AMERICA'S BIGGEST PROBLEM

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 71, 17 December 1919, Page 7

AMERICA'S BIGGEST PROBLEM

GROWING INSURGENCE OP THE NEGRO

AN EFFECT OF THE WAR

Another race riot, this time in Omaha, accentuates tho fact that tho United States is still fat" from fiuding a solution of what is when all is said and done tho most difficult, though not im: mediately the most important, of ' her social problems. A good deal has been said (writes "The Times" correspondent) in previous articles of the movement for the proper Americanisation of citizens of alien blood. Things like the steel strike, which would not liavo' come about had it not been for the ''inflammability of the foreign labourers in the mills, show that the movement is a' much needed one:

' For tho negro question there is no such ultimate euro as yet visible. The descendants of the slaves of colonial days and of the first era. of independence, are already'as much Americanised as they can be. One of the lessons of tho present situation is that the farther np- ' wards they move, in the social scheme, the greater their discontent and the greater tho prejudice against them of the whites with whom they compete. There are in the country over 10,000,000 people of black or mulatto Mood. In the old days the vast bulk of the negroes, who thus number about tea per cent, of the population, were to bo found in tho Southern' States.. Alabama, for instance, had in 1910 !,200,000 • whites, and 900,000 blacks; Georgia . 1,'100,000 whites and 1,150,000 blacks; and Mississippi only .780,000 whites to 1,000,000 blacks. Montana, on tho other hand, had 3G0.000 whites to under 3000 blacks; . North Dakota 500,000 'whites and only 600 . blacks,,and Nebraska, ol' which-Omaha Is the' chief city, 1,180,000 whites to 7500 blacksCauses of Bad Blood. It is the custom of the negro to live in'well-defined quarters of tho cities. Even' in. Washington one finds whole streets given up to coloured people, tucked away in tho midst of tho best residential quarter. As the negro crowds North tile old coloured district becomes 'unable to hold him;, he slops out into adjoining streets. His presence in them is resented, and there is bsd blood. This Ixid blood is often aggravated by the white workman's jealousy of his now competitor. A crime against a white woman, or something of that sort, and the fat is in the fire. The war has also hardened the feeling .of the negro against the white. He was sent, in largo numbers to. France. Ho . found in Franco no particular colour line drawn against him. Ho was received as un ally and not as an infer- ; inr.' It irks hini to return to the inequalities of Ihe homo he went to fight foiv to 'tho "Jifn Crow"' laws of the Southern States that provide for him eenarate Railway carriages, and to tho various schemes. like the "Grandfather Clause." whereby some States confine tho suffrage to . those whose grandparents were free, in-order to deprive him of-the vote that was constitutionally given him after the Civil War. It irks him the more inasmuch as- he is. told by his organs in the . Press that tho American "Hieh Command trieo' to get the French to.treat him as he was treated at home. • Proud of his-neiv-found sense of discipline. he is not deaf to propaganda 1 .. gainst* allowing himself to be exploited . bv the white race in times of crisis and 1 . then, when ■ the'crisis is over, to be put back into a position of recognised inferinritv.;

For many years past there have been two .theories about,'the education'of the -American neero. Ono idea has been to concentrate upon technical'education, to bring hiiii up to- manual trades, and to nncouraee him to become a small farmer. I he other idea has been ~ to treat him as a white man. to sivo him a higher education. The latter policy has had considerable success., There have been necroes high in the Federal service. There are trood coloured doctors-and lawyers; and there are. many thousands of negroes, probably, rich enough to own then- own motors and that sort of thing, in New York, for instance, there is a mor.t prosperous coloured community, livine together in Rood streets and good . n° llsp v with its', own theatres and all the other trappings of civilisation. Organised' Agitation.

But there is a reverse side • of the shield. The intellectual negro soenis to take rather kindly'to Socialism and organised agitation. Thus one finds, besides the National Association for the Advancement of the Coloured People, which has many white members, a number of purely coloured organisations like the League for Democracy, an organisation of coloured soldiers aflame with £rne\ a.nces against the white, officers thev had in the Universal Negro Improvement Association, - whose programme- is to awaken class consciousness among the negroes here and in Africa, t ano to knit together all the coloured Taces of the world; the National Association for the Organisation of Labour Unions among Negroes; the ITamitic Leatruo of the World; the League of the Darker Pconle of the World, and so on Nearly all such, associations are extreme and run by . young coloured Socialists, oftfiu_ aided and .nbetted by professional white extremists of the type that causes so much trouble among the alien proletariat. Some of them publish inflammatory organs like the "Messenger," of New York, the "Crisis," of jhc.same city, or .the "Boston Guardian," whose editor, W. M. Trotter, a Harvard graduate, after a fruitless visit to the Peace Conference, lately-told the Senate Committee on Foreign' Relations, to look out for a race rising if the whites did not mend their ways; Even tho Industrial Workers of the World have been getting recruits among the nee-roes in the South, .a fact - which nude the American Federation of Labour decide this yi/ar to countenance coioural .unions, much to the d'egust of Southerners. To this the white reply, as has been seen from the news of leeent months, has too' often been mob force. "Mol) protection is the only protection of the white man's home," cried the other day the paper , of a former Senator of the United States, published in Mississippi, in the course of an article calling 011 the "best 'and, bravest" in the Stab to organise, "since there is.no doubt that , hell will be to. pay in this country in the ' near future."

But 'enough- has been said to show how discontent merging often into impertinence and sometimes, criminal misbehaviour 011 the i ono side, and sometimes rough intolerance on the other are exacerabatinff a problem, already difficult. The process ip deplored by the vast majority of sober whites and by many thoughtful negroes. It is quite probablo that ths better sense of the nation will prevent its going so far as some profess to fear; iiut for the moment it is not the least troublesome feature of a general sit nation teeming with other problems of race amalgamation. Nor is it one the existence of which wo can afford to overlook. There can bo little doubt that the extremists would like to extend their propaganda to our possessions. Suveral of the n:o?t active agitators in .New Yuri: and elsewhere are, indeed, reported to be West Indians.