of South Africa who will labor one or two days in the week and the seven or eight millions of my people in the southern part of our country who labor as a rule six days in the week, is that the former have never come into close enough touch with white civilization to have wants awakened for whose satisfaction they will work, while the southern negro has ambitions which it takes six days' work to realize.
I do not believe that in all history there has been a parallel to the progress made by the American black man. After only forty years of freedom he is vastly less illiterate than the Spaniard, the Italian, or the South American. The negro is also making progress in contributing toward his own education, the expense of which in some districts is largely met by the direct and indirect taxes which he pays. Between 1877 and 1901 the amount per capita spent upon negro education in the South rose from $1.09 to about $2.21, or over 100 per cent.
From a moral point of view, it has paid to educate the black man. The well-educated negro is almost never a criminal. Of the colored people in the penitentiaries of the South 90 per cent, are entirely without trades of any character; and 61 per cent, of them are wholly ignorant. Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, who knew the negro in slavery, and who has followed his career since, states that from his own observation in the state of Georgia, the negro industrially, morally, mentally, from every point of view, is making progress at a tremendous rate ; and he asserts further that there is no reason why any American citizen should be discouraged by reason of the progress of the negro people. We must be judged more and more by the best, and not by the worst, that can be known of us.
The South, all things considered, is the most encouraging, the most satis- factory, habitat for the black man, and it naturally follows that we should seek in a straightforward and manly way to gain the friendship and the confidence of the people by whose side we are to live. The negro problem is to be solved finally by sympathetic co-operation between the two races ; and nowhere more than in the South, in spite of wrongs and discouragements, are opportunities of an economic character to be found.
From an economic point of view I claim that the education of the black man has been a valuable investment. We find evidence throughout the South that is tangible, that is indisputable, that shows that the negro has got upon his feet. But in measuring our progress, you must' not think so much of " the heights to which we have risen, as of the depths from which we have come."
Much remains to be done before the race as a whole will be making progress ; the records show that in Louisiana last year only one-fourth of the black children attended any kind of a school, and those who did attend were in school for only about four months during the year. More encouraging is the noble work done by young men and women who have gone out from Tuskegee and other schools, and have planted themselves in the most degraded and illiterate communities which they have gradually revolutionized intellectually and economically, by their patient, heroic endeavors.
Usefulness will constitute, in my opinion, the greatest protection that the negro can have. In proportion as our people are taught to do a common thing in an uncommon manner, to do it better than anybody else, in the same proportion will the race problem be solved, and that is my ambition for the black man salvation through his economic, industrial, and moral training. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, in Ethical Record, May, 1904. E. B. W.
