FUTURE OF THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH. 149 



ployments demanding more skill and, because of that skill, giving a 

 better intellectual station. The mechanical employments of the day 

 are ever gaining in their culture-giving powers. The complication of 

 the machines which are used, and the mysterious nature of the powers 

 which they apply, seem to make them more effective means of enlarge- 

 ment than the old simple tools. Those who have observed the process 

 by which the horse-car driver of a decade ago has been converted into 

 the motor-man of to-day have had a chance to see what the control of 

 energies may do for them. I feel safe in saying, from the basis of 

 personal experience with the negroes, that somewhere near one third of 

 them are ht to be trained for mechanical employment of a fairly high 

 grade. They will need more instruction than the average whites, but 

 they will have a keen interest in their work, and are more likely than 

 the whites to lead up their children in their own trades. For such 

 employment the types which, for lack of a better name, I have termed 

 the Zulu and the Semetic are clearly well fitted. Here and there in 

 the South we find these people of the abler stocks already so employed. 



There seems no reason to believe that there is at present enough 

 race prejudice in the South to oppose any effective resistance to negroes 

 entering on any such employment as that of the engineer. It is true 

 that among the women operatives in spinning and weaving mills there 

 has been such objection already found as to make it impossible to em- 

 ploy the negro and white in the same rooms. It is, however, im- 

 probable that there would be any opposition to having the black women 

 engaged in the industry, provided the personal association with the 

 whites was not required. Whatever resistance it would be necessary 

 to overcome in order to make the negro free to engineering employ- 

 ments would proceed from the poor white class or from Northern loom 

 operators who brought to the South the obdurate hatred of the negro 

 which is so strong in the regions where he is rarely seen. The old 

 slave-holding class, and those who inherit their motives, will, I am 

 convinced, welcome the effort to open such places to well-trained blacks. 

 As an evidence of the state of mind of this ruling class, I may relate an 

 experience of a year or two ago in one of the most remote corners 

 of the extreme South: 



I was lodged for some days in a small rustic inn whereto came, 

 in the evening, a dozen men of the planter class to spin yarns, smoke 

 and drink. They had all been Confederate soldiers — some of them 

 were the very remnants of war. Willingly they allowed the talk to 

 be led to the question as to the future of the black people. They 

 showed their interest in all the forms of trade schooling that could be 

 given them, and their contempt for the results of the literary education 

 which they have received. Repeated reference was made to the great 

 work that Booker Washington was doing at Tuskegee, and for it there 



