Nevertheless, the evil is still deep
seated, and only a general raising of the standard of living
will finally cure it.
Looking now at the county black population as a whole, it
is fair to characterize it as poor and ignorant. Perhaps ten per
cent compose the well-to-do and the best of the laborers,
while at least nine per cent are thoroughly lewd and vicious.
The rest, over eighty per cent, are poor and ignorant, fairly
honest and well meaning, plodding, and to a degree shiftless,
with some but not great sexual looseness. Such class lines are
by no means fixed; they vary, one might almost say, with the
price of cotton. The degree of ignorance cannot easily be
expressed. We may say, for instance, that nearly two-thirds
of them cannot read or write. This but partially expresses the
fact. They are ignorant of the world about them, of modern
economic organization, of the function of government, of
individual worth and possibilities,--of nearly all those things
which slavery in self-defence had to keep them from learning.
Much that the white boy imbibes from his earliest social
atmosphere forms the puzzling problems of the black boy's
mature years.
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