Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1888-05-10
NEGRO PROSPERITY.
Discussion of the Question is Once More
Revived
A Southern Authority Claims That The
Blacks Are no Further Ahead
Than in Old Times.

To what extent the negro has advanced
as q property holder is a matter which has
been lately discussed, and which has
brought out number of contradictory
statements, says the New Orleans Times
Democrat. The com ptroller general of
Georgia reports the taxable property
owned by negroes in that state at S9,00O,-
600 as against 100000 in 1879, an aver
age increase of 10 per cent. a year as
against per cent. increase IL the value
OF property owned by white citizens.
On the other hand, the Charleston News
and Courier points out that in Charles ton
the negroes stand just where they did in
1850; that the value of the property held
by them TO-DAY is just about the same as
that held by the free negroes twenty-eight
years ago. and strange 10 say. the cOIored
property holders are OF the same class as
in 1860, the descendants Of negroes free
before the war. This is a piece of con.
versation very infrequent in this country,
even among the whites, where fortunes
shift In generation.
We cannot but think that the Georgia
return is nearer the average of the
South; although what the News and
Courier says of Charleston is largely
true of this city also. We doubt whether
the value of property held by oclored
men in New Orleans is any greater today
than that held by the freedmen OF color
in 1860; and yet both in New Orleans
and throughout Louisiana the negro has
| been improving his condition steadily. Ii
| takes more than one generation, however
| to raise a race held in bonds of slavery
to the condition of property holders.
| When the hundreds of millions of dollars
| that have been paid the negroes in wages
and the millions wasted by them in the
veriest trash are considered it seems
strange that SO few dollars of it have been
invested in land, houses or any permanent
| property.
The freedmen of color who inherited
| land or houses have held on to them or at
least to a portion of them. The negroes
| engaged in any very profitable trade or
business may have laid aside something
and own some little property, but the
! great majority of the race, who are sim
| ply farm hands, laborers or domestic
| servants, have acquired no permanent
| property of any kind.
| Daring the days of Republican SUI
premacy, when the Government was held
by them or their pretended friends, thew
made no advance whatever, if they did
not actually 60 backward. Latterly, as
the Georgia statistics show, they have
been improving their condition financial
| ly. In the Yazoo delta of Mississippi, in
particular, they have become property
holders in great numbers and have done
well. There has certainly been a con-
| siderable increase in the amount of prop
erty owned by the Southern negroes in
the past ten years, but it is still very
small, certainly not o~er or per cent.
of the totel, and not anything like these
wild and exaggerated figures which went
the rounds of the press lately until con
tradicted and exposed by the Times
Democrat, and which placed the value OF
farm property held by the negroes in this
state at one fifth of the total.