Moreover,
in a land where the tyranny of public opinion and the intoler-
ance of criticism is for obvious historical reasons so strong as
in the South, such a situation is extremely difficult to correct.
The white man, as well as the Negro, is bound and barred by
the color-line, and many a scheme of friendliness and philan-
thropy, of broad-minded sympathy and generous fellowship
between the two has dropped still-born because some busy-
body has forced the color-question to the front and brought
the tremendous force of unwritten law against the innovators.
It is hardly necessary for me to add very much in regard to
the social contact between the races. Nothing has come to
replace that finer sympathy and love between some masters
and house servants which the radical and more uncompromis-
ing drawing of the color-line in recent years has caused
almost completely to disappear. In a world where it means so
much to take a man by the hand and sit beside him, to look
frankly into his eyes and feel his heart beating with red blood;
in a world where a social cigar or a cup of tea together means
more than legislative halls and magazine articles and speeches,
--one can imagine the consequences of the almost utter
absence of such social amenities between estranged races,
whose separation extends even to parks and streetcars.
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