The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-06-22
THE YAZoO DELTA.
Conditions of That Fertile Region
 Discussed.

Yazoo (Miss.) Sentinel.
 The Yazoo-M Mississippi delta is rich tract of land about 150 mlles in length ana about fifty miles in its greatest width, lying between the 32d and 35th parallels and the two rivers from which it is named, in the State of Mississippi It's soil Is so fertile that this delta has been described as the cream jug of the con- 'blackest of the Souths black belts, !" less than one-seventh of it's 2On, ,0oO inhab- itants being white. In one cf the coun- ties of this section, IssaQuena, the pro- portion of blacks to whites is 15 to 1. Only per cent of the white and nearly l9 per cent of the negroes of Mississippi are found here.
 A paper recently read before the Amer ican Economic Association in Washing ton. Alfred Holt Stone of GreenvilIe Miss, made certain statements of fact in regard to the negroes of this section that surprised his auditors. In the black delta, Mir Stone Is quoted as saying, we hear nothing about an ignorant mass of negroes dragging down the white man: we hear of no black incubus; we have few midnight assassinations and fewer lynchings." The violation of white wo- man by a negro is "an unknown crime" " yet nowhere else Is the line marking the social separation of the two races mere rigldly drawn. We have but one negro problem-though that constantly confronts us-how to secure more ne- groes."
 MT. Stone attributes this unusual con dition of affairs to the fact that there is in that region no white laboring class which comes in contact with the same negro class" There the white man con tributes only "the capital the devising brain the directing will" while the work itself is the .negros." There 'the era of the small farm has not set in" the holdings ranging from 800 to several thousand acres. In a word. it is the old time plantation life over again with but a single difference.
 Hence. according to Mir. Stone. the pre- vaiing good feeling. which would dis appear the moment a white laboring class entered the region. The negroes in grain admiration for wealth and station. strong as it is, he explains, lis no more controlling 8 mental habit than is their lack of respect for the opposite uuaIi- ties" They despse a white working man Cpoor white trashy. and their re- spect for the white man is destroyed when the two races labor side by side Hence the troubles in other sections which in the Yazoo- Mi isslssippi delta are unknown.
 The conditions in this region suggest those in some of the English colonies where q few white men. surrounded by thousands of the darker people. govern peaceablv as superiors among interiors. They also suggest the general situation
 In the Southern States during the ante helum period Indeed. the only change rom lne GFidllCD un-itf StHNtFN. SdN S MT Stone. is that "out of it has been evolved that of patron and retainer. 9 Because of this survival of old conditions and because there Is no strife-breedng racial "coltact on a common industrial plane" no white man or woman of the region is ever in fear of violence and the thought of the possibility of rape never comes.
 Having reviewed Mir. Stones able pa rar," The New York Sun is moved to remark that the condition he describes observes grave consideration. Prob ably The Sun thinks 'grave considera- ton in order because the contrast be- tween the conditions in the Yazoo- Ms sissippi delta and other Sertions of the South so vividly calls n mind the areu- ments of those who contend that two ab- solutely distinct races can not inhabit common territory in peace unless one he subordinate to the other--a relation which is forbidden by the laws and customs of d democracy.