while by no means free and still largely deprived
of political rights, we have a mass of 10,000,000
people whose economic condition may be thus
described: If we roughly conceive of something
like a tenth of the white population as below the
line of decent free economic existence, we may
guess that a third of the black American population of 12 millions is still in economic serfdom,
comparable to condition of the submerged tenth
in cities, and held in debt and crime peonage in
the sugar, rice and cotton belts. Six other millions
are emerging and lighting, in competition with
white laborers, a fairly successful battle for rising
wages and better conditions. In the last ten years
a million of these have been willing and able to
move physically from Southern serfdom to the
freer air of the North.
The other three millions are as free as the better class of white laborers; and are pushing and carrying the white laborer with them in their grim determination to hold advantages gained and gain others. The Negro’s agitation for the right to vote has made any step toward disfranchising the poor white unthinkable, for the white vote is needed to help disfranchise the blacks; the black man is pounding open the doors of exclusive trade guilds; for how can unions exclude whites when Negro competition can break a steel strike?
