Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/192

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170
THE NEGRO

sarily mean the Philippines or Liberia, nor does it mean wholesale deportation of the race in our life- time, as most of his critics assert. Separation of the races for the highest development and happiness of both is the dominant idea of his scheme. Omitting the economic use of the negro, in the scantily supplied labor of the South, and judging from the moral side of life wholly, no thinking man could truthfully fail to agree with the school of John Temple Graves, that the separation of the races would advance the ethical conditions of the white race. " Scholarly people, like the editor of The Times, fail to understand this caste problem from the point of view of the * poor whites ' of the South. These are laborers in full, unrestricted competition with the low- caste negroes. Every hour's work performed by a white carpenter, mason, miner, or mechanic, is paid according to the competition existing in the local labor market. The white workers of the South, desiring bet- ter homes, more varied food, educational advantages for their children, must compete with men satisfied with cabins, filth, rags and cornbread. The negro in the Southern States, and the Indian across the border in Mexico, can supply all his inherited cravings for half the wages of a civilized white man. " What complicates the case of the negro is that the amount of the mechanic's wages, when paid to him, tends to lower his morality. The political economists have not treated this side of the question of wages. Philanthropists declare the low-caste laboring people of English India, Mexico and the United States are all underpaid by the dominant race. They do not re- member that work without wages, i. e., slavery, is the