The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-02-16
THE RACE QUESTION.
Conditions in the North worse Fn@n
 In the south.


 Conditions in the North Worse Fn@n
 In the south
 New Orleans Picayune.
 The heated conditions which atteno n national political campaign are ai- ready commencing to become decioeo- Iv manifest, and naturally the neeEo question is creating its share or IhS excitement. "A. ,n / Active efforts are being made Tn ,ha south Ito set the negroes against president Roosevelt and his policy and while the Southern negroes nave practically no voice In deciding a pres idential election, they can nave great deal in making nominaIlon-
 Tn the Northern States. where thers is d large and growing negro popaIa- lation, there are negroes enough 70 produce alnotieeable a eneet on ~a,rs puv elections, and when political analIs grow warfii these negro voters are courted assiduously by the white po"-
 The industrial and social relations If the negroes in the Northern States are but little understood either oy whites or negroes in the Soutn' anu some information on the subject as ~ comes from Northern and theretore: presumably unpreJudlcedi source" ""' not be out of place. -
 Ray stannard Baker, well known writer for the press. a Northern man. who has recently been writing or the negroes Iof the South, for Northern publication, has an article In tne American Magazine for February on the negroes in the Northern states. He says that in the country distrlces and small cities of the north the ne- rroea are few in number. They avoid Agricultural labor, and for that req son they do not go to the country but according to his words the great cities of the North present wholly different aspect, the increases of population are there not snort OL extraordinary. In 1880 Chicago hao only 6,4s0 colored people; at presen. some 500 per cent. The census of 1sOO gives the negro population of New York as 60, 666. It is now (19OO pro habIy not less than S0,00O. Between 1890 and 1900 the negroes of Phildel- phia increased by 59 per cent, while the Caucasians added only 22 per cent ana the growth since 1900 has been even more rapid, the colored popuiati0h nowS exceeding SO,O00. .
 "It ia difficult to realize the signin- canca of these masses of colored pop uIation. The city of Washington Io- day has a greater community or ne- 9roes (some 0,000) than were ever before gathered together in one com munity In any part of the world. so far as we know, New York and Phil adelphia both now have probably as many negroes as any Southern city 1except Washington. if that be called A Southern city.) Nor must 1t be for- gotten that about a ninth of the ne- gro population of the United States Is in tha North and West. Crowded com fnunittes of negroes in Northern iati- tudes have never before existed any where. Northern city conditions, therefore, present an entirely unique and extraordinary interesting study.
 T went first to Indianapolis because had heard so much of the political noyver of the negroes there; after wards I visited Cincinnati, Philadel- phia. New York, Boston, Chicago and several smalled cities and country neighborhoods. In every large city both white and colored people told me that race feeling and discrimina- ton were rapidly increasing; that new and more difficult problems were con | stantly arising.