The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-07-03

in the personality of the negro labore.x E and his family in the coal and iron sec- tion of Alabama. Industrial Birming- ham would put to shame anything the writer has ever observed in regard to negro labor in groups in the north or
 west. Dixieland is Dixie to the negro socially, but in industry, as exemplified at Birmingham, Dixie is no longer Dxie- land but pioneer in the true develop ment of the black race.
 The condition at Birmingham is pro- phetic it is indicative of the capacity of the negro to fill responsible positions in the making of iron and steel and the production of coal, it is indicative of what the south is coming to and points the way to the north as it receives great numbers of the southern negro, whom it has no adequate conception of how to handle from the social side and whom 1t knows not how to get the best results from or to help. Dixieland is still Dixie in that the command boy gets action while the request or order in the north frequently meets with fawning or impu.N dence. Dixie is still Dixieland in tha
 the south depends on the negro to hf
 raise the family and have it's negro se%x/ ants a part of the family, and yet mal!y tain with scrupulous exactneSs it's ow%2 interpretation of social superiority.
 In having negro problem, and being menaced by the negro, the south is not Dixie. Dixieland can look on with com-A placancy while the north struggles with a new negro problem created by the flow of negroes to the north and the inaptitude of the north to deal with great numbers Of negroes It is sure the north will have trouble of it's own unless the negro comes back to the land of Dixie where the be- ginning of the end of the race problem is in process of self solution.
 The picture of the negro in :he south and of Dixieland would be incomplete without the reiteration of the fact that the negro servant in the south Is respect ful and does not fawn upon the white man, even when tipped. It would be in- complete without saying that in indus trial sections the negro hut is almost a thing of the past and the whole lump Is sure to be leavened by the germs of Booker T. Washington's ideals as being carried out in the coal and iron and steel works of the T. c. I. Co. It would be incomplete without saying that the music and culture of the Dixieland negro re- tains its native undercurrent strains of plaintiveness amidst it's melodies. There was no exhibition of noisy rag time in the interpretation of the music by thea negroes of Dixieland. to recent visitorasx and no boisterous and loud mouthed shouting and laughter in the entertain y ments offered by the darkies of DixiS1I land-it is serious business with theni and they made fun as seriously as they put their souls in the inimitable har- nomination of their music.
 But the negro is going to receive more careful consideration at the hands of f1a V m ia k- ing a serious effort to take mob law for all except clear cases of assault on white women, out of Dixieland. The south is going to pay the negro, as it is paying him in the coal, iron and steel properties of the T. c. I. Co.,, the same for skilled labor in the mills and for production in the mines as it~does the white man. The south is taking Dxie's conception of in- ability and incompetency of the negro out of Dixieland and the negro is to have his best chance to develop in everything that makes for self respecting and re- spected race in Dixieland, where almost all of Dixie's race problem is in the crux north cannot hope soon to refine it's growing race problem.
 Seeing negro men at work earning their two forty-seven to, 1t Is said, up to $20 day. seeing how they live and what pictures of competency and dependable ness they present. leads one to wonder If the negro in Dixieand Is not pointed as he should be pointed. for the evolution that will make him and his race worthy of distinctive place in industry, conn merce and production, a place that viii make him forget the foolshness of ideals of social equality of the races and the white man forget the folly of belief that such race cannot in time acquire initiative ande solidarity and create and ma n a n a q " a c fu1i itof ia nd