The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-06-14

the farm in the south is 70 per cent, and in Alabama I am told ...tt the labor he is content 10 perform is not more than 9 per cent The best county Tor cotton is not in the rich lands of South ern Alabama, but in the poor hills of North Alabama. where the white man Is at work and where no negro lives.
 "rhese immigrants. to my mind. make a giant against which the negro can never stand If he will lay aside his foolishness and cease to be a trifiing loafer in the towns and cities. and imi- tate the more steady. intelligent and in- dustrious of his race, then the southern white man will unite with him and try and help him over his difficulties and keep as long as possible the giant from choking the life out of him.
 There is another giant of equal, If not greater proportions. He may be de- scrlbed in the phrase. poor white trash He is the man who was in slavery dur ing the time the negro was supposed to be tho slave; he had absolutely no chance for himself or his offspring; no feudal system, no class distinction in any Flu ropean land ever made life more hope less than was his. When the war was over he was represented in such fine grained men as the one who died the other day in North Carolina, who by the labor of head and hands, starting with six hundred dollars after the war. had accumulated many millions at the day of his death.
 Antagonism of White Labor.
 "Ths class has decreed that all skilled labor shall never again come into the hands of the negro; that he shall not run a motor car or operate a cotton mill; that if white men put him in the place of skilled labor, as they did in the Columbia mills of Columbia, s. C., they will put him out of it, as they have done.
 "The labor unions are his undying en- emy and they say if the government itself undertakes to solve the labor diff flculty with him they will kill him, as soldiers say that if the negro be given any responsibility in the army they would pay no attention to his orders.
 "Pitiable, indeed. is the spectacle of a race with all work taken away from It. Foolish is that negro who does not seize every opportunity that comes his way to do any kind of work, and do it well, that is offered him in the face of such foes as these that arc closing in upon him.
 Negro and Disease.
 "Another giant more difficult to con- tro than any I have mentioned is dis case Tuberculosis is recognized by phy sicians as an enemy that may be con- troled, but 1t must be along the lines of sanitation. The poverty, the unsani- tary habits and the natural triflingness of the greater portion of the race makes him the greatest propagator of disease When the laws are to be enforced the people will not long tolerate those who persist In their violation. l have been informed that certain nameless diseases have already so infected many of the
 T.. 4l.n fFa.a ra from four and a half millions to nine millions in the last forty-hve years will be practically reduced to nothing
 A Hopeless Problem.
 "These conditions make a race problem that is fast becoming hopeless, and has given rise to such thinking as that ex- pressed above by MT. Page and Bishop Penick. I have felt myself that in try ing to make the lot easy for the black man one may discern the plan of Provi- dence in fitting him for larger and better life in land that is all his own, for it is fact that when for thousands of years before the coming of Christ the white man had dwelt on the shores of Africa he had built cities. he had had great thologies and greater schools, vet even to the death of Cecil Rhodes no great impression has been made in Africa by the white man. There are kingdoms of ivory tfere; there are king doms of rubber; there is untold wealth in mineral and in soil The natives are incompetent; they live fin tribes, fight savage wars, live on roots, fruits or hu- man beings. The implements of war are possibly the remains of the instruction of Tubal Cain in the making of metal. and the reason they remember this is because they have been working upon them from day to day. Everything else that has come to them from old eivi- llzation they have forgotten. for 1t is a strange, physchological fact that the African black man has no memory.
 "That Which Is Damnable."
 "When the first slave ship touched these shores and the first slave was put to work in America, and the first mu- latto baby was born, we have that which we are taught in Holy Writ is damnable. No right thinking, moral man can find word to make an apology for 1t. It has it's place in the great drama of God. alongside of those things which we know are wrong and which somehow He causes to work together for good.
 "The greatest negro l have ever known, and whom l believe to be the greatest negro alive. is w. H. Sheppard q hum- ble, Christian gentleman. and a worker