between sixty and seventy millions of dollars on rum and tobacco annually for their own consumption, and that within the last quarter of a century all of the several venereal diseases have enormously increased among them. The reason for this is well-known, but it is not necessary to dwell further upon it here.
I have presented enough, I think, thus far in the present chapter to illustrate what an intensely sensuous and lascivious race the negro race is — utterly lacking in sexual chastity among themselves, and highly dangerous in all these particulars to the whites who chance to reside in the same region with them.
The very important question now arises is there any remedy for all this, in so far as the redemption of the American negro is concerned? My firm conviction is that there is none, absolutely none. It is impossible to improve the morals of a people when they have no morals to improve. Every one who knows anything of the typical negro, knows full well that he is an utterly non-moral being, and to endow the whole race of them in this country with a sound morality would be just as impossible as it would be to change the color of his skin and take the kink out of his hair. Few there are who realize this fact.
Thomas proposes, as an expedient, that "The only feasible hope for such a consummation centres in such white women of the North as may be aroused to a sense of the needs and wants of a degraded black sisterhood, and who, by going to its relief, shall train the young negro women into abhorrence for immorality, and lead them to chaste living." (The American Negro, pp. 206, 207.)
Did any one ever hear of a more chimerical propo-
