Semi=weekly graphic., 1896-04-29
THE SOUTHERN RACE IR0B-
 LEM

LEM.
 Much has been said and written about the race problem confronting the South. No solution of it yet has met general aecep- | tance. Probably the discussion of the question thus far has resulted in little beyond recognition of it's as only less than that of slavery itself, says the Memphis .Scinitar. Are we drifting, then, aud are we to continue to drift, as before the war, until danger be- comes imminent and critieal2 How fares it with the patient who has rejected the prescriptions of the social doetors2 It is the cheerful thesis of noteworthy article by Mr. A. s. Van de Graaff, of Ala bama, which will appear in the May Fourm, that all is we'll; that the problem is already in process of solution by the spontaneous operation of the same fundamental economic law which, under the different conditions of slavery, brought into existence.
 The race problem, in Mr. Van de Graaff's opinion, rises out of the unequal distribution of the negroes in the United State. Tt will certainly be agreed that, if the negroes now in our borders-were evenly distributed over the country so that in no State or region did they form more than one-eighth of it's population, we would have no race problem in the sense in which we commonly speak of it as existing now. It is the presence of an un- due proportion of negroes ii the Southern States that at once gives rise to the race problem and makes it question belonging peculiarly to the South" Mir. Van de Graaff gives the result of his investigations, extending over a number of years, into the movement of negroes in the South, and the results as he presents them in his Fourm article are very striking. For they show conclusively that over much the greater portion of the South the race problem does not exist in the sense in which he has defined it. In the whole South the tendency is toward a more equal distribution of the blacks and the dissipation of black majorities. A remarkable tendency also exists op the part oi the negro to drift away from the farms into the cities. This passing of the negro from the fields into the towns is, in MT. Van de Graaff's opinion, obviously a fact of the greatest importance, not only in its bearing upon his status and distri button within the South itself, but also upon the question whether he is to remain in the South in re latively excessive numbers and as an element of it's population not shared in an appreciable degree bJ the North. Once loosed from the stability of country life, taught tc maintain himself in the city, anc placed on the great highways o travel, the negro has taken his frst and longest step out of the Soutf altogether, The transition iron Richmond to Philadelphia, or from Nashville to Chicago, is compara lively easy, and it may be made by easy stages. " In brief, Mir Van dt Graaff's figures suffice to show thai the negro is capable of migration on u large scale, ana that neither by choice nor necessity is he to re- main fixed in the Southern States, Mr. Van de Graaff concludes his Fourm article-a notable one it is, too-with a just tribute to the South's practically undeveloped re- sources and boundless possibilities. He says: Great as has been the industrial advance made, consider able as appears the present immi- grafton movement, they but faintly foreshadow the deYelopement now at hand. If so much has been done