If
now the economic development of the South is to be pushed
to the verge of exploitation, as seems probable, then we have
a mass of workingmen thrown into relentless competition
with the workingmen of the world, but handicapped by a
training the very opposite to that of the modern self-reliant
democratic laborer. What the black laborer needs is careful
personal guidance, group leadership of men with hearts in
their bosoms, to train them to foresight, carefulness, and
honesty. Nor does it require any fine-spun theories of racial
differences to prove the necessity of such group training after
the brains of the race have been knocked out by two hundred
and fifty years of assiduous education in submission, care-
lessness, and stealing. After Emancipation, it was the plain
duty of some one to assume this group leadership and training
of the Negro laborer. I will not stop here to inquire whose
duty it was--whether that of the white ex-master who had
profited by unpaid toil, or the Northern philanthropist whose
persistence brought on the crisis, or the National Government
whose edict freed the bondmen; I will not stop to ask whose
duty it was, but I insist it was the duty of some one to see that
these workingmen were not left alone and unguided, without
capital, without land, without skill, without economic organi-
zation, without even the bald protection of law, order, and
decency,--left in a great land, not to settle down to slow and
careful internal development, but destined to be thrown al-
most immediately into relentless and sharp competition with
the best of modern workingmen under an economic system
where every participant is fighting for himself, and too often
utterly regardless of the rights or welfare of his neighbor.
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