There
can be no doubt that crime among Negroes has sensibly
increased in the last thirty years, and that there has appeared
in the slums of great cities a distinct criminal class among the
blacks. In explaining this unfortunate development, we must
note two things: (1) that the inevitable result of Emancipation
was to increase crime and criminals, and (2) that the police
system of the South was primarily designed to control slaves.
As to the first point, we must not forget that under a strict
slave system there can scarcely be such a thing as crime. But
when these variously constituted human particles are sud-
denly thrown broadcast on the sea of life, some swim, some
sink, and some hang suspended, to be forced up or down by
the chance currents of a busy hurrying world. So great an
economic and social revolution as swept the South in '63
meant a weeding out among the Negroes of the incompetents
and vicious, the beginning of a differentiation of social grades.
Now a rising group of people are not lifted bodily from the
ground like an inert solid mass, but rather stretch upward like
a living plant with its roots still clinging in the mould.
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